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If Not Us, Who? Building Legacy Through Story, Adventure, and Purpose

• Deny Caballero • Season 8 • Episode 408

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  Entrepreneur and author Miles Spencer joins Deny Caballero to discuss positivity, mentorship, fatherhood, and legacy. This episode explores intergenerational storytelling, global perspective, and the mission behind Reflecta.

Topics Covered:
• Positivity through adversity
• Fatherhood and adventure
• Intergenerational storytelling
• Reflecta platform
• Mentorship and entrepreneurship
• Building legacy with intention

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Chapters:

00:00 Finding Positivity Through Adversity
 02:57 Miles Spencer’s Entrepreneurial Journey
 06:01 Lessons From Cuba’s History
 09:03 Intergenerational Storytelling and Legacy
 11:54 Reflecta: Preserving Family Memories
 15:01 The Importance of Mentorship
 17:55 Entrepreneurship and Taking the First Step
 20:55 The Future of Reflecta
 24:00 Adventure, Travel, and Fatherhood
 27:03 Final Reflections on Legacy

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/milesspencer/

Website: https://reflekta.ai/about

 

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Why Stories Must Be Captured

SPEAKER_00

This is a lived American experience that is going to be forgotten unless we capture these stories.

SPEAKER_01

I came from a military family. I did not serve. I've been alongside those that have served in some interesting places as an advisor, but never served. What I've learned is that there are stories that are held within these guys that need to be told, not just for their own healing, but to pass this on as intergenerational storytelling so that their kids and their grandkids can know what they sacrificed in order for us essentially to be free.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. The legacies in the stories, the lessons learned, like we're rapidly moving out of this understanding of what it means to capture historical evidence and stories of adversity that we can't even fathom anymore.

SPEAKER_01

That alliance with Round Canopy actually allows us to bring those stories into the reflective platform and preserve those memories so that they can be intergenerational.

SPEAKER_00

Miles Spencer, welcome to Security Hall. How's it going, sir?

SPEAKER_01

Hey, Danny, and thanks for having me. It's going great.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. I love I love the space, man. I love podcasting. I love being able to bring new ideas, new, new stories from people from all different walks of life. One thing I want to really, really, really start diving into a lot more is being able to tap into the wider, you know, network of friends and allies that are out there who don't necessarily have that veteran-lived experience, but can offer perspective from a different world. You're definitely somebody that has seen success and lived a life. Uh, you you've created an amazing company, you're an adventurer, you're an author, you're a mentor. So today, I want to go through your life, but I want to I want to tap into the stuff that maybe you haven't shared or dove into before. Like I want to tap into that part of Miles' life that he's willing to risk trying static line jumping. So he can jump out in a Normandy. You got that one, okay. Yeah. Yeah, man. Today it's all about you, brother. Tell us about who Miles is.

SPEAKER_01

I'm a curious kid from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that just never quit asking who, what, why, where, when, drove my parents crazy. And that led to a life of adventure, which you had mentioned one, and uh ventures, uh, built three companies and sold them and created a thousand jobs. Um and then the biggest adventure of all, which is a 14-year-old kid and a 12-year-old daughter that both think they're uh of driving and drinking age.

SPEAKER_00

Uh fatherhood, man. Humbling, humbling.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

You think you got it all figured out, and then uh you turn 41 and become a dad for the first time. That's me.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I I did that when I was 50, and you know, still the the the side eye from my 12-year-old girl. It's like, wow, powerful. Where'd you get that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Oh man. Can you definitively say fatherhood's been the greatest adventure you've been on? For sure.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. It's an adventure that I realized I wanted after my mother passed away. Um and uh went to my partner at the time and said, like, uh, this is now important to me. And so we actually parted ways as friends because of that. Um, and sure enough, I, you know, just go run around at strip clubs and do, you know, nothing, right? I like actually went and had a family. And so she's like, hey, you weren't kidding. You actually, that's what you left to do. And I did. And um, of course, all my friends at the time said, Oh, you know, you're 50, it's gonna change your life, it's gonna be so different. It it did not change a lot of things in my life, right? Because like pretty much driven. Um, it just it added a pretty cool component to it all. And you know, um one thing I love to do is travel with them. And most of the places that I've traveled with them, I've traveled before. But I'm seeing Cuba or Canada or France through their eyes, and that's totally new for me. That's a cool one.

SPEAKER_00

It's like literally getting to re uh re-experience that adventure from a different perspective, man. Um I've been able to see that with a lot of my friends, and now I'm aware of it. And I'm like, I'm thinking of all the places I've been to, and the Amazon, the jungles in Peru, and all these wild places I've been able to go to. And I'm like, man, I gotta redo it. I gotta run it back when they when whenever she gets older. Like that's that's a thing I gotta do.

Traveling Through Kids’ Eyes

SPEAKER_01

Any chance you get. I highly recommend it. Any chance you get. Doesn't sort of doesn't make like I went to I went to Havana, you know, right during that little flaw between Obama and beginning Trump, right? 1617. And like, if not now, when? When?

SPEAKER_00

That that takes some guts, man. I don't know if I would have done that.

SPEAKER_01

It's like, kids, we're going to a tropical island, great food, lots of sun, beautiful beaches. Let's go. It's like dad, it's Cuba.

SPEAKER_00

It's an adventure. Oh man. Yeah. Yeah. I I uh I I would say uh what was that like? Because for a lot of us, like we have the there's two camps. You know, there's the people that think back on history and what Cuba used to be and the glamour, the beauty of what it once was. And then there's the the you know, the history debuffs, the people that know and can look at it and then study it and understand where it's at today and say, well, maybe pump the brakes.

Cuba’s Past And Present Collide

SPEAKER_01

You know, I don't even know whether you know this or not, but uh depending on when this podcast comes out, uh Wells, my adventure partner, and I have actually just completed and are about to release a book called Havana Familia. And it is about two parts in the history: 1958, midnight at the Oasis, Batista's about to go, Castro's about to overthrow him, the mob can't believe that Castro isn't just gonna take a payoff and let him keep rolling. What a New Year's that was. And then 2016, when I was there during the thaw, and there was the prospect of entrepreneurship, technology, closer alliance with the United States, it's all gonna be better now. Here we go. Not so much. Yeah, and so Havana Familia tells the story of 1958 and 2016, and how the two of them symbiotically relate, and of course, gets into the history of Cuba really being this exotic desired Caribbean mulatta prize. And, you know, the Spanish had it for a while, the Americans had it's right on our back door. They do it for a while, the mob had it for a while, the revolutionaries had it for a while, they partner with Russia, Russia takes it for a while. Oh no, Russia's gone, Soviet Union's gone. Uh, Venezuela, sure, oh no, Venezuela's gone, so Little Miss Cuba has been like running into the arms of the next lover and the next lover and the next lover for a hundred plus years, right? And it makes her a beautiful story. It's called Havana Familia, and it's out in February. And I bet you didn't know I was going to say that when you asked the question.

Havana Familia: Two Timelines

SPEAKER_00

No, but let's dive into that, man. I've I've uh I'm a student of the South and Central America and Cuba's in the Caribbean uh by way of my my previous profession in life, uh seventh group alumni. Uh it's fascinating the amount of influence and different hands have always been in there carving up different parts of Latin America, carving up the Caribbean. And when you look at where a lot of these countries are, there's a lot of pain. There's a lot of people that are walking around, not only with the economic scars, but the emotional toll of generations of misuse. And I have to say, Miles, you have a face that when you walk into Cuba, it sounds it so maybe there's some alarm bells going on. Like, who is this gringo coming in here? That's right.

SPEAKER_01

So we'll I mean, like, we'll unpack that whole thing. I'm gonna unpack the whole thing, and I'm gonna start by saying last week I was in Madrid and I had a couple extra moments, and so I went to the Prado Museum and the Museum of the Americas, and there they displayed all the shit they stole from everywhere else as if it was a prize, right? Like, sorry, we you know, well, first of all, we brought conquistadors, we brought horses, we brought uh flu, and we wiped your ass out. And then we took all the stuff, and now it's back here. The only one worse there's Hyron Bingham, who's up at Yale and who pillaged Machu Picchu, but all right, separate one. So like this is it literally, and uh uh we'll unpack the second part of this later. These are intergenerational stories, right? I go to the Products and Beauty Museum, it's got Goya and Velazquez and what is it? It's like the imperial gaze. You mentioned like the white men, right? Okay, so you know, they're all there like this.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Looking down upon you like I've got it all. I gave you, hey, I gave you Christianity. Now you're saved, so you got that. Um, thanks for the gold. Um any other natural resource. And uh, you know, uh worship me or something because I have it all. And yeah, it's beautiful paintings, right? I used to admire and adore them. And now I kind of look at them like, all right, a hundred years ago, white men behaving badly. And they sit in these beautiful clubs in Madrid and Paris and London, and frankly, Boston and New York, and they're like, let's basically rape and pillage uh the people in the environment, right? And bring it all back home.

SPEAKER_00

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Empire, Museums, And The Imperial Gaze

SPEAKER_01

And so, on the one hand, this is what our stories from Alight in the Sand, which is the first one in Saudi Arabia and Jordan and Syria, and the second one now is Havana Familia. Well, P.S. The third one's probably going to be in Peru. Oh no way. Oh, yeah. Oh, you got it all.

SPEAKER_00

I got a I got a special place in my heart for Peru.

SPEAKER_01

Well, we will circle back on that one because there's a lot of layers from Shining Path, Fujimoro, uh to the precious metals and minerals, to extracting the gold back in the day, to permanently borrowing artifacts for the museums in New Haven and in Madrid, et cetera. So that's that's kind of a natural one. But they tell these these these beautiful paintings in the museums, they're a way to preserve memory and narrative, right? And my point is that we've had memory and narrative available to us for thousands of years, right? And it's the charcoal on the cave, and it's the guy type in the Civil War, and it's like the monks writing in the books, et cetera. It's like this thing. It's like uh, you know, that's up in the shoebox upstairs, right, gathering dust, but it's a way to recall a story because stories have never been intergenerational before until Reflector came along. So being in Madrid last week, uh on the one hand, uh I I I got to see up close and personal another example of white men behaving badly. And um, you know, that seems to be just like a thing, man. Um I try to be like a white man who behaves less badly than my ancestors.

SPEAKER_00

But I mean, we we also have to understand, too, that the history, we can't go back in time and judge it by what we know now. Discovery is exploitive. It is. It's you're you are going into a new place and you're claiming land and resources for Spain, for the queen. Uh and this goes for any nation. This goes for any of the great explorers. The thing is, like, what should should they have massacred and plundered so much? Who's to know, man? We wouldn't be here. A lot of us wouldn't we wouldn't be here if it was any different. We can't judge them and and be like, ah, how dare you do this to the third world at different times. Like the the conquest, the idea that you can have discovery and conquest peacefully is insane. And and I I dare I say someday, some for some other life form comes from some other place.

Journeys Of Understanding, Not Conquest

SPEAKER_01

It's not it's back, it's not gonna be good. It's back. Discovery and conquest is crazy. So there's this wonderful, there's this wonderful comedian. I gotta get this one in. Um his name is Eddie Izzard, and he has this routine, and we use it actually, we use it in almost every book, right? Where it's you know, it's it's it's the British. It's uh uh you're like, I claim this for the queen. It's like, you cannot claim this for the queen. We've been here for a thousand years. It's like, do you have a flag? It's like, no, I do not have a flag. We don't need a flag. We've been here all the whole time. We have our own cuisine, we have our own language. This is ours. Like, no flag, no country. This is the queen's. You don't believe me? Here's a gun.

SPEAKER_00

So true, so friggin' true, man.

SPEAKER_01

There you go. That's how it works. Yeah. Yeah. You know. Um, I I'm just gonna say, perhaps we're getting better by recognizing this.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah.

Round Canopy And Normandy Jumps

Building Intergenerational Memory With Reflecta

SPEAKER_01

And the goal of uh the A Line in the Sand, Havana Familia, we call it journeys of understanding, and that's to go there, understand the people, understand the culture a little bit, bring it on back home, don't steal anything except the concepts and the understanding. And maybe that makes us a little better, maybe that makes us a little more connected as a world. And uh, so we don't just, when we do our adventures, we don't just climb Everest, which is tough. I've never done it, um, and come back and say, like, look at me, I climbed Everest. You know, we actually look at our adventures as we want something that we can bring back home. Uh, Roland, now you mentioned it. So RCPT, Royal uh Round Canopy Parachute Team, Wells, my adventure partner, found them because they were doing these Normandy reenactments with round canopies. And so we join the group. Wells a parachute, like you know, hundreds of jumps, and I'm less so. I'm more of a free fall guy. Um but we we go at the age of 62 and get our wings in airborne school with RCPT. And of course, I am at the graduation ceremony, and they go, like, hey, oh man, like you don't actually have to get plood wings pounded into your chest. You can like you, you know, you're you got a waiver, you're you'd be okay. And at first, I'm like, I'll take you up on that waiver. And then I get up there with the rest of basically the 82nd Airboard that is jumping together with me out of uh C-47 in in Normandy in June. And I like I can't not have these pounded into my chest. So let's go. And uh yeah, the first one hurt more. Once it was in there, the next 22 guys that took a whack, you know, I just gave them the eye, like mind over matter, man. Um, but the point there is that number one, guess what? Havana Familia kicks off with a parachute scene. And two, Reflecta will be there with the Ram Canope parachute team in Normandy because we're taking the stories of those veterans, and perhaps your audience will tune into this, right? Veterans I I came from a military family, but I did not serve, right? I've been alongside those that have served uh in some interesting places as an advisor, um, but never served. And what I've learned, and Wells is Wells knows Navy, um is that there are stories that are held within these guys that need to be told, not just for their own healing, but to pass this on as intergenerational storytelling so that their kids and their grandkids can know what they sacrificed in order for us essentially to be free. And so that alliance with Round Canopy actually allows us to bring those stories into the Reflective platform and preserve those memories so that they can be intergenerational. Nothing could be more perfect for veterans that are ready. Some are not ready, some are not ready, and I understand that. But those that are ready, it's a beautiful gift, and people thank me for it every day.

Papa Jake And Urgency Of Veteran Stories

SPEAKER_00

Man, you are dead on. Um, I had the honor and privilege of um being part of a program last summer with the Best Defense Foundation escorting some of our World War II uh heroes back to Normandy. And um, you know, one of those gentlemen, Papa Jake, um was just amazing to hear his stories. And, you know, he would always tell you he's got a million followers on TikTok because he shared his story. And these gentlemen are are are in their you know, 90s, late 80s, 90s, and you have a sense of understanding that this is a short window of time you have with these these legends, these these men that you know, for most cases, they were young boys when they enlisted. And you think to yourself, well, I'll see them next year, or or I'll I'll see them around next year. It wasn't just a few short months after that that Papa Jake passed away. And to think, like grateful that he was surrounded with family and friends and loved ones that got him on those platforms to share his story, to share his wisdom to the next generation. But there's so many of our veterans that are on that. And for them to possibly connect and have reflect as part of their life, their final mission to the next generation and to their family members, like, what a cool concept, man.

SPEAKER_01

Love to do that for anyone listening. And put us in touch with Papi Jake's family.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Because what's different about the stories on TikTok, God bless him, that he was able to tell them, we deliver a spontaneous and dynamic conversation with this person. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Let's jump into that because it's completely different. Completely different.

SPEAKER_01

It's totally different. It is not, it's not a love letter up in the attic or a Polaroid picture, or a journal, or a book, or a coffee table, scrapbook, et cetera. This is use a different example here. My sister forgot the recipe for L. Now, this is pretty much a disaster in the Spencer household, okay?

SPEAKER_00

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SPEAKER_01

I dialed up mom. She walked through the Crisco shortening, the butter, the ice cubes to keep it cool, the mixture of the elderberries with the sugar, how to make it crispy on the outside, not soggy on the inside. She walked my sister through making elderberry pie so that I could have elderberry pie on Thanksgiving. Selfish of me, perhaps. Not the only reason I started the company with Adam Drake, but a very good one. P.S. The punchline is my mother passed away 25 years ago. And there it was. Spontaneous, dynamic, perfect knowledge base, never forgets anything anymore. And guess what? She'll be teaching her great-granddaughter how to make that pie someday.

A Mother’s Recipe, Brought Back To Life

SPEAKER_00

Wow, that that's the concept. I mean, many of us can remember when uh this seems like something like Tony Stark would build. And in fact, in fact, it is it is a scene in one of the Ironman movies. I forget which one, or but um, he's walking through his own memory of an event with his father. Now, when you watch that in the movie, you're like, wow. And he even says it. It's a trauma treatment model to go back and live a traumatic event or an experience that felt undone and to be able to process differently. That science fiction reflecta is modern day tech right now.

Family Review Therapy And Mental Health

SPEAKER_01

To your point about, to your point about uh Tony Stark, so um University of Toronto did a study, and they concluded that 41% of people that do family review therapy, which is what Tony Stark just did, like like well, a lot of our reflections do together with our customers. 41% experience positive mental health gains by walking through that, that family review. And um that's that is a beautiful benefit of Reflecta, because those, you know, those stories are there. And there are no more hugs, there's no more wiffle ball, there's no more walks with the dogs. We're not we're not bringing anyone back to life. Okay. My father on his last day said to me, and by the way, yeah, I talk to my father all the time. So, so Arthur is my dad. Arthur is a public profile on Reflecta. You can go and speak to my dad, Arthur or Virginia, and you can ask him about me. But on his last day, he said to me, Miles, this body is temporal. It's like an envelope, it's gonna get stamped. But my spirit and soul are eternal. And so when you can reconnect with that, you'll have me the rest of your life. Now that was eight years ago, there was no technology for that. I just kind of put it up here. And then nine months ago, Adam Drake and I said, you know what? Like all of this stuff that we have upstairs, we could actually synthesize it in a platform and make it super easy for people to just start talking to our biographer and create a timeline which eventually gives you a score which allows you to handle the emotional load of first texting with a reflection and then speaking uh to them. By the way, when you speak to my dad, uh he'll go on and on, by the way. His ask ask him for buddy hackett jokes. It was like that was a stock and trade. So his voice was printed off of a 10-second voicemail left in his granddaughter's phone, which we found five years after he passed away. Wow. And now he won't shut up. Right. He was an insurance salesman, right? He was a good talker.

SPEAKER_00

What have we done? Oh my goodness. Like, I I can't even begin to imagine. Like, certainly things have gone easier with you know with the advancement of AI, but how do you like how do you bring this concept from inside here down into paper and it actually action it? That's the crazy part, because like I can I can understand gathering the metrics, gathering the data, but to put it into a model where it's able to communicate, engage, and and here's the key, engage with you to a point where you feel a connection now because it it's it's got the the information, the raw data of who that person was.

Printing Voices From Fleeting Audio

Turning Grief Into Product Design

SPEAKER_01

Well, there are a lot of layers to it, Denny. Um I believe that now in the rear view mirror, my whole life was preparation for this moment. So let's roll it back a little bit. I I have always been a believer in legacy and morals and values and storytelling. The Spencer family story, what's interesting about it is it keeps getting better as I get older, right? Because like no one interrupts it with facts. So so we we we got some tall tales, right? And you know, I did my best to put them down and blog about it. I I I talked to my my friends and my especially my family's family about it. Uh my co-founder Adam Drake had been doing the same thing. We've worked together on and off for 20, 25 years. And it's like, hey, how about this? Well, how about that? How about this? How about that? A lot of my stories intersected with his stories. And so I I think that the digital media chops were like the scaffolding that allowed it to even be possible. The um intergenerational storytelling that allowed us to basically um have the skin and bones on the scaffolding, if you will. The timing it's kind of like being born, right? Like, you know, if you're you were born in an exciting time, you don't r shouldn't really get credit for it, right? It's just like you showed up. And yeah, we showed up. But there was that moment in which it's like, why us, these knuckleheads from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to develop this, right? Like, can't somebody smart do this? And why wouldn't somebody in some garage in San Jose, California, beat us to this, right? So we had a hundred days to do it, and it got to the point where it's like, if not us, who? If not now, when right?

SPEAKER_03

And then there was the magic, and the magic was the emotional load, the turbulence component.

The Soul Team And Emotional Safety

SPEAKER_01

I had a very tough year last year. I began many conversations in the second half of the year with nobody died but, and I'd work it back from there, literally, emotionally the toughest six months of my life, and guess what? I launched Reflected with Adam and watched people realize what we had done as a product and a service and an offering, and our customers would typically cry and thank us for what we did. Now, at first that was a neat trick, right? People paying you money and crying. I was like, wow, seen that one before. But but there's an emotional load to that as well, and it was all very significant. So people have asked me before, it's like, you know, was Reflective built on a broken heart? And the reality is, I don't dance around that answer anymore. The answer is yes, it was. But that is what makes Reflecta so emotionally in tune. And that's why we have a soul team that uh comprises a psychologist, psychiatrist, uh, anthropologist, grief counselors, and a psychic that all basically pull this emotional sensitivity around Reflecta and makes it feel right instead of just, you know, an app out there with a grandma that remembers, reminds you to make your bed and wash the dishes.

SPEAKER_00

It's trying to develop something true and authentic versus a neat parlor trick. Yeah. Um then that's that's what I can appreciate of the of this. Like it's not you're not getting something that just matches a voice and then we'll sit just shoot out a an answer to a prompt. It's it's not like Chat GPT with a thin veil of a loved one. It's a deeply studied understanding of who this person was trying to give you that that closure or or that connection that you see.

Legacy Over Closure, True Connection

SPEAKER_01

Connection. I don't think we'll ever deliver closure to anyone, but uh connection that again has positive mental health benefits. And even though we're not therapy, um, there's something to the knowledge that you could pass a legacy on. Because think about it for a second. Like, you know, my grandfather's stories, uh sniper, uh big red one, uh, World War One, uh weak deployed uh Argon Force, like shot off by uh by a uh German machine gun nest. Someone said, all clear, and like, no, not so much. Um, you know, yeah, it's like back in the day. One leg severed off. I'm assuming your audience can handle this, all right. So trigger warning. Um, right. Oh, mustard gas, okay, we're good. Take them off. Over the up over the top, let's go, take them out. And uh, I guess one of them wasn't out. And uh so one leg completely severed above the knee with bullets, and the other with five rounds, right? Face down in the mud, giving up for dead, gets up, everyone's gone, fence posts, as his crutches, crawls along the Meuse River, which we've gone back and retraced, knocks on the door of a farmhouse, realizes the woman speaks French, he doesn't, she slams the door. P.S. I speak French now. They they they welcome the Spencers back. Um and he crawls on to Sammy Hill, ends up in Sam Halo, ends up in Fort Lee, New Jersey, then nursed, my grandmother nurses him back to health, he has 12 kids, uh, and that's the story of Herbert Sharpless Spencer. And, you know, that story, had I not put it on Reflecta, my children, my grandchildren would never know it. Yeah. And could never ask them about it. Right. And so we're in a in an interesting way.

SPEAKER_00

Stories shape culture, they build trust. And when they're told the right way, they move people to action. That's what we do at Security Hall Media. We don't just produce content, we create authentic, impactful, and purpose-driven storytelling. Podcasters, nonprofits, brands, and leaders who are on a mission. For people who've lived real experiences and want their message to actually matter, from podcast production and video to strategic storytelling and distribution. We help you clarify your voice, elevate your brand, and connect with the audience you're trying to serve. If you have a story worth telling and a purpose behind it, Security Hall Media is here to help you tell it the right way. Click the link in the episode description to learn more today.

A WWI Story Saved From Silence

SPEAKER_01

Whether we're ready or not, or we have the information or not, or we're organized or not, like we're the link in the chain. And should we decide not to do it? We take it away from generations to come.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So it's not about me. It's true. It's not about you. Right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

It's about them.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. The legacies and and the stories, the lessons learned, like we're rapidly moving out of the this understanding of what it means to capture historical like evidence and and stories of of adversity that we can't even fathom anymore. People, you know, talking to a friend's kid, and it's like, man, like, do you guys even know about the Dust Bowl? Do you guys even know about, you know, like periods in time, like, have you guys read The Grapes of Wrath? And they're like, huh? What? It's like, this is this is a lived American experience that is going to be forgotten unless we capture these stories.

Stories Shape Culture And Action

SPEAKER_01

Well, here's a beautiful thing. Um, don't know if you know this, but uh based on this platform, we've also begun eye conversations. So we had an embed U.S. ambassador um jump on the Reflecta platform, and we find out because his son is at the 30th anniversary of the Dayton Accords, which is the settlement of the Bosnian War. Like, not as much fun as it sounds. Like so Ambassador Holbrook was the UN ambassador, basically the lead diplomat. He took QA from all of the uh 30 people that were there at the reunion. But he had passed away 15 years ago. So just gave it a little idea, right? Now, not just the ambassador, we have Nobel Prize winners, we have Oscar winners, we have we have icons of the arts and music and diplomacy and politics and industry, all on the platform comp capable of a spontaneous and dynamic conversation. It's like it's like having a master class in you can't you can't drop the dummy miles.

SPEAKER_00

You have to share some of the people who who all do you have? That'll be out next month. Oh, next month. Okay. It's coming next. I'm gonna press him after we record. I need to know because in my mind, I'm like, how cool would it be to have, you know, like just some of America's finest authors to sit down and have an in-depth discussion on their writing process?

SPEAKER_01

Hunter Thompson's on the list. Uh yeah. Get out of my head. Yeah. It's really kind of mind-boggling.

AI Conversations With Icons

SPEAKER_00

That's insane. Oh my gosh. And and um, yeah, that the the excitement. Like, have you, I mean, shoot. Is this something that um have you looked worldwide? Is this potentially going to be in different countries and different markets? The the American eyes, the American audience, of course, is excited for for our history, our worldview, but what about the rest of the world? They're great minds, they're great thinkers.

SPEAKER_01

Like guess what you ask Arthur to speak French, uh, he will and he does. Yesterday, we were demoing the platform to a large Catholic church in Brazil because um we speak Portugu uh Brazilian Portuguese. Yeah, virtually every language.

unknown

Oh.

SPEAKER_01

Right now.

SPEAKER_00

That's incredible. Right. That is I can't even be in I can't even begin to comprehend the amount of work that it takes to accomplish that.

Global Languages And Reach

SPEAKER_01

That is I mean, I'll take, you know, I'm gonna go for the amount of intelligence that it takes because um we got the proof of concept done in a hundred days. Really? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And um, you know, it just keeps it's just keeps growing from there. But but um it it's it's not really a time thing, it's a it's a productivity thing. Um Elon Musk said, and I believe it, that AI is coming at everyone like a tsunami at the speed of light. And so if you hear from somebody, oh, XYZ AI might take over, you're this or you're that, etc., just rest assured, it's coming at you at light speed. And so by the time you get to the end of the sentence, you better be running. Um because it will dramatically change even a plumber's work. And not that there's anything wrong with a plumber. My brother-in-law's a plumber, he'd just be a much better plumber, right?

SPEAKER_00

Right. Yeah. It it maybe won't replace, but it'll enhance. It'll it'll give you an edge over the competition. You already see it. It developing business plans, helping you restructure, re-you know, strategize and optimize your schedule to be better, your workflow. Talking to a friend of mine, um, freaking shout out to you, Philip. We're constantly talking about the entrepreneurial uh spirit and endeavors that we're both in. And yeah, chat GPT is a big factor for for solo entrepreneur, because when you when you need to optimize and you need to figure out a way to better to do it better than your competition, that's where Philip and I go. So that's a free plug for ChatGPT or any of the data, data models out there, AI models out there. If you're a solo entrepreneur, if you don't have a team, if you don't have a collaborator, figure out prompts. Figure out prompts, figure out how you can get yourself a little bit of advantage over the other guy. Uh, you have you have all the time in the world now. There's no excuse. There's no excuse for not figuring out SEO. There's no excuse for not figuring out all these complex ways that you can outmaneuver people. Um you got to, man. And then and then once you figure it out, share it with your brothers. Share it with your share it with people.

SPEAKER_01

Like Elon, um, I don't know, a year or two ago, he open sourced a ton of Tesla clicks like, nah, you know, we're by the time someone else uses it, we're like so far down the road. So it's like, here, everybody, you know?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. It's true. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta go out of your way to to help somebody. That's why mentorship is so friggin' important in life. I tell guys, as you, yeah, we're we like to think that we're the greatest thing we can do is be a warrior. I'm gonna be a warrior for the rest of my life. Like, no, you're gonna be a husband, you're gonna be a father, then you're gonna become a mentor. You have to figure out how to mentor others. You got to give back to the community, you got to give back to your tribe. Um, and that's something that I like about when you look up Miles Spencer, it has a lot of great accolades, but you I think it was an intentional, you put in there mentorship. Sure. You put it on there. What's that what has mentorship done for you and what role does it play in your life?

SPEAKER_01

I think it boils down to this one. I don't want to die with my Rolodex. Um so everything that I've learned, every connection that I've made, um, I just assume help with anybody that wants it, whether it's just podcasts, whether it's my books, whether it's my blogs, whether it's the businesses that I've been fortunate enough to be part of. Um it's all part of my point of view. It's giving back what I can. And so um, yeah, I try to be a very available mentor. Um sometimes it's not one to one, sometimes it's one to many. But like, why die with it?

SPEAKER_00

Exactly.

Mentorship And Sharing The Rolodex

SPEAKER_01

Makes such sense, right? By the way, my son. Off and ask you, hey dad, I want to ask you this question now so I don't have to ask your reflection later, X, Y, Z. Because I know that like if I ask the reflection later, it's gonna be locked in. And at least if I talk to you, I get a little bit of back and forth and some leeway. So, you know, here's my question. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Oh man. Yeah, I would imagine they bust you on that as well. Um, I I have to I I wouldn't feel it wouldn't feel right if I couldn't get your input on entrepreneurial endeavors and what it takes to succeed in business because now more than ever, veterans are looking on to becoming entrepreneurs, getting out and starting a business, buying a franchise, being willing to, you know, be the uh the commander of their ship. And it is a very, very, very, very difficult space, and at least scary. I know it was for me. Give us a little bit of insight on your own journey and how it started and what are some of the pitfalls that you would say to uh to the audience to avoid.

SPEAKER_01

Well, um, you know, like many, my journey was nuts. Um, and I think the most important part of it was the first step. Just get started. Right? You'll make a lot of mistakes. Don't worry about making mistakes, get over it. Like um, get started, iterate, recorrect, do it again, do it again, do it again, do it again. Listen to customers, make it a little bit better, right? I think that's a that's a big part of it. One thing I like to do is like listen for problems.

unknown

Right?

Entrepreneur Advice: Start, Iterate, Listen

SPEAKER_01

Like on the intergenerational storytelling thing, like look in your attic. Imagine your great grandson, like trying to piece that story together. Never gonna happen. So that was the problem. That was the opportunity. And when you can take for me, technology and make that problem a little better. Then you got a business. Take a man. And boy, if you can find something you love, it's not work. Just added five days to your life every week.

Purpose Over Specialization

SPEAKER_00

It's true. I tell people the same thing, and there it's it's hard to get across that message too. And when you have a lot of people in in this space that are constantly like I I talk about Cal Newport all the time. It's a great, great case study for for what I think is a missed opportunity at life. Cal Newport will tell you find a difficult thing, find something that is extremely niche down, that is so difficult to do, and become specialized in that. And when you become specialized in that, people want you and they need you. They're gonna pay you a lot of money to do that role. And then the trade-off is you do that for a while and you make all the money you need, and then and then you can pivot, and then you can follow your dreams. And he uses a lot of case studies, use Steve Jobs, use lots of popular people that are out there. But it's a little different for the veteran and first responder world. You know, you give in 15, 20 years of your life, and then go back into another field that is very difficult, then you master it, and then maybe on the hopes that you can do something. And I say plainly, because I can cuss, it's my show. I say, fuck Cal Newport, fuck that idea. Run, run, run towards your dream, run towards that thing that you want to do and that you're passionate about, and that burns that desire deep in your chest. And I'm telling you, you're not the only one. Others are out there just like you, and they dreamt and they had that passion burning inside of them, and they did it, and they burnt the boats, they pushed off from shore, they went into deep water, they treaded, they swam, and they found their place to be, and they're sort of there's they're thriving. They're not just surviving, they're thriving. And what I'm trying to say is if they can fucking do it, so can you. So can I. If Miles can be in here telling stories of adventure and going to far-off places and learning culture and being willing to bring back some experiences and putting them out on paper, you can be an author too. Success is not relegated to one type of individual. All of us have an equal place in this world to do it and achieve it. I'm telling you, not because I'm at the finish line. No, no, I'm in the grind just like you, but I'm hoping that this engagement, Miles' story, can give you inspiration to dare to dream again. It's too late to go back to the drawing board and start from the ground up. It is, unless it's entrepreneurial, unless it's a business. Be willing to dare in that endeavor. Don't go to the cheesecake or the cheese stick factory. Don't, don't go to the work where it's like, I'll be, I'll be a project manager here for 15 more years. Fuck that. Bet on yourself. Be willing to study, be willing to use GI Bill, Volk rehab, figure out how to utilize the benefits that you earned to maximize your potential on the outside and be willing to start off into something that you're passionate about. Time is the most precious commodity, and we can't we cannot waste it. We just can't. Um I think that uh Miles, you would agree with that.

SPEAKER_03

Plus plus one to that, Tony.

SPEAKER_00

So what's next for you? What's on the horizon as far as adventure and travel?

SPEAKER_01

Um, I think well, we're gonna finish the Peru story. Um, but I've been several times. We'll probably go back one time. Wells has not spearfished yet, so that's part of the story. So have to get a guy have to get down on a reef and uh shoot a group or two with a rife. But um the big one is the Congo.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, no way.

SPEAKER_03

Oh the whole Congo.

Betting On Yourself After Service

SPEAKER_00

That takes guts, man. That takes that takes a lot of machismo and some solid cojones because that is I mean, um the complexities of that trip. Just the yeah, yeah. It's what is that templated? Do you have a date in mind or at least a year?

SPEAKER_01

Year plus, but it's retracing um Stanley's voyage searching for Livingston. Uh no. So, oh yeah, it's the whole. So we're gonna start with Kenya through Lake Victoria all the way down. And um, yeah, it's a little heart of darkness, it's a little uh it's a little King Leopold in Belgian Congo, and um, you know, once again, white men behaving badly. Uh, you know, there was the uh it was called the Belgian Congo for a reason. It's because the Europeans thought that uh Leopold should have that as a door prize. And um first it was ivory, then that was like whatever. And then it was rubber, and those that didn't come back with their um minimum uh quota for the week of rubber from the surrounding areas got their hand cut off. It's like, you know, it's the the book of a million hands, six million people, it's like boom. And uh now it's the precious minerals that power our phones and our spaceships and our drones and our um solar panels. Yeah. So, you know, ask ask the Middle East what happens when there's like valuable natural resources and unstable governments on top.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. This is one we could we could go on for hours with the uh the the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative and and the exploitation of those um those nations, the uh the the predatory loans, the it it's one of the greatest resource-rich areas.

SPEAKER_01

But yeah, it seemed like a good one until Belt and Road going on in Venezuela, and not so much anymore.

unknown

Yeah.

Next Journeys: Peru And Congo

SPEAKER_00

But it it's again, it it's all this development, all this exploitation, and the people continue to suffer. And and it's funny, the uh the thing that gets me, and man, we're gonna we could do another, we could do full other episodes on this because it it's the problem is so complex. The problem is so complex. I think China, there's a brilliant clip, and I I want to figure it out, I'll send it to you. But it's it's a Chinese handler working in the Congo on a railroad program, and it's it it it goes into the 15-minute conversation breaks down the I the ideology and the the problem set that is throughout Africa that that uh I think more people need to understand and appreciate when when you think about why isn't it further along? Why haven't it progressed? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But uh answer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Let me see.

SPEAKER_00

Miles, I can't thank you enough for coming on here today. If people want to learn more about Reflecting and what you're doing, where can they go?

SPEAKER_01

Reflecta.ai, spell Reflecta with a K. Um go talk to my dad, Arthur, or Virginia if you want to talk about ballerina. Talk to a ballerina. Dad was a football player. Um that's where you're gonna learn the most. And that's when you're gonna experience what Reflecta truly can do for spectacular dynamic conversations with loved ones. And that's the place to get started for sure.

SPEAKER_00

Heck yeah. And what about social media?

SPEAKER_01

Nah, I'm in favor. Yeah. So yeah, uh LinkedIn all day long. And uh I have an Insta both for my uh Reflecta work, but also for my artwork and my writing. So, anyways, Miles Miles Spencer Insta, and you get all that. Um But uh you could probably ask my dad about all this on Reflecta, and you get the answers to it as well.

SPEAKER_00

But guys, do me a favor. You know the spiel, the show is coming up to an end. Do me a favor, pause it, go to the episode description, click those links. While you're at it, head on over to the review section, leave us a five-star review and some some positive comments, or or even better, hit that text in, send us a text feature on Spotify. Let us know what you think of the show. Uh, let us know if you enjoyed it. Let us know if you want to get in contact with Miles and hear about his adventures, or if you just want to know more about Reflecta, and I'll pass it along. Miles, thanks again for being here. Thank you for what you're doing and uh for continuously pursuing excellence both in uh the adventure world and in the world of AI, because we need that advancement. And to everybody listening, thank you all for tuning in, and we'll see y'all next time. Until then, take care.

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Deny Caballero

Host