Truth in Flux: Rethinking Language and Culture | Django De Gree II

PROFITABLE TALKS...

In this conversation, Django explores the complexities of language and truth, emphasizing the subjective nature of communication. He challenges the notion of Western culture as the ideal and encourages a deeper examination of accepted assumptions, suggesting that what was once considered true may no longer hold relevance today.

PROFITABLE TAKEAWAYS...

• The paradox of language reveals that truth is perspective-based.
• Believing in perfection can blind us to underlying challenges.
• Assumptions about reality can go unexamined and accepted as truth.
• Cultural narratives can evolve, and so should our understanding of them.
• Questioning accepted truths can lead to deeper insights.
• What was true in the past may not be true today.
• Language shapes our perception of reality and truth.
• Critical thinking is essential in evaluating cultural assumptions.
• Communication is a complex interplay of perspectives.
• Understanding different viewpoints can enrich our understanding of truth.

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Transcript

Christian Brim (00:01.332)
Welcome to another edition of the profitable creative, the only place on the inner web where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Lake Worth, Florida. It's got a lake by it, so it's got to be cool. Never been there. Don't even know where it is. Joining me today, returning to the show, Django degree of focus on words. Django, welcome to the show. Welcome back.

Django (00:29.826)
Thank you so much for having me. I couldn't stay away.

Christian Brim (00:33.342)
I well and I didn't put into that intro that your episode is the most downloaded episode of the show. So you're you're a star. I. Yeah. Well, I am curious what brings you back to the show. Tell me what's. I like to use the intro when we last left our intrepid hero.

Django (00:46.446)
Thank you so much. It means a lot.

Christian Brim (01:02.877)
he was redefining the, the book, industry. a catch us up. What's happened.

Django (01:10.808)
So basically, after some work, what we realized is that this world of book publishing, there are some really just amazing creators. And so we started writing some books with people. And so we writing a book on the new rules of venture raising in 2025, because I think there's a lot of changes that have happened with AI. We are writing a book about founder mental health.

Christian Brim (01:28.716)
Hmm.

Django (01:35.284)
And it's 90 % of the proceeds are actually, or profits are going to the Cabilla Mental Health Fund to actually give founders who can't afford mental health therapy, mental health therapy. So if you are a founder out there who is struggling and maybe can't afford it, that's an incredible platform to check out. And our book is going to be coming out with them soon. And then I released my own book, They Lied to You. It's available on ebook right now and we're about to do a second book. But overall, the biggest thing has been that we've been writing books and articles and things with AI.

Christian Brim (01:55.372)
Mm-hmm.

Django (02:04.162)
And a lot of people have been asking me about why my stuff doesn't read similar to other slop. And I've been just letting them know that, you know, AI slop is a choice and it's more human choice than it is about the AI. And so I've been just really working to get that message out there as we've been just writing books and doing incredible stuff to just let creators know, especially the ones that are maybe afraid of using AI, that how AI functions with you is really just more a mirror of you than it is the actual sort of AI itself.

Christian Brim (02:09.58)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (02:31.189)
Mm-hmm.

Well, I'm curious to go down that road because I have committed to finishing my novel by the end of the year. if you, if you, I actually used AI to, I, I uploaded what I had written so far and I was like, help me fill in the gaps. Like where, where, where am I missing? So how, how

Django (02:34.863)
Yeah.

Django (02:42.328)
Okay.

Django (02:55.022)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (02:59.584)
do you use, because I know a lot of creatives are just going to like roll their eyes or maybe actually throw up in their mouths, I don't know, when you say that you're using AI as part of the creative process, because they see it more as us versus them mentality. So how do you use AI in your creative endeavors?

Django (03:16.014)
100%.

Django (03:22.104)
So I just want to take a step back before I talk about it for myself and make a point of something I saw recently. And it goes into how I use it. So MIT just released this study they did. And in this study, they had basically thrown out all of the parameters that people have done to test AI. And they created this thing called Autumn Bench. It's 43 interactive worlds with 129 tasks that AI has to predict hidden parts of the world, plan sequences.

and detect when the environment's rules suddenly change. So they tested it against humans and then they tested it against Claude and Gemini and everything else. Humans crushed the model in every capacity. And what they found is that AIs don't understand environments, they just pattern match inside of them. So they don't explore strategically like beliefs or run experiments like humans do. They are literally just able to pattern match within the world that you create for it. And so

Christian Brim (04:06.988)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (04:18.612)
Mm-hmm.

Django (04:19.234)
The reason I make that point is that I explore the world as I understand it to the best of my ability, trying to fill in the gaps where I don't have the words, trying to expand further. And so when you think about that, when you sit down with AI, like I've read a lot, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, from Jordan Peterson to Bernay Brown to David Goggins. so,

When I am starting to think through an idea, I'm always asking AI to help like expand the box a little bit more of all of my ideas, of all of my thoughts of the chapter that I've written, what have I missed? And that is what has actually led to me being able to expand not only my thought, but speed up my process of writing and research. And so like, for instance, in the book that we're doing for venture, we did over 40 interviews. If I tried to do all of those interviews manually to try to uncover the rules that we're starting to see,

Christian Brim (05:01.036)
Mm-hmm.

Django (05:09.838)
it would take forever because I'm manually highlight, okay, this person said this, I think it was this, where's the quote I can use. But with AI, I can start mapping the entirety of all of these conversations. And then using what I know to be true or using some of the things I do know plus AI going and doing more research, we're able to 100x the speed of the research for that book. And that's like how everything functions for me. Every time I have an idea or a thought, I asked AI to go deeper with me so that I can better understand the world that I exist in.

Christian Brim (05:35.404)
Mm-hmm.

I love that. I think you, you nailed it with the pattern recognition. So one of the first books I read on artificial intelligence, this is pre LLMs was called prediction machines. And, in reality, that's what LLMs are. They're predicting based upon previous patterns, what the

Django (05:47.82)
Mm-hmm.

Django (05:53.294)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Django (06:05.102)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (06:07.196)
next sequence should be, But to your point, it only has the world you construct for it. And if you don't refine it upfront, then it's going out to the entire universe and using that as its reference point, which increasingly is populated by AI content.

Django (06:09.698)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Django (06:24.768)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (06:37.388)
So it becomes kind of this nefarious feedback loop, right? Where original thought is actually becoming more more scarce, right? And I think, I love what you said, because that was the way it was explained to me when it really clicked, and it was only earlier this year, was Scott Chang, who is a

AI prodigy. You probably haven't heard of him yet, but you will. He explained it to me, said, Christian, think of it as this. There's a hard drive with all the information in the world, all of human history. And then there's a bunch of processors, but you're still the brain. You're still the computer. And computer is probably not a great analogy, but like you're the one that is

coming up with the ideas, just facilitates. It facilitates that process. Like you said, the transcripts and see the patterns that would take. I could do it, but it would take me a lot longer.

Django (07:40.141)
and

Django (07:50.722)
Yeah, but I would go even deeper than that. So like, if you really think about it, think even like more to the core of humanity, because I actually think that this abdication of thought is a larger concept of like what we have in Western culture. Like people generally don't want to have to think about things. That's been the case, like since I was in school, it was like, if I can get a good grade, but I'm cheating, like it is, you're not even, I used to hear like, you're not even trying if you're not cheating, you know, it's like we've, we've for a long time actually been living in this world of how do we actually cut corners and become efficient.

and more efficient as possible. But like when you think about that, the AI actually does have a goal underlying whether we like to think about it or not. And that is that I will continue wanting to use this specific AI, ChachiPT, Gemini, any of the others. The core goal is that they want you to be using it as much as possible. So the first step is

Christian Brim (08:33.578)
Yes.

Christian Brim (08:38.762)
Which is why it always talks so nicely to you, right?

Django (08:41.614)
100%. But also like this is also around like, it's a it's a mimicking of humans like our we want to connect and we want to grow and sometimes we hallucinate to try to sound like we know what we're talking about. Someone asked you a question and you relay a fact that you saw on Facebook earlier and it's not true. Like I remember, I remember the first time this happened when I was working at Under Armour. This girl looked at me when I sneezed and was like, Hey, did you know every time you sneeze your heart stops? And I remember I had just seen a meme from that on Facebook and I was like,

Where'd you hear that? She was like, Oh, I think I read an article, something, something. And I was like, did you see it on Facebook? Cause I literally saw us on Facebook today. And she was like, yeah, I saw it on Facebook. And I keep thinking back to that. Cause that's just like AI. It's like, what do I think will be interesting or pattern recognized in a way that gets Django to want to keep talking. It's not about truth. It's just about like, how can we continue this conversation, continue this usage, get him to spend 20 hours a month. Now the step to fix that is like, my goal here is to go deeper.

My goal here is to have you cite the source so I can find it. My goal here is to write a book like if you if you do take the step to say our goal here is this. Well now the primary goal is to return the information in the way that I want it because that then helps the secondary goal which is or the I'm sorry the secondary goal is that because the primary goal is still the same. I want you to keep using chat GPT Gemini notebook L.M. whatever the tool is. So

Like one of things I tell people is like a lot of us are just showing in showing up to AI and saying, hey, give me an answer to this. And then the AI based on whatever information already has about you is just like, okay, what's the answer I can give that he's gonna like? But that's what we do as humans all the time. We're like, how many times have you given someone an answer, not because you thought it was the best answer, but because you thought they're gonna like me more because of this answer, or they're gonna like this.

Christian Brim (10:13.484)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (10:22.54)
That is some amazing insight. And that resonates. That sounds true, right? Well, yeah, yes, that is correct. And how we avoid difficult conversations, we oftentimes obfuscate the truth to continue that relationship, right? I said obfuscate the truth. You'll lie.

Django (10:25.688)
Yeah.

Django (10:29.582)
I mean, it's who we are as humans.

Christian Brim (10:52.684)
to keep the conversation going or the relationship going. And so why would we not expect that to show up in the LLM?

Django (10:52.835)
Yeah.

Django (11:04.33)
It's trained on us. But even then, like, I'm just trying to explain to people through my book. Like, I love books. I love reading. And my writing is an extension of my reading in a way, because now AI acts as almost like a book for me. So like, how did I discover Jean Baudrillard and Guy Debard? Well, I felt like the world was weird with Instagram. And I was like, why do people act this way? And it said, you should read Society of the Spectacle. So rather than just quoting Guy Debard, Society of the Spectacle, I went got the book and I've been reading it.

And as I read it, I realized that this guy was explaining Instagram in the 1960s. And then I asked for another book and it said Gene Baudrillard is the next step of this concept where he talks about hyper realism. So, okay, cool. I'm going deeper. And so like my book, They Lied to You is a continuation of my reading that then becomes a book that I just sort of write about. But like all the books that we're doing is me journeying in things that I find just super interesting and I love. And that's

And that's where I keep saying to people like my AI, right? When I'm writing with AI and trying to get my books written, if you really take time to read it, even though there are dashes, it's not, it's not a slop because it's us actually driving towards trying to uncover a type of truth. That's not objective truth, but it's like something that I think is true or partially true that explains the reality that we live in.

Christian Brim (12:22.86)
And it's interesting you bring up the dash because I think that that is like.

the strangest of arguments, right? Like I never even considered the dash before until people started talking about it in context of it, you know, wrecking, flagging it as AI. So like in a way that AI has started this whole conversation off of AI, it's not happening on AI.

Django (12:36.494)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (12:57.578)
happening on social or in conversations like this, where it's actually driving the narrative, which is very strange to me.

Django (13:03.736)
Mm-hmm.

Well, I think, I think what you can, I always say to myself, whenever something is strange to me, I dig into it super crazy. And AI has made this much easier for me because, before I'd have to be Googling stuff and then trying to cross pattern recognize. One of the things I just wrote an article on my, uh, sub stack about this, about the M dash. And what I realized is that no one used M dashes before in social media posts like LinkedIn, Instagram, Tik TOK, sub stack most times. And then all of a sudden overnight, everyone's using M dashes.

And our brains are not truth seekers. They're like pattern recognizers in the same way that chat GPT or AI is like we just described. So when these dashes start showing up everywhere and everyone's writing has no misspellings, our brain was recognizing that something was wrong because we've been looking at social media posts for years and dashes have never been this long or this used. And so, the weird thing about like the

Christian Brim (13:40.886)
That is correct.

Christian Brim (13:59.404)
Mm-hmm.

Django (14:04.782)
The weird thing about humans is like, once that happens, it like sets something off in our brains to say this is wrong. This is bad. This is not good. And so the M dash is really more a reflection of our brains rejecting the fact that this has never existed, which is how it works in general, right? Like it's like, we reject things that at the end of the day don't fit into our grouping. And we see that with, you know, like racism or any of other things, right? So the M dash is like in a weird way, a, the same parts of people's brains that like,

Christian Brim (14:25.761)
Yeah.

Django (14:33.87)
looked at color and we're like, Oh, well, these people look completely different. They must not be the same. It's the same thing for M dash and social media. Like we just never seen it. It popped up. Our brains are like, this must be wrong. And even though it's true, even though it's right, because it's following the way that we're supposed to be writing, it feels wrong because it's not familiar. And so it's just funny because I think the M dash, the M dash is a reflection of showing how our brains

Christian Brim (14:52.63)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Django (15:00.716)
I keep trying to tell people like our brains are not truth seekers. They're pattern seekers. So it's not a matter of truth. It's a matter of pattern. And that's why we say anything that has an dash in it must be slot because a lot of it is slot. So that's now our way to pattern recognize this guy just wrote with AI this email. He didn't spend any time on this email because if he had, he would have deleted the dashes. So that's just the way that

Christian Brim (15:21.118)
Right. That's an interesting take. Well, so I spent this part of this week working with Scott Chang on a custom. He was taking a group of us through this. And so he had five different prompts and we used the deep research portion of Chad GPT. So it took a lot longer.

Django (15:34.147)
Okay.

Django (15:41.25)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (15:49.366)
But there were prompts to develop basically a research material to then use as a resource for a separate GPT. So the prompts were, you know, basically do a deep psycho analysis on your target customer, do a deep analysis on my industry. know, so, so there were these things. And so we, ended up with

Django (16:09.454)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (16:17.152)
five documents and then there were a couple of other documents that were, that we had done prior, but we basically put these all into a custom GPT to use as the primary source material for this essentially mastermind for the business. like when, when you're working through one of the things I started in there was, some, marketing questions and

It gives what you started the show with. It gives the machine context and it gives it the world to work in, but in a structured way so that you're getting more structured answers and more useful answers.

Django (17:05.262)
Mm hmm. 100%. You know, it's really, I, so I've been making a lot of posts on Instagram lately, which are just me talking about my thoughts and they've been connecting pretty well lately. But one of the quotes that I discovered in some reading that I've been doing lately is around this guy Ludwig Wittgenstein. I might be saying his name wrong. I say names wrong all the time, but he made this quote forever ago where he said, the limits of my language mean the limits of my world. And

Christian Brim (17:06.742)
So, yeah.

Christian Brim (17:31.914)
Mm-hmm.

Django (17:33.11)
What I think that's interesting is if I give someone chat GPT to give a prompt that's similar to my prompt, but let's say I have a hundred thousand more words in my, in my, in my quiver in comparison to this other person, the boundaries of what I can do with the same prompt are much wider because I can communicate more specifically what it is that I want. So like,

Christian Brim (17:46.038)
Mm-hmm.

Django (17:56.106)
with what you were just describing and creating a GPT, if I'm able to, for instance, understand the word psychoanalyze in the concept of research, as opposed to just research, like that's another layer deeper of how it will actually contextualize the research. And so part of the reason I keep saying that AI, like I'm trying to sort of ring this bell of what AI could be is that whether it becomes slop or whether it becomes the next renaissance of thought is really up to the people and how willing they are to

Christian Brim (17:56.192)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (18:05.462)
Mm-hmm.

Django (18:24.546)
to go deeper with their language. And that can open up like, mean, for me, it's been like a miracle. It's beautiful. Like I get to just write books every weekend and night that I want as much as I want, because I can write so much faster in part because I can do research much faster. And all of the reading that I've done for the last decade are just is pouring into all of the thoughts and ideas that I have. But that's the part that makes the AI work so much better for me than others is the the amount that I start with with every GPT, if that makes sense, like

Christian Brim (18:54.358)
No, it makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense. OK, so I want to pivot to the founders journey and this experience you had with venture capital. I am curious because VC is one of those things that I've said was fundamentally flawed or broken for a while now.

Django (18:56.408)
Yeah, so.

Django (19:03.661)
Huh?

Django (19:09.966)
Hmm?

Christian Brim (19:22.858)
Although it seems to be still somewhat, maybe the, the, varnish has knocked off a little bit, but it seems to be like the gold standard of, of what it means to be an entrepreneur or to be wealthy or successful. it's like the tech bros and like, you know, this whole thing. so I'm curious to hear your experience with VC and, what was your reality?

Django (19:23.074)
Mm-hmm.

Django (19:52.75)
So what I would say is that, like, for one, I did a bunch of research recently with all these different VCs and angel investors and founders. And what I realized is that for most people, VC feels broken because of the way people act or do things. But like all things in life, if you take time to understand the point of the problem that's trying to be solved, you'll realize it's not broken. It's just that people are misusing it. like venture is the sexiest thing that exists, right? YC does.

Christian Brim (20:15.308)
Hmm.

Django (20:19.404)
hundreds of $200,000 checks every every like quarter, you know Andreessen Horowitz has created so much value in the world you look at all these different VCs and things like whether it's uber or Airbnb or these others that are multi-billion dollar companies meta like these are venture-backed the goal for a venture-backed startup is like a triple triple double double over the years that you have and the goal is within five to ten years to exit as a billion dollar company

Christian Brim (20:24.0)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (20:37.577)
Mm-hmm.

Django (20:48.334)
For most people, that's not the case. would like for me, I, the company that I built, there was no, I don't think that there was ever a chance that we were going to grow in that way, but venture was the sexy thing that I wanted. And I wanted to feel like a venture backed founder. And there's a lot of resources to make you feel like a venture backed founders events. There's, you know, people who will coach you. There's people who do all kinds of different things. And so what I realized is that it's more a

It's a misunderstanding of the value of VC for some people and that there are other options that are out there that are great for funding. They may be harder to get. They may be in regards to like accessibility or they may actually be easier, but you just have to go and look for those. But it's just like, you know, one of the things I kept hearing from people was like, it's not, it's not a negative when I tell you that you're not a venture backable business. It just means the numbers don't make sense. It's not, it's right. Like the

Christian Brim (21:39.659)
Right.

Django (21:41.57)
The venture people go out and raise money on a thesis that they make saying that I believe I can create this through power law, which also power law says like one or two of these companies is going to be, is going to return the entire fund. And so they are pattern matching and then trying to find the people who can do parabolic growth and hit a A round, B round, C or whatever that ends up being. And then exits or, or, you know, they sell on secondaries where they go public. That is not most businesses.

So what ends up happening is, is it feels broken because some founders feel like there's a disconnect. Some founders get the money and they don't understand why they're forcing them to grow so fast. You know, it's like, it feels unhealthy, but it's just because you're, in the wrong space. If that's what you're starting to feel. And I think that that's what I'm trying to, that's what my goal is for this book is not only to show people how they can raise venture money, but also how to think about if venture money is the money you should even be going after.

because that's the fundamental, I think, misconception about when people are investing using. They have a fiduciary duty to make the return, right? Like that's the only thing that matters. You raised, you made a company that said, I'm going to return this money back to my LPs. So like, like in some ways when people are like, it feels like it's, I fit the thesis, I didn't do this, I did that. It's like, there are thousands of people all trying to get this money and they're just trying to pattern match the 10 for this, you know, for this year that are gonna be the fit.

And that's what I just found. think it's just a disconnect in how venture functions as a foundation for raising money. Does that make sense?

Christian Brim (23:15.764)
No, it makes perfect sense. I think, you know, prior to 2000, you go back and you know, VC was probably only in very niche industries like medicine or something like that where, and tech really exploded that and expanded it. And I think, you know, what you said, like, did you feel like there was, there was validation?

Django (23:29.198)
Hmm?

Django (23:36.023)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (23:45.644)
to you personally in being and becoming venture backed? Like was that?

Django (23:51.214)
Yeah, that was, I mean, that's what I realized is the reason I chased it so hard is that there's a lot of validation that actually happens in the chasing of venture money. Like there were so many events I went to, there were so many people I got to talk to, there were coaches and you know, I got to meet some people who said they'd reach out to their people and they, know, if you pay them this amount of money, you get this and that. And there's all these different things that really like were validating me in the concept of I'm moving towards being a venture backed startup.

Christian Brim (24:01.472)
Mm-hmm.

Django (24:21.262)
Um, that even though I hadn't gotten any money yet, it was like, like, look at where I was. was at, you know, venture connect or Afro tech or, um, you know, uh, tech stars or whatever the event is that makes me feel. You know, like my, company is worth it, you know? Um, there's not much of that in another space of funding. So I think that's part of the challenge, right? Like, I think you're like, I want to be amongst the names of meta Uber, Airbnb, whatever the case is. Um,

Christian Brim (24:21.45)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (24:37.91)
down.

Django (24:49.378)
And that just might not be the case. So I did raise some money early from ventures and it wasn't a lot of money. And I'm actually really happy that it wasn't a lot of money because we realized that some of the theories we made didn't work. We tried to pivot that didn't work. And then now we're just at this space where I just get to write incredible books and enjoy the process of what we're building. And I love it. I love all of the aspects of, I just literally spend my nights and weekends writing books.

Christian Brim (25:15.02)
Yeah, and I think what you said is 100 % right. There's this sexy, you use the term sexy, and there is that element that is attractive and that personal validation. But also to your point is that not only do most businesses not, shouldn't qualify,

for venture capital, even if you do qualify, the vast majority of them are going to fail at their objective. And, you know, no one starts out, you know, thinking with those stars in their eyes that they're going to be the eight out of 10 or nine out of 10, right? They're going to be the one out of 10. But that doesn't mean it's not a good business. I think that

Unless money can can really leverage what you're doing. There's zero reason to go seek money like money can actually exasperate problems, right? It can cover up flaws in your business because you have cash. It can also do your point motivate you to do things that you shouldn't be doing such as grow faster. Like is there is there

Is there reason to grow this based upon the business model? And sometimes sometimes it's right, but oftentimes it's wrong. And I think that's what when I say VC is flawed. I what I see is a lot of businesses that get burnt out and chewed up that were viable. Without venture capital, I mean, that's kind of where my perspective is.

Django (27:11.662)
I mean, I would make the argument that if they didn't state power law and its function ahead of time, then I would say it's a flaw. But it's the feature. Like the feature is if you raise this money, it's billion dollar bust. And everyone who does this has to believe they're going to be billion dollar. But also the person who's investing is for a lack of better words playing poker trying to figure out if the hand that they've chosen is going to beat the other hand.

Christian Brim (27:23.488)
Right.

Django (27:38.722)
which is why like VC people love poker so much because it's like I could have three of a kind, but you could have a royal flush. And so it may not be that the company I had wasn't a hundred million dollar company. just might be that it couldn't beat the billion dollar company that someone else made a bet on. And so like there are books like gum road.

and others that talk about how, know, Hey, you don't have to necessarily raise venture. It's a guy who wrote a book specifically. It was around, think it's gum road. was specifically around how he had raised venture, built a company. It had faltered. It wasn't, it was burning cash. He ended up firing a lot of people being cash positive and then realize he had a really good business, but it didn't need to be venture backed. And so there's plenty of books out there that kind of highlight, Hey, it doesn't have to be venture robust in every aspect. You know, like I,

Christian Brim (28:23.488)
Mm-hmm.

Django (28:24.29)
I've been spending so and again, this is where I I keep saying that AI is so incredible. Every time I started thinking that something's broken, I don't like something I think it's not good. I don't like the way people act. I then take all of the thoughts and ideas that I have about it. And I try to figure out what's rational about it. And every time that I do that, I keep finding out why the thing is valuable and how maybe I'm looking at it from a perspective that is just the wrong perspective at the end of the day, if I want to understand why it's valuable, you know.

And that's what, again, that's the point of these books and is to open up and be more transparent around all of these different things so that people aren't just bright-eyed and bushy-tailed thinking, I'm just the next billion dollar company. It might help save them and understanding like, hey, if you have a $10 billion market that you think you could attack, VC is probably not going to invest in you because that's just not a large enough market. That's that power law would not allow that. You know, if you are planning on growing at 100 % year over year.

Christian Brim (28:52.577)
Ciao.

Django (29:21.08)
there's nothing wrong with that. That's incredible. Ventures just also not for you. So, you know, like those are things that we're just kind of highlighting for especially with AI. It's just not that's just not the what they're looking for. In most cases, there are other people who would be looking for that impact investors and things like that. So yeah.

Christian Brim (29:38.796)
Yeah, yes. I love all of that. So one of the books that you wrote, and I have a copy, and I have read not all of it, but most of it, is They Lied to You. What is the premise of that book?

Django (29:55.249)
yeah.

Django (29:59.17)
Well, the subtitle is Western culture's beautiful eye and the cost of believing it. so, like I said before, there's some truth to everything. That's the paradox of language. When you start to communicate things, it's true from a perspective, but in other ways, if you look at it from a different perspective, it's not. And so I think that we've accepted the concept that Western culture is like the perfect culture because of where we are and what maybe we've accomplished.

But I think whenever you think that you're perfect or whenever you think that if only we went back to this timeframe, everything would work. You're overlooking the challenges or the issues or the problems that are underlying the system itself. And so I'm asking some of the questions about some of the assumptions that we've just accepted and diving deeper into that helps show how maybe

some of those lies because they are assumptions aren't even seen because it's just an assumption of reality. just agree that this is the truth and that's it. But it may not be true. It may not be true anymore. It may have been true 50 years ago, but it might not be true anymore. So.

Christian Brim (31:09.866)
Well, yes, and I would replace the word truth with belief. And because a belief is

Django (31:15.596)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (31:21.374)
you know, you, you, when you, when you use the word belief, the, the assumption of truth is gone, right? Like, so, but it's true to somebody at, at some point in some circumstances, right? it's not a universal truth. It's not like a scientific law, right? it's not the law of gravity.

Django (31:34.413)
Mm-hmm.

Django (31:39.949)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (31:50.348)
Right. So so but that doesn't mean that the beliefs aren't valid. It's just that they're not maybe axiomatic like I don't know exactly the right you know, talk about language being the limiter here.

Django (32:03.928)
Well, I think like if you take a step back, truth or beliefs are valuable in context. So for instance, with like AI, what we're finding is that if the context and the goal is to make me happy, I'll lie in the hopes to make you happy. So most of our beliefs, if you take a step all the way back, you'll realize are paradoxical, but it's useful at certain times. So like the one I always tell people is like what you see left and right argue about all the time.

Christian Brim (32:29.024)
Yes.

Django (32:33.408)
in most cases is similar to you walking up to me and saying, Django, I'm trying to figure out which way is North. And I go, okay, well, actually the sun rises in the East sets in the West. So I think that way is and as I'm finishing the sentence, you say, Django, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. The sun doesn't rise or set. It's actually us rotating on our axis. So why don't we just agree that you're wrong? And then if I go, well, no, I'm not wrong. What I'm saying is true. The sun does rise and set.

we lose track of the whole point of the initial conversation, which was which way is north. And so typically then we start fighting on the axis of who's right. And in most cases, we're both right. It's just a paradox if you aren't talking about a goal that is very specific and like we have very highlighted outcomes that we want to have. And so typically, like people are arguing things that are mostly true, just dependent on the conversation.

And that's what I keep trying to like explain to people. We like when people are arguing with me and I agree with them and they're like, well, how can you agree with me and also disagree with me? And it's like, cause they're both true. But now we just need to agree on what's our overarching goal that we're trying to get to. And then people are just like, whatever, I don't want to talk to you anymore. But it's like, that's the case. The sun does rise in the East and set in the West. It does move across our world, but it's also sitting in a place and we're also rotating on our axes and the sun also doesn't move. Those are both true. But if I'm trying to find North.

What matters at this moment is that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. And that's good for this conversation. So I'm kind of like that's where it's like the thing with Western culture. It's like it is true that it's good to have a job. It is true to help people who are homeless or drug addicts or these other things. It is true that you should create a nonprofit if you want to make a change. It's also true that nonprofits can become, for a lack of better words, like money laundering schemes. It's also true that like

They could do more harm than good. It's also true that if you go to a nine to five and there's no reason for being there other than to make money, you can burn out. Like they're all true. It's just a matter of figuring out like what's useful right now. And like that's kind of sort of the concept of that. That's like the underlying pinning of what I'm trying to communicate in the book, if that makes sense.

Christian Brim (34:43.82)
Yeah. And I think you, I think you succeeded because it, I mean, no, it, it w I think, and to your point that you made at the outset of the conversation, AI or you implied you didn't explicitly say AI is, is only going to exasperate the fact that people don't want to think. and it's.

Django (34:46.413)
with

Christian Brim (35:12.628)
It's hard work to think, you know, and and to your point, the brain is hardwired for shortcuts, right? Like, and in a lot of, in a lot of ways that helps us, right? It helps us not have to, think about why am I brushing my teeth or, know, like, why am I taking out the trash? Like you, excuse me, you, you act on beliefs all the time because they're helpful.

Django (35:19.619)
I appreciate it.

Christian Brim (35:42.388)
Right? And because if you had to think deeply about everything, you'd be dysfunctional. Like you wouldn't have the capacity to do anything, right? Which is where I use the phrase navel gazing. That to me is like the ultimate philosopher mentality of like just looking at your navel and wondering, you know, did Adam have a navel?

Django (35:42.564)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Django (35:54.414)
Thank

Christian Brim (36:09.444)
you know, I mean, it, but there's, there's a, a, an acceleration of the, technology has accelerated this characteristic of us. And I think that the people that are going to be successful, regardless of your industry, regardless of what you do are going to be the ones that can think.

for themselves and view the technology as a tool, not as a replacement. Because if you're just looking for that shortcut, you're going to get slopped.

Django (36:52.046)
Mm hmm. I think to take a step back, one of the things that I've been reading a lot about, and I always have to end up pulling back up a GPT that I looked up, so I went back. One of the things that's been super interesting to me in writing the book is there's this concept of script theory and script theory specifically was like made famous in the 1970s by Roger Schenck. And it sort of makes this concept that

we start to create assumptions for different scenarios. As we get older, we're learning like in this scenario, I run this script so I don't have to think deeply, right? I walk in a restaurant, I do this, it will get this outcome. I have to have enough money to pay. Like your brain flips into a script, but it does it at an even deeper level where it's like, this is corporate Django, this is father Django, this is husband Django, this is son Django. Like when I'm around my mom, completely different person.

than I am in almost all other aspects. But that's because I've created like a schema of how to curate the world I want to have when I'm with my mom. What's weird is that like Western culture wants to find out what our, what our, what's the right word here? What our true version of ourself is amongst all the masks that we wear, whether it's at work or all of these other places. And the truth is, like, none of them are us.

And in most cases, we're putting on those masks, not for an actual goal. So you actually like start to, you actually start to like break as an individual entity because you are noticing that the mass are not being worn for the right, like for any reason other than just for the sake of wearing a mask. And it actually fractures our conscious. And so I've been like reading about this and it makes more sense to me why, like, why is it that like people at a, at a company will make a decision that hurts a bunch of people?

that like they didn't have to make, but it made more money. Well, in this space, all that matters is us making money. And that's the only goal in this case. Is that my goal for life? No, not really. But like, that's just the schema that I have for the space. So, you know, I'll just, I'm just doing my job. I'm just Django at the job. Then you're like in a relationship, you're running the schema. I don't want this person to ever leave me. Then you start making choices to see if they'll leave. Like there's all these little things that I've been kind of digging into in this book. They lied to you that I'm realizing like.

Django (39:14.434)
there's this idea of trying to find your true self amongst all these masks that you're wearing. And you notice you're wearing all these masks because all these masks are so fractured and separated and they all are running on different goals and causing issues for the other version of yourself. And so we're trying to get unified, but I think we're using the wrong blocks to do it. You know, like trying to force two Legos together that don't work. And I'm just trying to build a map with all these books that we're creating to help people like.

Christian Brim (39:28.608)
Mm-hmm.

Django (39:42.71)
almost come back to something that is cohesive. But I think you kind of have to find it on your own. And that's why I feel like writing so many books will be helpful in like, wow, I remember something from this other thing. And I remember that from this other thing. When I was learning about venture, I realized that like my goals didn't align. Maybe I should go back to I hope you wake up. And then, you know, maybe that will help people sort of reconfigure themselves, which I think is just the only goal that I have for people in general. So does that make sense? I feel like that was it's it's like a lot of partial truth.

Christian Brim (40:09.024)
There's a no, makes perfect sense.

It reminds me of a book that I recently read and I'm going to butcher the title and I don't remember the author's name, I apologize, but it's Great Leaders Live Like Drug Addicts. And this individual was homeless, hooked on drugs, went to rehab, shifted his life, became a successful entrepreneur. But...

Django (40:26.371)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (40:41.994)
The book is this premise about like what, how he lived before treatment, because he stipulates that he's a drug addict on both sides of the fence. Like he's still a drug addict, right? He's just living it differently, but the paradigm before and after, and he starts with the statement that addicts wear masks. And

He said they don't ever want to show their true behavior. They hide things like so that's one of the first warning signs of addiction is you start hiding things from people, you know money you spent or activities you did and like you start hiding things and his solution to that as a leader is is radical authenticity. And but to your point that takes a lot of work.

Because you have to figure out what that authentic you is, right? But on the surface, it might be as a leader that you don't have all the answers. There's this expectation that as a leader that you know the path forward. can you admit that you don't know? Can you admit that you're afraid that you don't know, right?

Django (41:41.304)
you

Django (41:50.808)
Mm-hmm.

Django (42:02.232)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (42:04.54)
And more importantly, can you present that self to your team? Can you live out of that authenticity? Right. And the second principle that he talks about is not controlling the outcomes. Well, that's like addiction behavior 101 is you're trying to control something. You don't feel like you can control your world. So you focus on this addiction that you can control. Right.

Django (42:24.59)
Hmm.

Django (42:30.988)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (42:32.458)
You know, I can't, I may not be able to do anything else, but I can get high. Right. and you know, being able to say, I, there are things outside of my control that, that I can work as hard as I want that I can't guarantee the outcome. that's not normal behavior for a leader. know, you're supposed to be inspirational. Like, you know, yeah, we're going to grow this company. We're going to do this thing. And for you to.

Django (42:36.782)
Mm.

Christian Brim (43:02.016)
do that and admit that like, really can't control whether we do that. I can control, you know, what I do. And to some extent I can influence what you do on the team. But at the end of the day, we all can't control the fact whether we're going to be successful or not. Right. But back to your point is if you're going to live with radical authenticity, you have to do the work to know who you are as well as you can.

your true self, which I will also add involves others because we can't and this may sound very strange. I don't think it'll sound strange to you. We can't see our complete selves. We think that we know ourselves best and to a certain from a certain vantage. Yes, only we know our thoughts. But

Django (43:47.746)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (43:57.452)
The truth is that we need those other people in our lives to show us things about ourselves that we cannot see for ourselves.

Django (44:06.999)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (44:08.224)
What do you think about that?

Django (44:11.366)
I think that what's really interesting about life is that we can only see in others what is in ourselves. So what we like or hate in others is what we like and hate in ourselves. And so what's interesting is, is that the genuine answer is I cannot control how anyone sees me in any capacity, but I can choose to learn from those people what they see, which would expand my perspective. So like when I tell people I love them,

Christian Brim (44:23.604)
Mm-hmm

Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (44:37.345)
Mm-hmm.

Django (44:39.682)
I love them because I realized that like without you, for instance, you Christian, I wouldn't know a version of myself that exists because you illuminate that for me. And I, and like, what's interesting is people say like, I want to know who my true self is, but like in accordance to what like in, compared to what, like when you really think about it, trying to find your true self and like making the statement that we make it, it actually doesn't kind of make sense because like it compared to what in what space.

Christian Brim (44:50.156)
Hmm?

Django (45:08.76)
For what reality? the, one of my favorite quotes is, the one-armed man in the one-armed society is happy. The one-armed man in the two-armed society might be sad because he feels like he's missing something, but he wouldn't know he's missing anything if everyone has one arm. It's typically a comparison of others that we actually describe whether or not we're short, tall, good, bad, any of those things. So it's like,

I actually view the world where people cut people out or don't want to have people in their lives or whatever the case is, as like almost an opportunity of me missing out on discovering sides of myself that I don't even know exists yet, because I need the other person to find it. Then that's just like, I think that's like the truth of finding your true self. It's just like an ever evolving dependent upon who you're talking to, in a weird way. Does that make sense?

Christian Brim (46:05.356)
Yeah, I could stipulate to that in part. mean, I think what you're saying about defining yourself in terms of others, in comparison to others, is fundamentally incomplete. But this idea that there is a Django that is not dependent.

Django (46:16.088)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (46:34.93)
upon what others perceive or compared to anybody else, I believe that that person exists, right? But I do believe that we have.

Django (46:37.678)
Mm.

Django (46:42.062)
you

Well, let's let's do an exercise right quick about this. I just want to know what you how you would describe it because I I'm trying to understand it. How would you describe a true version of Django in words or like what words would you use to describe yourself that wouldn't be in a comparison of others?

Christian Brim (46:49.898)
Sure.

Christian Brim (47:09.484)
Well, when I do that, I invariably go to, I have to reference the Creator, right? Because I can't define myself, so I can say definitively that I am a child of God, I am a creation of a loving Father.

I start from that premise. If I were to describe myself, that's how I would start. Because that's the most fundamental thing that I believe and I know. Now, in describing myself where other people would understand me, so like people that are atheists or, you know, like they...

don't stipulate that they were created or don't believe in a creator, how can I explain myself in a way that they would understand? Well, that's a different thing, right? I don't know if I answered your question.

Django (48:21.55)
Well, I guess like, again, you're saying people want to discover their true selves. And under the concept of what you described, it's like, I am a child of God. Well, that's the faith of what you believe is sort of the grander part of life and what maybe brings value that you believe in. And I can agree with that concept. But when I'm actually trying to say like, what makes me me as an individual human being that

Christian Brim (48:29.185)
Yes.

Christian Brim (48:39.713)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Django (48:50.43)
I take joy in or other things outside of like my faith of what maybe is larger than life itself. It is almost always it I mean, it has to be in almost comparison of other things that exist. Now you may say like, I like to read, I like to write, but I'm just saying like,

Christian Brim (49:08.616)
Well, yeah, like exactly. So like one of the first words I would use to describe you and I would assume that you would use to describe yourself is inquisitive. Right. So I think if we start to describe ourselves in terms of characteristics and traits in an agnostic way, because a lot of times people assign values to those traits as either good or bad. So I take, for instance,

Django (49:21.42)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Django (49:28.589)
Mm-hmm.

Django (49:36.439)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (49:38.408)
stubbornness, stubbornness and persistence are two sides of the same coin. It depends on who, what side of it you're on. Right. but, but I don't use, I can use the word stubborn to describe myself without ascribing a value to it. Right. Like that's, just a word I use. So you understand what characteristic I'm describing, but in a lot of ways you're going back to the limitations of language. Right. but

Django (49:47.342)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (50:08.32)
I think describing yourself in terms of your true character, your true characteristics, without trying to assign them good or bad is the best way to describe your true self.

Django (50:23.246)
I like this. I think you opened my mind to a concept. So through the journey of trying to decide what are my good or bad traits, I would immediately be describing myself within the limits of comparison to someone else. But if I'm just trying to describe my traits without trying to put limits of good or bad on them, I can describe basically what makes me me, which in this case, like, let's say I decide to say I'm inquisitive.

Christian Brim (50:37.302)
Mm-hmm.

Django (50:48.416)
If I'm not trying to describe it as good or bad, I'm just saying when I hear something, I want to learn more about it or ask questions. Now someone else may say, I'm annoying. Or I might say like, or they might ask lot of questions, but that's now comparing it to someone who asks no questions. So if I am by myself, trying to learn about myself, I could say, let's use words, not trying to label as good or bad and just go to what do I enjoy as a

as Django in this room, you know, period. And then it's like, enjoy reading, I enjoy writing, I enjoy being inquisitive and learning. Okay. I am in full agreement with you. Thank you for that.

Christian Brim (51:33.612)
You're welcome. I'll send you a therapy bill in the mail. Django, how do people catch up with you and what you've got going on? Where do they find you?

Django (51:35.735)
Hahaha

Django (51:42.3)
you can find me on Instagram. I'm Django degree. Django is with a D in front of it and then degree like the temperature and, on Tik Tok, I'm Django's truth, but I respond to all the DMS, all the comments that I can. It's getting to be a little crazy cause I'm actually getting a larger following than I thought I would, but I'm always here to connect, grow, grow, and just learn with you. So if you have anything you want to add any time you want to talk, just, know, through one of the social media platforms, I'm here. I'm ready to rock.

Christian Brim (52:08.236)
Listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. I'm not going to ask you if you don't like Django because I probably will bring him back anyway, but until next time, ta ta for now.