This episode was a speech recorded at the FUSION conference with the American Farm Bureau talking about the art of storytelling and the profound impact it can have on personal and communal growth.
Vance shares his journey from working in agriculture to becoming a storyteller who helps individuals record their life stories for future generations. He emphasizes the importance of listening and asking the right questions to help people open up and share their experiences.
Vance discusses the concept of "Pole," a Kenyan approach to being present with someone in pain, and how this has influenced his work. He also shares insights on how to ask questions that encourage deeper reflection and storytelling, such as avoiding "why" questions and instead asking "how" or "tell me about it." Throughout the episode, Vance provides valuable lessons on how to become a better listener and the importance of capturing wisdom through personal stories.
Resources discussed in this episode include:
- Vance Crowe's podcast "The Ag Tribes Report" - [Link](https://www.vancecrowe.com/podcast)
- Legacy Interviews by Vance Crowe - [Link](https://www.legacyinterviews.com)
[00:00:14]
Unknown:
Do you get nervous before you, speak with anything? No. I don't mind helping people. Being on this committee has become apparent. Jared, do you have any of that? Any of that. Yeah. I do I'm an accretourism business, so I have to entertain people regularly in that format and setting. So I feel like if the crowd is larger than, like, maybe a couple hundred, then then I get a little bit more nervous. Okay. But this is fine. Yeah. I don't Yeah. You probably won't be saying anything too controversial in your over your remarks or Yeah. It's crazy. And what is the pin for?
So this was for a, governor's award. They our governor in North Carolina works, like, 25 people across the state every year, a couple of volunteer award for those volunteers in different districts in the state. Wow. And I got nominated for that a couple years ago, and it was a pretty great honor. Yeah. You know, I see all these pins all the time, and I've never have have never worn a pin for anything. And then I finally got this cool pin. I'm like, I have a legit pin. And it's for earning. You earned it. Yeah. To spare it. So it's kind of a funny thing. Thank you very much about it.
Now where are you from? Missouri? Yeah. I live in Saint Louis. Not visited Missouri before. Yes, sir. But I have great friends that live in the great state of Missouri. It's a great state. It's quite it's quite diverse. Yeah. I have four minutes. We don't shut doors until it's time. Sure. Yeah. I understand. Do you come from an agriculture background? I grew up in small town Central Illinois, so I would bail hay and walk beans, but I didn't I didn't grow up on a farm. That's how my dad, started. He was just working on his back and farm, and then we kinda got into agriculture business as a family. Yeah. My four year old has started pestering me that she wants to work on it. She wants to have a farm because all my friends that are in ag send me chicks photos and videos of sheep and stuff like that. So they they know more as city kids, they know more about farming than anybody. I love that.
Well, you can always have backyard chickens in Missouri. Yeah. We're working on it. Yeah. Well, in the state of Missouri, they made it illegal for an HOA not to allow you to do it. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. That's fantastic. That's really great. Good to hear. As they tell me today, I don't know what state they're in, that they, it's crazy. In Louisiana, if you sell a single flower, you don't have to have a permit. But if you Bunch them? Flowers together, you have to have a floral permit. Oh, god. What a terrible, terrible a hundred dollars a year to have this permit to put the flowers that you grow together.
How does that It's like literal tyranny. Right? It's like how is it It is literal tyranny. Yeah. It really is. It's just like it's just straight out of, like, the colonies? I'm like I'm like, extreme on liberty. Like, I I believe that, daylight savings time is like a tyrannical control of the government to rip us out of, our natural synchronicity with the world. In real life. Okay. I hear you. Yeah. Okay. Don't get me fired up. I wanna go, like, $3 right now. Yeah. There you go. Are you a Bitcoiner? No. I'm not. You so I don't know what you're doing at three whatever the next session is, but I will make the case for Bitcoin for you. It'll I'll make it very quickly. It won't be a long drawn out one.
Out. Yeah. Let me give you I had to I realized I left all of my cards that have the right address on there, Sofia. I'll be able to find you. Sofia Lily. So my kids' names, my two daughters named the flowers, Autumn Rose and Violet. And we've got a little boy on the way and his name is gonna be Forrest. We're gonna use all I love it. All natural. I have a great name. I have no problem. Well, my wife was very concerned that Forrest was like in Forrest Gump when we were growing up where he's kinda dumb. But we did a bunch of testing to find out, do kids now associate the name Forrest with that? Most of them haven't even seen the movie. So They don't even know. Enough time is a lap. Hopefully, they don't make a Forrest Gump part two. It really is It is, isn't it? Yeah. Of course. And then we have different colors. There we go.
Thanks. Well, I want to start off by saying thank you to everybody for coming. I am a firm believer that your attention is the most valuable thing that you own, and I realize that on a day like today, there are many places that you could go and pay attention to things that will impact your future. It could impact, you know, the decisions you're making with crops and how you diversify or what you get to practice, on debate and the speaking work that you guys do. So thank you for coming. My name is Vance Crowe, and I came to agriculture, unexpectedly. I grew up in small town Central Illinois, and just like most kids, all I wanted to do was leave and get away from small town Central Illinois, and it wasn't until many years later where I was invited to go work at Monsanto, where I became the director of Millennial Engagement.
And, that's kind of a funny job title, but at the time, which is about ten years ago, there was a lot of pushback against GMOs and pesticides. And so, my job was to go out and talk with people about those concerns. And this was a wonderful experience for me. It led me back to my cultural roots, which was being in small town America and, an understanding of how rural communities work. And so it is a great honor for me to be here talking with you today because I want to share with you things not so much about what I learned about being a speaker, but about what I've learned over the last five years of being a listener.
And, now as they were talking about in my biography, I spend my time recording people telling their life stories so that future generations can watch these recordings and know their family history. And through this, I've been able to learn a lot about not just the heritage of our country and about the inner workings of families, but I've also had a chance to learn on a much, much deeper level how to help people open up and talk about things that truly matter. If you consider the idea that when somebody is recording their life stories and we are proposing we will store these stories for hundreds of years, they are really sitting there thinking, what is it that I have to share that is of deep enough value that a hundred or two hundred or three hundred years from now, somebody of my family line can watch this and pull something valuable out of it.
And so in order to help you maybe kind of understand the where I'm coming from, I want to start off by getting you to think deeply about a question. What is one thing that you believe that almost no one you know agrees with you on? If any of you are listeners to my podcast, I have a weekly podcast called the Ag Tribes Report. Is there anybody in here that listens to the podcast? Alright, a few. During this podcast, I ask people this question. And the reason I ask them this question is because it makes them uncomfortable. Right? This is a challenging question to ask because actually, as human beings, we are optimized not for truth.
We think we are. We think we always want the right answer and the true answer. But the reality is if you go back and look at where our beginnings were when we were in tribes and we were, you know, trying to scour the world every single day was a hunt for calories, we needed to get along with our group of people, it it created a mind that is optimized not for the right answer, but to get along with other people. And so this question is one that I love to ask people. We call it the Peter Thiel Paradox because it's really got two parts to it. The first thing is, I ask you this, and if my guest says something that people don't that they already agree with, well then they failed. Right? But then if they tell me something that everybody disagrees with, now they've created a, now they've created a new problem because now they have to find a way to convince me of something that I don't already agree with.
So the reason that I ask you this is because I know that everyone in this room has things that they believe that other people don't necessarily agree with. Now that might be on some grand national level, Hey, I believe this policy should be this way, or I believe farming should head in that way. Or it might be something on a much smaller scale. It might be that you believe something about the way your family is operating or about choices that you should make. And that you know that other people don't agree with you because you've said it before and people didn't listen to you, or they didn't like what you had to say.
Now I want you to think about this question for yourself because I want you to feel that discomfort. That discomfort is something that when people come into my office to record their legacy interview, they're dealing with. Because everyone that comes in, oftentimes the legacy interviews are gifted. You have adult children that say, I want to make sure mom and dad are recorded so that my children, their grandchildren can know where they came from. They can understand what dad was really like so they know what I went through and why I treat them the way that I do. Now you would think, or at least I thought, that when people would be receive this as a gift that they'd be like, Oh gosh, that's great. I can't wait to tell my story.
But it turns out a lot of people are afraid to tell their story. The reason that they're afraid to tell their stories is because they have been working their whole lives. They've been gripping on. They've been one of these to do people that have gotten things done, so they are wound up tight. They're always trying to make sure things are going, and they've never taken the time to look back. And so oftentimes they'll come into my office and usually if it's a couple, there'll be one person that's marching right in there. They've got a lot of good stories they want to tell. And there's another person that walks in with their arms folded like this. Right? And they're not so sure that they want to be here and they're not so sure who I am and they're not so sure that they want to tell me anything at all.
And so you have to ask yourself, how can we go from a person coming in like that and getting them to be like this? To be open. To be telling a story. To be laughing. These people, when the man came in there, he did not want to. His name is Steve. He had no interest in this. He told me the same thing that many people tell me, I don't really have any interesting stories. Nobody's really going to care. I've lived an unremarkable life. And here you see he's sitting there telling a story. He's so engaged and his wife's laughing. So the question is, how do you get somebody to move from this closed off position into being somebody that's willing to open up?
And I would take this a fur a step further is to say, why does this matter to you? Why should you care about getting somebody to want to open up and tell their stories? Well, it's here that I actually wanted to throw a thank you out to one of your fellow Farm Bureau members, Kelly Roberts from the Virginia Farm Bureau. About a year or so ago, she and I had a conversation. I will occasionally call up people I know in ag and I'll say, Hey, what's going on with your members? What are the latest problems that they're experiencing? And is there anything that I know about that I could come talk about that? And so Kelly and I had this conversation back and forth, and farm members, the young farmers and ranchers, are on operations where they don't know when is it going to be my turn to make decisions?
When is it going to be a chance that my family and I can know what's going to happen in the future so that we can start to plan? So that we can start to actually build out our lives with confidence knowing what mom and dad or grandma and granddad are gonna do? Now up until this point, I had never really thought about it. But as Kelly's describing this, I started to remember that many, many times, about a month after I've done the legacy interview with, with an individual or a couple, I'll get a phone call from their kids. And their kids will be like, Vance, you are not gonna believe this.
I am right now on my way to the estate attorney because mom has finally decided that she wants to let the farm get passed down and she's gonna move in with her sister in Minneapolis. Vance, she's wanted to do this for ten years since dad died and she's just never done it before. She just couldn't get herself to do it. Or I'll get a phone call with somebody and be like, hey Vance, you're not gonna believe this. Dad came downstairs yesterday morning and announced that he was gonna take his first vacation in forty years.
And so as I'm talking to Kelly, I started to realize I am experiencing so many people setting down who they were, letting that go, and taking on a different role in their family. And this wasn't because I had instructed them on anything. We hadn't even talked about what their succession plan was or what they wanted to do. Really, all they were doing was telling their stories. And this became something I think that's really important particularly in agriculture. You know, you think about in ag, particularly the Farm Bureau, I spent years working with your pals program and different organizations inside of the Farm Bureau where they've been like, Hey, Ag, you need to tell your story. Tell your story. Tell your story. And that's true. But there's another set of stories that need to be told.
And it's not your story. It's actually getting other people within your operation to tell their stories. Because when you do, you will see that they will change. When you get other people to open up and talk about what went on in their past, I believe they're able to set that past down. They're able to let go of being this to do person, and they start to become a person that can become the wise person or a person that's living out a new chapter of their life. And what I came to realize in talking with Kelly is that this is so much bigger than just my individual business that's designed to record people telling their stories, that the truth is it will actually do more good for the world than anything I've ever spoken about. If I can teach you how to get people to open up and tell their stories, then we can start to solve this log jam that we've seen happen in our culture, in agriculture, of people struggling to let go of who they were and letting the next generation go on.
And so I want to talk a little bit about how to become not just a better listener, but a person that can prompt other people to reflect on their lives and share with things that are important to them. And then watch where that goes, because wherever it goes, I can't predict, but I can tell you it will be an adventure, and I think it will be a net major positive for you. And I want to start off by talking about this concept, pole. I was a US Peace Corps volunteer and I was living in a remote part of rural Kenya. And, there I was, you know, just working on different projects.
And one day, the guy that's supposed to be teaching me how to integrate into culture, his name was Daniel. Daniel came to me and he said, Vance, we need to go to to say, Polae for a woman whose husband died. Now, poli, if you go look this up in the dictionary, poli equals I'm sorry. Right? It's what you say when somebody dies or gets sick. So here I am, an American guy that's got a lot to do. I'm really focused on getting things done, and I'm like, Well, Daniel, you know, where where is this funeral? He's like, Oh, it's just there. Let me just go for a bit. So I'm like, Alright. Let's go. So I stand up. I'm not really interested in doing this because I actually hate going to funerals.
And one of the reasons I hate going to funerals is because of the way they work in American culture. Right? We go and we stand in line and we shuffle up to the family. Maybe we see the the casket, and then we keep moving on, and then we see the family, and we hold out our hands, and what do we say? I'm sorry for your loss. Now, the reason that I really dislike this is because it feels so disingenuous. I'm always afraid in the back of my mind that the person's going to say, sorry. What are you sorry about? What? Why? Because there's some kind of failing in our language. Right? There's something that doesn't fit with saying I'm sorry when you aren't responsible for anything. So I'm imagining as Daniel's telling me this, we're gonna go over and say, I'm sorry, to a person that I've never even met their husband.
How could I be sorry? So Daniel and I start our walk. Now what Daniel didn't tell me was just there meant walking all the way down a mountain, crossing a river, and walking all the way back up another mountain. So by the time we get there, I'm already pretty upset. He's been wasting my time. We've already dedicated more time to this than I ever thought we were going to. So finally, we get to the compound, and as we go in, I notice that the women are sitting over here by the fire. They're making tea and food, and the men are sitting over here. The widow is very obviously sitting in a place of honor, and so I think we're going to walk over there, say I'm sorry, and leave, but that's not what we do.
What we do is we walk over to a table of a group of men and boys, and we sit there and a little girl comes over and she brings the tea over. Now you guys have heard this term chai tea. In Kenya, chai tea is really, really caffeinated tea with a Kool Aid level amount of sugar in it. And so I'm sitting there and they pour me that, chai tea and I start sipping on it and I think, Alright, we're gonna do one cup of tea and when I finish this, then we'll go. So I drink down that tea and just as that little tin cup is getting empty, I, you know, make sure to hit it on the table. So Daniel hears, I'm done. We can go say, I'm sorry, and get out of here. But as soon as I do that, little girl over there pops up. She's got her kettle, walks back over, pours more tea for me. So now, I'm moderately caffeinated, a little bit annoyed, but I'm like, I can suck down another cup of Kool Aid tea here. Let's do this and we'll get done.
So I drink this next cup of tea a little bit faster, hit the thing again. Of course, I'm expecting Daniel to stand up and go say, Poli, and then we're gonna get out of here. But that girl comes over and fills the cup up, and now I'm really caffeinated and really agitated, and this goes on for hours. Finally, Daniel stands up, dusts himself off, says like, Whoop. And then we start walking to leave, and we go to leave the compound. And I said, Daniel, I think you forgot to say, I'm sorry, to the widow. We better go back. We're not gonna get credit for having been here. Daniel looks at me and I said, Daniel, we didn't say Poland.
He looks at me like I'm totally nuts. And so, I end up saying, you know, he keeps walking and I'm falling behind him like, Daniel, we didn't say Poli. Daniel, you forgot. We didn't say Poli. And he thinks, he's completely bewildered by this. This is a cultural divide here. So finally, I figure out that Daniel isn't stopping. We're gonna walk all the way down the mountain and come back up it. So now I'm in a hurry. I'm like rushing right behind Daniel. I'm trying to get him to move faster down the mountain because I got things to do and I trip over a branch and Daniel turns and he says, Vance, pole, pole.
And in that instant, my understanding of human beings changed. It was immediate because in that instant, I had a revelation, something I had never thought of before, something I never realized, something the Kenyans knew far deeper than anything that I had ever been taught in my own culture. You see, pole pole, when you go to the dictionary equals slow down. And I believe and in that moment came to realize that the dictionary different definition when they said, Polle equals I'm sorry, was somebody making a very serious translation mistake. What the Kenyans knew that us Westerners had forgotten was that when somebody is in pain, when somebody is experiencing something, there are no words that will help them get past it.
There is nothing you can say. And so when they went to say, Polle, they weren't saying anything at all. Instead, they were spending time with people. And this became something that helped inform so much more of how I interacted with people because you have all felt the experience of somebody sitting and truly being with you. It's profound and it doesn't happen very often. What normally happens when we are sitting with our loved ones, maybe you guys can relate to this, you're sitting with somebody that you love, you care about them so much, your husband, your boyfriend, you're you're you see them kind of staring off into space, You know they've had a long day, and so you ask them that question that's burning in your heart. What is the question you ask that person?
What are you thinking, and how well does that go? Terrible. Right? And how many people in here, I'll ask the men, how many men in here like being asked, what are you thinking about? Nobody. Why? What's going on there? This is a profound realization. Right? Because you think the woman is sitting there saying, I want to connect with you. I want to know what's going on with you. When you ask, what are you thinking about? The man gets mad. Why are you asking me that? I'm not thinking anything at all. And the woman is sitting there saying, What do you mean you're not thinking anything at all? I can see it. It's written right on your face. But the truth is most of what we think of as thinking isn't thinking at all.
Most of what we're doing when we're staring off into space is experiencing emotion. We're experiencing what happened to us earlier in the day. We're reliving it. We're trying to say, that guy cut me off, or maybe I should have said this back, or whatever. But we're not thinking about it in words. So when you ask somebody, what are you thinking about it, it's a little bit like asking somebody, what does that color smell like? They're like, I don't know. And now you've ripped them out of what they're doing, and nothing good happens from that.
So what can you do instead? Well, when a person walks into my office and they've got their arms crossed and we're about to spend six to eight hours together, I need to find a way to get on their wavelength. Right? I need to find a way to synchronize with them. And if I ask them, are you mad or are you frustrated or how are you feeling? They're gonna say, no. I'm fine. Why? Why do you ask? So what I do instead is I show them this painting in my office. We stand in front of it. It's almost as big as this thing is right here, and I ask them a very simple question. I ask them, What do you see?
I would ask you that question. You have to think about it in your mind because as soon as somebody throws out an answer, you're going to see that too. I've asked hundreds of people this. So I'll ask you, What do you see? Anybody? Planting seeds. Anything else? A tired woman anything else? What's that? Survival. Yes. So people come in and they look at this and it isn't a trick. I've heard hundreds of answers. People think that this is a woman walking in a jungle or crossing the street or carrying groceries or whatever it is that they see, whatever it is that they see it doesn't matter. I'm sitting there looking at this painting with them and I ask them what do you see And now we can get on the same wavelength.
I'm not judging them. I'm only listening. And oftentimes, I'll ask you, what are they feeling? And they'll tell me, what is it that they're feeling? And in some ways, it's a bit of a Rorschach test. Maybe they'll tell me a little bit of a glimpse about what's going on in their own lives, but more than anything what it does is it shows them that I'm listening. Because most of us go most of our lives without ever having anyone listen to us. Sure. You go to to the checkout line and somebody knows that you're taking that, shirt and you want to get it checked out and you have that interaction, so they're not really listening to you. But when somebody is really listening to you, when they're fully present with you, that changes your state.
While it's not easy as what are you thinking about, trying to direct somebody and saying, Hey. What is it that you see here? What are you observing? Gets you to allow them it's you, shows them that you are synchronized with them, that you are listening. And if you can do this, if you can be present with people, they will feel it. You don't have your phone out. You're not trying to go anywhere necessarily. You're just trying to be present with them. We all know what it feels like when somebody is really deeply listening to us. It feels so good that we often find ourselves waking up partway through the conversation being like, why am I telling you so much stuff? And it's because when somebody's present with us, it feels so good and so rare that we want to share.
And so now, as they're beginning to open up, you have to ask yourself, how can I be a better listener? Right? This is something that people want to do, but it's really hard to become a better listener. Because what's the answer? If somebody says, you should become a better listener, what should I do? Be quieter, harder? Right? How can I do that? What is a good listener? How do you know if you're a good listener? Is there anybody in here that thinks they are a good listener? There's gotta be more than that in here. Right? Yeah. Okay. There are people who are good listeners out there. Right? And when somebody's a good listener, it really opens people up. And I want to talk about an experience I had a couple of years ago. A woman was telling me a story about her life, and she's given me permission to share this story.
She had moved from, Saint Louis out to LA. And she was telling me this story about how when she got there, she fell madly in love with an artist. And this artist was somebody that she just became so into that she said, I would finish my work as fast as I could, and I would go to his house, and I would sit in his studio and just watch him work. And I absolutely loved it. And he would get so annoyed with me from being in that studio that he would shoo me and the dog out, and he'd say, go watch movies. And then we'd go watch movies and, yeah. It was that was an unfortunate thing. And then we broke up, and it didn't work out.
So the story kind of trailed off. Now, if you're a really good listener, what is it that you would ask that person next? Think about that question, what you would ask them next. And I want to talk about the two interruptions that I think most people have. What actually keeps them from asking a great next question? And I think almost everybody falls into one of these two camps. These interruptions, these things that as you are synchronizing with the person, you hit this wall and the conversation drops off. The first interruption is the internal dialogue.
This describes my wife to a tee. Right? She meets a person. They start talking. As they're talking, she's like, wait. What was his name again? And wait. Where did where did he work? Oh, gosh. Okay. Now who is he connected with? Right? And the conversation starts going, and is she listening in that way? No. She's so lost in trying to keep up with it. How many people in here get lost in your own internal dialogue in a conversation? There, the hands are going up. Right? That's easy to do. Right? And we get stuck in this thing of like, oh, no. What am I going to ask them next? And then when the time comes for you to ask a question, you're just scrambling and trying not to embarrass yourself. Now the other interruption, this is the one that I am guilty of if I'm not careful, is what I call fast matching.
Fast matching is when you're listening to a person and you find the fastest, most surface level way to connect with what they said, and you say, oh, you did that, I did that. Right? Oh, you went there, I went there. I'll give you an example. Right? Imagine a person has just told you, oh, I, I dropped my parents off at the train station for their cruise to The Bahamas. Right? The fast matcher will be like, oh yeah. Where in The Bahamas did your parents stay? Now why is the fast matcher asking that? Yeah. Because they've been to The Bahamas and they hope that you are staying at the same place that they stayed at and now you're gonna be able to talk about that.
And we're lured into that. Right? In Western culture, we're told, hey. The best way to relate to another person is to find some commonality as quick as you can and find a way to connect with that. But the obvious next good question, the person that dropped their parents off at the train station to go to The Bahamas doesn't want to talk about their trip to The Bahamas. The thing they want to talk about is why in the world did you drop your parents at a train station when they're going on a cruise? But the fast matcher misses that. That's me. I'm a fast matcher. I want to connect with people as fast as possible. How many people in here are fast matchers?
Got a few of those too, Okay. So what can you do instead? If you have this challenge, what is it that you can do to keep yourself from doing this? And what I do is I call it a game. It's really just a mentality. I call it the tiniest choices game. When someone is telling you a story, particularly a story that they have not thought about very much, they're telling you about their past, they're telling you about something that happened, maybe they're telling you about something that this is the first time that they've really revisited this story, maybe in their whole lives. You have to understand how people tell these stories.
Right? When you're telling, when you're thinking back, you're viewing it in these snapshots. I view I talk about it being like plunging your head into a into a bucket of water and looking around at those experiences. All you get are these snapshots. Now you would think a person would tell a story a to b to c to d. Right? Just what did you see that happened? But the truth is they're telling you these snapshots. And oftentimes they include these details in the story that are completely irrelevant from A to Z. But they included them in there anyway.
And the reason that they included them in there is because the core of the story may be from a to z, but the interesting things are in those details, and they don't even know it. So let's think back to the artist. What was the tiniest detail she included in her story? What's that? The dog. Right? Why did she include the dog? Why was the dog pushed out with her in the studio? So what I asked her next was what I was really curious about. But, she's telling me about this, and the natural reaction that normally what you you would say is, oh, you're in LA? Where where were you living in LA? Right? Oh, you had a heartbreak? I had a heartbreak too. Yeah. Let let me tell you about mine. Or that was really rough, wasn't it?
But what I asked her was, tell me about this dog. And the woman lights up. Right? She goes, oh my gosh. His name was Sky. He was this fluffy malamute. He had no business being in LA. And, oh, I loved him so much. I would take him for walks and I got him special food. And, you know, come to think of it, I remember when I was talking with my boyfriend and he told me that he actually didn't want the dog anymore, but it would be more work to get rid of the dog than it would be to just keep him. And so that's when I knew that's actually how he felt about me. And so I took the dog and I left.
Right? That key detail, right, she had not even connected that it was critical, super important to the story because it actually is what guided her her towards what she was doing next. Now when you are listening to people tell stories, they are littered with tiny details. And we sit there. I know I've done it for years with my own mother before I realized what was going on. It's those tiny details that to me is like, she's in a rabbit hole. Where is she going with that? But that is where all the gold lies in the tiniest detail that they're telling you about.
Now, of course, you can't explore every detail. So how do you keep this from being another internal dialogue where you're like, is it that detail that I should ask him about? Is it that detail? So what I'm proposing is if you want to be a great listener, you have to trust yourself. You have to let go of thinking, I'm going to try and find the next perfect question. And instead, let go, and it's hard, and say, when this person is done talking, a question will come to mind. Something will be there, and it will be the right question. And because you are fully present with them, if you let your curiosity wait, you will be able to ask them questions that alert them to the idea that you are really there.
And even with your own parents, listening all the way through to a story that you've heard a hundred times, letting yourself go all the way to the end, and then waiting for that question to come up. If you can trust yourself enough to do that, and you might find sometimes that you fall down just like ice skating. Right? You're trying to do this thing and you fall down and you don't have a question there. But if you really trust yourself, a question will come to mind. Now it's not perfect. So maybe somebody in here is thinking about, well, what are some questions that you could ask or that you could have ready to get people to open up?
And so I want to share with you some of the things I've learned about asking questions that get people to open up, whether they're really close family members to a new person that you're just meeting for the first time in networking with. One of the first things that you realize if you get a chance to ask hundreds of people hundreds of questions, right? I'm now hundreds of thousands of questions in. There are some questions when the way you ask them, the person kind of curls up. You say, oh, I don't know. I haven't really thought about it. And they kind of move away from you. They put their arms in front of you.
And so you can start to get signals about what questions make it so people get closed off. And one of the questions that we intuitively or really almost always ask are why questions. Right? Why did you do that? Why? And we kind of believe that why is the thing that we're all after to understand, but I would actually suggest that most of the time what we as humans do, we do without reason. We do without really thinking about it. So if you ask somebody a why question, they actually are going and there's MRI studies that show this. If you ask somebody a why question, most of the time what they are going to do is make something up. You have and think about this. Like your dad comes storming into the house. Why did you handle this thing this way? Right? Now you're either trying to figure out, should I be defending myself with this answer? Should I frame my question so that I'm protecting myself?
Or if you have a why question where you get to puff yourself up and you get to create all these grand reasons why you did this thing that you did. Why questions almost never get at something beautiful. So I instead have figured out that if you ask how questions, it will totally change the conversation. So if you were to ask somebody, for example, how did you and mom decide to sell the dairy herd? How did you get out of bankruptcy? How did you do this thing? What happens is a person asked a how question. We'll go all the way back to the beginning and they'll start to tell you what happened.
Well, this happened and then this happened. And, oh, yeah, in order for you to understand this, you need to know this detail. And as they're telling you about how, why will emerge and it'll oftentimes emerge for them for the very first time. Because when they were doing it, they weren't doing it thinking deeply about it. They were reacting to what was going on in their lives, what was going on in their world. And think about now that you're reaching the age that you are, there's so much going on, you don't take time to stop and look back. You just keep moving forward. So if you can describe how and that leads you to your own why, people start to really open up.
Another great question that you can put into your pocket and you can use at almost any time, I learned, when I was in high school. Now you remember that day in middle school and then in high school when they separate all the girls and all the boys, and the boys are like, Where are the girls going? And they're going to have their own conversation, and the boys are all stuck like watching some lame movie. I remember when that happened, we had this teacher named Mr. Simmons, and Mr. Simmons was this hardcore marine, and he comes walking into class, and I have no to this day, I have no idea what possessed him of this, but he marches down to the bottom of the classroom and he stands up there and he says, Boys, one day you will be men, and one day you will have a child.
And that child will come home from school and they will hold up something that they painted or drew for you. And if you ask them what is it, I will personally come to your house and kick your ass. That's something that sticks with you. Right? So you're like, well what should I ask? This is a child that has just painted something. They've poured themselves into this and they're showing it to mommy or daddy. They think it's so obvious what it is. And if you ask them what is it, you've destroyed that trust. So one of us timidly opened their eyes, raised their hands, not me, said, well, Mr. Simmons, what should we ask?
And he said, you should ask. Tell me about it. You told me about crying. I'm thinking about doing this with my own children because it actually works. It is profound with children. If they hold up a painting and instead of saying, what is it? You say, tell me about it. They're like, well, this is where the horse was jumping over the rainbow. Look at it. It's so great. No. I drew it with these people. And they really, really get into it. This is true with a four year old named Violet or an 80 year old man named Sam. When he's built something that matters.
If you only ask him something as simple as, tell me about it, and you have demonstrated that you're willing to listen, he'll share with you things that he's never even shared with anyone in his life. Not because he's trying to keep it hidden all those years. Nobody asked. Nobody asked. Tell me about this tractor collection that you have. Tell me about why you chose to, you know, how you chose the color of paint on this barn that you're so proud of. Having this question, tell me about it, can be used in any circumstance, and it's one of those questions that you can put in your pocket and use over and over and over again. And so few people get asked to tell them about the things that matter to them that it will open them up. Now the final question that I want to share with you, it took me a long time to learn.
And in legacy interviews, what I've come to realize is that if you are deeply present with another person, if you are really listening to them, they will share things that are deep and important and sometimes horrifying. Sometimes really, really sad. And so you get through hearing somebody tell you about something they've experienced and a question doesn't come. There isn't a tiny choice for you to grab out of that when you hear about somebody being abused or about terrible crazy things that happen that you can't relate to. So what question can you ask there?
Well, one day I was hearing a woman tell me a story about abuse and I didn't know what to ask. But I waited and eventually it came to me. I asked her, what was the lesson in that? And the woman stopped. And she had never been asked that question. She was telling me the story because she wanted her grandchildren to hear it and to know what had happened to her. It wasn't in great graphic detail, but it was enough to let them know. So I asked her, what was the lesson in that? And she paused. And she said something that changed my life, changed the way I parented my children. She said, in this family, we don't keep secrets.
A few months later, that woman called me up and said, how grateful she was to have been asked that question because it was the first time she was able to take something so terrible and turn it into something valuable. In fact, maybe the most valuable thing that humans create. More valuable than anything they're going to pass down on the farm. More valuable than their land or their tractors or any inheritance or anything that they have, the thing that human beings earn, and you can only earn it, is wisdom. And that wisdom comes when people can understand what happened to them, the experiences that they've had along their lives.
And so when you're talking with somebody, imagine the power that you can have. Imagine the difference you can make in their lives if you help them go through, look through their experiences, the good ones, the bad ones, the moments when they fell down and they were low and they got back up. And I can tell you so many people in this life never went back and looked at it. They never looked back on what they did because when they start to look back there, they remember the painful things that they got through. But what they don't remember until somebody asks them questions to get them to talk about their lives is that they did stand up, and they did dust themselves off, and they did figure out a way to move on.
And whatever it is that they discovered through that, that they could get past it, that they could move beyond it, that's wisdom. And if we can get them to record it, they can pass that wisdom on for hundreds of years. And it allows them to let go like we were talking about before. So I give you this question, what was the lesson in that, as maybe the most valuable thing that I've learned from legacy interviews. There are an infinite number of circumstances where if you are really listening to somebody, you're going to find yourself in an area where you don't know what to ask next. And that question, what was the lesson in that?
Embrace yourself and be prepared to allow them to find something back in their history that they never knew and never understood despite having gone through those experiences. But once you get them to think about it, it becomes wisdom and you have done a great kindness to those people. So I want to conclude here and hopefully man, I'm mad at you, dude. I had no anticipation of this. So the conclusion here that I want to talk about, and I don't know how much time we have left, is a couple of things I want you to think about. There is no replacement for being present with somebody.
Sitting down and fully just being there, not expecting yourself to have great creative questions. I had to let go of my own ego being like, oh, I ask all the greatest questions. That's why people open up to me. No. People really open up when you're just sitting there and you're just patiently waiting and you're open to whatever they bring. Also, trust your curiosity. Don't feel like you have to know the exact right question. Don't feel like you have to have a question and hold on to it as they're going through the rest of what they're saying so you can ask that question. Let it go.
Be there with them and a question will come to your mind. I promise If you wait for that question, it will come. And your curiosity, the deeper parts of your brain, maybe it is your soul, will give you that question and it will be the exact right question. And then finally, be open to helping people explore their experiences. This is harder than it seems. You have to be prepared to let people flounder around not really knowing, not always having their stories be clear a to b to c. And when you can do these three things, when you can do it with your family members, your parents, your grandparents, your uncles, your aunts, the neighbor that you're renting land from, you will begin to see that as they tell you their stories and as they understand their past, they're going to let it go.
And when they let it go and they begin to be a different person, they will turn to you and they will want to share and they will want to move on, and you might get to be a part of that. So I recognize that this was not a conversation about succession planning in terms of being, you know, the legal work or the accounting work. It's not even the part that happens when people are in a fight. Right? This is before all of that. It's figuring out how to get people to open up, understand their past, and move on in a profound way. So I have a challenge for you.
This is something you guys have a great opportunity. You're going to be with people for the rest of the weekend, and, I want you to try and find a way to be present with another person so that they will be comfortable enough sharing their Peter Thiel paradox with you. This kind of inverts it. Right? You don't have to worry about, can I express myself? Can I explain my idea that makes me uncomfortable? But can you get another person to feel comfortable enough in a conversation with you to tell you the thing that they're a little bit afraid to tell people.
And if you can do that, you will know that some of the lessons that we talked about here can work. So I'm gonna say thank you very much for you guys, coming and talking about this. It is a great honor, and I said before about your attention. I hope that this was worth your attention, and I'm grateful for your time. Thank you. I don't know. How are we doing on time? Yep. We're doing good. We've got, about ten minutes. So one thing I wanted to throw a pitch out there for is, Elizabeth where is Elizabeth? Elizabeth is doing a, a networking session today, and she's going to be prompting people to interact with one another. That's at 04:00.
Yeah. This is an excellent communicator. I would all recommend that everybody go to her session at 04:00. And that might be a chance for you to try out the getting people to tell your Peter Thiel paradox. So we have about ten minutes left. Do you mind if we take questions? Are there do you guys want to talk further? Would you like to, discuss? Yeah. You know, that's a great question. When I discovered so she asked, what do you do if you're hearing horrible things? I wanna say, it's not that common. Right? Like, people have hard lives. But when you can hear like that woman talking about, Well, we don't keep secrets.
And then I can take that home and I can talk with my children about that. And I've been able to take a lot of the distilled wisdom, that drip, drip, drip and try and turn it into valuable things for me. I hear a lot about, for example, men feeling like they worked too hard and missed the time when their children were little. And it's a lot easier for me to go home at 04:30 than to wait till 07:30. And so I try and turn the wisdom that I'm hearing into valuable lessons in my own life. Yep. Do you ever hear someone's story and be like, I can't not judge that?
Do I ever hear anybody's story and think, Can I not judge that? I I remember once hearing a story. This so, the answer to your question is, if you're really listening to someone, there's nothing to judge Because they're just telling you, I went through life and this is what happened, and this is how I reacted, and this is what I thought, and this is why I did it. They are the hero of their own adventure. And so I'm just sitting there along for the adventure. And I can remember one time when I was listening to a man tell a war story that I was unprepared for, and I was absolutely judging him. And then he was telling me his how and then he got to earlier details where all of a sudden I was like, Vance, you fool. How could you possibly have have thought, you know, been so arrogant as to think you could judge that moment right there. And so now, I spend most of my time not judging people and just saying, You're the hero of your own story.
Yes. So his question was, how do you listen to somebody that doesn't always have the words to express in their own head? So, this happens a lot with the exact group you'd think, right? Men that are between the ages of 50 to 70 that have never really like stopped. So towards the end, particularly in a couple's interview, I'll ask, you know, What did you learn about this woman by being married to her for forty years? And this man who has all of this gratitude and this understanding that the life he has is born, you know, the children that he has, all of these things were because of her and he goes to put things out and he can't choke and get it out. The wife's reaction is always to cut the tension in half.
She deeply wants to know the answer to this, but she can't handle the discomfort of him stammering and not having an answer to it. And so I always try and keep the wife from cutting that tension because he will get there. And he'll get there even if it isn't in words. He'll get there in the way that he breaks down. He'll get there in the way he shakes his head or in the way that he leans over and kisses her. And so I think that there are many experiences where there aren't words to do it, but they're saying something all the same. So the question was, how has Legacy Interviews helped me bring intimacy with my family and my friends?
It's a great so, it's a great question. It's a really good question. How many of you guys have young kids? So I have a two year old and a four year old. And every night, I'm so tired. Right? I've finally gotten them to take their baths and they're in their sleep diaper and finally in their sleep sack and they're finally laying down and they're getting out of bed and they're doing all these things. And then finally, I get them to lay down and they're right as I'm about to leave, they're like, Dad, tell us a story. And I'm like, I don't have any stories. Tell us about when you were a little boy.
And I have so many times been like, I just don't have anything left. But now knowing that all of your experiences once understood are wisdom, now I try and sit there and think of where are those times in my life that I fell down that for anybody else in the world, I would be embarrassed to tell them. But if I can figure them out, if I can pull them out, then I can give them wisdom so that they don't have to fall down. And I think that I don't know that that directly answers your question, but I won't let myself shut off the light if my kids are asking for a story. And if I hadn't had legacy interviews, I probably wouldn't have done that. Yes.
Gosh. These are the best questions I've ever heard. So, you guys all hear a question? Are there themes that you can pull out of here? So, yes. One of the things that I have pulled out from hearing a lot of older women talk, which I had not spent much time with 60, 70 year old women. It just wasn't a part of my life. And hearing them talk about one of the questions I ask people is, what was the most difficult lesson to learn that was valuable to know? There's something that women say consistently, maybe 80% of them. I hope I'm not going to offend you, but this is my reality. This is what I see. Did anybody have a guess on what women say is their biggest regret? The most difficult thing to learn, what's the most valuable to know? Anybody?
Speak up. Speak up more. Something like that. Yeah. I wish I didn't, I wish I didn't go so long worrying about what people thought of me. And over time, what I've come to realize is that, the women's role in many families, not every family, not every woman, but my experience is many women are the PR agents for the family. It is really important that in a community, somebody is looking out for how do other people think of this because it does matter your family name, it does matter how you are perceived, how the kids are perceived, but that can go too far, And that can be something where people were really limited by what their mother-in-law thought or what their mom thought, and they realize much, much later in life, if I had only thrown that off, I might have taken a different chance. I might have done something different.
So women talk a lot about that. And so that's something I think is important. And men, I think the consistent pattern with men that I've seen, and this goes to your words concept, is many, many, many, many men, this probably changed the intimacy with my family, said, I wish I would have known earlier that my wife was my partner. And you think about that and you're like, what do you mean? And what happens is a man will say, I was hiding the fact that I drank a lot from my own wife because I thought she'd be mad at me or she would judge me. And when I finally understood that she was on my team, then all of a sudden I had somebody that was there. And that profoundly impacted how, to your point, how I interacted with my wife to be like, hey, this is a thing I'm struggling with. I like, I'm not trying to keep it in for you. I'm understanding we're in this together.
So I guess those would be the two things. We don't have time. I I wanna thank you guys so much for, having me here. If you're interested in legacy interviews, it's right there. I also have the Ag Tribes report on Thursday nights at, 6PM. And so there there's the, survey for how we do it. Thank you. Vance, we wanna thank you for your time today and coming to speak to us and and sharing the wisdom that you gained, not only for your own life experience, but but the interactions that you've had with others as well. We wanna show you our gratitude as a small gift Thank you. Of appreciation. And let's give Vance one more round of applause.
May I see that one more time? So I'm doing a session in thirty minutes. And if you want to hear my Peter Thiel paradox, which I assure you will make you uncomfortable, I'm giving a session and we can talk about it there. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, no. That was great. Hey. Thank you. Thank you. It was nice to meet you, James. Nice to meet you too. I think. Hey. Hey. There we go. Let me take a photo of that. It's like from Rosa. I knew I'd find it. Got it. Got it? Okay. That's great. So what which room are you in next? Somewhere down in the Governor's, row. Somewhere down there. Thank you very much. Alright. That's great. Thank you, Fred.
Yep. Are you still doing the next session? Because I've gotta help with I probably will. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Ask you a quick question. Sure. So whenever you talked about how the most effective way of talking to people after their abuse story is to ask them what was the lesson in that, I definitely agree with that, but my question is, I know a lot of people or my first first response is that people would take that as what lesson did you learn almost as the as if they did something to earn the abuse where whereas that, obviously, it's not what happened. So how could you phrase the question when you're talking to people that would take it that way so that they don't take it as they me thinking they did something to you? That is a great question. I think for me, by the time I've gotten to the point where they're talking about something that deep, they've heard me asking them questions about all sorts of things. So the context that I'm describing it in, it fits. They've already put their guard all the way. They've or they're all the way down. Right? They're they're sharing something and they and I will have already asked them many things about how did that go and and what did you take away from that. And so the context is different. I it's a good point and I will make sure I more have more nuance there because I would not say that I know anything at all about counseling people that have that have gone through these things, but that that's something that worked in that in those moments. Right.
Okay. Thank you. Hi. I'm Vance. I'm Peyton. Nice to meet you, Peyton. Nice to meet you too. That was very educational. Oh, thank you very much for saying that. I appreciate that. I appreciate all the stuff you said. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Angela Davis. Hi, Angela. I wanna tell you, I've heard you speak a number of times when I was actually in college class nine. Oh, wow. Alright. The last college class that met on the on Central Campus before they changed to bear the whole week. But I do wanna tell you that I've heard you speak several times.
And I there are things that you said both in other speaking engagements and through our engagement and call that still resonate with me. Oh, okay. Thank you. And, also, like, every time I have the option to hear you speak, I try to do it because I just I feel like there there are things that you say that I hope you understand how impactful they are. They are to me, but I think, you know, people this will resonate with people as they walk out of this room and that's a good that was a great workshop. Oh, I am so just with you out into the world. Thank you very much. That means a lot to me. Thank you.
Yeah. Well, there's a you press the case. Hi, Preston. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. I just wanna go out and enjoy your podcast. Oh, hey. Alright. A podcast listener. Great. Yeah. How'd you find it? Oh, just just growl. Just out in the world. Yeah. Great. Yes. So if you ever I've I was just telling him I started a a business with, doing custom application with drones on farmland. So if you ever wanna talk about You got a guard? I absolutely. I'm terrible. I should have. Preston, damn it. Send me an email. Yeah. I [email protected]. Okay. I actually love I'm on working you know you know working cows. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm on it Monday. So you can No kidding. Yep. Okay. I'll check that out. Yeah. So with Clay. So I know Clay very well. Yeah. I was just on his pod I don't know if he's there already yet, but I was on his podcast recently. Yeah.
Yeah. I actually was just tweeting about drones, about the the hellscape terror from above that I think they're gonna one day cause. It's it's gonna be it's gonna be interesting in the next four years. Come on the podcast. Let's talk about it. Yeah. I'd love to. And we and I've also got a session tomorrow. I'm talking at three about how we use these AG drones to help with hurricane hurling. So we we delivered, like, three and a half tons of supplies for these drones. So Wow. Yeah. Well, I won't be here, but otherwise, I would come see it. I talked on the session. Said three, I think. Two or three. But I talked on the shark farmers podcast. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You've seen You know all, man. You're going anywhere. Yeah. Nice. You can you can scroll back and find it. But, yeah. But that was, like, fresh after the hurricane. So that was Yeah. They're great, man. Yeah. Well, come on and we'll talk about, we'll do the AG drive report, but I'll I I think that drones are gonna get used against this in a terror act that is gonna be like it's gonna make nine eleven look like nothing. Well, there's also a button out there that the government could push to put them all on the ground too. So Well, that's see, that's good that's a good counterpoint. Right? I don't know anything at all about that. I would Terry's dumping so much money into counter drone stuff right now. That makes me feel better. Yeah. It's like, I don't know what the military base is right now.
I mean, they're getting hit by $30 Amazon drones. Yeah. Right now, I'm in Hi. I'm Vance. Nice to meet you. I'm nasty. Yeah. I was just out in Montana a few months ago. Oh, where at? With the Farm Bureau. I gave you talk at the State Bureau. Yeah. Somebody was saying that. I missed that conference because I was busy with CCA stuff. I've never been to North Carolina's firm, buddy. I'm the chair of Young Farmers Ranch. Oh, alright. Maybe maybe we can get you there. That'd be great. I love that. I love that. You think this fit I when they read the description, I was like, it's not a ton about succession cleaning. It is, but it isn't. Did it fit with I I enjoyed it. I mean, it makes complete sense how it can how it relates to succession planning. Yeah. So Yeah. No. I've I've been there with my dad too. So we've we've we've formed together and then split up, and so it's it's, no. It's good. You gotta ask the right questions.
Well, guys, I gotta run downstairs. It's great to chat with you. Just saying. Yeah. Great great talk today. Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. I'll I'll email you or Do. A % do. The legacy email? Yeah. [email protected]. Hi. Really enjoyed your, presentation. Sorry. I was kind of, like, leaning on my head. I was just having a little bit of a headache, but I did really enjoy it. I have a question. So if this is something that folks that don't live in the same state as you want to do, is that a possibility to do it virtually? Yeah. We do them virtually. We do we do it three ways. We most of them happen in our studio. Okay. People travel to us. We do a bunch online and then every once in a while we'll travel out to somebody. Okay. Okay. But, yeah, the online ones are great. We use a software that's like Zoom, only way better. Yeah. And we can make it look and sound really good. Okay. You have some people you're thinking of? Yeah. My grandparents specifically. And as you were talking, like, they were born at the end of the Great Depression.
My Paw Paw works with me in Texas in the Amarillo area. And then Oh, down in Texas? Okay. Yeah. They live in Claude, which is near Amarillo. And so he worked the night shift and then would sleep for a couple hours and then go out and do a custom harvest for me daily. And my mommy was a, special aid or, command experience. She was an aid for special education students. Wow. That would have been early. There were when they were. And then, to retire when I was young, and then Paw Paw was still working, like, well into his sixties. Well, he started to slip, like, mentally.
I'm pretty convinced you have some form of dementia or Alzheimer's. And then, Mimi, of course, is getting out there. They're 80, 80 80 nine. So I texted my mom, and I was like, hey. You should look into this. And she was like, yes. But getting it pushed I'm the person that's, you know, constantly pushing things over the finish line, it seems like. So I wanted to see if that was a possibility Yes. Great. To find out that you can track. And don't, yeah. Don't don't wait on it. Go as quick as you can. My own uncle, my I couldn't get my cousin. I'd be like, come on. Bring him in. Bring him in. And they get to a point where they can't remember as much as they had before. Yeah. I'm sure. So well, thank you very much, and I'll look forward to hearing from you. Great. Thank you. Yeah. Hey. How are you? Yeah. I saw you up on stage up there. Yeah. And then that's when I saw that you're here and I thought, yeah. What session is he doing? So I was in there in the back because I'm helping with this one, this next one. What time is that? I think I've got an It's second. I gotta go. But, good to see you.
Do you get nervous before you, speak with anything? No. I don't mind helping people. Being on this committee has become apparent. Jared, do you have any of that? Any of that. Yeah. I do I'm an accretourism business, so I have to entertain people regularly in that format and setting. So I feel like if the crowd is larger than, like, maybe a couple hundred, then then I get a little bit more nervous. Okay. But this is fine. Yeah. I don't Yeah. You probably won't be saying anything too controversial in your over your remarks or Yeah. It's crazy. And what is the pin for?
So this was for a, governor's award. They our governor in North Carolina works, like, 25 people across the state every year, a couple of volunteer award for those volunteers in different districts in the state. Wow. And I got nominated for that a couple years ago, and it was a pretty great honor. Yeah. You know, I see all these pins all the time, and I've never have have never worn a pin for anything. And then I finally got this cool pin. I'm like, I have a legit pin. And it's for earning. You earned it. Yeah. To spare it. So it's kind of a funny thing. Thank you very much about it.
Now where are you from? Missouri? Yeah. I live in Saint Louis. Not visited Missouri before. Yes, sir. But I have great friends that live in the great state of Missouri. It's a great state. It's quite it's quite diverse. Yeah. I have four minutes. We don't shut doors until it's time. Sure. Yeah. I understand. Do you come from an agriculture background? I grew up in small town Central Illinois, so I would bail hay and walk beans, but I didn't I didn't grow up on a farm. That's how my dad, started. He was just working on his back and farm, and then we kinda got into agriculture business as a family. Yeah. My four year old has started pestering me that she wants to work on it. She wants to have a farm because all my friends that are in ag send me chicks photos and videos of sheep and stuff like that. So they they know more as city kids, they know more about farming than anybody. I love that.
Well, you can always have backyard chickens in Missouri. Yeah. We're working on it. Yeah. Well, in the state of Missouri, they made it illegal for an HOA not to allow you to do it. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. That's fantastic. That's really great. Good to hear. As they tell me today, I don't know what state they're in, that they, it's crazy. In Louisiana, if you sell a single flower, you don't have to have a permit. But if you Bunch them? Flowers together, you have to have a floral permit. Oh, god. What a terrible, terrible a hundred dollars a year to have this permit to put the flowers that you grow together.
How does that It's like literal tyranny. Right? It's like how is it It is literal tyranny. Yeah. It really is. It's just like it's just straight out of, like, the colonies? I'm like I'm like, extreme on liberty. Like, I I believe that, daylight savings time is like a tyrannical control of the government to rip us out of, our natural synchronicity with the world. In real life. Okay. I hear you. Yeah. Okay. Don't get me fired up. I wanna go, like, $3 right now. Yeah. There you go. Are you a Bitcoiner? No. I'm not. You so I don't know what you're doing at three whatever the next session is, but I will make the case for Bitcoin for you. It'll I'll make it very quickly. It won't be a long drawn out one.
Out. Yeah. Let me give you I had to I realized I left all of my cards that have the right address on there, Sofia. I'll be able to find you. Sofia Lily. So my kids' names, my two daughters named the flowers, Autumn Rose and Violet. And we've got a little boy on the way and his name is gonna be Forrest. We're gonna use all I love it. All natural. I have a great name. I have no problem. Well, my wife was very concerned that Forrest was like in Forrest Gump when we were growing up where he's kinda dumb. But we did a bunch of testing to find out, do kids now associate the name Forrest with that? Most of them haven't even seen the movie. So They don't even know. Enough time is a lap. Hopefully, they don't make a Forrest Gump part two. It really is It is, isn't it? Yeah. Of course. And then we have different colors. There we go.
Thanks. Well, I want to start off by saying thank you to everybody for coming. I am a firm believer that your attention is the most valuable thing that you own, and I realize that on a day like today, there are many places that you could go and pay attention to things that will impact your future. It could impact, you know, the decisions you're making with crops and how you diversify or what you get to practice, on debate and the speaking work that you guys do. So thank you for coming. My name is Vance Crowe, and I came to agriculture, unexpectedly. I grew up in small town Central Illinois, and just like most kids, all I wanted to do was leave and get away from small town Central Illinois, and it wasn't until many years later where I was invited to go work at Monsanto, where I became the director of Millennial Engagement.
And, that's kind of a funny job title, but at the time, which is about ten years ago, there was a lot of pushback against GMOs and pesticides. And so, my job was to go out and talk with people about those concerns. And this was a wonderful experience for me. It led me back to my cultural roots, which was being in small town America and, an understanding of how rural communities work. And so it is a great honor for me to be here talking with you today because I want to share with you things not so much about what I learned about being a speaker, but about what I've learned over the last five years of being a listener.
And, now as they were talking about in my biography, I spend my time recording people telling their life stories so that future generations can watch these recordings and know their family history. And through this, I've been able to learn a lot about not just the heritage of our country and about the inner workings of families, but I've also had a chance to learn on a much, much deeper level how to help people open up and talk about things that truly matter. If you consider the idea that when somebody is recording their life stories and we are proposing we will store these stories for hundreds of years, they are really sitting there thinking, what is it that I have to share that is of deep enough value that a hundred or two hundred or three hundred years from now, somebody of my family line can watch this and pull something valuable out of it.
And so in order to help you maybe kind of understand the where I'm coming from, I want to start off by getting you to think deeply about a question. What is one thing that you believe that almost no one you know agrees with you on? If any of you are listeners to my podcast, I have a weekly podcast called the Ag Tribes Report. Is there anybody in here that listens to the podcast? Alright, a few. During this podcast, I ask people this question. And the reason I ask them this question is because it makes them uncomfortable. Right? This is a challenging question to ask because actually, as human beings, we are optimized not for truth.
We think we are. We think we always want the right answer and the true answer. But the reality is if you go back and look at where our beginnings were when we were in tribes and we were, you know, trying to scour the world every single day was a hunt for calories, we needed to get along with our group of people, it it created a mind that is optimized not for the right answer, but to get along with other people. And so this question is one that I love to ask people. We call it the Peter Thiel Paradox because it's really got two parts to it. The first thing is, I ask you this, and if my guest says something that people don't that they already agree with, well then they failed. Right? But then if they tell me something that everybody disagrees with, now they've created a, now they've created a new problem because now they have to find a way to convince me of something that I don't already agree with.
So the reason that I ask you this is because I know that everyone in this room has things that they believe that other people don't necessarily agree with. Now that might be on some grand national level, Hey, I believe this policy should be this way, or I believe farming should head in that way. Or it might be something on a much smaller scale. It might be that you believe something about the way your family is operating or about choices that you should make. And that you know that other people don't agree with you because you've said it before and people didn't listen to you, or they didn't like what you had to say.
Now I want you to think about this question for yourself because I want you to feel that discomfort. That discomfort is something that when people come into my office to record their legacy interview, they're dealing with. Because everyone that comes in, oftentimes the legacy interviews are gifted. You have adult children that say, I want to make sure mom and dad are recorded so that my children, their grandchildren can know where they came from. They can understand what dad was really like so they know what I went through and why I treat them the way that I do. Now you would think, or at least I thought, that when people would be receive this as a gift that they'd be like, Oh gosh, that's great. I can't wait to tell my story.
But it turns out a lot of people are afraid to tell their story. The reason that they're afraid to tell their stories is because they have been working their whole lives. They've been gripping on. They've been one of these to do people that have gotten things done, so they are wound up tight. They're always trying to make sure things are going, and they've never taken the time to look back. And so oftentimes they'll come into my office and usually if it's a couple, there'll be one person that's marching right in there. They've got a lot of good stories they want to tell. And there's another person that walks in with their arms folded like this. Right? And they're not so sure that they want to be here and they're not so sure who I am and they're not so sure that they want to tell me anything at all.
And so you have to ask yourself, how can we go from a person coming in like that and getting them to be like this? To be open. To be telling a story. To be laughing. These people, when the man came in there, he did not want to. His name is Steve. He had no interest in this. He told me the same thing that many people tell me, I don't really have any interesting stories. Nobody's really going to care. I've lived an unremarkable life. And here you see he's sitting there telling a story. He's so engaged and his wife's laughing. So the question is, how do you get somebody to move from this closed off position into being somebody that's willing to open up?
And I would take this a fur a step further is to say, why does this matter to you? Why should you care about getting somebody to want to open up and tell their stories? Well, it's here that I actually wanted to throw a thank you out to one of your fellow Farm Bureau members, Kelly Roberts from the Virginia Farm Bureau. About a year or so ago, she and I had a conversation. I will occasionally call up people I know in ag and I'll say, Hey, what's going on with your members? What are the latest problems that they're experiencing? And is there anything that I know about that I could come talk about that? And so Kelly and I had this conversation back and forth, and farm members, the young farmers and ranchers, are on operations where they don't know when is it going to be my turn to make decisions?
When is it going to be a chance that my family and I can know what's going to happen in the future so that we can start to plan? So that we can start to actually build out our lives with confidence knowing what mom and dad or grandma and granddad are gonna do? Now up until this point, I had never really thought about it. But as Kelly's describing this, I started to remember that many, many times, about a month after I've done the legacy interview with, with an individual or a couple, I'll get a phone call from their kids. And their kids will be like, Vance, you are not gonna believe this.
I am right now on my way to the estate attorney because mom has finally decided that she wants to let the farm get passed down and she's gonna move in with her sister in Minneapolis. Vance, she's wanted to do this for ten years since dad died and she's just never done it before. She just couldn't get herself to do it. Or I'll get a phone call with somebody and be like, hey Vance, you're not gonna believe this. Dad came downstairs yesterday morning and announced that he was gonna take his first vacation in forty years.
And so as I'm talking to Kelly, I started to realize I am experiencing so many people setting down who they were, letting that go, and taking on a different role in their family. And this wasn't because I had instructed them on anything. We hadn't even talked about what their succession plan was or what they wanted to do. Really, all they were doing was telling their stories. And this became something I think that's really important particularly in agriculture. You know, you think about in ag, particularly the Farm Bureau, I spent years working with your pals program and different organizations inside of the Farm Bureau where they've been like, Hey, Ag, you need to tell your story. Tell your story. Tell your story. And that's true. But there's another set of stories that need to be told.
And it's not your story. It's actually getting other people within your operation to tell their stories. Because when you do, you will see that they will change. When you get other people to open up and talk about what went on in their past, I believe they're able to set that past down. They're able to let go of being this to do person, and they start to become a person that can become the wise person or a person that's living out a new chapter of their life. And what I came to realize in talking with Kelly is that this is so much bigger than just my individual business that's designed to record people telling their stories, that the truth is it will actually do more good for the world than anything I've ever spoken about. If I can teach you how to get people to open up and tell their stories, then we can start to solve this log jam that we've seen happen in our culture, in agriculture, of people struggling to let go of who they were and letting the next generation go on.
And so I want to talk a little bit about how to become not just a better listener, but a person that can prompt other people to reflect on their lives and share with things that are important to them. And then watch where that goes, because wherever it goes, I can't predict, but I can tell you it will be an adventure, and I think it will be a net major positive for you. And I want to start off by talking about this concept, pole. I was a US Peace Corps volunteer and I was living in a remote part of rural Kenya. And, there I was, you know, just working on different projects.
And one day, the guy that's supposed to be teaching me how to integrate into culture, his name was Daniel. Daniel came to me and he said, Vance, we need to go to to say, Polae for a woman whose husband died. Now, poli, if you go look this up in the dictionary, poli equals I'm sorry. Right? It's what you say when somebody dies or gets sick. So here I am, an American guy that's got a lot to do. I'm really focused on getting things done, and I'm like, Well, Daniel, you know, where where is this funeral? He's like, Oh, it's just there. Let me just go for a bit. So I'm like, Alright. Let's go. So I stand up. I'm not really interested in doing this because I actually hate going to funerals.
And one of the reasons I hate going to funerals is because of the way they work in American culture. Right? We go and we stand in line and we shuffle up to the family. Maybe we see the the casket, and then we keep moving on, and then we see the family, and we hold out our hands, and what do we say? I'm sorry for your loss. Now, the reason that I really dislike this is because it feels so disingenuous. I'm always afraid in the back of my mind that the person's going to say, sorry. What are you sorry about? What? Why? Because there's some kind of failing in our language. Right? There's something that doesn't fit with saying I'm sorry when you aren't responsible for anything. So I'm imagining as Daniel's telling me this, we're gonna go over and say, I'm sorry, to a person that I've never even met their husband.
How could I be sorry? So Daniel and I start our walk. Now what Daniel didn't tell me was just there meant walking all the way down a mountain, crossing a river, and walking all the way back up another mountain. So by the time we get there, I'm already pretty upset. He's been wasting my time. We've already dedicated more time to this than I ever thought we were going to. So finally, we get to the compound, and as we go in, I notice that the women are sitting over here by the fire. They're making tea and food, and the men are sitting over here. The widow is very obviously sitting in a place of honor, and so I think we're going to walk over there, say I'm sorry, and leave, but that's not what we do.
What we do is we walk over to a table of a group of men and boys, and we sit there and a little girl comes over and she brings the tea over. Now you guys have heard this term chai tea. In Kenya, chai tea is really, really caffeinated tea with a Kool Aid level amount of sugar in it. And so I'm sitting there and they pour me that, chai tea and I start sipping on it and I think, Alright, we're gonna do one cup of tea and when I finish this, then we'll go. So I drink down that tea and just as that little tin cup is getting empty, I, you know, make sure to hit it on the table. So Daniel hears, I'm done. We can go say, I'm sorry, and get out of here. But as soon as I do that, little girl over there pops up. She's got her kettle, walks back over, pours more tea for me. So now, I'm moderately caffeinated, a little bit annoyed, but I'm like, I can suck down another cup of Kool Aid tea here. Let's do this and we'll get done.
So I drink this next cup of tea a little bit faster, hit the thing again. Of course, I'm expecting Daniel to stand up and go say, Poli, and then we're gonna get out of here. But that girl comes over and fills the cup up, and now I'm really caffeinated and really agitated, and this goes on for hours. Finally, Daniel stands up, dusts himself off, says like, Whoop. And then we start walking to leave, and we go to leave the compound. And I said, Daniel, I think you forgot to say, I'm sorry, to the widow. We better go back. We're not gonna get credit for having been here. Daniel looks at me and I said, Daniel, we didn't say Poland.
He looks at me like I'm totally nuts. And so, I end up saying, you know, he keeps walking and I'm falling behind him like, Daniel, we didn't say Poli. Daniel, you forgot. We didn't say Poli. And he thinks, he's completely bewildered by this. This is a cultural divide here. So finally, I figure out that Daniel isn't stopping. We're gonna walk all the way down the mountain and come back up it. So now I'm in a hurry. I'm like rushing right behind Daniel. I'm trying to get him to move faster down the mountain because I got things to do and I trip over a branch and Daniel turns and he says, Vance, pole, pole.
And in that instant, my understanding of human beings changed. It was immediate because in that instant, I had a revelation, something I had never thought of before, something I never realized, something the Kenyans knew far deeper than anything that I had ever been taught in my own culture. You see, pole pole, when you go to the dictionary equals slow down. And I believe and in that moment came to realize that the dictionary different definition when they said, Polle equals I'm sorry, was somebody making a very serious translation mistake. What the Kenyans knew that us Westerners had forgotten was that when somebody is in pain, when somebody is experiencing something, there are no words that will help them get past it.
There is nothing you can say. And so when they went to say, Polle, they weren't saying anything at all. Instead, they were spending time with people. And this became something that helped inform so much more of how I interacted with people because you have all felt the experience of somebody sitting and truly being with you. It's profound and it doesn't happen very often. What normally happens when we are sitting with our loved ones, maybe you guys can relate to this, you're sitting with somebody that you love, you care about them so much, your husband, your boyfriend, you're you're you see them kind of staring off into space, You know they've had a long day, and so you ask them that question that's burning in your heart. What is the question you ask that person?
What are you thinking, and how well does that go? Terrible. Right? And how many people in here, I'll ask the men, how many men in here like being asked, what are you thinking about? Nobody. Why? What's going on there? This is a profound realization. Right? Because you think the woman is sitting there saying, I want to connect with you. I want to know what's going on with you. When you ask, what are you thinking about? The man gets mad. Why are you asking me that? I'm not thinking anything at all. And the woman is sitting there saying, What do you mean you're not thinking anything at all? I can see it. It's written right on your face. But the truth is most of what we think of as thinking isn't thinking at all.
Most of what we're doing when we're staring off into space is experiencing emotion. We're experiencing what happened to us earlier in the day. We're reliving it. We're trying to say, that guy cut me off, or maybe I should have said this back, or whatever. But we're not thinking about it in words. So when you ask somebody, what are you thinking about it, it's a little bit like asking somebody, what does that color smell like? They're like, I don't know. And now you've ripped them out of what they're doing, and nothing good happens from that.
So what can you do instead? Well, when a person walks into my office and they've got their arms crossed and we're about to spend six to eight hours together, I need to find a way to get on their wavelength. Right? I need to find a way to synchronize with them. And if I ask them, are you mad or are you frustrated or how are you feeling? They're gonna say, no. I'm fine. Why? Why do you ask? So what I do instead is I show them this painting in my office. We stand in front of it. It's almost as big as this thing is right here, and I ask them a very simple question. I ask them, What do you see?
I would ask you that question. You have to think about it in your mind because as soon as somebody throws out an answer, you're going to see that too. I've asked hundreds of people this. So I'll ask you, What do you see? Anybody? Planting seeds. Anything else? A tired woman anything else? What's that? Survival. Yes. So people come in and they look at this and it isn't a trick. I've heard hundreds of answers. People think that this is a woman walking in a jungle or crossing the street or carrying groceries or whatever it is that they see, whatever it is that they see it doesn't matter. I'm sitting there looking at this painting with them and I ask them what do you see And now we can get on the same wavelength.
I'm not judging them. I'm only listening. And oftentimes, I'll ask you, what are they feeling? And they'll tell me, what is it that they're feeling? And in some ways, it's a bit of a Rorschach test. Maybe they'll tell me a little bit of a glimpse about what's going on in their own lives, but more than anything what it does is it shows them that I'm listening. Because most of us go most of our lives without ever having anyone listen to us. Sure. You go to to the checkout line and somebody knows that you're taking that, shirt and you want to get it checked out and you have that interaction, so they're not really listening to you. But when somebody is really listening to you, when they're fully present with you, that changes your state.
While it's not easy as what are you thinking about, trying to direct somebody and saying, Hey. What is it that you see here? What are you observing? Gets you to allow them it's you, shows them that you are synchronized with them, that you are listening. And if you can do this, if you can be present with people, they will feel it. You don't have your phone out. You're not trying to go anywhere necessarily. You're just trying to be present with them. We all know what it feels like when somebody is really deeply listening to us. It feels so good that we often find ourselves waking up partway through the conversation being like, why am I telling you so much stuff? And it's because when somebody's present with us, it feels so good and so rare that we want to share.
And so now, as they're beginning to open up, you have to ask yourself, how can I be a better listener? Right? This is something that people want to do, but it's really hard to become a better listener. Because what's the answer? If somebody says, you should become a better listener, what should I do? Be quieter, harder? Right? How can I do that? What is a good listener? How do you know if you're a good listener? Is there anybody in here that thinks they are a good listener? There's gotta be more than that in here. Right? Yeah. Okay. There are people who are good listeners out there. Right? And when somebody's a good listener, it really opens people up. And I want to talk about an experience I had a couple of years ago. A woman was telling me a story about her life, and she's given me permission to share this story.
She had moved from, Saint Louis out to LA. And she was telling me this story about how when she got there, she fell madly in love with an artist. And this artist was somebody that she just became so into that she said, I would finish my work as fast as I could, and I would go to his house, and I would sit in his studio and just watch him work. And I absolutely loved it. And he would get so annoyed with me from being in that studio that he would shoo me and the dog out, and he'd say, go watch movies. And then we'd go watch movies and, yeah. It was that was an unfortunate thing. And then we broke up, and it didn't work out.
So the story kind of trailed off. Now, if you're a really good listener, what is it that you would ask that person next? Think about that question, what you would ask them next. And I want to talk about the two interruptions that I think most people have. What actually keeps them from asking a great next question? And I think almost everybody falls into one of these two camps. These interruptions, these things that as you are synchronizing with the person, you hit this wall and the conversation drops off. The first interruption is the internal dialogue.
This describes my wife to a tee. Right? She meets a person. They start talking. As they're talking, she's like, wait. What was his name again? And wait. Where did where did he work? Oh, gosh. Okay. Now who is he connected with? Right? And the conversation starts going, and is she listening in that way? No. She's so lost in trying to keep up with it. How many people in here get lost in your own internal dialogue in a conversation? There, the hands are going up. Right? That's easy to do. Right? And we get stuck in this thing of like, oh, no. What am I going to ask them next? And then when the time comes for you to ask a question, you're just scrambling and trying not to embarrass yourself. Now the other interruption, this is the one that I am guilty of if I'm not careful, is what I call fast matching.
Fast matching is when you're listening to a person and you find the fastest, most surface level way to connect with what they said, and you say, oh, you did that, I did that. Right? Oh, you went there, I went there. I'll give you an example. Right? Imagine a person has just told you, oh, I, I dropped my parents off at the train station for their cruise to The Bahamas. Right? The fast matcher will be like, oh yeah. Where in The Bahamas did your parents stay? Now why is the fast matcher asking that? Yeah. Because they've been to The Bahamas and they hope that you are staying at the same place that they stayed at and now you're gonna be able to talk about that.
And we're lured into that. Right? In Western culture, we're told, hey. The best way to relate to another person is to find some commonality as quick as you can and find a way to connect with that. But the obvious next good question, the person that dropped their parents off at the train station to go to The Bahamas doesn't want to talk about their trip to The Bahamas. The thing they want to talk about is why in the world did you drop your parents at a train station when they're going on a cruise? But the fast matcher misses that. That's me. I'm a fast matcher. I want to connect with people as fast as possible. How many people in here are fast matchers?
Got a few of those too, Okay. So what can you do instead? If you have this challenge, what is it that you can do to keep yourself from doing this? And what I do is I call it a game. It's really just a mentality. I call it the tiniest choices game. When someone is telling you a story, particularly a story that they have not thought about very much, they're telling you about their past, they're telling you about something that happened, maybe they're telling you about something that this is the first time that they've really revisited this story, maybe in their whole lives. You have to understand how people tell these stories.
Right? When you're telling, when you're thinking back, you're viewing it in these snapshots. I view I talk about it being like plunging your head into a into a bucket of water and looking around at those experiences. All you get are these snapshots. Now you would think a person would tell a story a to b to c to d. Right? Just what did you see that happened? But the truth is they're telling you these snapshots. And oftentimes they include these details in the story that are completely irrelevant from A to Z. But they included them in there anyway.
And the reason that they included them in there is because the core of the story may be from a to z, but the interesting things are in those details, and they don't even know it. So let's think back to the artist. What was the tiniest detail she included in her story? What's that? The dog. Right? Why did she include the dog? Why was the dog pushed out with her in the studio? So what I asked her next was what I was really curious about. But, she's telling me about this, and the natural reaction that normally what you you would say is, oh, you're in LA? Where where were you living in LA? Right? Oh, you had a heartbreak? I had a heartbreak too. Yeah. Let let me tell you about mine. Or that was really rough, wasn't it?
But what I asked her was, tell me about this dog. And the woman lights up. Right? She goes, oh my gosh. His name was Sky. He was this fluffy malamute. He had no business being in LA. And, oh, I loved him so much. I would take him for walks and I got him special food. And, you know, come to think of it, I remember when I was talking with my boyfriend and he told me that he actually didn't want the dog anymore, but it would be more work to get rid of the dog than it would be to just keep him. And so that's when I knew that's actually how he felt about me. And so I took the dog and I left.
Right? That key detail, right, she had not even connected that it was critical, super important to the story because it actually is what guided her her towards what she was doing next. Now when you are listening to people tell stories, they are littered with tiny details. And we sit there. I know I've done it for years with my own mother before I realized what was going on. It's those tiny details that to me is like, she's in a rabbit hole. Where is she going with that? But that is where all the gold lies in the tiniest detail that they're telling you about.
Now, of course, you can't explore every detail. So how do you keep this from being another internal dialogue where you're like, is it that detail that I should ask him about? Is it that detail? So what I'm proposing is if you want to be a great listener, you have to trust yourself. You have to let go of thinking, I'm going to try and find the next perfect question. And instead, let go, and it's hard, and say, when this person is done talking, a question will come to mind. Something will be there, and it will be the right question. And because you are fully present with them, if you let your curiosity wait, you will be able to ask them questions that alert them to the idea that you are really there.
And even with your own parents, listening all the way through to a story that you've heard a hundred times, letting yourself go all the way to the end, and then waiting for that question to come up. If you can trust yourself enough to do that, and you might find sometimes that you fall down just like ice skating. Right? You're trying to do this thing and you fall down and you don't have a question there. But if you really trust yourself, a question will come to mind. Now it's not perfect. So maybe somebody in here is thinking about, well, what are some questions that you could ask or that you could have ready to get people to open up?
And so I want to share with you some of the things I've learned about asking questions that get people to open up, whether they're really close family members to a new person that you're just meeting for the first time in networking with. One of the first things that you realize if you get a chance to ask hundreds of people hundreds of questions, right? I'm now hundreds of thousands of questions in. There are some questions when the way you ask them, the person kind of curls up. You say, oh, I don't know. I haven't really thought about it. And they kind of move away from you. They put their arms in front of you.
And so you can start to get signals about what questions make it so people get closed off. And one of the questions that we intuitively or really almost always ask are why questions. Right? Why did you do that? Why? And we kind of believe that why is the thing that we're all after to understand, but I would actually suggest that most of the time what we as humans do, we do without reason. We do without really thinking about it. So if you ask somebody a why question, they actually are going and there's MRI studies that show this. If you ask somebody a why question, most of the time what they are going to do is make something up. You have and think about this. Like your dad comes storming into the house. Why did you handle this thing this way? Right? Now you're either trying to figure out, should I be defending myself with this answer? Should I frame my question so that I'm protecting myself?
Or if you have a why question where you get to puff yourself up and you get to create all these grand reasons why you did this thing that you did. Why questions almost never get at something beautiful. So I instead have figured out that if you ask how questions, it will totally change the conversation. So if you were to ask somebody, for example, how did you and mom decide to sell the dairy herd? How did you get out of bankruptcy? How did you do this thing? What happens is a person asked a how question. We'll go all the way back to the beginning and they'll start to tell you what happened.
Well, this happened and then this happened. And, oh, yeah, in order for you to understand this, you need to know this detail. And as they're telling you about how, why will emerge and it'll oftentimes emerge for them for the very first time. Because when they were doing it, they weren't doing it thinking deeply about it. They were reacting to what was going on in their lives, what was going on in their world. And think about now that you're reaching the age that you are, there's so much going on, you don't take time to stop and look back. You just keep moving forward. So if you can describe how and that leads you to your own why, people start to really open up.
Another great question that you can put into your pocket and you can use at almost any time, I learned, when I was in high school. Now you remember that day in middle school and then in high school when they separate all the girls and all the boys, and the boys are like, Where are the girls going? And they're going to have their own conversation, and the boys are all stuck like watching some lame movie. I remember when that happened, we had this teacher named Mr. Simmons, and Mr. Simmons was this hardcore marine, and he comes walking into class, and I have no to this day, I have no idea what possessed him of this, but he marches down to the bottom of the classroom and he stands up there and he says, Boys, one day you will be men, and one day you will have a child.
And that child will come home from school and they will hold up something that they painted or drew for you. And if you ask them what is it, I will personally come to your house and kick your ass. That's something that sticks with you. Right? So you're like, well what should I ask? This is a child that has just painted something. They've poured themselves into this and they're showing it to mommy or daddy. They think it's so obvious what it is. And if you ask them what is it, you've destroyed that trust. So one of us timidly opened their eyes, raised their hands, not me, said, well, Mr. Simmons, what should we ask?
And he said, you should ask. Tell me about it. You told me about crying. I'm thinking about doing this with my own children because it actually works. It is profound with children. If they hold up a painting and instead of saying, what is it? You say, tell me about it. They're like, well, this is where the horse was jumping over the rainbow. Look at it. It's so great. No. I drew it with these people. And they really, really get into it. This is true with a four year old named Violet or an 80 year old man named Sam. When he's built something that matters.
If you only ask him something as simple as, tell me about it, and you have demonstrated that you're willing to listen, he'll share with you things that he's never even shared with anyone in his life. Not because he's trying to keep it hidden all those years. Nobody asked. Nobody asked. Tell me about this tractor collection that you have. Tell me about why you chose to, you know, how you chose the color of paint on this barn that you're so proud of. Having this question, tell me about it, can be used in any circumstance, and it's one of those questions that you can put in your pocket and use over and over and over again. And so few people get asked to tell them about the things that matter to them that it will open them up. Now the final question that I want to share with you, it took me a long time to learn.
And in legacy interviews, what I've come to realize is that if you are deeply present with another person, if you are really listening to them, they will share things that are deep and important and sometimes horrifying. Sometimes really, really sad. And so you get through hearing somebody tell you about something they've experienced and a question doesn't come. There isn't a tiny choice for you to grab out of that when you hear about somebody being abused or about terrible crazy things that happen that you can't relate to. So what question can you ask there?
Well, one day I was hearing a woman tell me a story about abuse and I didn't know what to ask. But I waited and eventually it came to me. I asked her, what was the lesson in that? And the woman stopped. And she had never been asked that question. She was telling me the story because she wanted her grandchildren to hear it and to know what had happened to her. It wasn't in great graphic detail, but it was enough to let them know. So I asked her, what was the lesson in that? And she paused. And she said something that changed my life, changed the way I parented my children. She said, in this family, we don't keep secrets.
A few months later, that woman called me up and said, how grateful she was to have been asked that question because it was the first time she was able to take something so terrible and turn it into something valuable. In fact, maybe the most valuable thing that humans create. More valuable than anything they're going to pass down on the farm. More valuable than their land or their tractors or any inheritance or anything that they have, the thing that human beings earn, and you can only earn it, is wisdom. And that wisdom comes when people can understand what happened to them, the experiences that they've had along their lives.
And so when you're talking with somebody, imagine the power that you can have. Imagine the difference you can make in their lives if you help them go through, look through their experiences, the good ones, the bad ones, the moments when they fell down and they were low and they got back up. And I can tell you so many people in this life never went back and looked at it. They never looked back on what they did because when they start to look back there, they remember the painful things that they got through. But what they don't remember until somebody asks them questions to get them to talk about their lives is that they did stand up, and they did dust themselves off, and they did figure out a way to move on.
And whatever it is that they discovered through that, that they could get past it, that they could move beyond it, that's wisdom. And if we can get them to record it, they can pass that wisdom on for hundreds of years. And it allows them to let go like we were talking about before. So I give you this question, what was the lesson in that, as maybe the most valuable thing that I've learned from legacy interviews. There are an infinite number of circumstances where if you are really listening to somebody, you're going to find yourself in an area where you don't know what to ask next. And that question, what was the lesson in that?
Embrace yourself and be prepared to allow them to find something back in their history that they never knew and never understood despite having gone through those experiences. But once you get them to think about it, it becomes wisdom and you have done a great kindness to those people. So I want to conclude here and hopefully man, I'm mad at you, dude. I had no anticipation of this. So the conclusion here that I want to talk about, and I don't know how much time we have left, is a couple of things I want you to think about. There is no replacement for being present with somebody.
Sitting down and fully just being there, not expecting yourself to have great creative questions. I had to let go of my own ego being like, oh, I ask all the greatest questions. That's why people open up to me. No. People really open up when you're just sitting there and you're just patiently waiting and you're open to whatever they bring. Also, trust your curiosity. Don't feel like you have to know the exact right question. Don't feel like you have to have a question and hold on to it as they're going through the rest of what they're saying so you can ask that question. Let it go.
Be there with them and a question will come to your mind. I promise If you wait for that question, it will come. And your curiosity, the deeper parts of your brain, maybe it is your soul, will give you that question and it will be the exact right question. And then finally, be open to helping people explore their experiences. This is harder than it seems. You have to be prepared to let people flounder around not really knowing, not always having their stories be clear a to b to c. And when you can do these three things, when you can do it with your family members, your parents, your grandparents, your uncles, your aunts, the neighbor that you're renting land from, you will begin to see that as they tell you their stories and as they understand their past, they're going to let it go.
And when they let it go and they begin to be a different person, they will turn to you and they will want to share and they will want to move on, and you might get to be a part of that. So I recognize that this was not a conversation about succession planning in terms of being, you know, the legal work or the accounting work. It's not even the part that happens when people are in a fight. Right? This is before all of that. It's figuring out how to get people to open up, understand their past, and move on in a profound way. So I have a challenge for you.
This is something you guys have a great opportunity. You're going to be with people for the rest of the weekend, and, I want you to try and find a way to be present with another person so that they will be comfortable enough sharing their Peter Thiel paradox with you. This kind of inverts it. Right? You don't have to worry about, can I express myself? Can I explain my idea that makes me uncomfortable? But can you get another person to feel comfortable enough in a conversation with you to tell you the thing that they're a little bit afraid to tell people.
And if you can do that, you will know that some of the lessons that we talked about here can work. So I'm gonna say thank you very much for you guys, coming and talking about this. It is a great honor, and I said before about your attention. I hope that this was worth your attention, and I'm grateful for your time. Thank you. I don't know. How are we doing on time? Yep. We're doing good. We've got, about ten minutes. So one thing I wanted to throw a pitch out there for is, Elizabeth where is Elizabeth? Elizabeth is doing a, a networking session today, and she's going to be prompting people to interact with one another. That's at 04:00.
Yeah. This is an excellent communicator. I would all recommend that everybody go to her session at 04:00. And that might be a chance for you to try out the getting people to tell your Peter Thiel paradox. So we have about ten minutes left. Do you mind if we take questions? Are there do you guys want to talk further? Would you like to, discuss? Yeah. You know, that's a great question. When I discovered so she asked, what do you do if you're hearing horrible things? I wanna say, it's not that common. Right? Like, people have hard lives. But when you can hear like that woman talking about, Well, we don't keep secrets.
And then I can take that home and I can talk with my children about that. And I've been able to take a lot of the distilled wisdom, that drip, drip, drip and try and turn it into valuable things for me. I hear a lot about, for example, men feeling like they worked too hard and missed the time when their children were little. And it's a lot easier for me to go home at 04:30 than to wait till 07:30. And so I try and turn the wisdom that I'm hearing into valuable lessons in my own life. Yep. Do you ever hear someone's story and be like, I can't not judge that?
Do I ever hear anybody's story and think, Can I not judge that? I I remember once hearing a story. This so, the answer to your question is, if you're really listening to someone, there's nothing to judge Because they're just telling you, I went through life and this is what happened, and this is how I reacted, and this is what I thought, and this is why I did it. They are the hero of their own adventure. And so I'm just sitting there along for the adventure. And I can remember one time when I was listening to a man tell a war story that I was unprepared for, and I was absolutely judging him. And then he was telling me his how and then he got to earlier details where all of a sudden I was like, Vance, you fool. How could you possibly have have thought, you know, been so arrogant as to think you could judge that moment right there. And so now, I spend most of my time not judging people and just saying, You're the hero of your own story.
Yes. So his question was, how do you listen to somebody that doesn't always have the words to express in their own head? So, this happens a lot with the exact group you'd think, right? Men that are between the ages of 50 to 70 that have never really like stopped. So towards the end, particularly in a couple's interview, I'll ask, you know, What did you learn about this woman by being married to her for forty years? And this man who has all of this gratitude and this understanding that the life he has is born, you know, the children that he has, all of these things were because of her and he goes to put things out and he can't choke and get it out. The wife's reaction is always to cut the tension in half.
She deeply wants to know the answer to this, but she can't handle the discomfort of him stammering and not having an answer to it. And so I always try and keep the wife from cutting that tension because he will get there. And he'll get there even if it isn't in words. He'll get there in the way that he breaks down. He'll get there in the way he shakes his head or in the way that he leans over and kisses her. And so I think that there are many experiences where there aren't words to do it, but they're saying something all the same. So the question was, how has Legacy Interviews helped me bring intimacy with my family and my friends?
It's a great so, it's a great question. It's a really good question. How many of you guys have young kids? So I have a two year old and a four year old. And every night, I'm so tired. Right? I've finally gotten them to take their baths and they're in their sleep diaper and finally in their sleep sack and they're finally laying down and they're getting out of bed and they're doing all these things. And then finally, I get them to lay down and they're right as I'm about to leave, they're like, Dad, tell us a story. And I'm like, I don't have any stories. Tell us about when you were a little boy.
And I have so many times been like, I just don't have anything left. But now knowing that all of your experiences once understood are wisdom, now I try and sit there and think of where are those times in my life that I fell down that for anybody else in the world, I would be embarrassed to tell them. But if I can figure them out, if I can pull them out, then I can give them wisdom so that they don't have to fall down. And I think that I don't know that that directly answers your question, but I won't let myself shut off the light if my kids are asking for a story. And if I hadn't had legacy interviews, I probably wouldn't have done that. Yes.
Gosh. These are the best questions I've ever heard. So, you guys all hear a question? Are there themes that you can pull out of here? So, yes. One of the things that I have pulled out from hearing a lot of older women talk, which I had not spent much time with 60, 70 year old women. It just wasn't a part of my life. And hearing them talk about one of the questions I ask people is, what was the most difficult lesson to learn that was valuable to know? There's something that women say consistently, maybe 80% of them. I hope I'm not going to offend you, but this is my reality. This is what I see. Did anybody have a guess on what women say is their biggest regret? The most difficult thing to learn, what's the most valuable to know? Anybody?
Speak up. Speak up more. Something like that. Yeah. I wish I didn't, I wish I didn't go so long worrying about what people thought of me. And over time, what I've come to realize is that, the women's role in many families, not every family, not every woman, but my experience is many women are the PR agents for the family. It is really important that in a community, somebody is looking out for how do other people think of this because it does matter your family name, it does matter how you are perceived, how the kids are perceived, but that can go too far, And that can be something where people were really limited by what their mother-in-law thought or what their mom thought, and they realize much, much later in life, if I had only thrown that off, I might have taken a different chance. I might have done something different.
So women talk a lot about that. And so that's something I think is important. And men, I think the consistent pattern with men that I've seen, and this goes to your words concept, is many, many, many, many men, this probably changed the intimacy with my family, said, I wish I would have known earlier that my wife was my partner. And you think about that and you're like, what do you mean? And what happens is a man will say, I was hiding the fact that I drank a lot from my own wife because I thought she'd be mad at me or she would judge me. And when I finally understood that she was on my team, then all of a sudden I had somebody that was there. And that profoundly impacted how, to your point, how I interacted with my wife to be like, hey, this is a thing I'm struggling with. I like, I'm not trying to keep it in for you. I'm understanding we're in this together.
So I guess those would be the two things. We don't have time. I I wanna thank you guys so much for, having me here. If you're interested in legacy interviews, it's right there. I also have the Ag Tribes report on Thursday nights at, 6PM. And so there there's the, survey for how we do it. Thank you. Vance, we wanna thank you for your time today and coming to speak to us and and sharing the wisdom that you gained, not only for your own life experience, but but the interactions that you've had with others as well. We wanna show you our gratitude as a small gift Thank you. Of appreciation. And let's give Vance one more round of applause.
May I see that one more time? So I'm doing a session in thirty minutes. And if you want to hear my Peter Thiel paradox, which I assure you will make you uncomfortable, I'm giving a session and we can talk about it there. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, no. That was great. Hey. Thank you. Thank you. It was nice to meet you, James. Nice to meet you too. I think. Hey. Hey. There we go. Let me take a photo of that. It's like from Rosa. I knew I'd find it. Got it. Got it? Okay. That's great. So what which room are you in next? Somewhere down in the Governor's, row. Somewhere down there. Thank you very much. Alright. That's great. Thank you, Fred.
Yep. Are you still doing the next session? Because I've gotta help with I probably will. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Ask you a quick question. Sure. So whenever you talked about how the most effective way of talking to people after their abuse story is to ask them what was the lesson in that, I definitely agree with that, but my question is, I know a lot of people or my first first response is that people would take that as what lesson did you learn almost as the as if they did something to earn the abuse where whereas that, obviously, it's not what happened. So how could you phrase the question when you're talking to people that would take it that way so that they don't take it as they me thinking they did something to you? That is a great question. I think for me, by the time I've gotten to the point where they're talking about something that deep, they've heard me asking them questions about all sorts of things. So the context that I'm describing it in, it fits. They've already put their guard all the way. They've or they're all the way down. Right? They're they're sharing something and they and I will have already asked them many things about how did that go and and what did you take away from that. And so the context is different. I it's a good point and I will make sure I more have more nuance there because I would not say that I know anything at all about counseling people that have that have gone through these things, but that that's something that worked in that in those moments. Right.
Okay. Thank you. Hi. I'm Vance. I'm Peyton. Nice to meet you, Peyton. Nice to meet you too. That was very educational. Oh, thank you very much for saying that. I appreciate that. I appreciate all the stuff you said. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Angela Davis. Hi, Angela. I wanna tell you, I've heard you speak a number of times when I was actually in college class nine. Oh, wow. Alright. The last college class that met on the on Central Campus before they changed to bear the whole week. But I do wanna tell you that I've heard you speak several times.
And I there are things that you said both in other speaking engagements and through our engagement and call that still resonate with me. Oh, okay. Thank you. And, also, like, every time I have the option to hear you speak, I try to do it because I just I feel like there there are things that you say that I hope you understand how impactful they are. They are to me, but I think, you know, people this will resonate with people as they walk out of this room and that's a good that was a great workshop. Oh, I am so just with you out into the world. Thank you very much. That means a lot to me. Thank you.
Yeah. Well, there's a you press the case. Hi, Preston. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. I just wanna go out and enjoy your podcast. Oh, hey. Alright. A podcast listener. Great. Yeah. How'd you find it? Oh, just just growl. Just out in the world. Yeah. Great. Yes. So if you ever I've I was just telling him I started a a business with, doing custom application with drones on farmland. So if you ever wanna talk about You got a guard? I absolutely. I'm terrible. I should have. Preston, damn it. Send me an email. Yeah. I [email protected]. Okay. I actually love I'm on working you know you know working cows. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm on it Monday. So you can No kidding. Yep. Okay. I'll check that out. Yeah. So with Clay. So I know Clay very well. Yeah. I was just on his pod I don't know if he's there already yet, but I was on his podcast recently. Yeah.
Yeah. I actually was just tweeting about drones, about the the hellscape terror from above that I think they're gonna one day cause. It's it's gonna be it's gonna be interesting in the next four years. Come on the podcast. Let's talk about it. Yeah. I'd love to. And we and I've also got a session tomorrow. I'm talking at three about how we use these AG drones to help with hurricane hurling. So we we delivered, like, three and a half tons of supplies for these drones. So Wow. Yeah. Well, I won't be here, but otherwise, I would come see it. I talked on the session. Said three, I think. Two or three. But I talked on the shark farmers podcast. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You've seen You know all, man. You're going anywhere. Yeah. Nice. You can you can scroll back and find it. But, yeah. But that was, like, fresh after the hurricane. So that was Yeah. They're great, man. Yeah. Well, come on and we'll talk about, we'll do the AG drive report, but I'll I I think that drones are gonna get used against this in a terror act that is gonna be like it's gonna make nine eleven look like nothing. Well, there's also a button out there that the government could push to put them all on the ground too. So Well, that's see, that's good that's a good counterpoint. Right? I don't know anything at all about that. I would Terry's dumping so much money into counter drone stuff right now. That makes me feel better. Yeah. It's like, I don't know what the military base is right now.
I mean, they're getting hit by $30 Amazon drones. Yeah. Right now, I'm in Hi. I'm Vance. Nice to meet you. I'm nasty. Yeah. I was just out in Montana a few months ago. Oh, where at? With the Farm Bureau. I gave you talk at the State Bureau. Yeah. Somebody was saying that. I missed that conference because I was busy with CCA stuff. I've never been to North Carolina's firm, buddy. I'm the chair of Young Farmers Ranch. Oh, alright. Maybe maybe we can get you there. That'd be great. I love that. I love that. You think this fit I when they read the description, I was like, it's not a ton about succession cleaning. It is, but it isn't. Did it fit with I I enjoyed it. I mean, it makes complete sense how it can how it relates to succession planning. Yeah. So Yeah. No. I've I've been there with my dad too. So we've we've we've formed together and then split up, and so it's it's, no. It's good. You gotta ask the right questions.
Well, guys, I gotta run downstairs. It's great to chat with you. Just saying. Yeah. Great great talk today. Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. I'll I'll email you or Do. A % do. The legacy email? Yeah. [email protected]. Hi. Really enjoyed your, presentation. Sorry. I was kind of, like, leaning on my head. I was just having a little bit of a headache, but I did really enjoy it. I have a question. So if this is something that folks that don't live in the same state as you want to do, is that a possibility to do it virtually? Yeah. We do them virtually. We do we do it three ways. We most of them happen in our studio. Okay. People travel to us. We do a bunch online and then every once in a while we'll travel out to somebody. Okay. Okay. But, yeah, the online ones are great. We use a software that's like Zoom, only way better. Yeah. And we can make it look and sound really good. Okay. You have some people you're thinking of? Yeah. My grandparents specifically. And as you were talking, like, they were born at the end of the Great Depression.
My Paw Paw works with me in Texas in the Amarillo area. And then Oh, down in Texas? Okay. Yeah. They live in Claude, which is near Amarillo. And so he worked the night shift and then would sleep for a couple hours and then go out and do a custom harvest for me daily. And my mommy was a, special aid or, command experience. She was an aid for special education students. Wow. That would have been early. There were when they were. And then, to retire when I was young, and then Paw Paw was still working, like, well into his sixties. Well, he started to slip, like, mentally.
I'm pretty convinced you have some form of dementia or Alzheimer's. And then, Mimi, of course, is getting out there. They're 80, 80 80 nine. So I texted my mom, and I was like, hey. You should look into this. And she was like, yes. But getting it pushed I'm the person that's, you know, constantly pushing things over the finish line, it seems like. So I wanted to see if that was a possibility Yes. Great. To find out that you can track. And don't, yeah. Don't don't wait on it. Go as quick as you can. My own uncle, my I couldn't get my cousin. I'd be like, come on. Bring him in. Bring him in. And they get to a point where they can't remember as much as they had before. Yeah. I'm sure. So well, thank you very much, and I'll look forward to hearing from you. Great. Thank you. Yeah. Hey. How are you? Yeah. I saw you up on stage up there. Yeah. And then that's when I saw that you're here and I thought, yeah. What session is he doing? So I was in there in the back because I'm helping with this one, this next one. What time is that? I think I've got an It's second. I gotta go. But, good to see you.
