VENTURE STEP PERSONAL UPDATE: BOUNCING BACK FROM THE CATABOLIC STATE

E85 VENTURE STEP PERSONAL UPDATE_ BOUNCING BACK FROM THE CATABOLIC STATE

Transcript

Dalton Anderson (00:00.866) Welcome to Vintros Step Podcast, where we discuss entrepreneurship, industry trends, and the occasional book review. Months ago, I was on track for a new chapter, moving to New York, starting to work on my dreams and to get integrated in all this stuff that I wanted to do and interact with more exceptional people. And then I went to a conference in Ohio and shortly afterwards, I thought I came down with COVID.

but it wasn't COVID because I tested a couple of times negative, but I was starting to feel kind of sick.

night sweats, fever, all sorts of things, very COVID like, not the night sweats piece, but, and I was like, man, it's not COVID. I guess it's just something else, like maybe a cough thing going on. And then eventually I got really sick and turns out that the virus mess with my...

ear nervous system, which caused my equilibrium to misfire, which induced virus induced vertigo. And what that did was make me really sick and vertigo is tough to deal with from my limited experience with it. It's tough to deal with, especially by yourself and in a new place where you don't know where stuff is. So it didn't really go that well. My dream move didn't, didn't pan out.

And in that time period, lost 30 pounds of, of muscle and, and the fat. was in a catabolic state and eventually had to go to the hospital. I was too sick, too sick to shower or any of these things. just was just constantly throwing up and was unable to eat food for quite some time. And then after I was no longer sick,

Dalton Anderson (02:03.02) like sick sick, I was only able to eat like applesauce and rice for weeks afterwards and had to do like this vertigo physical therapy. Like you just do it at your house. No one's subscribed. No one prescribes it to you. Like you don't have to go anywhere, but yeah, you have to do these exercises and they make you really sick and then you've got to stop and then you repeat until you get too sick. And then you just do that over and over again to try to fix your

situation because if you don't do that, then there is a likelihood that you could get it permanently. I think that's it's like a 30 % chance or 20, 25 % chance, something like that, like 13 to 30%. It's quite high. It was, it was way too high for me to be like, all right, well I'm just, guess I won't do the therapies. So I went all out and I was like, okay, we're doing this all the time. And so that's what I did. Had to take close to, I think I did.

take three weeks off of work, like three weeks in like three days. So quite a bit of time off work. But for this episode, that's a long intro. For this episode, we're going to be providing some personal updates and we're not going to be doing the typical show about AI or entrepreneurship or any of these other things. We're just going to talk about me. I think it's nice sometimes to share personal updates and anecdotes about myself.

as we're on this journey and I think it's.

I would say I think it's interesting to share about myself, even though I don't talk about myself very much. I'd to talk about other things and hopefully things I talk about are interesting enough. But I also think it's cool occasionally to share updates, especially in something big like this. Okay, so we're going to talk about home and habitat, some conferences slash networking things that I've done.

Dalton Anderson (04:07.705) And then I guess like where, where I'm at on my recovery and how that's all going. So the first thing that we want to talk about is my home and habitat. So I think that I, I was fortunate to get a place that

a friend's friend's brother lived at and was fully furnished. He didn't want all this stuff because he was moving in with his girlfriend. So he basically gave me a fully furnished apartment and he didn't have to move his stuff out and then I didn't have to move anything in. So it worked out for everybody.

I think there, sorry, my mouth was getting a little dry. I think there were some differences in style for sure. Like I had a different type of style than he did and that's all right. So when I moved in, I was like, okay, we're gonna have to make some stylistic changes here. But then I got super sick and then I was sick for months and then I didn't have any energy, which we'll talk about later on the show.

And then I was like, okay, eventually I've got to start plugging away at this. So I was doing a little bit at a time, like 30 minutes a day, 20 minutes a day, just, just keep, keep attacking, right? But eventually I have gotten more energy and I'm more energetic and now I'm like really attacking the problem. So one of the first things I, I've finished was the redecorating of the bathroom. So I want to share,

Dalton Anderson (05:56.174) See how I think about this. Maybe I talk through the points and then share the photos. might make sense. This is gonna be a short episode anyways. So Home and Habitat, I changed my shower curtains, my storage above, like the storage near your toilet, and then I changed the rugs out for my bathroom. it looks and feels

very nice. Like it feels spa like and and relaxing. It puts an ease to my mind, which I like. I quite like. And then another thing that I did that I don't have photos of and I didn't take photos of it, but I built a pantry in my living room slash kitchen. And so that pantry replaced like this like seating areas plus pantry thing that I had going on before. Like when I moved in, it was there and it was quite

big so and it didn't store that much stuff so I was like okay do I do I need more seating or do I need more storage I was like I need more storage so I built a pantry

Dalton Anderson (07:11.917) Okay, so that's home and habitat. One thing that I do need to work on is I need to work on my bedroom eventually. I need to get to that. It's just that I have to make some progress on. I think I need to get a bigger bed. I'm not a huge guy, right? I would say six foot and I think the exact scientific height is 5'11 and 7'8, but.

I hang off my bed and I'm like, I'm not a huge guy. Why, why do I hang off my bed? That doesn't make any sense. And so I'm hanging off my bed and I'm like, man. And I, the only time I'm not hanging off my bed is if my head is like at the very, very tippity top of my, my bed. But the problem was that is like, you know, you move around at night and stuff and eventually you're just like off your bed a little bit.

And I'm like, man, why are my toes out? Like what if there's somebody underneath the bed just snatching people's toes off? I'm not protected. I've gotta be on the bed, in the covers, and without my toes exposed. I mean, that's crucial. Any toe grabber that hangs out underneath your bed, they know that's easy pickings. So I think that's important. That's a big takeaway for yourself.

is to make sure that you're ready and that you're qualified with your bed, that your toes aren't hanging off. That's huge. That's huge. Cause the toe grabbers will get you. So I got to figure out my bed situation. Another thing that I've been really working on is my desk. So I bought an uplift desk and I bought all these attachments and different things and some things worked and some things didn't. Don't need to get too detailed in that.

But one thing that I was surprised about is that none of the holes are pre-drilled. So you need a drill to do it, or you can hand pilot hole the holes and then screw it in, which would take you forever. So I would suggest you just buy a drill. So I had to get a drill and do all that, but I was surprised that they don't have like the holes marked or whatever for you or pre-drilled because a lot of people

Dalton Anderson (09:33.827) don't just have a drill out and about, like always. And it's quite a bit of work too. was like, dang, like I paid money for this. Like this is a lot. But I will say that their customer service is really good because I did have some blemishings, blemishes, I think that's the word, blemishes on my desk. And I had emailed them, said like, hey,

And it was way, way out because I was sick, right? So I emailed them like three months later and I sent them, sent them photos of the desk and I was like, Hey, like I've got some markings on it. It's nothing serious. I'm not going to return it. It's not that big of a deal, but I was wondering if they'd like, could help me out. And they offered me like $300 worth of stuff or a hundred dollars and then a hundred dollars in store credit.

And then a couple other things that was all worth like 300 bucks and I didn't need more stuff because I live in New York City. So I can't have that much stuff, which is fine. I don't like having that much stuff. I'd like to have a small amount of items that are really nice instead of a lot of items. But anyways, so I wound up taking the a hundred dollars and I think the store credit of a hundred bucks.

But that goes to show that they're able to work with me and then they're letting me return some other things that I never opened that was way, way past the return period. So I really appreciate their customer service. And I think that if you're looking for a desk, I've, I've had a couple of deaths, like I've had like uplift and then apex and these other ones. I would say that uplift is great, right?

you can get somebody that's cheaper for sure, right? Like that's possible. But then if you do have issues, are they going to help you out? I think that's the most important thing. Like if you have any questions or anything like that, or you have legitimate issues where you need to make things right, like what happened to me, there was no, darling, you know, we can't do it because it's past the 30 days and you know, this is not, I mean, the

Dalton Anderson (11:46.078) they know that I'm, I was being genuine. Like I was like, Hey, like if it's a huge deal and you don't think that there's anything you do and you don't trust that what I'm saying, I could send in my hospital records that I was in the hospital for being really sick. It's all good. And I was like, I understand if you think that there's nothing we could do here and that's fine. I just wanted to call it out and I'm scratching things off my to-do list and

They were in, they were pretty cool about it all and I really appreciate that. So shout out to Uplift.

Speaking of my desk though, I did all the attachments and then my under, under can, or how do I, I need to rephrase that. So my desktop mount that is mounted under my desk didn't fit the one that I got from uplift. Like my desk, my, my computer is too big. It doesn't, doesn't fit. It's too thick and it's too long. So it doesn't work. And I was like, ah, that's a bummer. So then

I have to try to return that somehow, but I bought a different computer mount and then that computer mount works. But my computer has to stick out a little bit because it's big. And then the first holes I drilled, installed it and I was like, wait, this seems, this seems like if I plugged the cords in, it might be too close. It was far enough.

when I measured everything and I was okay. I want it to be a little bit in, uh, behind my edge, my desk. So if I'm walking by, I don't run into it and it'll look nice and things like that. And then what happened was I installed it that way. And when I plugged in the power cord, I was like, Oh no, I don't have enough space. I don't have enough space to lower my desk anymore. And I was like, Oh,

Dalton Anderson (13:53.935) you gotta uninstall and reinstall, Dawn. You know, was like, ah, no, no. So I had to do that and it looks great now. So it sticks out maybe.

Dalton Anderson (14:11.362) Maybe an average man's index finger. That's my mission.

Dalton Anderson (14:20.92) Like four inches, six out of four inches.

So that's that. And I have photos of that. So we'll get into that. And then physical. So my physicality and my health, all that stuff has really, really been having a hard time after I got sick, right? Where I'd lost so much weight, like I was so weak and I still haven't gained back all my weight, but I think I'm okay with the weight I'm at if I can get a

bigger back like my back can get a little bit bigger. My legs are huge. My back, I want to get huge. And then I could have a small, small baby chest and abs, but I would love a big back and then big legs and then proportional arms and then small chest. I'm good with that.

Dalton Anderson (15:17.26) So that's what I'm working on.

But what I have been doing is I like this app called then X. So T H E N X no space. And it's this guy, he's a famous YouTuber. I don't know his name though. I know he is famous though. Like this, this person.

Maybe if I'm talking about him, I should know who he is. Let's see. I got a community.

Dalton Anderson (15:51.535) But he has a YouTube, he's famous, but he also has this app. So I use this app all the time and I've been using it for a while and I spoke very highly of it for some time. And if I go to my profile, profile, my profile, how do I get there? My progress, followers. I've done 187 workouts on this app. So.

Dalton Anderson (16:24.43) just pointing out there that I use the app. I'm not just saying, Oh, use this app. I've used it for some time. I use it with weights because this this is, this is calisthenics only. So I used to do running and then go to the gym, do some weights and then do the calisthenics, not all in the same day, of course, but once you do a little bit calisthenics, do a little bit of weights, do a little running, you're in a really good spot. So

I haven't found a gym yet and I don't think I am going to find a gym. think I'm just going to do calisthenics and then maybe some Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or something like that in the city. But anyways, so I've been using this app for some time and so I was working out at my local park, Tumskins Park, Tumskins Square Park.

So used that app, I the workouts, they're doing great and they've been brutal. I used to do advanced all the time and I was trying intermediate and I was like, man, this is so hard. This is so hard.

And like when I first started, let's say, when I first started, it was difficult to do a couple of pull-ups and I used to be able to do unbroken 20 pull-ups, no problem. And it was difficult to do two in a row. I just couldn't hold onto the bar. I was just having a hard time. And now it's been a...

months of me consistently working out and not working out that often. I'm only doing... When I first stopped being sick, I'd work out once or twice a week for weeks and then I would slowly increase the intensity because I got to recover. I don't want to put too much stress on my body but I want to get my body going again. Now I'm working out more consistently but still not all the time. So I probably will do like three workouts a week.

Dalton Anderson (18:27.864) doing calisthenics and I'll run twice a week or something. So that's five days, but.

I used to do way more than that.

Dalton Anderson (18:39.744) Recently, of Friday, Friday last week, I was able to do like eight unbroken pull ups. And I was like, yes, I'm coming back. So I went from two struggling for two to like eight on my third set. So in my first set, I was able to do the whole thing without getting off the bar. Second set, the whole thing without getting off the bar. And then the third set, I had to get off the bar like eight. So

I think it's getting there, like I'm getting there. And then I've been going on really long runs. I went on an almost 19 mile run. It was like 18.9. Call it 19 if you want. But I went on that 18.9 mile run. And then a couple weeks before that, I went on a 20 mile run and I was holding 930 pace to like 915 pace per mile. So it's quite quick for that long. So happy with that.

It's coming back and then I've also joined this pickup soccer league called street FC. They're in a whole bunch of different cities. They're in Paris, Tokyo, Austin, New York, London, and I like all the, all the big cities they're in. They started, I think in New York and street FC is similar to sport two, two, or I think that's what it's called. The, the app that I use in Mexico.

It's sport, I think. But Street FC, I'm pulling it up on my phone. Street FC is this community like app and it rates you. So I've only played three games and I am, I don't know if you can see on the camera, but I am, ah, come on, focus. I have played two games and my skill level is 3.5 out of five.

And 3.5 is kind of high for just starting, because I have to adjust to the game and all that stuff. But 3.5 basically means on their scale, 3.5 means that you're consistently competitive in competitive games. 4.0 means that you are...

Dalton Anderson (20:54.626) dominating competitive games and above 4.5. you're a standout star. Or like above 4.0 is you're a standout star. So I'm a great player in competitive games consistently, but I'm not some dominant force yet. I'm coming. I'm coming for them all. It was funny. I played my second game and I was really energetic and hustling and just running people down.

just these hustle plays that people don't expect where like you just run because the field's small. So you could do a sprint and you're close to the other side pretty quickly, depending how fast you are. And I remember there was this play where the ball was super high up like 30 feet in the air. It was about to go out. Like it was in the corner field, like the corner of the map and no one was, no one's going for it. They're just going to let it go out. ran over

touched it down, turned around, crossed it, guy scored. And there's just a couple plays like that where it just, you're just running them down. Like you're just, you're just doing the things that other people don't want to do and don't expect. And scored a couple goals, taking shots, like long shots, close up, doing dribbles. And there was another play that I really liked that I remember where I was dribbling the ball and I had the ball kind of

not like super close to me, but like close enough. And I let the guy think that he was able to take it and he went in for the tackle and I just rolled the ball before he could, he could get his foot in. And then I took it, did an outside the foot pass to the guy at the end. He crossed it and then we scored it. Cause it's foot saw. So it's all on small core, very fast base and everything's got to be pretty tight.

And I'm not that kind of player. Typically I play center back or left back. So I'm a defender or CDM, maybe a ball winning CDM, not a playmaker. Like I'm not on Alonzo. I can't make a long pass and things and things like that. But I pretty good at short passes. And if I'm getting pressed, I can protect the ball, but I don't have skill moves on them. I'm not like some skilled dribbler that can drill pass through people. So.

Dalton Anderson (23:18.132) One of the things I wanted to call out was one of the main reasons why I wanted to live in New York city was the ability to drop in on conferences or meet people. People are constantly flying into New York city. So you get to interact all these different folk. And there's also a lot of exceptional people in New York city. And then one thing that happened to me recently was I was invited to a conference that dealt with insurance and resiliency and like the stabilization of the market.

And I got to learn a lot. Like there was a lot of money there. There was investors. There was people that owned funds. There were a lot of scientists and it was very interesting, nerdy group and had a different perspective on insurance than the most. And a lot of people were super excited about what the next frontier of insurance is going to bring with innovation and creating opportunities for this innovation to thrive through funding.

These other things, was honestly a very cool conference, very niche, like not that many people there, maybe 30 folk. But those folk were highly focused on the problem and they all had interesting perspectives, which I thought was great.

Dalton Anderson (24:32.254) So the health piece, so I lost this 30 pounds and that had some effects on me. I think there's something called like the post viral fatigue syndrome. That's what it's called scientifically. And this, when you get this, it's like when you have a severe virus, you just feel ill or you.

you just don't feel good, you feel unwell, you're in a brain fog, you don't have any energy, you feel uneasy, all that stuff. And I felt that for a while where I just felt just, didn't want to do anything. I didn't have any energy. I didn't care to do anything. The way that I would describe it is life normally feels wonderful, warm. And a lot of the things that I typically would enjoy just felt like fluff. Like it felt like something to

like I had to do because I needed to do it, but didn't have like true enjoyment to it where now it feels warm. It feels inviting, which is great, right? That's how you want life to feel. And so it kind of sounds like depression-ish, but...

Dalton Anderson (25:52.759) I guess it post-viral fatigue syndrome makes you feel that way. It just makes you feel like you just don't have any energy to do anything. And that translates to you not doing much. And what happens is you just kind of have to force yourself to do things. So I was working on the house for like 20, 20 to 30 minutes minimum every day, just doing little things to try to get settled.

And eventually I was doing these little workouts, doing pushups, doing, doing squats at the house, just to just get back in the swing of things. I was going on walks. I was trying my best to get back into it, get back in the swing of things. Like I wasn't going to accept that I was tired and I couldn't do anything. Like I felt, felt fine ish, like obviously not back, but I felt good enough to work and if you feel good enough to work, then you can walk around or like you could do a couple of pushups.

I don't want to hear it body. And so that's what I did. So I would do like five, five pushups a day, like nothing crazy. I'm not saying, yeah, now, now you can work. Now you do a thousand pushups to a thousand talking about five, like five pushups, five sit ups, five squats, you know, then go on a 10 minute walk at the after work, then work on the house for 20 minutes and then do whatever you want.

But basically this lack of energy just led to a lack of productivity. I wasn't doing the things that I was supposed to be doing. Like I wasn't working on Vibition, not Vibition, sorry, that's the wrong company. I wasn't working on VentureStep as much. I wasn't working on my business ideas. I was just there, like just trying to get better. Just every week, just trying to get better. And that was my job. That was my main job. So I'm not complaining. I'm just talking about the journey.

And then the last thing was my hair was falling out. A crazy amount of my hair fell out and it sketched me out. And so what happened was I just started spamming.

Dalton Anderson (27:59.278) Jamaican castor oil and I started doing these little scalp massages where you have your hands and you don't put your nails in your scalp. You just use your tips and then you just like do a light light massage in your scalp. Very light. And it's really just to get the blood flow going again to maybe wake up those

those dormant hair follicles. And then you just do that for five to 10 minutes a day, plus the Jamaican castor oil a couple of a week. Maybe you could do it more, but just be careful doing it too much. And you can get on here and say that Jamaican castor oil doesn't explicitly help with hair growth. Like there's no scientific proven like this.

equals that.

causation and correlation. But I feel that they're correlated because a healthy scalp helps promote hair growth. Castor oil helps promote hair growth by creating a healthy scalp. And so castor oil is known to make your scalp healthy. So you kind of just rub it into your scalp and it does its thing and you leave it in and you wash it out at end of the day. Or you can, you could do a bunch of things with it. You can sleep in it. You can

wear it when you're working from home, you can go on long runs with it. So what I would do if I was going for a workout, like a long workout, long run, I'd put it my hair and then let it soak in the sun. If I was working from home, which I normally do, I put it in my hair and let it sit all day and then I wash it out at the end of the day.

Dalton Anderson (29:51.746) Okay, so that was all my topics. So let's share some photos. Let's get into it. let's somehow this was 30 minutes, by the way, not sure.

Dalton Anderson (30:08.781) Okay, so I guess I'll share.

I don't know why.

Dalton Anderson (30:20.419) Okay, so I'm sharing myself at the moment.

Dalton Anderson (30:25.539) And let's go right here. OK, so this is.

Dalton Anderson (30:32.815) This is fair f-

to sharing a window.

Dalton Anderson (30:42.735) my gosh. So I guess it didn't work. So start sharing something else.

window. Here we go. Okay. So I just had to reopen it. Okay. So here is Neil Milo's the dog and this is Henry. So some, some friends that I've met in New York city. They're originally Luke's friends. Luke was on the podcast and he was a guest, Luke Tatman, but these are his friends from Ohio. He had introduced me to them and we have become friends.

Dalton Anderson (31:21.229) This is me and my Instapot making Instapot lasagna. And I think it's great. I think that people that love traditional lasagna would be upset about it. But once it doesn't look like lasagna right now, but then once you put it in the refrigerator and you let it cool, it hardens up and it turns into like a lasagna like state, which I think is really good. This is me and Neil on a long run.

We like to run through central park quite a bit. We run up from East village, which is the lower East side, I guess. And that's an actual place, but it's in the lower side of Manhattan on the East side of it. And we like to run all the way up to Manhattan. Like I guess it's Midtown, such a park. So we'd run into the central park and run some laps and it happened to be a race.

that day, like there's always races in Central Park. So we did that. And I've got my goofy glasses on in a headband and a Portland thorns Jersey and my running vest. This is where the

This is where the, where is it? The conference was, it was in the Amazon building in Manhattan and it's quite serious security where they take your ID and then you're individually scanned in through security, like through the doors, and then you're individually escorted up the elevator. So, and if you want to leave, you are escorted. And if you're walking around, they'll always ask you what you're doing, where are going? You're like, I'm just going to the bathroom.

All right. So that was interesting. And then here's a photo of Insure 2025 Climate Forum. And it was powered by all these companies and then MSI is the company I work for. okay, so this is the bathroom. So this is the floor right here. We've got the curtains. These are the curtains, very colorful. This is the rug and this is my towel, which I need to get some towel upgrades going.

Dalton Anderson (33:32.547) And then we'll scroll over to the after. Here's the after with the new shower curtain. Same busted up towel. And then this new rug, this rug center rug, but these are bath stones, whatever they're called. So apparently they're made from fossilized algae. And because the algae is very porous, it just sucks out all your moisture.

in like a good way. So if your feet are wet, it just sucks it all out. And then the way to clean it is you just clean it with a cloth. You don't have to wash it and stuff because it's just it's literally a stone. So it's quite neat and it looks nice. And I kind of have an awkward bathroom where it's very long and not very wide. So it just works out this way. It works better.

And then this is the after of my bathroom. And then the before is right here. the four is right here. So I had this storage unit or not storage unit, but storage shelving. And then after that, I had this piece created. I got this off of Amazon. Disappointingly, the product photos for this are same color as this.

kind of mesh thing. So it was supposed to be like a natural wood color. And I was pretty bummed out when this first came here, but it's very difficult to turn stuff in New York City. And this was like one of the only designs that had integrated toilet paper, which I liked like a toilet paper holder. So I thought it was quite nice. And I was like, okay, whatever. I'll deal with it. I'll deal. I'm not happy about it, but I'll deal with it. And this was Chuck.

Neil and Elliot. Elliot and Neil are brothers and they're, we're just here eating some Polish food and yeah, it was pretty good.

Dalton Anderson (35:36.838) This is me observing the game after the game I just played of Street FC. So the Street FC pennies and I think this guy's named Michael. I don't know him, but he's really good. I mean, look at the calves on this guy. I mean, his calves are humongous, humongous calves on this man. He's like 80%. His body is like 80 % calf, but yeah, he's really good. He is a very talented dribbler.

difficult to deal with.

So then I got to zoom out to go to a new photo, I guess. All right, here we go. So I showed you a little pull in, this thing.

This is where I work out. So this is a selfie of me mid workout at the end. I work out at these bars. There's these little basketball courts. The community is kind of just playing basketball and I'm working out over here. This whole section is just all calisthenics bars, which is cool. And it's also quite popular. There's a lot of people here consistently. This is me on a run. I ran over the Williamsburg bridge with Neil and his fiance, and we are running

Think it's battery? No, Dumbo Park. Dumbo Park, running through there. The views are great. This is the city, baby. And this is us after our 18 mile run. We got smoothies from a local shop that we like, and I got milk as well, because I wanted some milk. And this was Sunday. went to a concert. This all happened on Sunday. I did the 18 mile run and then did this.

Dalton Anderson (37:18.929) 18.9 and then I did this concert. My legs were hurting so bad. my goodness. And the music was so loud. I just, I was there, but I was like, okay, this is a bit much. But the view is great. This little rooftop view and looking over to Manhattan. It was quite cool. And that's it. And then this is the mess up that I had with my computer.

where it was too close. was like, man, that's tough. But I appreciate you listening in today. Of course, wherever you are in this world, good evening, good afternoon, good morning.

And thank you for listening in and I'll see you next week. Bye.