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Episode #74. Volitional Science: Freedom, Markets, Value, and Entrepreneurship with John Deming & Mike Hamel

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What does it mean to build a civilization that advances forever—and what role do entrepreneurs play in that project? In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast, Hunter Hastings interviews John Deming (author) and Mike Hamel (editor) about their book Blueprint for a Spacefaring Civilization: The Science of Volition. Deming and Hamel frame markets, innovation and entrepreneurship through the lens of volitional science: a scientific approach to subjective value and long-term progress.

Key insights include:

  • Markets are non-coercive discovery engines that reveal value through voluntary exchange.
  • Volitional science reframes entrepreneurship as an experimental, long-horizon activity that discovers meaning and utility.
  • Institutional design matters: intellectual property, revenue-share structures, and time-horizons shape whether innovation translates into civilization-scale progress.

This episode mixes economic theory, civilizational vision, and practical proposals—from licensing regimes to new corporate structures—aimed at accelerating durable progress.

Resources:

➡️ Learn What They Didn’t Teach You In Business School: The Value Creators Online Business Course

Purchase the book “Blueprint for a Spacefaring Civilization: The Science of Volition”

Connect with Hunter Hastings on LinkedIn

Subscribe to The Value Creators on Substack

Knowledge Capsule

  1. Markets as Non-Coercive Discovery Processes
    • Markets provide a solid foundation on which to build civilizational progress.
    • Critically, market transactions are voluntary, revealing value through choice.
    • Value is determined by the buyer, not by producer claims.
    • Decentralized systems serve diverse preferences more effectively.
  2. Volitional Science: A Framework for Subjective Value
    • “Science of volition” applies scientific inquiry to valuation.
    • Explains how inventions become market-tested innovations as a result of user evaluation.
    • Recasts entrepreneurship as an experimental process.
  3. Entrepreneurship as Practical Experimentation
    • Every entrepreneurial act is a hypothesis tested in the marketplace.
    • Consumer adoption serves as confirmation or rejection.
    • Iteration builds cumulative, practical knowledge.
  4. Value Emerges from Customer Experience
    • What matters most is the post-exchange experience.
    • Retention and referrals follow consistent value delivery.
    • Businesses must design both the exchange and the lived experience.
  5. Time Horizons and Civilizational Progress
    • Extending time horizons beyond quarterly results reshapes strategy.
    • Long-term orientation changes investment and innovation incentives.
    • Civilizational progress requires durable, compounding growth.
  6. Intellectual Property and “Primary Capitalism”
    • A proposed system for registering and licensing scientific ideas.
    • Two principles: non-coercive use and positive-market royalty agreements.
    • A public registry would let innovators license without losing diffusion.
  7. Alternative Corporate Structures: Equity vs. Revenue Shares
    • Distinction between ownership (equity) and revenue participation.
    • Aligns incentives between entrepreneurs and collaborators.
    • Designed to reduce conflict and foster cooperation.
  8. Opportunity To Move Beyond Employer–Employee Relationships
    • Suggestion to replace fixed employment with value-based associations.
    • Contributors compensated through revenue shares rather than wages.
    • Though challenging in practice, this could align incentives more closely.
  9. Asset Stewardship as a Driver of Value
    • Neglecting assets reduces customer experience and long-run value.
    • Maintaining and improving assets safeguards future value creation.
    • Short-term profit extraction at the expense of assets undermines sustainability.
  10. Science and Innovation as Civilizational Engines
    • Science and markets are cumulative processes that push progress forward.
    • Scientists could engage in markets of ideas through licensing systems.
    • Linking science more directly to entrepreneurship broadens prosperity.
  11. Civilizational Risk and the Spacefaring Imperative
  • Humanity faces existential risk from destructive technologies.
  • Expanding into space spreads risk and accesses new resources.
  • Progress must be paired with governance that preserves freedom.
  1. Institutional Transformation for Civilizational Shifts
  • Legal and incentive changes are key to enabling innovation.
  • Open markets, licensing mechanisms, and long time horizons drive progress.
  • Entrepreneurial leadership is central to building new institutions.

Episode #72. How Entrepreneurial Businesses Can Harvest The Science of Meaning: Semiotics, Emotion, and Customer Value With Duncan Berry

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Why do customers choose one offering over another—often in a split second? In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast, Hunter Hastings talks with Duncan Berry, PhD, a consultant to leading brands at the intersection of semiotics, psychology, and neurology. Duncan explains how value is meaning from the customer’s point of view, why most behavior is pre-conscious and emotional, and how entrepreneurs can design signals, experiences, and narratives that align with what people actually feel and do.

Key insights include:

  • Value = meaning: Start from the customer’s lived experience, not the firm’s internal value chain.
  • Emotion and speed: People form judgments in tens of milliseconds; design must communicate instantly.
  • Signals & archetypes: Semiotics and association help brands encode meaning customers recognize fast.

This conversation reframes value creation as a human science: understand meaning, design signals, and earn the right to your customer’s next choice.

Resources:

➡️ Learn What They Didn’t Teach You In Business School: The Value Creators Online Business Course

Learn more about Applied Iconology

Connect with Duncan Berry on LinkedIn

Connect with Hunter Hastings on LinkedIn

Subscribe to The Value Creators on Substack

Knowledge Capsule

1. Value Is Meaning (when it is viewed through the lens of Austrian economics)

  • Value doesn’t reside in the object; customers bring meaning to it.
  • Entrepreneurs discover that meaning through exchange and experience.
  • Start with the customer’s perspective, not internal metrics.

2. From Value Chain to Customer Bullseye

  • Traditional value creation models taught in business school (like Michael Porter’s 5 Forces model) pursue a linear process in the wrong direction – from the inside of the company to the outside..
  • The correct direction is to work backwards from the customer to uncover what they truly prize.
  • Treat internal processes as means, not ends.

3. Emotion Drives Choice

  • Much consumer behavior is habitual and pre-conscious.
  • Emotional states shape attention, preference, and loyalty.
  • Blend qualitative + quantitative tools to surface emotions that matter.

4. Bandwidth & Filtering

  • The nervous system processes millions of bits per second; all but a tiny fraction of them are filtered out and never register in a customer’s consciousness.
  • Attention is scarce; perception is heavily pre-conscious.
  • Design for fast, intuitive appraisal, not rational analysis.

5. First Impressions in ~50 ms

  • People form website/app reactions in tens of milliseconds.
  • Color, typography, layout, and affordances carry instant meaning.
  • Consistency turns quick impressions into trust.

6. Semiotics Beyond Logos

  • Semiotics = how signs and symbols convey meaning.
  • Markets are signal systems; customers interpret patterns, not parts.
  • Map the signals your category encodes (and where you fit).

7. Category Cues

  • Packaging, labels, and form factors imply attributes (e.g., “healthy”).
  • Misaligned cues create friction or rejection.
  • Align design language with the meanings your audience expects.

8. Associative > Persuasive (Often)

  • Associative networks can outperform direct persuasion.
  • Build webs of related cues that guide perception holistically.
  • Over time, associations become a moat for your brand.

9. Archetypes Compress Complexity

  • Archetypes are dense packets of meaning humans intuitively grasp.
  • Use them to organize story, design, and messaging coherently.
  • Avoid clichés—choose archetypes that fit your promise.

10. Design as Valuation Engine

  • IConsumers are constantly evaluating – as an experience, not a computation..
  • Design orchestrates the sensorium (sight, sound, touch) to create value.
  • Efficiency matters, but experience moves the needle.

11. What AI Can’t (Yet) Feel

  • AI models patterns but lacks embodied, sensory experience.
  • Human perception shifts with context; static models lag.
  • Advantage: entrepreneurs can notice subtle gradations and adapt.

12. Experiment with a Hypothesis

  • A/B tests help—when tied to a value hypothesis.
  • Avoid “spray & pray”; let judgment and neuroscience inform tests.
  • Iterate toward finer distinctions customers actually care about.

The Value Creators Podcast Episode #70. Will Today’s Students Redefine Entrepreneurship? AI, Agency, and New Roles: A Conversation With Raushan Gross

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AI is now at the leading edge of value creation, where creativity, innovation and new business thinking will exercise great leverage. Entrepreneurs – and especially young entrepreneurs unburdened with the baggage of old business models – will lead the value creation revolution. 

Dr. Raushan Gross is a professor, author, and expert in AI, in business systems, and in entrepreneurship, all of which he is teaching to students in preparing them to enter a rapidly evolving marketplace. With Hunter Hastings, he explores how AI can empower these young entrepreneurs, and why agency—not technology—is the driver of progress, especially for new startups and small businesses who embrace technology and automation without losing their human advantage.

Dr. Gross shares how entrepreneurial thinking must evolve in a world of predictive algorithms, and how leaders can build businesses that remain adaptive, authentic, and focused on value creation.

Key insights include:

  • Why entrepreneurs must focus on agency over automation—and how to stay proactive in a reactive world.
  • How small businesses can leverage AI as a strategic collaborator, not just a productivity tool.
  • Why the new economic advantage isn’t size, but speed, flexibility, and intentionality.

If you want to lead with clarity in an AI-enabled world, this episode offers the mindset shift and tools to help you do it.

Resources:

Raushan Gross AI Articles Archive

➡️ Learn What They Didn’t Teach You In Business School: The Value Creators Online Business Course

Connect with Hunter Hastings on LinkedIn

Subscribe to The Value Creators on Substack

Knowledge Capsule

1. Agency Is the Core Entrepreneurial Advantage

  • Professor Gross’s message to entrepreneurs: Don’t  fear AI—focus on preserving and expanding your own agency.
  • Agency means the power to choose, to act, and to innovate intentionally.
  • Automation can be powerful only when paired with human direction.

2. Technology Is a Tool—Not a Replacement for Thought

  • Entrepreneurs must view AI as a collaborator, not a substitute.
  • Critical thinking and vision remain irreplaceable assets.
  • Tools should enhance decision-making, not dictate it.

3. The New Edge Is Speed, Adaptation, and Flexibility

  • Large enterprises move slowly; entrepreneurs can learn and pivot faster – it’s the ultimate advantage.
  • Small businesses that adopt AI intentionally gain a competitive edge.
  • Advantage now lies in responsiveness, not scale.

4. Predictive Systems Can Reinforce Old Biases

  • AI tools trained on outdated data may replicate legacy thinking.
  • Entrepreneurs must challenge assumptions, not automate them.
  • Intentional input leads to more valuable outcomes.

5. Entrepreneurship Requires Systems Thinking

  • Business owners must think in systems, not isolated tasks.
  • AI can help visualize and improve those systems.
  • Strategic automation happens at the systems level.

6. AI Literacy Will Define Future Business Success

  • Entrepreneurs need fluency in AI to use it responsibly. Fluency comes from experience: practice, practice, practice.
  • Literacy includes knowing limitations, risks, and opportunities.
  • This doesn’t require coding—just clear conceptual understanding.

7. AI Can Unlock New Levels of Customer Insight

  • Data-driven tools can help anticipate needs and personalize service.
  • But value comes from how entrepreneurs apply the insight.
  • Empathy + analytics = human-centered advantage.

8. Intentionality Beats Automation

  • Blind automation creates detachment and risk.
  • Entrepreneurs should deploy AI with clear objectives and constraints.
  • Design determines whether AI empowers or alienates.

9. Decision-Making Remains a Human Function

  • AI assists, but it doesn’t replace context, judgment, or nuance.
  • Leaders must remain accountable for the choices made.
  • The ultimate value creator is the human who wields the tool.

10. Entrepreneurial Education Must Evolve

  • Current business education is rigidly based on old models that have been superseded.
  • New teaching frameworks must incorporate digital fluency and ethics.
  • Future entrepreneurs will need systems awareness and AI navigation skills.
  • Learning must combine theory, tools, and lived experimentation.

11. AI Will Not Equalize—It Will Amplify Differences

  • Businesses that use AI strategically will accelerate.
  • Those who ignore it risk falling behind.
  • The gap will widen between the adaptive and the passive.

12. Value Creation Is Still the Ultimate Goal

  • Regardless of tools or trends, entrepreneurs exist to create value.
  • AI is only useful to the extent that it enables better outcomes.
  • The human intention behind the tool is what matters most.

The Value Creators Podcast Episode #66. Financing the Future: Private Debt, Capital Access, and Entrepreneurial Lending Innovation with Dave Kotter

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What does it take to unlock capital in a system full of red tape, landmines, and outdated institutions? In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast, Hunter Hastings is joined by Dave Kotter, CEO of Integrity Capital and founder of the Hybrid Debt Fund. Dave pulls back the curtain on commercial real estate financing, innovative lending structures, and how technology—especially AI—is transforming capital flows.

From high-net-worth investors to B2B borrowers, Kotter explains why relationships are the key product, not interest rates. He shares how Integrity Capital designs financing that works for the future—faster, more flexible, and centered on the entrepreneur.

Key insights include:

  • How to unlock capital through advisory-based lending models
  • How debt innovation is reshaping the role of banks
  • How AI, alternative platforms, and decentralization are democratizing investment

Whether you’re raising funds, deploying capital, or building a financing venture, this is an essential guide to value creation in the modern financial ecosystem.

Resources:

➡️ Learn What They Didn’t Teach You In Business School: The Value Creators Online Business Course

Learn more about Integrity Capital

Learn more about Hybrid Debt Fund

Connect with Dave Kotter on LinkedIn

Connect with Hunter Hastings on LinkedIn

Subscribe to The Value Creators on Substack

Knowledge Capsule

1. Capital Access Is a Value Creation Lever

  • Entrepreneurs seeking debt capital often default to banks without exploring better options.
  • Integrity Capital serves entrepreneurs as a centralized access point to those other smarter lending options.
  • This advisory lending service opens doors that would otherwise remain closed.

2. Simplicity Wins in a Complex World

  • Commercial real estate financing is filled with nuance and variation.
  • Kotter’s mission is to reduce friction through clarity and experience.
  • Strategic simplicity earns client trust and facilitates execution speed.

3. Value Creation Starts with Proactive Structuring

  • Most loans fail because risks weren’t properly anticipated upfront.
  • Kotter’s team identifies “landmines” before they explode.
  • Strategic foresight turns complexity into competitive advantage.

4. Valuation Is a Deal-Maker—or Breaker

  • Appraisal mismatches can kill a deal.
  • Integrity Capital works with clients to prepare valid valuation narratives.
  • Micro-market realities must guide macro-level assumptions.

5. Every Deal Is Personal and Hyper-Customized

  • There’s no “one-size-fits-all” in real estate lending.
  • Institutional wisdom—developed through experience—adds unseen value.
  • Success depends on seeing what others miss.

6. Hybrid Debt: The Best of Debt and Equity

  • The Hybrid Debt Fund offers higher leverage with equity-like upside.
  • Borrowers can avoid raising excess equity while keeping control.
  • Investors gain steady returns with participation in profits.

7. Relationships Are the Real Product

  • Deals succeed or fail based on people, not just terms.
  • Kotter emphasizes matching the right people to the right capital.
  • The role of facilitator is as much human as financial.

8. AI Is Transforming Underwriting and Efficiency

  • AI tools speed up due diligence and eliminate bottlenecks.
  • Kotter’s team built proprietary AI systems to rate deals in minutes.
  • Automation reduces overhead while improving response time.

9. Innovation in Financial Services Is Just Beginning

  • Antiquated processes like SBA lending are ripe for disruption.
  • Fintech is democratizing investment and removing gatekeepers.
  • Custom-built tools challenge legacy institutions to evolve or lose relevance.

10. Rolling Recession Demands Adaptive Strategy

  • Kotter sees today’s market as a “rolling recession,” not a binary one.
  • Cycles are inevitable—resilience comes from reflection and realignment.
  • Hard times are opportunities for relationship-building and innovation.

11. Democratization of Capital Is Accelerating

  • Access to alternative investments is no longer exclusive to elites.
  • Technology allows individuals to participate with as little as $25K.
  • Legacy institutions face existential pressure from agile upstarts.

12. Strategy Must Precede Technology

  • Tools like AI and CRMs must follow clear strategic intent.
  • Executives must define needs before adopting solutions.
  • Discernment—not shiny software—is the real competitive edge. The human factor remains the most important.

The Value Creators Podcast Episode #65. The Inner Excellence Of Entrepreneurial Leaders: Performance, Presence, and Purpose with Jim Murphy

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Entrepreneurial leaders are focused on value for others, especially customers and colleagues. They deliver through innovation, which is the implementation of a better future for those customers and colleagues. This outer-directed focus must start from a place of trust, clarity, and purpose. A place Jim Murphy calls Inner Excellence.

Jim Murphy is a high-performance coach and author of Inner Excellence. Drawing from his years coaching elite athletes, Jim shares the spiritual and mental tools that allow leaders to transcend fear, train presence, and perform with joy. This is a masterclass in leading from the inside out.

Key insights include:

  • Why your thoughts are not you—and how to gain freedom from them
  • How to surrender control to unlock courage and creativity
  • The business case for training your heart, not just your mind

Inner Excellence isn’t about perfection—it’s about joy. And it starts in the one place most of us avoid: within.

Resources:

➡️ Learn What They Didn’t Teach You In Business School: The Value Creators Online Business Course

Learn more about Jim Murphy and Inner Excellence

Connect with Jim Murphy on LinkedIn

Connect with Hunter Hastings on LinkedIn

Subscribe to The Value Creators on Substack

Knowledge Capsule

1. Inner Excellence Begins with Identity

  • Most people chase results; few build the identity that sustains them.
  • Your greatest performance starts with knowing who you are.
  • Inner excellence focuses on service, not self.

2. You Are Not Your Thoughts

  • Negative thoughts don’t define you—they pass like weather.
  • Learning to separate from thoughts is key to emotional freedom.
  • Awareness creates distance; distance creates clarity.

3. The Ego Is Your Biggest Opponent

  • Ego clings to image, past failures, and fear of rejection.
  • True growth requires surrendering ego to embrace possibility.
  • The more selfless you become, the more fearless you get.

4. Presence Replaces Control

  • Fear lives in the future; presence dissolves it.
  • In the present moment, there’s no fear—only awareness.
  • Success flows from clear, non-judgmental focus.

5. Surrender Is Strength

  • Surrender isn’t giving up—it’s letting go of what limits you.
  • Let go of the “little lollipop” to gain the whole candy store.
  • Surrender clears space for trust, intuition, and energy.

6. Emotional Energy Drives Performance

  • You can’t control outcomes, but you can manage your energy.
  • Every thought and environment influences your internal state.
  • Choose thoughts, words, and inputs that align with truth.

7. Feedback Is Always a Gift

  • Everything is here to teach and help you—if you let it.
  • Inner Excellence reframes every experience as feedback for growth.
  • Daily goal: Learn and grow, no matter the outcome.

8. Practice Builds Self-Mastery

  • Focus is trained by how you speak, think, and breathe.
  • Tools like the “float-up technique” help reset perspective.
  • Repetition—not intensity—creates transformation.

9. Love, Wisdom, and Courage Are Core Pillars

  • Love leads to fearlessness.
  • Wisdom is the unobstructed view of possibility and truth.
  • Courage is the willingness to step into discomfort.

10. Let Go of the Past to Become Someone New

  • Transformation requires letting go of your story and self-image.
  • You can’t reach second base with a foot on first.
  • Growth demands facing what you’ve never wanted to face.

11. Leadership Is Relational Energy

  • The quality of your relationships defines the quality of your life.
  • Self-awareness fuels better communication and trust.
  • Relationship capital is entrepreneurial capital.

12. The Fullest Life Is One of Selfless Actualization

  • Zoe: the Greek concept of “absolute fullness of life.”
  • The path is not fame or control—it’s being fully alive.
  • That begins with surrender, presence, and service.

The Value Creators Podcast Episode #64. Customer Experience Is Everything: A Conversation with Vance Morris

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What makes a business truly stand out in the hyper-competitive challenge to create customer value? It’s not just the product—it’s the experience, and the system that generates and sustains it.

In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast, Hunter Hastings speaks with Vance Morris, former Disney leader and expert in service system design, about why a customer experience system is the most strategic asset in business. From theme parks to high tech to carpet cleaning to consulting, Vance reveals how to create experience systems that delight customers, and drive lasting loyalty.

Key insights include:

  • Why systematization enables—not limits—exceptional service.
  • How systems harness personality, emotion, and consistency to create customer connection.
  • What it means to “plus” every interaction, and how to embed improvement into daily operations.

Whether you’re a small business owner or enterprise leader, this episode offers a masterclass in designing customer experiences that actually mean something—and work effectively.

Resources:

➡️ Learn What They Didn’t Teach You In Business School: The Value Creators Online Business Course

Connect with Vance Morris on LinkedIn

Learn more about Vance Morris

Connect with Hunter Hastings on LinkedIn

Subscribe to The Value Creators on Substack

Knowledge Capsule

1. Customer Experience Begins Where Product Ends

  • Good service is no longer a differentiator—it’s the minimum to compete.
  • Exceptional experiences elevate brands beyond commoditization.
  • Experience excellence means adding personality, care, and consistency.

2. Systematization Creates Freedom to Delight

  • Disney runs on SOPs—systems create consistency and free employees to “wow” guests.
  • When operational tasks become muscle memory, emotional service can flourish.
  • For entrepreneurs, strong systems create the freedom to step away.

3. Plussing: Continuous Improvement as a Discipline

  • Disney’s term “plussing” means always making things better—even small ones.
  • Experience design is iterative: each step can be “plussed” regularly.
  • Improvement ideas often come from frontline staff, not executives.

4. Experience Design Can—and Should—Be Intentional

  • Even packaging a book sale can be turned into a designed experience.
  • Vance created a “Vance in a box” experience to beat Amazon’s default convenience.
  • Thoughtful design creates brand moments customers remember.

5. Personalization Builds Loyalty

  • Customers forgive errors if there’s emotional connection.
  • Vance used stories, newsletters, and even his daughter’s ballet to connect.
  • People buy from people they feel they know.

6. Alarm Systems Prevent Customer Churn

  • Businesses need built-in alerts for declining engagement.
  • CRM systems should flag changes in behavior (e.g., less frequent visits).
  • Follow-up can recover at-risk customers before they leave.

7. Training Enables Consistency

  • SOPs must be practiced—not just handed out.
  • “Practice creates muscle memory, which creates freedom to serve.”
  • Great service requires clear systems, repetition, and buy-in.

8. Empowered Staff Improve the Experience

  • Frontline employees should be included in design and feedback loops.
  • Vance’s Disney story: how busboys improved table turnover with a tabletop organization idea.
  • Listening builds engagement and makes improvements real.

9. Let Personality Into the Process

  • Allowing staff to express themselves creates differentiation.
  • A phone greeting like “The agency that rocks” helps filter the right clients.
  • Great experiences reflect the values and style of the brand.

10. Human Touch Beats AI—Especially in Service

  • Live phone answering is a competitive advantage in an AI-dominated world.
  • Chatbots are efficient, but compassion and connection still matter.
  • The best businesses will blend tech with human warmth.

11. Service Recovery Must Account for Total Cost

  • Fixing a mistake means accounting for all customer costs (time, money, stress).
  • Offering a free repair isn’t enough—make it whole with extras (e.g., loaners, dinners).
  • Recovery is an opportunity to build deeper trust.

12. Implementation Is the Only Way to Profit

  • “You won’t profit unless you implement”—Vance’s core mantra.
  • Pick one idea and act on it; then build momentum.
  • Knowledge without implementation is just entertainment.