In this episode of ALPS In Brief, our Risk Manager Mark Bassingthwaighte sits down with Troy De Baca, the man behind The Silk Screen Machine, Inc. to talk about life, risk taking, and an ice cream dream.   Hello. I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, the risk manager here at ALPS. And welcome to ALPS in Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the Historic Florence Building in beautiful downtown Missoula Montana. I'm here on a business trip at the mothership, the home office here, and we've had some interesting speakers the past couple of days. And the one that I have enjoyed the most, and have been it's just got all kinds of things gone in my head here, just a lot of things to chew on in terms of life insights is a presentation given by Troy De Baca. And I just want to sit down, and we're just going to chat a little bit. For those of you that have listened somewhat rightly, or more rightly on all that I've done with podcasts, I've done several on listening to your life. I am going to add this discussion to this series, if you will, because man, oh man, is there a lot here. So Troy, welcome. It's a pleasure.  Troy De Baca:  Mark, great to meet you. Thanks for having me.  Mark Bassingthwaighte:  You're most welcome. And before we jump into just having a chat, can you tell our audience a little bit about who you are, and what you are in life I guess?  Troy De Baca:  Sure. Sure. So out of the many titles that you can be given, I've magically found myself in this role of entrepreneur, and I know that's a very big buzzword right now, but yeah. I basically am an American entrepreneur, who creates very outside of the box thinking in terms in the world of advertising, and marketing, and promotional items. And what my job is for the most part is when people ask me, "What do you do for a living," I say, "I'm a professional solutionist," because that encapsulates everything that I do. My job is to find solutions primarily for Fortune 500 companies to go out, and do experiential marketing, which is basically finding a company's demographic, or target demographic audience, and then providing them with an experience that they then hold onto, and they have a positive moment with, that they'll hopefully buy the brand, or support the brand.  Mark Bassingthwaighte:  I love that. I love that, professional solutionist, and boy, trust me, folks, when he talks about what he's done here, it's just like, good for you. God bless. Man oh man, are you freaking kidding me? Got to stop.  Troy De Baca:  You're too much.  Mark Bassingthwaighte:  You talked in this presentation yes a word that it explains some things, but entrepreneurs is not necessarily a word you use comfortably to describe yourself. You just don't see yourself that way.  Troy De Baca:  Right.  Mark Bassingthwaighte:  But you talk about all of this being unexpected.  Troy De Baca:  Yeah. Yeah.  Mark Bassingthwaighte:  What does that mean? You are in a great place, and tremendous success, but it's very unexpected. What's the journey?  Troy De Baca:  Yeah. So what I'm realizing now that I didn't know growing up is that I've just deeply been passionate about art and creativity. I didn't really know how to express myself. And that got me down paths that as most artists or creatives, there's a dangerous side to it, because you want to explore everything. And then that can be hurtful or harmful when you're not fully in control of your art, or your craft.  Mark Bassingthwaighte:  Okay.  Troy De Baca:  So growing up, I took a lot of [inaudible 00:04:15]. I wanted to get into everything, and explore everything.  Mark Bassingthwaighte:  Right.  Troy De Baca:  And through doing that, like many artists, I got involved with drugs, and I went down a rabbit hole pretty deep. I got addicted to heroin, and I spent about six years of my life pursuing that. And it took me to some really deep, dark places. And I also overdosed a few times, and was considered legally dead two of those times. So I consider my