Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / #115: Dalton Lauer / South Florida Real Estate Agent

Transcript

#115: Dalton Lauer / South Florida Real Estate Agent · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of a come together
• 0:15
  and we're live, we're live we're live.
• 0:17
  It's awesome. Welcome back, brother.
• 0:20
  I'm. Excited to be back again.
• 0:21
  Dude, I felt the last time like we got cut off.
• 0:25
  Well, I cut us off, but I felt you could have gone for a while.
• 0:28
  So I'm happy that we do in Part 2 all I want.
• 0:30
  Yeah, that's sweet. Celebrating.
• 0:32
  We're celebrating today. Dalton just closed the deal to.
• 0:36
  Very happy about as someone that has never closed a real estate
• 0:40
  deal despite having my license for like a summer.
• 0:42
  And I just found that out today, listened to your podcast with
• 0:45
  Chris. Oh there, you're awesome.
• 0:46
  December Yeah, dude, I'll show you after my wallet.
• 0:48
  I have, I still have my picture from my from my New York, NY
• 0:52
  state certification or whatever it was.
• 0:55
  It's crazy, but. It's a different beast too.
• 0:56
  Like it's. It was tough.
• 0:58
  I can imagine as hell dude, but I had to cheat the pass the pass
• 1:03
  the test. I think everyone cheats.
• 1:05
  I think that's I. Heard not like much to to pass
• 1:08
  like to get into it you know the.
• 1:11
  So, yeah, when I was in college, I didn't, I, I was, I remember
• 1:14
  as I was a creative writing literature major, I had tons of
• 1:17
  free time. I was hanging out, drinking a
• 1:19
  lot, hanging out with my buddies, playing basketball and
• 1:23
  I was like, maybe I'll try for my real estate license.
• 1:25
  I went online on Groupon. Cheers.
• 1:27
  And I found, you know, those like Groupon classes like, you
• 1:33
  know, like off like 1000 dollars, $50.00 for like a real
• 1:37
  estate like class, whatever. So I signed up one of those
• 1:40
  classes and the reason why I take 50 bucks is because it
• 1:42
  doesn't prepare you at all for anything.
• 1:45
  So I spent all the time on these, you know, modules and
• 1:48
  like going through these slides and I took the test.
• 1:51
  I'm like, I don't know any material that's on here.
• 1:54
  None. Well, that's a crazy thing.
• 1:56
  Is the test itself, the material you study, is so different than
• 2:00
  the test itself? Yes.
• 2:01
  And then you get into real estate and it's totally
• 2:04
  different. From the test, what they teach
• 2:06
  you in the. Schools because the schools vary
• 2:09
  like law and literature and like basically just how to not get
• 2:14
  yourself end up in jail. Yeah.
• 2:16
  And then you get into the real life and you're like, I have to
• 2:18
  learn sales. I have to learn interpersonal
• 2:20
  relationship building. I have to all marketing, like
• 2:23
  all of this stuff that you are not you didn't even know.
• 2:26
  Yeah. Yeah, Yeah.
• 2:28
  I think the reason why they do that probably or if I were to do
• 2:31
  that, the reason I would do that is because I would say that you
• 2:34
  can learn all those kind of skills, but you can't.
• 2:35
  Like most of the stuff that's on the test are legal and our
• 2:39
  thing, if you're going to be representing someone buying a
• 2:41
  house, there's a lot of repercussions to that.
• 2:43
  And so like they want to make sure that all like the technical
• 2:46
  bases are covered and they figure that like sales and like
• 2:49
  interpersonal relationships and being on top of your leads and
• 2:52
  following up and all that stuff like that comes with with time
• 2:54
  anyway, you know? Yeah, that's why it's good to
• 2:57
  get under some good like leadership or mentorship, Why
• 3:02
  just once you're new in the business and you can learn that
• 3:05
  stuff as well. And you said that.
• 3:07
  You say we were going to pick right up.
• 3:09
  You said that so so we ended last episode ending with you
• 3:14
  leaving Afghanistan with the shit show that it was and then
• 3:20
  you and then we had to run out. And you're telling me that you
• 3:23
  started doing real estate while you're still in the military?
• 3:26
  Yeah. So I would have gotten back from
• 3:28
  my deployment and had one month until my date of separation from
• 3:33
  the military. What does that mean?
• 3:35
  That means like they still pay you for a month or whatever.
• 3:37
  They still. You are, yeah, like, no, most
• 3:40
  people you get back from the deployment, you continue your
• 3:41
  career. It is what it is.
• 3:43
  I would have gotten back and I had one month left in my time of
• 3:47
  service that I signed up for until I would have been out.
• 3:50
  And it's really a process if you want to prepare yourself to get
• 3:55
  out. Like they have classes that you
• 3:57
  go through. It's called TAPS.
• 4:00
  With that. Transition assistance program
• 4:03
  and you can do it at any point in your career.
• 4:04
  Most people suggest do it at least one year before your data
• 4:08
  separation. In my class, there's half the
• 4:10
  class was raising their hands there one week from their
• 4:13
  separation. And I'm thinking we get so much
• 4:16
  information on how to utilize our benefits and prepare
• 4:21
  ourselves for the next stage of our life, and you guys are only
• 4:25
  getting here one week before your separation.
• 4:27
  How are you going to use or implement any of?
• 4:29
  This. Yeah, yeah.
• 4:30
  So fortunately I had a buddy who had told me about the program
• 4:34
  and just at this point I'm I'm getting my real estate license
• 4:38
  while I'm on my deployment. That's why I was studying.
• 4:41
  I was taking the test out there. Was a lot of work.
• 4:43
  Do you put a lot of time in too? Not.
• 4:44
  Really. Yeah.
• 4:45
  Fortunately I had a lot of time when I wasn't flying missions.
• 4:48
  I was free, so it was the gym. It was, yeah, and it was real
• 4:55
  estate while. Everyone else was playing video
• 4:56
  games. I was studying for real estate.
• 4:58
  Good for you, man. And so, yeah, so from there,
• 5:02
  man, I forgot the question now. It was just that you that you
• 5:05
  were studying for it and preparing yourself before you
• 5:08
  left for. Coming out, right.
• 5:09
  So, yeah, so I got back from it. I decided I was going to extend
• 5:12
  my contract with the military one year longer so that I didn't
• 5:15
  just get out and have one month to get out.
• 5:18
  So that gave me enough time from there to start planning,
• 5:22
  preparing and, you know, just setting myself up.
• 5:25
  And that's when I decided I was going to start interning with a
• 5:30
  real estate brokerage. So I would do my full day at
• 5:32
  work with the military. I'd get off and then I would go
• 5:36
  to a brokerage and they would let me do all kind of their
• 5:40
  admin work and anything I can do by the.
• 5:42
  Way that's the best, Just hands on experience.
• 5:44
  Like, that's the best way. That's a better way to learn
• 5:46
  than to study. No, absolutely, absolutely.
• 5:48
  Because it's real world scenarios like and like we said,
• 5:52
  the stuff from the test isn't what's applicable that much in
• 5:55
  your day-to-day. So I was getting that
• 5:57
  day-to-day. I was kicking that learning
• 5:58
  curve early because doing open houses on the weekend.
• 6:02
  Fortunately, again, my fiance, she's off doing her thing with
• 6:05
  schooling. We're not living together yet.
• 6:07
  So I'm still able to just go all in on myself, development and
• 6:12
  focus on my future. And so yeah, doing the real
• 6:15
  estate stuff. And then it was, there's a
• 6:18
  program called skill bridge in the military.
• 6:21
  It's open to all branches. And I hope people hearing this
• 6:24
  in the military will take more advantage of it because a lot of
• 6:26
  people don't know about it or don't take advantage of it.
• 6:29
  Skill bridge. Skill bridge up to six months
• 6:31
  prior to your data separation, you can get approved for an
• 6:36
  internship where they have a list of places you can go.
• 6:40
  And if it's not on there, you can try and get that company on
• 6:43
  boarded. And I found a real estate
• 6:45
  brokerage to was they had a hybrid model.
• 6:49
  So it was like online slash in person because if it's all
• 6:53
  online, they don't let you actually leave the base because
• 6:56
  why would they pay for you to leave and when it's just online?
• 7:00
  So this hybrid model worked out for what I was trying to do,
• 7:02
  which is get to Florida and be with my fiance.
• 7:05
  You know, what were you at this point?
• 7:07
  Where was I was in California. OK, my last base.
• 7:10
  Gotcha. Gotcha, gotcha.
• 7:11
  Yeah, Northern Cali. And so yeah, he gave me the
• 7:15
  opportunity because I was looking with different
• 7:17
  brokerages, some in Tampa, some in like Miami, one staying in
• 7:22
  Cali. So there were options, but it.
• 7:24
  You're looking at the big names like Douglas Element or
• 7:26
  whatever. You're looking at like smaller
• 7:27
  shops that are giving you more like.
• 7:29
  I'm working on whatever was on the list and I did reach out to
• 7:32
  the brokerage I'm with now, one Sotheby's, because the broker, I
• 7:37
  was in the Air Force with his son.
• 7:38
  Oh cool. Really?
• 7:39
  So I had. Flown with it with his son and
• 7:42
  there was the connection made. I reached out Tim and Sotheby's
• 7:45
  is a luxury brand and so they kind of take brand new ages.
• 7:49
  Yeah. So he was willing to try and
• 7:53
  make it work, but because they weren't already on the list,
• 7:55
  it's like a six month process to get.
• 7:57
  Wow. So I was like, Dang, that's not
• 8:00
  going to work out and I'm not. All those like luxury, like
• 8:03
  luxury homes in like Miami and Surfside and all those places,
• 8:07
  that's, that's the kind of places we cover.
• 8:08
  They're all over. Yeah.
• 8:09
  Sotheby's is like the number one global brand.
• 8:13
  They're global luxury. Yeah, they're global.
• 8:15
  They're all over the world. Got you.
• 8:16
  Bigger than Douglas, bigger than like.
• 8:18
  Than Douglas Douglas Alderman. I don't even think they know
• 8:20
  about them in like Spain or like around the world.
• 8:23
  I could be wrong. I don't know.
• 8:24
  Maybe I'm biased. Maybe I'm biased, but in my
• 8:28
  mind, Sotheby's is the best. And so, yeah, so I was super
• 8:32
  excited to be joining them under the leadership of some of the
• 8:37
  father that I flew in the Air Force with.
• 8:39
  And then it didn't work out, but there was an option with Exp
• 8:42
  Realty, which is kind of this newer real estate model.
• 8:45
  They're very like the brokerage itself is online.
• 8:49
  And then so that was with the hybrid model.
• 8:52
  So I was able to move to Florida be with my fiance.
• 8:55
  They I only got approved for four months early.
• 8:59
  And so for four months I got to move here, I got to start
• 9:03
  practicing real estate. It was my full time thing and so
• 9:05
  I just hit the ground paid. By the military.
• 9:07
  While still getting paid by the. Four months.
• 9:10
  So obviously four months of like.
• 9:12
  Yeah, transitional time. Seriously.
• 9:14
  Yeah, that's huge because I was telling Chris yesterday, like I
• 9:18
  spent two months doing sales in the city.
• 9:20
  I didn't do any sales. I just lost a ton of money.
• 9:22
  It would be so helpful to have that opportunity to like, have a
• 9:24
  learning curve and like, do that, you know, like I spent
• 9:27
  money and time going for my parents upstate to the city.
• 9:31
  Every day I'd take a bus for two hours or a drive in and spend
• 9:34
  $30 each way to cross the GW Bridge and you know, and like,
• 9:39
  and you got lunch and you go out and like, all of a sudden you're
• 9:42
  like, where'd all this money go? And I'm going, I'm not making
• 9:44
  anything yet. I'm not.
• 9:45
  Coming in and it takes sometimes months, yeah.
• 9:48
  People. Yeah.
• 9:49
  Most people don't have that opportunity.
• 9:50
  It's awesome, yeah. So for four months I was very
• 9:53
  blessed because I was able to kind of go through my training
• 9:55
  period, get out there, start marketing myself.
• 9:58
  The only thing is, if I close a deal, I couldn't take that
• 10:02
  income because you can't get paid while you're in the
• 10:04
  military's can. You get a bonus or can you get
• 10:08
  like anything? No, no, you can't get paid at
• 10:10
  all. So timing, right?
• 10:12
  Actually, I was only approved for three months, but one month
• 10:15
  of that was my, they call it leave your time off, your paid
• 10:19
  time off. And so I had one month of that.
• 10:22
  So I used that and within that time, even though I'm still with
• 10:25
  the military, your net, you can now double dip cool, because
• 10:28
  only in that time here where it's your time off.
• 10:31
  So you close anything then? So fortunately for me, right as
• 10:34
  my time and service ended, I got my first rental deal and it was
• 10:38
  from my family. So it's not like.
• 10:41
  Rental deals here was it here where was it it was here so
• 10:44
  rental I know that in the city typically they do I think one
• 10:48
  month rent or 20% of the annual. I think 20% of the annual rent.
• 10:53
  What do they do here? It's.
• 10:55
  Different per brokerage and per realtor and you know everyone
• 10:59
  takes whatever Commission their. First month, last month or 10%
• 11:02
  of the year? The typical is one month and
• 11:05
  that's split between both sides. If there's oh really on both
• 11:09
  sides, OK, got you. Then you're getting half of
• 11:11
  that. I think you're getting
• 11:12
  percentage of that because you're the agent under
• 11:15
  brokerage. So the brokers take like let's
• 11:17
  say you get. Brokerage takes enough.
• 11:18
  You get one month, you get one month, you split that 5050
• 11:21
  between the buyers and the seller, you know, between both
• 11:24
  representatives, and then you get let's say 30% of that half
• 11:29
  that first month's rent. If my broker's only giving me
• 11:33
  30%, I would have quit. Yeah, Now is that what they did
• 11:37
  in New York? In New York.
• 11:39
  Mine's 8020 but I also. You get 80, they get 20.
• 11:42
  They keep 20, I keep 80. That's a lot.
• 11:45
  And so normally it's like 7030. They keep 30, I got 8020.
• 11:50
  And then and as you progress through your career and as you
• 11:53
  bring them more money, you can renegotiate the Commission
• 11:55
  split. Yeah.
• 11:56
  And so, yeah, for now, that's that's what it.
• 11:59
  Is that's awesome. It is that's awesome.
• 12:01
  By the way, I, I think mine was 6040 in the brokerages favorite.
• 12:05
  So I'll get 40% of the one months rent for closing the deal
• 12:08
  because they claim they hey, they, they don't claim they,
• 12:11
  they have the leads and they have the, you know, they gave
• 12:14
  you all the work And so they're like.
• 12:15
  Right. And if a brokerage is giving you
• 12:18
  a lot, it can be worth it to like put that with them Exp.
• 12:23
  It was like one of those ones where it was like 9010.
• 12:26
  And so it's more attractive, but it's also an online brokerage.
• 12:29
  So you don't get that face to face with your broker.
• 12:32
  You don't have that like in office presence like so that's
• 12:37
  why I say every brokerage is different.
• 12:39
  Some now there's 100% you keep 100% of Commission.
• 12:42
  I'm like but those. Brokerages.
• 12:44
  Why do they do nothing? They give you nothing.
• 12:46
  It's just. It's just something for you to
• 12:48
  keep to just a brokerage for you to associate park.
• 12:51
  Your license, right? Exactly.
• 12:52
  But it's not really going to get anything out.
• 12:54
  So what do they get out of that? If, if you, if, if I'm a
• 12:58
  brokerage and you're keeping 100 and I'm giving you 100%.
• 13:02
  You probably have a monthly fee or something.
• 13:04
  Gotcha. OK, that would be my guess.
• 13:06
  And then they're just betting on a bunch of agents who may or may
• 13:09
  not do business with them, really don't really do much for
• 13:12
  them, but they're paying a monthly subscription.
• 13:14
  Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 13:15
  So. There's all these different
• 13:16
  models. OK, cool.
• 13:18
  Yeah, there's nothing about. Yeah.
• 13:19
  So I started with the Exp during that internship and then not
• 13:23
  long after that realized it wasn't I was actually on a team
• 13:27
  because it was through this internship and it was like prior
• 13:29
  military people who knew about this program got their real
• 13:32
  estate team on the program. And then they're all in
• 13:36
  California. I'm the only agent in Florida.
• 13:39
  And I had a lot of access to them and they had a ton of
• 13:42
  resources for me. Like for like the first three
• 13:44
  months of living here, I was just like on their portal
• 13:47
  everyday studying, learning, There was a ton of good stuff,
• 13:51
  but I didn't have that support. I didn't have that mentorship
• 13:54
  that I was hoping for. So that's when I was like, OK,
• 13:58
  actually I didn't even reach out the broker I was talking about
• 14:01
  commenting on my Instagram story was like, hey, like, I think
• 14:04
  it's time we like repay. You're doing well.
• 14:06
  Do you make that story? Do you make that video?
• 14:10
  The story The other day, you had a funny video on your story, I
• 14:14
  think yesterday or two days ago about shit, dude, you have to
• 14:20
  pull it up. I don't remember what it was,
• 14:22
  but it was super well edited. It was funny and it was about
• 14:25
  like that feeling of like, oh man.
• 14:27
  Wait, was it like the avocado toast?
• 14:29
  Thing yes yes yes yes the avocado toast thing that when
• 14:31
  you start buying avocado toast, you can afford all these to
• 14:34
  afford all your. Apartment I didn't make it, but
• 14:36
  I was dying laughing when I saw that because that's like total
• 14:40
  Dave Ramsey's big on like I think that comes from him where
• 14:42
  he's like people just stopped buying avocado toast dude take.
• 14:46
  $15 first like. Sourdough bread.
• 14:50
  It was just sourdough. Some avocado.
• 14:52
  Give me $15. Yeah.
• 14:53
  No, our generations financial problems would be solved if we
• 14:57
  just stopped buying avocado toast.
• 14:58
  Yeah, that's it. We would have own houses.
• 15:00
  Mansion. Sure.
• 15:01
  These. Sure.
• 15:02
  Sure, for sure. So that video cracked me up.
• 15:04
  They did a very good job. I wish I could make videos that
• 15:07
  good. Usually usually work on that
• 15:08
  too, because I feel like that's what would make a difference in
• 15:12
  like today's world, what people are looking for especially like
• 15:16
  because younger, the younger generations becoming adults and
• 15:19
  they're, I even know what to call it the younger generation,
• 15:22
  right. I don't even know what the term
• 15:23
  is, but kids that were growing up on social media with reels
• 15:27
  and with all and videos and stuff and entertainment like
• 15:29
  mixed with business. Yeah, it's great advertising.
• 15:32
  It really is. And I, I used to do that like
• 15:35
  back when I was in with the last brokerage, I was trying heavily
• 15:40
  to focus on, you could scroll through my Instagram and see a
• 15:42
  couple. Yeah, I was trying to make like
• 15:44
  edutainment videos where it's like educational and
• 15:47
  entertainment and I got good feedback.
• 15:49
  It was. But dude, I don't like some
• 15:52
  process of trying to film my whole day or like shoot all
• 15:55
  these videos and then sit down, edit them.
• 15:58
  And then it's just like it's exhausting and it's not what I
• 16:01
  wanted to be doing, so if I could.
• 16:03
  By the way, that's what I don't do meals for my own podcast,
• 16:05
  dude. It's because I don't have the
• 16:06
  patience for it. Yeah, it's a lot.
• 16:08
  I mean, eventually maybe hire somebody, hire somebody and that
• 16:11
  would be ideal, but it's a lot and it and honestly, I have been
• 16:17
  having this resistance with real estate, which is also kind of
• 16:22
  shifting my mentality towards like.
• 16:23
  The personal resistance. Hard for me to want to put in
• 16:26
  that additional work to like shoot videos and stuff.
• 16:30
  What do you mean resistance? Like from yourself?
• 16:33
  Like you're not sure whether you want to stay in it or not.
• 16:36
  Yeah. So for me, real estate was
• 16:41
  bridging that gap between ideally becoming an investor in
• 16:45
  real estate at some point, owning my own portfolio, scaling
• 16:48
  that through rentals. But you don't just get out of
• 16:51
  the military with little income and jump into that.
• 16:55
  Yeah, sure. So for me, it was like, oh,
• 16:56
  well, I can get my real estate license.
• 16:58
  I can learn the insurance and outs of the business.
• 17:00
  I can build capital, keep that as my business and then find
• 17:04
  deals and bring them in as my, my as I go along.
• 17:07
  Yeah. However, three years into the
• 17:09
  business, I realized that like, I'm not fully fulfilled in my
• 17:14
  role. Sure.
• 17:16
  It's that I think coupled with the disconnect after being in
• 17:23
  the military, I think there's like a silent battle that all
• 17:27
  veterans go through. It's like a mental struggle just
• 17:30
  of like lack of purpose or fulfillment or.
• 17:33
  What I do IP games? What's that you gotta do?
• 17:35
  IP game or shrooms or some kind of psychedelic or something.
• 17:39
  Like that, right? To pull me out of that, Yeah,
• 17:42
  even. Thinking about that, well also
• 17:44
  being a real estate agent is, I mean you work as hard as you
• 17:47
  choose to work. Right, right.
• 17:49
  It's a joke that. It's a joke that every Jewish
• 17:51
  mom in South Florida is a real estate agent, you know, because
• 17:54
  like whenever they feel like, you know, they have 345 kids,
• 17:57
  that whatever you feel, whatever work you feel like doing, you
• 17:59
  can do. And the days that you want to
• 18:00
  work, you do. And if you don't want to do a
• 18:01
  show when you cancel and like it's OK, no one really cares,
• 18:04
  you know, like, right. Or you could be like, I have a
• 18:07
  friend of mine from, from my gap year and his dad passed away, I
• 18:13
  think when he was a junior or senior in high school and, and
• 18:18
  he got his real estate license as soon as he went to college
• 18:21
  and he started hustling crazy and he was able to take his
• 18:24
  family on like this vacation to Israel from America.
• 18:29
  Like I'd say, I don't know exactly.
• 18:31
  I'd say four or five people, fly them across the world, you know,
• 18:35
  put them up in this hotel for 10 days and take them back.
• 18:39
  And because he spent. A year and a half, two years
• 18:42
  hustling his ass off, you know, and and he did it and like he
• 18:44
  turned it into like a legitimate business.
• 18:46
  He became a three guys on brokerage, you know, license and
• 18:49
  he opened the brokerage of his own name and he's doing his own
• 18:51
  thing. But like, as you know, like
• 18:54
  there's every everything in between the Jewish moms and this
• 18:57
  and that kind of guy, you know, it's a full scale.
• 18:59
  Spectrum of like the agents who are running their business like
• 19:03
  a business, they show up every day, they're kicking ass and the
• 19:06
  people who wake up and they wait until something falls in the
• 19:09
  bond. Check it out.
• 19:13
  Boxers all day. Right, Hanging out the pool when
• 19:15
  someone gives you a call, you know, and so I've always tried
• 19:20
  to be the person that is very disciplined, schedule, routine.
• 19:23
  And for me, you know, there's a lot of things I love about real
• 19:27
  estate. There's a lot of things I hate
• 19:29
  about real estate. And so trying to find fine
• 19:32
  balance between that. Honestly, I couldn't tell you
• 19:36
  where I'm at with it right now because I've been trying, I've
• 19:39
  been battling with like where I want to take it, trying to
• 19:43
  remember that this wasn't my end goal, that this is just like a
• 19:46
  part of the process. And I think in life there's a
• 19:49
  fine balance of like doing things that you don't like,
• 19:53
  sacrificing for their greater good.
• 19:55
  And also remembering that you have to chase what really lights
• 19:59
  you up and have fulfillment because otherwise, what are you
• 20:04
  living with? Like what's the purpose of life?
• 20:05
  You know, I think there's too many people that get to that end
• 20:08
  stage and they're like, I wish I would have done things
• 20:11
  differently. I hear it all the time.
• 20:12
  I've asked very successful real estate developers.
• 20:16
  People who are older, wiser. And I'm like, what would you
• 20:19
  have done differently? Or if you could go back and
• 20:21
  like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have done it.
• 20:23
  I would have done that totally something really.
• 20:25
  You know, they say that and I'm like, yeah, yeah, I've had, I've
• 20:28
  talked to a billionaire who's like, he's a top 10 on the
• 20:31
  Forbes list and he's said the same thing.
• 20:32
  Really. You know, I'm like, is that
• 20:34
  true, though? Because you have something, you
• 20:36
  have such a legacy. I think it is dude.
• 20:40
  The only reason why I think that is because people that
• 20:47
  especially people that are billionaires, especially people
• 20:48
  that have like built that much, there's a level of trying to
• 20:54
  accomplish something, something. And you know, a lot of times if
• 20:58
  you don't know what you're trying to accomplish, you turn
• 21:00
  to money or business or power, right?
• 21:02
  Because like, like if you're trying to find meaning, if
• 21:04
  you're trying to find, you know, someone that will accept you in
• 21:07
  your life, I'd say you were rejected as a kid your whole
• 21:10
  life or your parent or you felt like your parents didn't pay
• 21:12
  enough attention to whatever it was.
• 21:13
  Or even if it's subconscious, even if you don't know, you
• 21:15
  know, and like all you want to do is try to get people to pay
• 21:18
  attention to you. An unhealthy Ave. is to try to
• 21:23
  get attention in any way that you can't.
• 21:25
  You know, it doesn't make a difference who's paying
• 21:27
  attention to you, how much time you spend doing it.
• 21:29
  You know, you know, whether it's destructive to your other
• 21:32
  relationships, whether it's destructive to your hobbies or
• 21:34
  your passions. Like it's like this thing that
• 21:36
  you want that's driving you, that's getting you there.
• 21:38
  And then there's the people that like know what they're looking
• 21:40
  for in their lives. And then when they and by
• 21:44
  accomplishing it, they're happy. And they don't need to get to
• 21:46
  billions that billionaire status.
• 21:48
  They don't need to get to Forbes top ten status or to any of
• 21:51
  that. They're like like, you know,
• 21:53
  they're just people that have extraordinarily successful
• 21:56
  careers at what they do and have happy lives with their family
• 21:59
  and their friends and they just like live happy lives and die
• 22:02
  happy people, you know, and like.
• 22:04
  And that's the goal. It's like, yeah.
• 22:05
  That's the goal. Pursuing that like extra wealth
• 22:09
  so you can live comfortable, so you can bless other people in
• 22:11
  their lives, but not doing it at the sacrifice of like being a
• 22:14
  workaholic, your family, not feeling like you're around
• 22:18
  things like that. Like that's all I feel like in
• 22:21
  my military career in the earlier days, I like fully
• 22:24
  absorbed that identity of like trying to just be a go getter,
• 22:29
  climb the ladder, climb the ranks.
• 22:32
  And like, I didn't care if like I had to step on toes, like I
• 22:35
  was progressing and I was doing it fast.
• 22:38
  And then I look back, I'm like, man, I wish I would have taken a
• 22:43
  break and focused on some of the relationships, been a better
• 22:46
  mentor to others around me. And so now that's, that's a big
• 22:51
  focus in the line. It's just like giving back.
• 22:52
  And like that's also like look, look back and help others get to
• 22:56
  where you. There's got to be really great
• 22:57
  ways to be able to make a career out of something like that while
• 23:03
  both being successful and of yourself and also being
• 23:05
  inspirational and motivational. For sure there's gotta be.
• 23:09
  I think social media, that's one of the nice things about social
• 23:11
  media, is there. You can just shoot a video and
• 23:14
  say what's on your mind. But then it's also falls back to
• 23:18
  that part of me doesn't want to do that because I don't want to
• 23:22
  have my phone in front of me all the time.
• 23:23
  Yeah, I want like. Real.
• 23:24
  It's exhausting, dude, It's exhausting.
• 23:26
  In it for sure, for sure, for sure, yeah.
• 23:28
  It's funny, it's funny that you say that because recently I've
• 23:30
  been like for for a couple years, I only like, I associated
• 23:36
  my well, my well-being with how productive I was, right?
• 23:41
  And so I was trying to always jam more in how to be more
• 23:43
  efficient, how to be more productive, how to do this
• 23:45
  better and spend my time better and, you know, utilize this and
• 23:48
  that and that. And at a certain point I was
• 23:50
  like, I'm not even, I'm not even enjoying what I'm doing.
• 23:52
  Like the thing I love, I love writing, I love playing guitar.
• 23:55
  I love, I love, I love sales. I love talking to customers and
• 23:58
  getting them to and get, and, you know, and, and making a
• 24:01
  connection with someone and then having them buy something.
• 24:03
  I mean, like, I trust you over XYZ competitor and I'm going to
• 24:06
  buy something from you. I'm like, that's awesome, you
• 24:08
  know, but but I was so focused on like optimizing that I didn't
• 24:13
  focus on like being present, being a dad.
• 24:17
  You know, I have a 2 1/2 year old and I have a 2 month old and
• 24:20
  I'm like, I'm so busy running around doing things for them and
• 24:24
  doing things with them that I was like, but without actually
• 24:27
  being present in like what I was actually doing, you know, that I
• 24:32
  that at a certain point I was like, I'm not even like, I'm
• 24:36
  even like I'm blacking out my days, you know, like, you know,
• 24:38
  and like. What did you do today?
• 24:41
  And you're like, so much I look at my list because I have to
• 24:45
  keep a list for everything and check it off.
• 24:47
  And that's how I am. I'm like, how do I not remember
• 24:50
  my whole day and or the day before?
• 24:52
  I'm like, because everything for me is like, become a list.
• 24:55
  I have to check it off. Yeah.
• 24:57
  Do you take time to, like, sit down and reflect and like, yeah.
• 25:01
  Leave reflect. I started to more.
• 25:03
  I do well, I started to on a regular basis.
• 25:07
  I've always done it on like a, let's say a weekly basis or
• 25:09
  whatever because I like to write a lot.
• 25:10
  So when I write that's very, that's a lot of reflective time,
• 25:14
  just like. Journaling.
• 25:15
  Yeah. I'll do either, I'll either
• 25:18
  write what are called, but I called dear me letters, which
• 25:21
  are just like dear me. Things are pretty good.
• 25:26
  I'm happy about this, but I'm not happy about this, you know,
• 25:30
  but and then a lot of times my fingers are just like go and
• 25:35
  I'll write things that I've never said or even realized that
• 25:39
  I was thinking before. And I'm like, oh shit, you know,
• 25:43
  there's a real. Power to it.
• 25:44
  And I'm learning this as well. Like this has become a new thing
• 25:47
  for me. But I listened to your last
• 25:50
  podcast with Chris. Yeah.
• 25:51
  And you guys were talking about the breathing.
• 25:53
  Yeah. And so that's something.
• 25:55
  That breath work dude. Doing breath work, have you?
• 25:58
  Yeah, and what do you think, dude?
• 25:59
  A lot of people to talk to him about this, so I'm glad that.
• 26:01
  Wow, I'm going to my first class this week.
• 26:04
  Oh, really? Yeah.
• 26:05
  We've done it at a class. Yeah, But have you heard of,
• 26:08
  like, Wim Hof? No, Wim Hof.
• 26:09
  Great. So Wim Hof is a guy who he's set
• 26:13
  all these different world records and he's really big into
• 26:16
  like going into ice cold. Like he's big on the cold
• 26:19
  plunges, but breathing and like different things.
• 26:22
  And I can't remember how I came across and it was a long time
• 26:28
  ago. And then when I was going
• 26:30
  through this rut with like work and then being out of the
• 26:34
  military and trying to find my place, I came into like the
• 26:39
  breathing exercises. And so I found I saw the William
• 26:43
  Hoff and I was like, Oh, this is crazy.
• 26:44
  I was doing this previously in a very similar way.
• 26:50
  And now I have someone who's like teaching me, like showing
• 26:52
  it. So I, I did the program and
• 26:56
  really got into like right now I would say like I'm in the space
• 26:59
  of like learning the profound effects that come, isn't it?
• 27:04
  Crazy. Wait, so tell me some of your
• 27:07
  experiences that you have, if any any come to mind.
• 27:10
  But yeah, sure. So the Wim Hof specifically is
• 27:14
  like supposed to like boost your mood, your energy.
• 27:17
  It's good for like combating like depression, anxiety.
• 27:19
  OK. And I know that there's
• 27:21
  different types of breathing. There's like the much faster
• 27:24
  style. That's like hyperventilating.
• 27:26
  Yeah, like Holotropic, yeah, or something.
• 27:29
  There's all these different ones.
• 27:30
  So I'm in the process of experimenting with these
• 27:33
  different breathings and seeing what brings it to me.
• 27:36
  Wim Hof I really enjoy. Then there's another one that's
• 27:39
  called Breathe with Sandy on YouTube.
• 27:42
  OK. And this guy, he does a lot of
• 27:44
  different ones. And when I do some of the
• 27:46
  breathing, since you're asking about my experience, there's
• 27:49
  been times where like, and this is when I'm like really deeply
• 27:53
  breathing and like pushing through that mental block and my
• 27:57
  hands will cramp up and that. And they say like, oh, like
• 28:02
  there's going to be like some numbing or this and that.
• 28:05
  And I had to like ChatGPT like what?
• 28:08
  This is why it's. Happening well because when
• 28:12
  you're cramps there are consequences of not getting
• 28:14
  oxygen through your body. Right, Yeah, right.
• 28:15
  So it's like a depletion of like your.
• 28:17
  Yeah, yeah, something. Like I actually felt that today
• 28:20
  on a jog. I got back to my jog and my
• 28:22
  hands felt I, I can tell it was I was not breathing properly on
• 28:26
  my jog. I don't know whether it was the
• 28:28
  music I was listening to in the podcast that it started with or
• 28:31
  ended with, but like, I got home and I was like, something's
• 28:36
  wrong. And I was like, I know it has to
• 28:37
  do with the breathing that I've been doing, you know, because I
• 28:40
  was definitely, you know, I was definitely oxygen and depleted
• 28:43
  for sure. Yeah, I can talk about how it's
• 28:45
  helped me with running as well. And this is probably going to
• 28:48
  scare people out of wanting to breathe talking about it, but
• 28:51
  like, my hands had actually like, like cramped up like that.
• 28:55
  Like as if you got the Stinger. Sure.
• 28:58
  Creep. Yep.
• 28:59
  What is this? I haven't had this southern
• 29:00
  bloom. It's right here.
• 29:01
  It's a it's a pills near. It's a great beer.
• 29:04
  It's from Local 3 Sun Brewery. Is it going to?
• 29:07
  Be drunk before my event. Where do you want it before you
• 29:10
  go? The breathing has been
• 29:14
  phenomenal. So for me, I've tried to
• 29:16
  incorporate it in my mornings because what I feel like it does
• 29:19
  is it like raises my it, it brings me to like my highest
• 29:24
  version of myself where I think your morning habits can dictate
• 29:30
  your entire day, especially if you're someone who's like not in
• 29:34
  the best place mentally. Things aren't going your way.
• 29:38
  Like you have more reasons to be upset than you do to to be happy
• 29:42
  or. Productive.
• 29:43
  Or productive and so while when you're unhappy, you're typically
• 29:46
  unproductive. And so addressing that at the
• 29:49
  root cause, which the breathing, what it does is it gets you to
• 29:53
  the mindset where like you tune everything else out.
• 29:56
  So you can't just tell somebody with a busy mind, especially an
• 29:59
  entrepreneur, to sit down and meditate.
• 30:01
  It's not going to happen. Your mind's wandering.
• 30:03
  You're thinking about 100 things at once.
• 30:05
  But if you go through this process of breathing and you get
• 30:09
  to that point where it's like you're just, everything's still
• 30:13
  in your mind. And then you don't even have to
• 30:15
  think about what it is you're trying to solve.
• 30:17
  But all of a sudden answers just start coming to us and it that's
• 30:21
  the craziest point. So you want to talk about my
• 30:23
  experience, the revelations that I've had?
• 30:25
  Yes. Dude for sure.
• 30:26
  From just sitting in that stillness and then something I'm
• 30:30
  not thinking about currently, like maybe last week's problem.
• 30:34
  Yeah, boom. An answer comes to me.
• 30:37
  Yeah. And I'm like, where's that come
• 30:40
  from? Yeah.
• 30:40
  Because it, it's, I still can't explain it.
• 30:43
  I'm still trying to figure this out now.
• 30:44
  So I think I'll tell you what I think and what I've heard.
• 30:51
  Cheers. First of all, with our phones
• 30:59
  and social media and podcasts and music in your car and
• 31:02
  screens, we experience non stomp stimulus.
• 31:06
  I don't think, I don't think our brains are meant to be
• 31:12
  responding to high intensity stimulants all the time.
• 31:17
  And that's our lives. Agree, right.
• 31:19
  And so when you're breathing or when you're stopping, I think
• 31:23
  that our breeds have developed in a sense to for, you know, to
• 31:27
  require some downtime and to require some time without
• 31:30
  stimulants. So you could like kind of rest
• 31:32
  and ponder and figure out your own thoughts and your own
• 31:36
  experiences, your own problems. You know, and like, it's like if
• 31:39
  you're jogging, no matter how good of a jogger you are, it's
• 31:43
  not going to be the same thing. And you know, it's not going to
• 31:45
  be something that's laying on the couch, you know, like, no
• 31:47
  matter how like, let's say you're a marathon sprinter and
• 31:49
  you're going for a four mile run, right?
• 31:51
  It's not hard for you, you know, it's not hard for you.
• 31:53
  You know, you're not like working too hard, but it's not
• 31:56
  the same thing as being still hanging out of bed, you know?
• 31:58
  And so I think that like it's like, I think that the breathing
• 32:01
  is the equivalent of giving our brain an opportunity to rest and
• 32:05
  process all the things that we haven't had a chance to to
• 32:09
  process because we've been surrounded, because we're
• 32:12
  surrounding ourselves with so many stimulants.
• 32:14
  Like I decided the other day, like I realize I'm spending, I'm
• 32:17
  listening to way too many podcasts, spending way too much
• 32:20
  time on Twitter. And I'm like, I just feel like
• 32:24
  my brain isn't even my brain. I feel like I'm just like a
• 32:27
  sponge for outside information. I don't have my own way of
• 32:30
  thinking right now, right? And as I'm talking about like
• 32:32
  delete the apps, yeah. So like give myself a day or two
• 32:35
  of just like break because our phones are very good at just
• 32:39
  sending us a notification. Like, hey, you've been going too
• 32:42
  long. You are like.
• 32:43
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are you up to?
• 32:44
  Come hang out here for 20 minutes.
• 32:46
  And half an hour and then you end up scrolling for much longer
• 32:49
  and it's like, yeah, that's. The So I've been much more
• 32:51
  conscious to like the last week even just to like have quiet
• 32:56
  time without somebody playing in the background or to have time
• 32:59
  to read or time to just like sit and write or a time to just go
• 33:03
  for a walk without anything even jumping down the block.
• 33:04
  You know, like, just like a couple of, you know, just like
• 33:06
  5-10 minutes and like you feel like you're getting your own
• 33:10
  life, you're getting autonomy back, you're getting your own
• 33:12
  perspective back, your own thoughts, your own, like
• 33:14
  whatever. Yeah, it gives you time in the
• 33:16
  process. It's very powerful.
• 33:17
  Thing. So what?
• 33:18
  What other realizations have you had?
• 33:21
  Well, with deep breathing, let's see.
• 33:26
  There we go. Different reading.
• 33:28
  I've, I, I had one the other day that I don't want to talk about
• 33:31
  it because I'm waiting to see if it plays out and if it does, I
• 33:34
  will that will be like my testimony for like how effective
• 33:39
  it is. Sweet because it was just like
• 33:41
  one of those things that popped in my head and it felt like it
• 33:43
  was the extension of the plan that I had in place and the next
• 33:48
  steps just came into mind. Sweet and even since then, a
• 33:53
  couple things have like popped up that have like gone along
• 33:56
  with them like it's just it's crazy.
• 33:59
  It's crazy and I'm I'm somebody who I'm spiritual, so I believe
• 34:05
  that, you know, I don't know, it's tough for me to say because
• 34:09
  I'm what do you think? Figure all this stuff.
• 34:11
  I want to hear. I think it opens you up to like
• 34:14
  a new like just a a higher frequency of yourself, like.
• 34:21
  Spirituality new to you You've always been spiritual.
• 34:25
  You've always been open to. Religious I was religious since
• 34:29
  high school and as a Christian was going to church when I got
• 34:33
  into the military. Had a couple experiences and a
• 34:38
  really close friend of mine who I'm still in touch with has kind
• 34:41
  of drawn me closer to my faith. Faith in God and however, once I
• 34:47
  got out of the military and this is maybe 8-9 months ago, I
• 34:57
  started kind of deconstructing my faith my.
• 35:00
  Religion. Is it like examining?
• 35:02
  It examining it a lot further, asking more questions, not
• 35:06
  taking scripture like it's like definitive, like it's like the
• 35:12
  only and and as soon as I started questioning things is
• 35:16
  when I started feeling like I was coming across more things
• 35:19
  that like really just kind of like threw me in a pit of
• 35:22
  despair. And it was like for for me it
• 35:24
  was. It was how do you know all this
• 35:27
  is bullshit kind of thing. Yeah, and I'm someone who I take
• 35:30
  everything with a grain of salt. I'm not just like, oh, I see
• 35:33
  this, I believe this, I see this, I believe this.
• 35:35
  Like, I, I was firm in my faith and I think that that's what
• 35:38
  threw me off so much. Is that now I'm confused in my
• 35:41
  faith? Yeah.
• 35:42
  Now I'm questioning things. Yeah.
• 35:44
  And so I still believe in in God.
• 35:47
  And the reason why is because I feel like I really had
• 35:50
  connections and things that I would give credit to to God for.
• 35:54
  So I know that that. Was real.
• 35:56
  It's because of your experience. Yeah, it's, I know it was real.
• 35:58
  Yeah. However, I just don't know if
• 36:00
  the stories that I was taught are all the certain fact.
• 36:04
  Yeah, dude. And so that's where I'm.
• 36:06
  Yeah, dude, that's that's where. I'm that's interesting.
• 36:09
  That's crazy, by the way. So it's funny you say because
• 36:11
  I've had in my life, I've had my religion, my religious
• 36:18
  perspective perspective shattered, like completely
• 36:23
  shattered probably 5 or 6 times. Really.
• 36:28
  Yeah. And I was learning about Judaism
• 36:31
  you on the last podcast, and it's so new to me being here in
• 36:35
  Florida. I was never really, there was 1
• 36:38
  I think, Jewish girl in my school, or at least that's what
• 36:40
  I knew about it. So I wasn't ever around it.
• 36:43
  And then find out there's a big population here in South
• 36:45
  Florida, and especially when I sold the house down the street.
• 36:49
  It was. Only families coming.
• 36:51
  Yeah, that's right. So I was learning about the
• 36:53
  holidays and the different things.
• 36:55
  And as a Christian, a lot of this stuff that like anything
• 36:59
  that doesn't fit into the boundaries is like, that's like
• 37:02
  devil worship, devil worship, like it doesn't make sense.
• 37:04
  Like it's all. And so I lived a lot of my life
• 37:07
  feeling like. Anyone that's outside of it is
• 37:11
  wrong, right? Exactly.
• 37:12
  Like it's this or that It's tribal.
• 37:14
  Yeah, exactly. It's very tribal.
• 37:16
  And I think religion and what people like is certainty and
• 37:21
  community. And I think there are two things
• 37:22
  that all religions provide. And so it's really just who you
• 37:25
  fit with. And so for me, it was like I no
• 37:28
  longer wanted to consider myself one single thing and have
• 37:33
  certainty through that. And so I was more like, OK, let
• 37:37
  me just start reading into these other religions.
• 37:41
  And not that I'm, like, giving too much focus into it, but I
• 37:46
  want to know. I want to know what Judaism, but
• 37:47
  I don't want to know what the Muslims believe.
• 37:49
  I want to know what? Like, yeah, I want to know why
• 37:53
  they believe that and where did it begin?
• 37:56
  And I have a whole notes page on the deconstruction of my
• 38:00
  religion videos and blogs and things I was reading.
• 38:04
  And I was. That's good.
• 38:05
  Like what led me to my decision where I'm at now?
• 38:09
  So I think that questions questions are the best thing
• 38:14
  that you can do. Yeah, and even my buddy who got
• 38:17
  me into Christianity told me like God doesn't want us to be
• 38:22
  surface level beliefs. We should question and we should
• 38:26
  like be firm in our faith because so why I started
• 38:30
  deconstructing is because I wanted to be able to answer what
• 38:33
  other people would question US want.
• 38:35
  And when I started looking into that, I started, yeah, started
• 38:39
  kind of wavering in my own like, hey, how can I be so certain?
• 38:44
  I have to believe what I'm taught if I want to be certain.
• 38:47
  And it's just not. Yeah, you can't be.
• 38:50
  I don't think you could be. Maybe you could be.
• 38:52
  And I don't know about it, but I, my own experience, in my
• 38:57
  experience, my understanding, it's interesting because you
• 39:01
  have the Bible, you have, you know, let's say the five books
• 39:03
  of Moses, which Jews consider the Torah.
• 39:07
  That's considered like, that's where you know, and then you
• 39:10
  have a couple of collections of other things like Psalms and
• 39:13
  stuff like that, but primarily the five books of Moses, right.
• 39:16
  And in the Talmud and, and shit, I forgot where I was going with
• 39:22
  this. I totally forgot.
• 39:24
  I lost my train of thought, but one of the thing, oh, so one of
• 39:29
  the things that, and it's funny because you, you have
• 39:32
  commentators from 1500 years ago, 2000 years ago, 2500 years
• 39:36
  ago. Let's say this is not a history
• 39:39
  book. This is not a textbook.
• 39:42
  This is truth. I don't know what that means.
• 39:44
  How could something be true and not like a history book, you
• 39:47
  know? And that's another.
• 39:48
  Religion saying it's not. True.
• 39:49
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 39:52
  You know, like I, I, I don't even know what that mean.
• 39:55
  So does truth mean that the ideals are true?
• 39:58
  Does truth mean that the values are true?
• 40:00
  Does truth mean that every, it's not a history book, so it
• 40:03
  doesn't mean that every sentence literally happened, does it?
• 40:06
  I mean, I don't know, you know, And so trying to figure out, and
• 40:08
  then you ask these questions. And first of all, people
• 40:11
  initially immediately get upset when they hear these questions,
• 40:14
  right? Because what you're doing is
• 40:15
  you're questioning the premise of which they've spent their
• 40:18
  entire life or a lot of their life, you know?
• 40:23
  Perceiving as the truth. And if that's wrong, what else
• 40:25
  is wrong, What else isn't true, or what else are you not right
• 40:28
  about? And it's too threatening to for
• 40:30
  a lot of people. A lot of people don't want to
• 40:32
  ask that question dude, rather just believe and accept it for
• 40:36
  what it is. Yeah.
• 40:38
  But I never thought about the the other side of the IS of the
• 40:41
  Israel Gaza conflict in my life until about a year ago, a year
• 40:45
  and a half ago. I never thought about in my
• 40:47
  life, you know, and I spent years in Israel, you know,
• 40:50
  collectively over the course of my life, you know, and I never
• 40:53
  knew there was more than one side and.
• 40:55
  What do you mean by that? Like outside of like Israeli
• 40:58
  side. Yeah, outside of the Israeli
• 40:59
  perspective, like my, I grew up with the perspective that Arabs
• 41:02
  just want to kill Jews and that no one wants anyone to be there.
• 41:04
  And Israel's the only democracy in the Middle East, which I
• 41:06
  guess they are. But like, that doesn't
• 41:08
  necessarily mean that like everyone's everyone's enemy
• 41:10
  necessarily, you know. And and how about this, you
• 41:13
  know, like, I know that Hamas is bad.
• 41:16
  I don't know Palestinians that are 17 years old and, you know,
• 41:21
  were born after Hamas was elected in one time 20 years
• 41:24
  ago, that they're necessarily bad people.
• 41:27
  They deserve to suffer. And I just say these things to
• 41:30
  that to my family. And I say this to my friends.
• 41:32
  They lose their shit. They lose their shit.
• 41:35
  You know, like how tribal can you, how tribal can you be that
• 41:38
  like the notion that someone might be innocent and that's a
• 41:42
  terrible thing, that they're getting killed is like a bad
• 41:45
  thing. Like how can you even like, and
• 41:48
  you know, and, and how can you even like argue with that, you
• 41:50
  know? And so, yeah, I feel like.
• 41:53
  Being in the military is a very similar what what you're feeling
• 41:57
  with that tribalism. I mean, you're in the military,
• 41:59
  you're supporting the USA and anybody that they're against,
• 42:03
  you're also against. And then you start kind of
• 42:06
  questioning like who's being the bully here?
• 42:10
  Or you know, the guy who's in China or Russia, you know, they
• 42:15
  might be just, they might have been forced in the military and
• 42:18
  that person and I, we might have very similar commonalities and
• 42:22
  they have a family as well. And so it's not just another
• 42:25
  face who you're going to take off the face of this planet.
• 42:30
  Like it's like there's if we weren't at war and I travelled
• 42:33
  and we met somewhere and like that and we spoke the same
• 42:36
  language, that's a good chance we could become.
• 42:38
  Friends for sure. But because my government is
• 42:40
  saying like you're bad and like you're all this and that they,
• 42:45
  they try to lead you to believe that and, and and push that and
• 42:48
  then you end up feeling that same hatred towards that
• 42:51
  totally. I see it in the same day, like,
• 42:53
  I mean, there's people who are who are with this whole Israeli
• 42:57
  and Gaza thing, like they're, they're pushing both sides.
• 43:00
  And it's like the media is going to spin it however they want to
• 43:04
  attract whoever they want for their.
• 43:05
  Yeah, sure. And so it's, it's very tough to
• 43:08
  try and decipher and find your own way in this world.
• 43:12
  Yeah. And I think that going through
• 43:14
  my decoupling of my faith led me to become more of my own self.
• 43:18
  Yeah. Because I was someone who is so
• 43:21
  conditioned to kind of just go through life through the
• 43:25
  guardrails and boundaries that everybody around me has put on.
• 43:29
  Like they say, you're the five people you hang out with, 10
• 43:32
  people you hang out with, whatever.
• 43:33
  And I really believe that's true because you're if you're not
• 43:38
  someone who stands firm in your own values and beliefs and knows
• 43:42
  where you want to go, you're going to fall for anything.
• 43:45
  You're going to follow the crowd.
• 43:46
  You're going to do what you feel like society wants you to do.
• 43:50
  And I think I lived so long in my life like that before I
• 43:55
  started realizing like I need to, I need to know who I am.
• 43:58
  And that's why I asked you if you reflect deeply reflect
• 44:01
  because I never did until I started going through this like
• 44:06
  phase. And now I take a lot of time to
• 44:10
  do breathing, to do reflecting, to try and be more intentional
• 44:14
  about life, to try and pick out those wins and learning lessons.
• 44:20
  Yeah, throughout my life. And there's a lot of, you dig up
• 44:24
  a lot of ugly things. Oh, sure.
• 44:26
  It sucks. It hurts.
• 44:27
  It hurts. It's.
• 44:28
  Really, really, really, really unpleasant.
• 44:31
  Especially because you have that own initial instinct to doubt
• 44:36
  it, you know? Like I know that can't be true
• 44:38
  like. But can't like get.
• 44:39
  A tiny, tiny words that I get like can't it not be true?
• 44:42
  And like maybe it is true and it's like, no, you can't be
• 44:45
  right. Maybe it is right.
• 44:46
  Like all of a sudden, like you don't even know.
• 44:48
  Instinct is all state. Yeah, right.
• 44:49
  Sit there and. It's not fun.
• 44:50
  That's why a lot of people don't do it, because it's hard.
• 44:53
  Because it's really, really, really hard.
• 44:55
  Yeah. Yeah, I, I, I can't, I can't, I
• 44:59
  can't encourage writing enough. Writing helps so much.
• 45:02
  Just like steer me, you know, data if you want.
• 45:05
  I don't even look at them. Like I don't even look back on
• 45:07
  them sometimes. Like I just recently, a couple
• 45:10
  months ago, I looked back at some of the writing I did in
• 45:11
  like 2019-2020. I've been doing it for some
• 45:15
  time, yeah. Yeah, I don't even recognize why
• 45:17
  I was. That's the crazy thing.
• 45:19
  Even though I. Don't even know what.
• 45:20
  I can't even get my head to understand how I was writing,
• 45:23
  what I was writing, what I was going through.
• 45:25
  And it's so that's why it's so important to do that.
• 45:28
  And I do you know, have you ever read Green Lights by Matthew
• 45:32
  McConaughey? No, he wrote.
• 45:34
  Matthew McConaughey wrote a book.
• 45:34
  Matthew McConaughey. Wrote a book and my fiance is
• 45:37
  the one who told me to read it. Is it good?
• 45:39
  It's so good. It's literally just like he
• 45:41
  journaled for years and years and years.
• 45:43
  And a lot of those he put in his book he knows like the photocopy
• 45:47
  of his journal and his stories throughout.
• 45:50
  And he's talking about how you look back and you see those
• 45:53
  green lights throughout your life.
• 45:55
  Like you realize where those green lights were awesome.
• 45:59
  And I was talking about this the other day with a friend, and I
• 46:03
  just started journaling. I started doing the breathing
• 46:06
  and meditating, reflecting and journaling.
• 46:10
  And I was realizing that I was really only journaling on the
• 46:13
  bad days, like when I'm like. That makes sense.
• 46:15
  Down and I just want something to get off my mind.
• 46:18
  I go and I journal it how I'm feeling.
• 46:20
  And what's going on? That's human, by the way.
• 46:22
  It is, but that was also starting to I would journal a
• 46:25
  couple days on the good days and I realized like I normally don't
• 46:29
  go back and read them, but if I did, those encouraging days
• 46:34
  really re encouraged me because I was reading those my own
• 46:37
  voice, seeing the hope that was in me.
• 46:40
  It's like it's like if you could tell your younger self, yes, a
• 46:43
  lesson, you can just go back and like talk to them.
• 46:46
  You hear from yourself, whether it's a week ago or two years
• 46:49
  ago, you're like, OK, I did do what I wanted to do back then.
• 46:54
  Like I, you know, I had hope and like, I things like that.
• 46:57
  But if you're only really writing down the bad days, you
• 47:00
  know, it's not always going to give you that encouragement that
• 47:04
  you're looking for, but it always gives you Peace of Mind.
• 47:07
  I think when you're done, just. Yeah, of course.
• 47:10
  Paper. And it makes you feel better.
• 47:12
  You're venting. You're venting.
• 47:13
  And by the way, that's why a lot of people, it's funny, I don't,
• 47:16
  I don't know if it's the case. I don't know if as many people
• 47:20
  would necessarily need therapy if they had close collection of
• 47:25
  friends or an ability to express what's going on in their head to
• 47:28
  themselves and they had those like skills.
• 47:30
  I think that just having like a couple of close friends that you
• 47:34
  could have like a very real and open and honest conversation
• 47:37
  with it or an and, or probably and not or, and the ability to
• 47:42
  like write to yourself, a journal, express yourself.
• 47:44
  A lot of times a therapist is just a sounding board, like
• 47:49
  they're just like, they're just someone that you could talk to.
• 47:51
  And there's no other person on the planet that you can tell.
• 47:53
  You can't tell your mom, you can't tell your dad, you can't
• 47:55
  tell your siblings, you can't tell your friends.
• 47:56
  It's embarrassing. You don't have anyone to talk
• 47:58
  to, so you sit across with somebody and you just spill.
• 48:01
  And you're just releasing that negative end.
• 48:03
  Yeah. Yeah, you're just releasing it.
• 48:04
  And that alone makes you feel better.
• 48:05
  Yeah. Which is something I never knew.
• 48:08
  Yeah. The military allowed me or
• 48:12
  encouraged me to suppress my emotions.
• 48:15
  And so coming out of high school and we talked about this, I was
• 48:19
  like more introvert. I never learned to express my
• 48:23
  emotions. I never learned to fully express
• 48:25
  myself. And being in the military kind
• 48:28
  of sometimes naturally would allow me to do that.
• 48:33
  And so I think it was a big part of, like, why I felt the way I
• 48:36
  was in the recent history. But it's because I wasn't fully
• 48:41
  expressing myself. And it wasn't until I started
• 48:44
  reflecting and journaling that I realized, like, the things I
• 48:48
  enjoy doing aren't. I haven't pieced them into my
• 48:50
  life. I've been so focused on work.
• 48:52
  Yeah, that when things spill out like over like, and I'm like
• 48:57
  argumentative, whatever, it's really just because I haven't
• 48:59
  taken time to like release that, let it go and, you know, talk to
• 49:04
  somebody about it, like. So I'm so impressed.
• 49:06
  It's awesome. It's such a, it's such a, such a
• 49:08
  great place to be and it's such a hard place to get to.
• 49:13
  And once you're like this far in, once you've, once you've
• 49:18
  tasted it, you can't go without it.
• 49:21
  You know, like once you realize that like this is like a
• 49:24
  necessary part of being a healthy person, it's like, it's
• 49:27
  very hard to go back to not being like that.
• 49:29
  It's very hard to go back to. It's very, it's like you don't
• 49:31
  feel good being unintentional. You don't feel good, you know,
• 49:35
  just letting the days pass by and like not being aware of
• 49:37
  yourself, like right. Once you know that like it's so
• 49:40
  good for you and so healthy and like productive.
• 49:43
  You don't want to not be like that.
• 49:45
  You know, it's like the fact that you're here, it the odds of
• 49:49
  you going back here are pretty low, I imagine, as opposed to
• 49:53
  the odds of you going here are way higher, you know, or like
• 49:57
  you know, like you only building now.
• 49:58
  It's just a foundation. Yeah.
• 50:00
  And I think through that reflecting, it's kind of giving
• 50:02
  me the time and space to decide on what my path forward is, that
• 50:07
  what it's going to look like, and it's going to be based off
• 50:10
  of who I am, what I value, no longer what I feel like society
• 50:15
  wants me as. So.
• 50:16
  What do you think now? So what?
• 50:18
  So, So what are some passions that you think that are popping
• 50:21
  up now in your head? We'll have to do that on Part 3.
• 50:24
  Yeah, whatever I find out because I'm, I'm really, I'm
• 50:30
  fully immersed in this phase of like, OK, my job is what's
• 50:36
  paying the bills and, and getting me by.
• 50:39
  I like it and it, I'm good at it and but it doesn't fulfill me.
• 50:43
  And I think too many people are willing to just allow that to be
• 50:47
  their life. Like I OK, it pays the bills, it
• 50:50
  doesn't fulfill me. I'm unhappy and blah, blah.
• 50:52
  But what if in that same time you had a plan to get out of
• 50:57
  that? Like what if you could start
• 51:01
  doing something on the side little by little, like finding
• 51:04
  the hobbies that you'd like so that your life isn't every day
• 51:08
  you're waking up and it's unenjoyable or you're just
• 51:11
  getting through. Because I think that's why, you
• 51:13
  know, most of our days we don't enjoy.
• 51:15
  We don't want to go to work. We don't want to do what we want
• 51:17
  to do. And then we stay in front of our
• 51:20
  phones, TV, entertainment, all that, all the consumers.
• 51:25
  And then you wake up in 10 years and you're like, like, I'm 30 or
• 51:30
  I'm 50. Like what happened?
• 51:31
  Like. And it's getting faster and
• 51:33
  faster the more we involve technology.
• 51:36
  And so who knows? I think a passion of mine is
• 51:39
  just spreading this knowledge. Like, yeah, it's fun.
• 51:42
  It's so new to me, but it's been so impactful to me that I want
• 51:46
  more people to know about it. And I well.
• 51:48
  We'll do as many podcasts as you want to do it anytime you want.
• 51:51
  Yeah, just keep. We'll keep on.
• 51:52
  We'll keep on rolling that if they're fun.
• 51:55
  I'll be honest, one of the things that has been life
• 52:00
  changing night and day for me has been Toastmasters.
• 52:03
  Have you ever heard of that? I've heard the name.
• 52:05
  Actually it's. Not a breakfast club, I promise,
• 52:08
  but it's it's a speaking club, OK.
• 52:10
  And it's a big reason why I'm even willing to do this podcast
• 52:14
  with you because being an introvert, not being confident
• 52:16
  in my voice, all of that took a change for the best once I
• 52:21
  joined Toastmasters. OK.
• 52:23
  And so my experience with Toastmasters when I was 2019,
• 52:26
  I'm in Korea and there is I'm in the military and there's a
• 52:31
  newcomers briefing. So when I first got there, I had
• 52:34
  to sit in this auditorium and hear from these different
• 52:38
  speakers talking about their jobs and what how it affects us
• 52:41
  for the one year time we're in Korea.
• 52:43
  You can't drink off based. You have to do that.
• 52:45
  You know, there's all these rules and they want, is that a?
• 52:47
  Role you can't drink off based. Well, you can't have an open
• 52:50
  container and they tell you like the the medical team will be
• 52:53
  like 3 drinks per hour this or that like you like there's like
• 52:57
  they try to tell you how you should drink to not be like,
• 53:01
  yeah, I gotcha that. Yeah.
• 53:03
  So the tables later in my time there, I was now one of the
• 53:10
  people who had to come present for my job.
• 53:12
  Nice. And I never public speak like it
• 53:15
  was it was not a thing for me. So and I was super nervous about
• 53:18
  it. Like when they was it would come
• 53:19
  up, Hey, who's going to go do the no comers brief for us this
• 53:22
  way? Can you?
• 53:23
  Describe the anxiety you felt. Dude, dude, you feel in your
• 53:26
  chest, you feel in the back. I feel the bottom of my throat
• 53:29
  sometimes, you know, like. My hands are sweaty, back is
• 53:33
  sweaty. I'm like, my heart is you feel
• 53:36
  about the thumping. God, my heart is thumping and
• 53:39
  I'm just like reciting what I'm going to say.
• 53:41
  So here's how it went down. I got told I dodged it too many
• 53:45
  times and now I have to step up and do the briefing.
• 53:48
  It's me and one other guy and we have a slideshow for what we
• 53:53
  have to go present on. And it's probably about 150
• 53:57
  people in this auditorium. And, and I'm sitting there, I
• 54:01
  know I'm up next. And so my heart's dropping more,
• 54:04
  more and more kills me. And I'm running.
• 54:06
  I don't need to know everything because I have slides, right?
• 54:09
  But I need to be able to introduce myself, right?
• 54:13
  So I go up there. I'm Staff Sergeant Lauer, right?
• 54:17
  And the guy beside me, I say, good morning, everybody, I'm
• 54:21
  Staff Sergeant Lyons. And this is Staff Sergeant
• 54:23
  Lauer. And then I mean, I'm Staff
• 54:26
  Sergeant Lauer. This is Staff Sergeant Lyons.
• 54:28
  Instead of just letting it go because no one would know, I
• 54:31
  corrected it and I immediately blacked out turn turn my back to
• 54:36
  the crowd because I realized how bad I just messed up.
• 54:39
  And I'm like profusely sweating down my back just reading slides
• 54:43
  and like, dude, I totally. Harem, I understand where you're
• 54:47
  coming from. I couldn't.
• 54:48
  Wait to get out of there. I was so embarrassed.
• 54:50
  Getting your name wrong is the worst thing.
• 54:52
  It happens, dude. I had like 3 things to say and I
• 54:55
  swear. To God.
• 54:56
  I couldn't even get my name right.
• 54:59
  So I used to so my name, you know, I'm a frien and I
• 55:04
  sometimes go by Effie and you know, and so and I'm not at all
• 55:10
  my family. Hirshman's are notorious for
• 55:12
  folding under pressure. We're bad pressure people.
• 55:14
  We're great when there's no pressure.
• 55:15
  We're terrible under pressure. And I introduced myself to new
• 55:19
  people in high school and I was going back and forth between a
• 55:22
  fry and Effie. I'm like, nice to meet you, like
• 55:24
  say anything. I was like, oh fucking can you
• 55:28
  get my name right? Dude, I sound like an idiot.
• 55:30
  The. Same boat then?
• 55:31
  Yeah, dude. So after that experience, I had
• 55:33
  a buddy come up to me. He's like, hey man, you want to
• 55:35
  join Toastmasters with me? I'm like Toastmasters.
• 55:38
  No, I I'm not joining a breakfast club.
• 55:40
  What is that? And he's like, it's a public
• 55:43
  speaking crew. And I said, dude, dude, don't
• 55:45
  ever bring up public speaking to me again.
• 55:47
  I don't want anything to do with it.
• 55:49
  I'm never doing it again. I, I had such a bad experience.
• 55:53
  And this is 2019. I moved here in 2022.
• 55:58
  And so about a year ago, it felt like one of those things that
• 56:03
  just like oddly like popped into my mind was like Toastmasters.
• 56:08
  And I know that it's a global thing.
• 56:10
  You could find, you could skip a stone and hit a club around you
• 56:13
  because they're all around and it's very low, cheap membership.
• 56:17
  And I reached out to two clubs. One got back to me and I was
• 56:21
  like, this is through a series of things.
• 56:24
  I was like, this is like a calling, Like I need to go check
• 56:27
  it out. I need to set aside my worries
• 56:29
  and go check it out. And from the first day, they
• 56:33
  made me get up and speak. And it was just like, how do you
• 56:36
  like the club? Tell us a little bit about
• 56:38
  yourself. Like, they were encouraging me.
• 56:40
  And I was like, this is what I came for, to like, yeah, work
• 56:44
  out this anxiety and this fear in front of a crowded fear of,
• 56:47
  like, my own. Skills that you could like,
• 56:50
  Would you? Would you, Would you?
• 56:51
  What are some tangible skills that you could pass along, you
• 56:54
  think? Using your body language speaks
• 56:57
  more than 50% of your message. Never knew it, never knew it.
• 57:02
  Your tonality. Emphasizing learning.
• 57:05
  I'm a fast talker naturally because I feel like no one's
• 57:08
  listening to me. I'm speaking confident, huge.
• 57:12
  If I'm not confident in my voice, I don't think anyone else
• 57:14
  is listening or I'm afraid I'm going to cut off.
• 57:17
  So I speak through everything quick, learning to take it
• 57:20
  slower, use a little bit of pause, use my body gestures,
• 57:25
  pacing. And then also how to frame what
• 57:28
  you're going to say with like a setup, setting it up, having
• 57:32
  your introduction, your like meat and potatoes of it and
• 57:35
  having a conclusion. Every message should have a
• 57:39
  message. To her, to it you.
• 57:40
  Know it should have a meaning to it.
• 57:42
  So even for somebody who's already confident in their voice
• 57:45
  and is like, oh, I can go speak on a stage, no worries.
• 57:48
  Not to scare at all. They'll go up and they'll
• 57:50
  Babble, they'll just say a bunch of things and then there's not
• 57:52
  much context or like much behind it.
• 57:55
  And I think that even those people can really benefit going
• 57:58
  through something like this. So for me, I've just become more
• 58:02
  comfortable. Like I've become more
• 58:04
  comfortable in my own skin and find some voice.
• 58:07
  I feel much better and I've learned so many different
• 58:11
  techniques along the way, and it's only been a year.
• 58:14
  Yeah. And I learned, dude, you're
• 58:15
  gonna. Be dude, you're gonna be great
• 58:16
  at this, man. Just give it dude.
• 58:17
  I'm excited to see where you're gonna head with this because
• 58:20
  what you're doing from at least from the outside looking in, I
• 58:24
  don't know what the inside looks like right from the outside
• 58:26
  looking in the things that you're doing for yourself, for
• 58:30
  your development, which is questioning your premises that
• 58:34
  you were raised on. I think it's important not even
• 58:36
  to deviate from them, just to question them, just to be like,
• 58:39
  where did he come from? How do I know about it?
• 58:41
  And then yeah, exactly. So for example, right.
• 58:43
  Like I'm, I'm religious and I've always asked.
• 58:47
  I, I, I, I've actually, it's not true.
• 58:49
  I've never thought to ask a question until one of my friends
• 58:53
  asked me like, why do you do what you do?
• 58:55
  I was in, I was in Israel for the year, I was taking a year
• 58:57
  between high school and college. And I had a friend who's like,
• 59:00
  why do you do Judaism? And I was like, I don't know.
• 59:06
  And I was like, I literally, I was like, I, I got defensive
• 59:09
  before I even realized the answer is I don't know.
• 59:11
  And then I was like, because my parents taught me that it's the
• 59:15
  right thing to do. And like, it has to be right.
• 59:17
  Like, you know, and he's like, so because your parents say it's
• 59:20
  right, that makes it right. Your parents tell you to jump
• 59:22
  off the roof. It's the right thing to do.
• 59:23
  If your parents tell you to, you know, do whatever.
• 59:24
  Like, so that's like, oh, shit. I was like, why do I do what I
• 59:28
  do? Yeah.
• 59:29
  And that and that. And that was like the beginning.
• 59:33
  But but I was always looking to understand I wasn't so there.
• 59:39
  I think there are people that their instinct is to look for
• 59:41
  reasons to not do things. And then there's instincts to
• 59:44
  understand why you do what you do, right?
• 59:47
  And those are two fundamentally different things, right?
• 59:49
  Like my dad asked me to do something I don't like, want to
• 59:52
  deal with a controller around the house, go to the DMV and get
• 59:55
  my car re registered or go take my car for an inspection, right?
• 59:57
  I don't, I will think of a breakdown analytically, reasons
• 1:00:01
  to not go, oh, I don't have time.
• 1:00:03
  I got my kids, I got blah, blah, blah.
• 1:00:04
  I can't do this now. I got work to do that.
• 1:00:08
  Those are reasons to not do something.
• 1:00:11
  And then you or you can have my dad asked me to do this and try
• 1:00:15
  to understand what he's saying. He's saying is I'm paying your
• 1:00:18
  bills. I'm going to work to put food,
• 1:00:20
  to put food on the table. I don't have the time at the
• 1:00:22
  moment to do this and I've spent 30 years raising you.
• 1:00:27
  Would you mind taking 20 minutes of your time to please go ahead
• 1:00:30
  and and and make my life a little easier if you don't mind
• 1:00:33
  after, you know, after all this like, Oh shit, I'm happy to do
• 1:00:36
  that. Right.
• 1:00:37
  That sounds awesome. You know, it's a good it's it's
• 1:00:39
  it's understanding why you're doing something as opposed to
• 1:00:41
  look, as opposed to reasons to avoid them.
• 1:00:44
  So I think my lot. So there are times when people
• 1:00:46
  will say, oh, it started questioning things and wondering
• 1:00:48
  things. A lot of times it's about
• 1:00:51
  looking to throw off that responsibility or to like avoid
• 1:00:54
  that burden. But the people that like, you'll
• 1:00:57
  meet a lot of people that will question things and they seem to
• 1:01:01
  cut out better and stronger and more ferociously deep and like
• 1:01:06
  real and authentic. And you're like, how did you
• 1:01:08
  even get there? And you're like, because I
• 1:01:11
  questioned everything. But like I, and I want to
• 1:01:13
  understand why I do what I do or how to, how to go about it.
• 1:01:16
  And some things might change, but a lot, a lot will probably
• 1:01:19
  be the same. You know, I was on fire for
• 1:01:22
  Christianity. Like I was going to church, I
• 1:01:25
  was going to like Christian businessmen's groups, everything
• 1:01:27
  I was trying to involve myself with because I, I know that each
• 1:01:32
  time I moved from base to base in the military, I was able to
• 1:01:34
  select a new group of friends. I was able to like, I always
• 1:01:38
  believed who you're around is like a big influence in your
• 1:01:40
  life. And so as I went through
• 1:01:42
  seasons, I would try and bring around people that I knew were
• 1:01:46
  good influences. And being here, I was on, I was
• 1:01:50
  all in on my faith and I really wanted to absorb myself with
• 1:01:53
  that. And it was when I started
• 1:01:56
  questioning that that I was like, you almost feel guilty for
• 1:02:00
  questioning and like you're. Fortunately, just guilt is the
• 1:02:04
  most common form of guilt in the history of of the universe.
• 1:02:09
  Dude, it's tough. Yeah, Yeah, it's tough.
• 1:02:12
  How do you grapple with guilt? I'm learning a lot about just
• 1:02:18
  like self forgiveness and not trying to like you can't change
• 1:02:23
  the past. I saw something recently that
• 1:02:26
  was like so simple but so profound and impactful.
• 1:02:31
  It was like a little chart that shows like OK, like yes or no,
• 1:02:35
  and it goes to the next things. It's like, is this something you
• 1:02:39
  can change? Yes.
• 1:02:40
  OK, make the change, figure it out.
• 1:02:43
  Like do something. About it, Don't sweat it.
• 1:02:44
  No, well then don't let it bother you and bog you down.
• 1:02:48
  Like it's, it's so simple, but it's so hard to follow cases
• 1:02:52
  because we want to just ponder and let things consume us.
• 1:02:56
  But in reality, it's like, if you can't do anything about it,
• 1:03:00
  what's worth letting it just ruin your day?
• 1:03:03
  And like. I'm pretty good about that.
• 1:03:05
  It's it took me it took me years off things that I know that I
• 1:03:09
  can control even if they bother me right?
• 1:03:11
  Like I don't even want to I you know if.
• 1:03:16
  There's things how to manage your emotions too, like it's a
• 1:03:19
  big part of that I think. Yeah, well, I think it's what?
• 1:03:22
  So the example of the metaphor that I've always heard of is
• 1:03:25
  that like the forest and the tree metaphor you've heard that,
• 1:03:29
  that if you're looking at if you're looking at a forest, you
• 1:03:31
  can't focus on the specific trees.
• 1:03:33
  You see the beauty of the big picture.
• 1:03:35
  But when you're zooming into a particular tree, you can't see
• 1:03:37
  the whole, the whole forest, right?
• 1:03:39
  And there are points in life where you have to focus on the
• 1:03:41
  tree. And there are points in life,
• 1:03:42
  you have to focus on the forest. You know, there are points in
• 1:03:45
  life where like you're like, this particular moment sucks,
• 1:03:50
  but I have a forest of my life that is amazing, you know, And
• 1:03:54
  so I'm going to take a step back and bask in the whole picture or
• 1:03:59
  this is a particular moment that's particularly important
• 1:04:03
  and beautiful. And I want to zoom in on this
• 1:04:06
  experience. You know, like the day I got
• 1:04:09
  married, everyone says their weddings are like blackout
• 1:04:12
  events and not just because of drinking because, you know, like
• 1:04:15
  everything happens so fascinating to Russian, like,
• 1:04:17
  and I got married relatively late to compared to the rest of
• 1:04:20
  my world, my friends, the Orthodox Jewish world, you know,
• 1:04:24
  guys. And then you typically end up
• 1:04:25
  being married by 22 to 25. And I got married at 26, right?
• 1:04:29
  So I was like towards the end, towards the later peak of my
• 1:04:31
  friends and I was like, and I didn't care when I got engaged.
• 1:04:35
  I was like, I didn't care about anything.
• 1:04:38
  I'd get married in my backyard with a couple of hot dogs and
• 1:04:40
  hamburgers. I can get married in the hall.
• 1:04:42
  I don't care. I just, you know, like I, I, I,
• 1:04:45
  I'm excited to spend my life with my wife.
• 1:04:47
  And I was like my wedding day. I just want to be present.
• 1:04:50
  I just want that to be the tree. I just want to be able to like
• 1:04:53
  have this tree where I like look at my wedding day as it could
• 1:04:56
  day that I was extra present. Yeah.
• 1:04:59
  You want to be able to relive it in your mind over and over
• 1:05:01
  again. Yeah.
• 1:05:02
  Out of feeling like a just a like.
• 1:05:04
  A blackout. Yeah.
• 1:05:05
  You know, like a rush, like, just like a blank rush of like
• 1:05:08
  everything. And then and then you have
• 1:05:11
  moments. And I actually said this to my
• 1:05:12
  wife. I said this to my wife when he
• 1:05:13
  first got married, too. I was like, our life is going
• 1:05:15
  to. We're going to have like these
• 1:05:16
  moments that are not fun or pleasant.
• 1:05:18
  Like we're going to fight. We're going to have like hard
• 1:05:21
  weeks, months or even years over the next until, until one of us
• 1:05:26
  were dead, right? Or God forbid, something else,
• 1:05:28
  you know? But as I get to remember that
• 1:05:32
  these are only like sentences in a paragraph in a chapter in a
• 1:05:36
  book. That's our relationship.
• 1:05:38
  Serious of. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:05:40
  That's that. That's our life.
• 1:05:41
  That's our relationship. And I was like, so and I was
• 1:05:44
  like, and and so we have to and and you know, we bicker, you
• 1:05:47
  know, but like we don't get into like these huge fights where we
• 1:05:50
  don't talk for days on edge or anything like that because both
• 1:05:53
  of us like more good about saying this is a sentence in a
• 1:05:59
  paragraph in a chapter, you know, then like.
• 1:06:03
  Everything. Will fall into its place and
• 1:06:05
  we'll work it out and we'll make it happen.
• 1:06:06
  But like, and right now, it's not easy.
• 1:06:08
  Right now, this sentence is a particularly unpleasant sentence
• 1:06:12
  to speak or swallow or deal with.
• 1:06:15
  But at the end of the day, it's part of the story.
• 1:06:18
  And like, the overall story is amazing, you know?
• 1:06:20
  And so that was really awesome. Yeah, At the end of the day, I'd
• 1:06:23
  say that intentionality in your relationship is very important
• 1:06:30
  because it's important to be the relationship together.
• 1:06:35
  And also your individuals, like you guys have hobbies and
• 1:06:38
  interests. And I think as you grow through
• 1:06:41
  life, you go through different seasons, you have different
• 1:06:44
  interests, which if you're not intentional, then those
• 1:06:48
  interests will help, will make you grow apart.
• 1:06:50
  And that's why we have such a high divorce rate.
• 1:06:52
  But if you're intentional to realize like, hey, like you
• 1:06:55
  change in this way, I change in this way, but we have grounded
• 1:06:57
  values and things like, that's why values are so wow.
• 1:07:01
  They so happy to say that to you.
• 1:07:03
  Because people change. I'm not the same person I was in
• 1:07:06
  the beginning of my relationship with my fiance.
• 1:07:07
  She's not the same person she was.
• 1:07:09
  But I still love her and I love watching her grow.
• 1:07:13
  And you have to, you have to love the person that you met and
• 1:07:17
  the, and the person that you know they're becoming.
• 1:07:20
  And so that's why I think it's important because you know that
• 1:07:22
  people are going to change. They all do.
• 1:07:24
  But it's it's having that communication and that
• 1:07:28
  intentionality that helps you kind of change together and, and
• 1:07:31
  ride the wave of life together. And I think also having the same
• 1:07:39
  shared sense of goals because like, for example, if your goal
• 1:07:44
  let's, you know, different people, different goals, some
• 1:07:46
  people do outreach, some people are goals to raise a happy
• 1:07:49
  family, you know, raise kids and like when their marriage is hard
• 1:07:54
  and their relationship is not great and whatever, we're going
• 1:07:57
  through a rough patch, What's going to keep you under the same
• 1:08:00
  roof? What's going to keep you guys
• 1:08:01
  together? It's going to be your shared
• 1:08:03
  goal. So you're going to be like,
• 1:08:04
  listen, at the moment it's hard with you.
• 1:08:06
  It's hard, you know, but but you and I both are invested
• 1:08:10
  enormously in the same thing. So like, what do we do to make
• 1:08:14
  this work because both of us want the same outcome.
• 1:08:16
  Like I, I think that you have to have, I think that having a
• 1:08:21
  mutual goal keeps people honest. Like in business, right?
• 1:08:24
  If you have a business and the, and the mutual goal is for both
• 1:08:26
  of you guys to support your families, then both of you guys
• 1:08:28
  are going to hustle the same amount.
• 1:08:30
  You know, if one guy has three kids or five kids and one kid is
• 1:08:33
  is single and has a dog, the amount that one guy's going to
• 1:08:36
  work is very different than the other guy's going to work.
• 1:08:39
  And resent, resentfulness is probably going to build up at
• 1:08:42
  its own point. And like, you know, but like if
• 1:08:44
  they both have the same kind of listen, our goal is to reach X
• 1:08:49
  amount, you know, to reach people, to make the world a
• 1:08:51
  better fit place, then it doesn't make a difference how
• 1:08:53
  much money you have or not. Like you feel like you're
• 1:08:56
  accomplishing your particular goal that you're trying to
• 1:08:58
  accomplish. And if your goal with your
• 1:08:59
  spouse is to raise families to make the world better, is to
• 1:09:03
  both, you know, travel, you know, whatever it is, you know,
• 1:09:06
  like there has to be something above just like how I feel about
• 1:09:10
  you right now. Right, right.
• 1:09:12
  That's why I think too many people, the divorce rate is high
• 1:09:15
  because we have too many. People, it's like 60%, yeah.
• 1:09:18
  It's crazy. It's probably up to 60% now.
• 1:09:21
  Too many people, they just, they're not willing to have
• 1:09:23
  those hard conversations. They're willing to base solely
• 1:09:27
  off the feeling in the moment. Or relationships are good or
• 1:09:30
  they die, or you stop. Investing in it.
• 1:09:32
  You stop investing in it. I think that's a huge thing
• 1:09:34
  that's hard. And I'm somebody who's very like
• 1:09:39
  self discovery, self improvement, always like looking
• 1:09:42
  on ways I can change myself and sometimes I think maybe I bring
• 1:09:45
  that too much into my relationship on like ways that
• 1:09:48
  we could do better. But it is important to reflect
• 1:09:54
  and say, hey, like just to check in, like, hey, how, how are we
• 1:09:57
  doing? Like how, what could I do
• 1:09:59
  better? Because maybe I'm doing
• 1:10:02
  something else. I'm minding my own business, do
• 1:10:04
  whatever. And maybe I'm not picking up on
• 1:10:06
  that like you're unhappy or in that in your own way or
• 1:10:08
  whatever. And so it's good to to have
• 1:10:10
  those. Fun.
• 1:10:11
  Those checks are checking. Yeah.
• 1:10:11
  And they, they call it. My wife describes it as as
• 1:10:15
  dating through marriage, but like you're continuing to date.
• 1:10:18
  Like when you're dating someone and you're on your third date or
• 1:10:20
  fifth day or 10th day, you're like, you know, you're like, So
• 1:10:23
  what do you think? You know, how do you feel about
• 1:10:25
  this or how you feeling today? You know, like you stop asking
• 1:10:27
  those questions eventually, you know, and you're like, you
• 1:10:29
  shouldn't like you have to like you have to put effort into
• 1:10:32
  continue to do that. But it's not natural, you know?
• 1:10:34
  I know because you get so comfortable.
• 1:10:36
  Yes. And you take it for granted and
• 1:10:37
  it's complacent and it's. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:41
  And also you start to take, I think the other thing is when
• 1:10:44
  you take a relationship for granted, you invest more in the
• 1:10:46
  relationships that aren't for granted, Right.
• 1:10:49
  So like, why do we treat siblings so much worse than we
• 1:10:52
  treat our friends Friends, Yeah. Or why do we treat our, you
• 1:10:55
  know, our our teachers better than we treat it with more
• 1:10:58
  respect in our parents? You know, it's because these are
• 1:11:00
  relationships that like, you know that if you don't invest in
• 1:11:04
  it, it'll fall apart with a parent or with a sibling or with
• 1:11:07
  a spouse that you married for 30 years.
• 1:11:10
  You know, they're not going anywhere.
• 1:11:11
  You know that nothing's happening.
• 1:11:12
  You guys are all blood. You guys are all family, You
• 1:11:14
  guys are all whatever. So like, OK, you know, like I
• 1:11:16
  went, I, I have some amount of effort.
• 1:11:17
  I want to invest that effort in a relationship that I'm not sure
• 1:11:19
  will pan out. But you can lose those
• 1:11:22
  relations. You can lose those you know,
• 1:11:23
  relationship with your siblings, with your parents, or with your
• 1:11:25
  spouse. God forbid you know and like you
• 1:11:27
  don't want. That place in for sure, yeah.
• 1:11:31
  I totally did not imagine this conversation was going to go
• 1:11:33
  this way, but I love it. This is fun.
• 1:11:35
  We've had a variety of topics now.
• 1:11:38
  Last time was so much about my career.
• 1:11:40
  This was really in depth on just like life, because I think this
• 1:11:46
  is one of those things I was talking about that I was just, I
• 1:11:51
  wasn't having this connection with a lot of people.
• 1:11:54
  So I appreciate just being here and and being able to.
• 1:11:57
  Like that's the point of this man.
• 1:11:58
  That's the point of this podcast. 1 of this podcast is
• 1:12:00
  for like legit, legitimate, real thoughts and conversation and to
• 1:12:05
  encourage people to have them themselves.
• 1:12:06
  Like that's like the goal. The goal is to like it'll like.
• 1:12:10
  So it started actually, I had a friend of mine, David Izzo is
• 1:12:12
  his name and I spent the gap year with him and we were
• 1:12:19
  friends kind of lost touch, kind of got back in touch every now
• 1:12:22
  and then. The beginning of COVID in 2019,
• 1:12:24
  I was living in Seattle and he actually, I went to ask you
• 1:12:26
  about California after, but and he and he texted and I saw that
• 1:12:30
  he posted that he started a podcast called Don't worry about
• 1:12:34
  it. And it was a mental health
• 1:12:35
  podcast. And he started with like
• 1:12:38
  everyone does with a group of his friends that he started
• 1:12:40
  recording episodes with. And I knew all these guys and I
• 1:12:43
  did not know any of the stuff they were talking about, You
• 1:12:47
  know, they were talking about their insecurities, they're
• 1:12:48
  talking about their anxieties, they're talking about, you know,
• 1:12:50
  the challenges they're having with, you know, and I mean, I've
• 1:12:53
  been with these guys throughout these phase in their lives and I
• 1:12:56
  didn't even know that they're going through this.
• 1:12:57
  I just thought they were these like 1 dimensional, you know,
• 1:12:59
  whatever, you know, douchebags see whatever it was, you know,
• 1:13:02
  and, and I was like, whoa, there's so much more to so many
• 1:13:06
  people and I had no idea. But it also gives you permission
• 1:13:09
  to acknowledge that, like, life is hard and like, it's OK that
• 1:13:15
  life is hard and like, it's hard to make your way through.
• 1:13:17
  And like, the more that you know that other people are going
• 1:13:19
  through that as well, the more you you could forgive yourself.
• 1:13:24
  You forgive for. Understanding that it's hard.
• 1:13:26
  To say, OK, I'm not the only one in a shit show and then maybe I
• 1:13:31
  can't dig my way out or at least keep working day by day because
• 1:13:34
  I'm not the only one. Definitely.
• 1:13:36
  I think there's a lot of men especially who are just not
• 1:13:39
  willing to open up and be vulnerable.
• 1:13:41
  Me being one of them. For many years, it was like a
• 1:13:44
  badge of honor to suppress my emotions because I thought it
• 1:13:49
  would make me better at my job if I had to get to that point of
• 1:13:52
  like some like, you know, being in war.
• 1:13:54
  And like, I knew that if I the less emotion I had, the easier
• 1:14:01
  would be for me to get through because they say, you know, to
• 1:14:03
  get you don't learn to get through hard shit without going
• 1:14:07
  through hard shit. And so I was all in on let's get
• 1:14:12
  through the hard shit that's put hard shit in our life so I can
• 1:14:15
  just be this invincible person. So when I got out of the
• 1:14:17
  military, I thought I was bulletproof.
• 1:14:20
  I thought there's no like nothing.
• 1:14:21
  You think a lot of vets are like that?
• 1:14:25
  I think, like I said, I think every vet will go through this
• 1:14:28
  silent battle with themselves. And I think it depends on the
• 1:14:31
  level of like identity you took in the military.
• 1:14:34
  Like for me it was everything and it gave me so much and I had
• 1:14:39
  so much pride in it. And so trying to build a life
• 1:14:44
  without having that as part of it became difficult.
• 1:14:48
  Like if I don't see myself as the same as it like a realtor,
• 1:14:53
  for example, a lot of these people are chasing Commission
• 1:14:56
  checks. They're they're, they're
• 1:14:57
  materialistic, they're money hungry.
• 1:14:59
  They're all about selling people and buying nice things.
• 1:15:03
  And that's none of me. I don't want that life.
• 1:15:05
  I, I was for my first year, 2 years, I was just burning off of
• 1:15:09
  motivation and, and I'm willing to hustle.
• 1:15:12
  I'm doing this for my family. I'm doing this for growth.
• 1:15:14
  Like I can get through anything and hurdle.
• 1:15:17
  And then you're like, I'm unfulfilled.
• 1:15:20
  And this is like, I think veterans and and a lot of people
• 1:15:23
  who bottle things up. Yeah.
• 1:15:26
  Your biggest war is from within. Yeah.
• 1:15:28
  You're, you're gonna tear yourself.
• 1:15:30
  Do you do? You have to listen to
• 1:15:31
  Springsteen, man. Do you ever listen to
• 1:15:32
  Springsteen? I like what songs?
• 1:15:37
  So. My problem is that you can put
• 1:15:38
  it on and OK maybe I know that song but I'm terrible with
• 1:15:41
  knowing lyrics and names. OK, so the so so I want I'll
• 1:15:46
  send you Springsteen has an album called Darkness on the
• 1:15:50
  Edge of Town and it was the next.
• 1:15:53
  So he basically he had two albums that were not very
• 1:15:58
  successful, even though he's a great musician.
• 1:16:00
  Then he had Born to Run, which everyone knows.
• 1:16:02
  Born to Run was like an American like.
• 1:16:04
  Album awesome song. I I definitely know maybe.
• 1:16:07
  We were born to run, and there's also born in the USA.
• 1:16:12
  That's the other one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:16:14
  Yeah, I know. That one, and that was actually
• 1:16:16
  about the Vietnam War, about the about how crappy the Vietnam War
• 1:16:19
  was. But so but so.
• 1:16:23
  And his experience was his writing experience and his and
• 1:16:27
  his music was primarily based on the community he grew up in,
• 1:16:30
  which was a very blue collar, poor, downtrodden part of
• 1:16:35
  Central Jersey. And Darkness of the Edge of Town
• 1:16:39
  is an album with the lyrics and the music are people going
• 1:16:44
  through the heartbreak of like day-to-day life where their
• 1:16:49
  dreams are just evaporating in front of their eyes and just
• 1:16:53
  floating off into the air and they just have no hope left and
• 1:16:55
  it's just gone. And a combination of that and
• 1:16:58
  songs of like, I don't give a shit how hard today is, I'm
• 1:17:01
  going to make it happen, you know?
• 1:17:02
  And like the ups and downs that people experience.
• 1:17:04
  The album's a combination of the two of them.
• 1:17:06
  You. Know listening to it on my way
• 1:17:07
  home it is so. Deep and so powerful and I.
• 1:17:14
  Love that and I love the deep conversations like what you and
• 1:17:17
  Chris are talking about, like so many things that I'm not good at
• 1:17:21
  the Subsurf, like the surface level conversations, the small
• 1:17:25
  talk, I'm better at it, but I love these deep conversations
• 1:17:29
  where like you truly learn something or feel a different
• 1:17:33
  way. Most people like it.
• 1:17:35
  I can't imagine. I can't imagine people don't
• 1:17:37
  like. I think people don't know how to
• 1:17:38
  get there. I think people don't know how to
• 1:17:39
  get there or they're not willing to like bring up those, Congress
• 1:17:42
  those. Those yeah, it also because it's
• 1:17:43
  hard and also in order to be deep, you got to do work and
• 1:17:48
  doing the work is hard. It's also hard, I think to, or
• 1:17:51
  at least this is what I'm going through now where I'm like
• 1:17:53
  trying to figure out like the way to approach it.
• 1:17:56
  Because now that I feel like what we were talking about, like
• 1:18:02
  with the meditation and these types of things that can kind of
• 1:18:05
  re ground people and give them new perspective.
• 1:18:07
  Yeah, it's a lot of people don't want it Like they're, they're
• 1:18:10
  not open to doing that kind of work.
• 1:18:12
  They're afraid of it, dude, I'm too, I'm too.
• 1:18:14
  I the reason I didn't do a breath work class yet is because
• 1:18:17
  I'm afraid. I, I don't know what I'm about
• 1:18:19
  to experience, you know, like I know when I smoke a jade.
• 1:18:22
  What about the experience? I know, I know when I'm having a
• 1:18:27
  doing a podcast like this and having a deep conversation, I
• 1:18:29
  know what I'm getting myself into.
• 1:18:30
  You know, like I've done this before.
• 1:18:32
  It's familiar. It's okay.
• 1:18:33
  A lot of people, if they haven't done it before.
• 1:18:35
  That's the excitement of life is doing the things you've never
• 1:18:39
  done before, but. You got to teach people that
• 1:18:41
  too. You got to teach we have to
• 1:18:42
  learn how to be Americans where America is.
• 1:18:46
  The premise of it is risk. America is risk takers.
• 1:18:50
  It's people that are just like willing to go out there and
• 1:18:53
  because. We're born on the we're land of
• 1:18:54
  immigrants who took risk to down here, Yeah, generations took
• 1:18:58
  risk to be here, to make something and.
• 1:19:01
  Expansion is fucking crazy. In our blood food.
• 1:19:06
  But that's why that's what like upsets me is to see so many
• 1:19:09
  people living day-to-day yes now.
• 1:19:11
  American Spirit. I feel like it's being
• 1:19:13
  suffocated. It's being suffocated.
• 1:19:14
  There's a blanket. There's a blanket of what I
• 1:19:17
  think personally is technology. As I was saying this with Chris
• 1:19:21
  also yesterday, I feel like we've created these little
• 1:19:24
  bubbles around ourselves, especially when we're in public.
• 1:19:27
  Like these tiny little bubbles have like a couple of feet that
• 1:19:30
  people just, it's not socially acceptable to, like, invade that
• 1:19:33
  bubble. Yeah.
• 1:19:34
  You can't say hot, it can't be with sound, it can't be with
• 1:19:37
  looks, it can't be with jet. Someone can be sending next to
• 1:19:39
  you for half an hour and you will not make eye contacts one
• 1:19:42
  time in the supermarket or the DMV, right?
• 1:19:44
  You won't say what's up, how you doing how's your day going?
• 1:19:47
  What are you doing here? You know what are you shopping
• 1:19:49
  for in? Florida is even worse you.
• 1:19:51
  Think so? Oh.
• 1:19:52
  Yeah, dude, you go to my fiance and I will travel to like
• 1:19:55
  somewhere where it's like West or like more country and yeah,
• 1:19:58
  and. Oh country.
• 1:20:00
  Country, yeah. Like they're, they say hi, how
• 1:20:03
  are you? And like when I moved to
• 1:20:04
  Florida, I was trying to be intentional about being more
• 1:20:07
  social, more outgoing. So when I would go out on a run,
• 1:20:11
  I would wave. I do that too.
• 1:20:15
  I was like, do people think I'm going to kill them like I would
• 1:20:18
  and they would like look down to the side and I'm like, whoa.
• 1:20:22
  I'm like I I wish I would have just looked off to this.
• 1:20:25
  We're. Afraid of We're afraid of other
• 1:20:27
  people. Yeah, we're really afraid of
• 1:20:29
  other people. It really it, it actually
• 1:20:31
  stresses me out now because like, and I go out of my way
• 1:20:33
  now, like, man, I was by 7 right by the Hard Rock.
• 1:20:37
  I was. I was going to West Hollywood.
• 1:20:39
  So I was I was going to make. I was, I was I was going down 7
• 1:20:43
  and by that big intersection before you cross to the Hard
• 1:20:45
  Rock Cafe. And I was like, not in Cafe to
• 1:20:48
  the parking lot. And there's a woman there that
• 1:20:52
  was, you know, a homeless woman that was holding up a sign.
• 1:20:55
  Need help. And it was it was a nice day.
• 1:20:58
  It was a couple of months ago. My windows were rolled down.
• 1:20:59
  I didn't want to roll up my windows and like be obnoxious,
• 1:21:02
  right? And like treat like, you know,
• 1:21:03
  act like she was like an animal or something like that.
• 1:21:05
  And so, you know, she she was asking for help and I like, I
• 1:21:10
  was gonna ignore her. So I smiled at her and I was
• 1:21:11
  like, I'm sorry. I don't have any cash or
• 1:21:13
  anything. Yeah, you know, I'd love to I'm
• 1:21:15
  sorry. And she was like, that's
• 1:21:16
  alright. And then she kept on going and
• 1:21:18
  then she came back like right before the light change.
• 1:21:20
  She's like, I just want to say the fact that you like smiled at
• 1:21:22
  me and said like sorry and like good luck means everything to
• 1:21:27
  me. Like I don't get that ever
• 1:21:29
  right. And like she and she said it to
• 1:21:31
  me. I'm like, that's crazy.
• 1:21:32
  You know I used. To try and carry around little
• 1:21:34
  waters for those. Yeah.
• 1:21:36
  Dude, hey, like I don't, I don't, I don't always give out
• 1:21:39
  money, but like if I can give you a.
• 1:21:40
  Yeah, what about or something? Like that one guy where I used
• 1:21:44
  to live would be at the light, and the light took forever, and
• 1:21:47
  he'd come up and I think I gave him money one time so that I
• 1:21:51
  could have a conversation with him and just, like, talk to him.
• 1:21:54
  Yeah. What's going on?
• 1:21:56
  And we like became like friendly in that way.
• 1:21:59
  I would see him and just be like, hey, man, like what's
• 1:22:00
  going on? How you doing?
• 1:22:01
  He's like out here living life like the one time I'm walking
• 1:22:05
  home and I saw him get some money.
• 1:22:09
  Like I'm walking from a restaurant down the street.
• 1:22:11
  I'm coming this way and I saw him out.
• 1:22:12
  He's got some money. He goes off the side, puts a
• 1:22:15
  sign down, falls out a crack pipe smokes it.
• 1:22:18
  No way. And as he's as he's looking
• 1:22:20
  over, as he's blowing up the smoke, he sees me.
• 1:22:22
  I wave over to him like, hey, what are you out here trying to
• 1:22:27
  get it, man? And I'm like, well, you know, I.
• 1:22:32
  Was just like friend sent me a meeting yesterday.
• 1:22:35
  He was you know I gave, I gave to me was I gave 5 dollars $5 to
• 1:22:40
  a homeless to a homeless guy. Yesterday a stranger started
• 1:22:43
  lecturing me he's going to buy alcohol and drugs in it.
• 1:22:46
  I'm like, what do you think I'm going to be there?
• 1:22:54
  Yeah, it's going to J man. Yeah, at least he needs it more
• 1:22:57
  than. So funny, dude, that's so funny.
• 1:23:01
  Northern California. Where were you there?
• 1:23:04
  I was in where it's called Fairfield by Vacaville.
• 1:23:07
  It's about 30 minutes east of San Francisco.
• 1:23:13
  Gotcha. Yeah, so like, you could fly
• 1:23:15
  into San Francisco. Spot before you.
• 1:23:17
  Fly into oof. I don't know, like you're saying
• 1:23:20
  the highway. Yeah, Yeah, I don't know the
• 1:23:21
  highways. I'm telling you, I couldn't tell
• 1:23:23
  you the highways here besides 95 and.
• 1:23:25
  Yeah, the Thruway, there's only two highways.
• 1:23:27
  Yeah, I drove, I so I drove from Seattle to San Francisco, OK in
• 1:23:32
  a. So probably, probably that
• 1:23:34
  probably. The merge you're talking about.
• 1:23:36
  Yeah, no. So there's inland, there's
• 1:23:38
  inland, which is like basically there's, there's two, there's
• 1:23:42
  two highways going down into it. From the bottom and the right, I
• 1:23:46
  think, to San Francisco to San Francisco, right.
• 1:23:49
  And if it went N, but there's two there.
• 1:23:50
  So Hwy. 5 is inland. Hwy. 1 is by the water just like
• 1:23:53
  it is here. And like like there's one in one
• 1:23:56
  at east and West Coast or one-on-one.
• 1:23:59
  So I was driving from Seattle, so I took 2 two hours.
• 1:24:03
  I took four hours total out of my way.
• 1:24:05
  I drove 2 hours to 1, like West to the to the Pacific, to the
• 1:24:08
  Pacific Ocean. And then I drove down and then I
• 1:24:11
  had to actually go to San Francisco.
• 1:24:13
  I. Didn't spend a lot of time in
• 1:24:16
  San Francisco. Actually, it was.
• 1:24:18
  It was COVID. Man, everything was shut down.
• 1:24:22
  Everything. Yeah, my fiance was visiting.
• 1:24:23
  I was ever doing COCA too, actually.
• 1:24:25
  Really. Yeah.
• 1:24:26
  That's when I came to visit. Dude, I went to that park by the
• 1:24:30
  that overlooks the bridge. You know what I'm talking about
• 1:24:32
  there. It's a big running spot.
• 1:24:35
  That was me and my fiance over taking pictures.
• 1:24:37
  Oh, no way. That's to.
• 1:24:39
  Me, dude, it's so funny there. We such because she was in her
• 1:24:44
  master's degree and it was COVID and all the school went online,
• 1:24:47
  so she spent a month out with me.
• 1:24:50
  It was amazing, but it was quite an experience while we were
• 1:24:52
  there. My I had only been there for
• 1:24:56
  like a week and I had just came from Korea, so we had spent nine
• 1:25:00
  months apart from each other. So when I got to Cali, she had
• 1:25:03
  flown out to to be with me. Yeah, while we were there there
• 1:25:07
  was wildfires. So we're both new to the area.
• 1:25:11
  I. Actually know exactly what
• 1:25:12
  you're talking about because those wildfires that summer,
• 1:25:14
  that was the summer of 2020, I think, right?
• 1:25:16
  Yes, yeah, those, those wildfires went all the way up to
• 1:25:19
  Seattle and they were literally, I mean, you could see Mount
• 1:25:22
  Rainier from my from my house and you could not see 20 feet.
• 1:25:26
  It was crazy I was out of your house like it before.
• 1:25:29
  I have pictures that look like from the Redmi Instagram filter.
• 1:25:34
  From that whole area, the whole. Somebody like flipped a
• 1:25:36
  cigarette off the highway and it lit on fire.
• 1:25:38
  Is that what it? Was I believe so, or at least
• 1:25:41
  that's what the fire before it was.
• 1:25:43
  But that's a big, it's just like a random like brush fire that
• 1:25:46
  only happening. So we had only been there a
• 1:25:49
  couple days and now the whole base is getting evacuated
• 1:25:52
  because they're like, it's about to blow across.
• 1:25:55
  They already flew out all the planes like, wow, FEMA is like
• 1:25:58
  coming in. They're like, you have to leave
• 1:26:00
  the base like, and nobody can stay here unless you're
• 1:26:02
  emergency personnel. We had hung out a little bit.
• 1:26:05
  Traffic was really bad getting off and we ended up going, you
• 1:26:09
  know how they have hurricane parties here?
• 1:26:12
  We were having like a wildfire party.
• 1:26:14
  Like we're drinking on base. We're like, I'm going to die.
• 1:26:17
  Well, my fiance did not like that.
• 1:26:19
  So she said let's get out of here.
• 1:26:21
  We've waited long enough. So we'd like to went up at a
• 1:26:23
  friend's house, but you would turn on your AC in your car.
• 1:26:28
  Yeah. And smoke was like tell you not
• 1:26:30
  to turn on your AC because it looked like it's snowing
• 1:26:32
  outside. It was actually just the ash,
• 1:26:34
  like landing on your car. Just ash.
• 1:26:36
  I'm like, this is insane. The sky is bright orange.
• 1:26:41
  You can't see far too hazy. Everything but dude it.
• 1:26:44
  Travels thousands of miles. It travels.
• 1:26:46
  It travels all the way through Oregon up to up through
• 1:26:49
  Washington. I mean, it's crazy.
• 1:26:51
  It's it's they can't, they can't contain it fast enough.
• 1:26:54
  Yeah, it was a wild experience for sure.
• 1:26:56
  It shows how futile things are a lot, a lot of times for people,
• 1:26:59
  yeah, you know, really crazy. So.
• 1:27:01
  So when it was. COVID, we went to San Francisco,
• 1:27:04
  right? And you know the pier.
• 1:27:05
  Yeah, sure, the fisherman's dwarf.
• 1:27:07
  Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
• 1:27:08
  I don't remember the number of it, but like the sea lions are
• 1:27:10
  there. You can see Alcatraz, Yeah, from
• 1:27:12
  there. So we were disappointed because
• 1:27:14
  we wanted to see Alcatraz and it was all closed down.
• 1:27:16
  We did see the sea lions, but literally that pier was.
• 1:27:19
  Dead. There was like nobody out there.
• 1:27:21
  All the shops are closed down. So that was our only day in San
• 1:27:24
  Francisco. We went by the bridge.
• 1:27:25
  We took pictures at that park. Yeah.
• 1:27:27
  What's what's funny is it's like you crossed over the bridge to
• 1:27:31
  San Francisco. It's like 1015° colder.
• 1:27:34
  It's yeah. Isn't that crazy how they have?
• 1:27:36
  It's like insanely, it's like we were prepared for this.
• 1:27:38
  It was hot, dude. It's so funny that you say that.
• 1:27:41
  So have you ever heard of Crater Lake?
• 1:27:43
  Do you know what that is? So Crater Lake was a volcano
• 1:27:46
  that thousands of years ago erupted and it's since been
• 1:27:50
  inactive and it's filled up since with, with rainwater.
• 1:27:53
  So it's the world's like deepest lake technically, because it's
• 1:27:56
  the, it's a lake, the lake the, the, the, the depth of a
• 1:28:00
  volcano, right? And it's in Oregon.
• 1:28:03
  It's just north, just north of California.
• 1:28:05
  And while we're driving, it was probably 105° in the California
• 1:28:10
  desert going to Oregon. And we start and we start
• 1:28:13
  heading up to Crater Lake within 1520 minutes of snow on the
• 1:28:17
  ground. And I'm like, what is this dude?
• 1:28:21
  Yeah, dude. I'm in love with the West Coast.
• 1:28:23
  I love the West Coast. And like I.
• 1:28:26
  I wish I would have done more while I was out there.
• 1:28:27
  It was one of my biggest regrets being in the military, not
• 1:28:30
  exploring, you know, the areas. Go with your fiance.
• 1:28:32
  You know what you should do? Go for a trip if you can.
• 1:28:35
  I don't know how you and when you can make it.
• 1:28:37
  Dude. Yeah, take a trip and take your
• 1:28:40
  time from Seattle down to San Francisco.
• 1:28:43
  But there's all these little like beach towns along the along
• 1:28:46
  the Pacific, along the Pacific Coast.
• 1:28:49
  And there's the coolest places to stop.
• 1:28:52
  And they're so nice and the people are incredible.
• 1:28:55
  And the landscape and this terrain is always changing.
• 1:28:57
  There's black beaches, there's forest, there's there's regular
• 1:29:00
  beaches. The Pacific's pretty cold.
• 1:29:02
  That happens to be. It's not like a swimming kind of
• 1:29:03
  thing, but. Running the water while I was
• 1:29:04
  there. Yeah, it's.
• 1:29:06
  Yeah, it's not. I know it's cold.
• 1:29:07
  Yeah, it's not fun. Yeah, but yeah, dude, I, I
• 1:29:11
  can't, I can't recommend the West Coast highly enough for
• 1:29:17
  like nature and like incredible travel and like, just like you
• 1:29:22
  have to spend any money just like rent a car and just like to
• 1:29:25
  drive up and down, you know, like it's.
• 1:29:27
  Incredible. It's one of my favorite places
• 1:29:29
  to run. Was where I lived in California.
• 1:29:31
  Because it was just like an open land, like one.
• 1:29:34
  It was a road that just like nobody really went back.
• 1:29:37
  It was like farm fields on both sides.
• 1:29:39
  And there's just so much more of that because there's more land.
• 1:29:42
  I never ran, like I ever ran on the West Coast.
• 1:29:45
  Yeah, I did run against Seattle, dude, I'd run, I'd run 5-6 miles
• 1:29:49
  a day, seven days a week. I just like, I loved it.
• 1:29:52
  Like it was just like, like you said, the scenery and the nature
• 1:29:56
  and yeah, I do. West Coast life is good.
• 1:29:59
  Do you still run that much? No, now I now I run.
• 1:30:03
  Sorry, run. I run.
• 1:30:04
  I do I I I run every day. I don't do jujitsu and I only
• 1:30:08
  run 4 miles now. I'm not looking.
• 1:30:10
  Cleaner. Have you done like a marathon?
• 1:30:12
  No, I'm not. Looking to I looked I I I jog
• 1:30:15
  because it's challenging for me so like I like that mental like
• 1:30:20
  challenge and just to be healthy like there's.
• 1:30:22
  There's nothing like a rhyme to clear your mind.
• 1:30:25
  Yeah, dude, you. Like it's crazy.
• 1:30:27
  Just working out in general, like going to the weight room,
• 1:30:32
  going to jujitsu, things like that, That's all.
• 1:30:34
  It's all good and fun, but there's just something different
• 1:30:36
  about actually going out for a run.
• 1:30:37
  You don't even have to. But it's meditative.
• 1:30:39
  It's meditative, yeah. That's, that's really what it
• 1:30:41
  is. It's just you alone in your
• 1:30:43
  thoughts and you're like able to push through and.
• 1:30:46
  And it took me years to to start running like I've actually I, I,
• 1:30:49
  I. Realize walk.
• 1:30:50
  Even just going off a walk by yourself, you get the same
• 1:30:53
  meditative feeling, Yeah. Yeah, I started jogging.
• 1:30:56
  I, I didn't realize it even, but like about 10 years ago and when
• 1:31:01
  I started, I would go 2 1/2 minutes on the treadmill and
• 1:31:05
  then I'd walk. Then I'd go another 2 1/2
• 1:31:06
  minutes and I'd walk again. And like, I had, no, I had no
• 1:31:09
  stamina. I know a lot of people that are
• 1:31:11
  very discouraged by like, you know, they can't just start.
• 1:31:16
  That's The thing is like people, too many people think that they
• 1:31:18
  need to hit the ground running and be able to do 5 miles
• 1:31:21
  whatever. Like if you start and you have
• 1:31:25
  to walk and then the next day you walk a little bit further.
• 1:31:28
  We talked about this last time. Or if that was bite sized winds.
• 1:31:32
  Don't, don't compare yourself to everybody else or where you want
• 1:31:36
  to be. You got to start somewhere.
• 1:31:37
  Compare yourself to anywhere yesterday.
• 1:31:39
  Yeah, exactly. If that's a short walk and then
• 1:31:40
  tomorrow you do a shorter or or a little bit longer to walk,
• 1:31:43
  eventually you're going to get to a job, especially you're
• 1:31:45
  going to get to a run. Yeah, but you have to start
• 1:31:47
  somewhere. And.
• 1:31:48
  People are afraid to take that that risk or start.
• 1:31:52
  Life is just, life is just about who's willing to go longer
• 1:31:56
  before quitting than everyone else.
• 1:31:58
  Yeah, that's it. And.
• 1:31:59
  Everything. It's just who's the.
• 1:32:01
  Yeah, who's who's the last guy to quit?
• 1:32:03
  You know, who's the last guy to call it out?
• 1:32:04
  We talked about that last time, too.
• 1:32:06
  Yeah, but that was that was, that was great.
• 1:32:09
  Dude, I'm gonna let you go because you got to make your but
• 1:32:13
  I know you're having a great time, so we'll get you some
• 1:32:16
  we'll get some water in you and we'll we'll get you running.
• 1:32:18
  Dude. Thanks so much for coming, man.
• 1:32:19
  I really appreciate it and this is always there's always a ton
• 1:32:22
  of fun. Thank you of.
• 1:32:23
  Course. Catch you soon.
• 1:32:24
  Awesome.