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From Rubble to Restaurant: A Katrina Survivor’s Journey · Groove with Portia

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Grow with Porsche, the podcast that uncovers the
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: hidden treasures within grief. I'm your host, Porsche the Producer,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: and I'm inviting you to join me on a transformative
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: journey where we were exchange laughter, of course the best
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: medicine of them all, reflect on cherish memories, Remember that
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: time that the little boy grabbed my hand instead of
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: his mother's at the amusement park yikes, And of course,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: discover gratitude while navigating one of life's hardest challenges lost.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: So get ready to grow with me, Porsche the Producer,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: let's dive in. Hello everybody, and welcome back to Grow
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: with Porsche. I'm your host, Porsche Booker, and as always,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: don't forget to like, share and subscribe to keep it
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: with the latest and greatest of all with Grew with Porsche. So,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: as those of you know, I talk a lot about grief,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: and one of the things that I think that we
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: forget about in our societ is that grief is not
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: just limited to physical transitions. There's the grief of when
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: we're forced to relocate. There's the grief of when we
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: have to start over, even though sometimes starting over looks
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: like a great opportunity, but there's that piece of us
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: that's so used to where we were and now it's
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: like what do I do from here? So today, everybody,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: I'm joined by an individual who was a survivor of
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Hurricane Katrina. And believe it or not, Hurricane Katrina happened
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: twenty years ago. Right, it's hard to believe that we've
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: come so far, but yet we're still here in this
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: space with people rebuilding. So I'm honored to have mister
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Ron Ladner on the show. So, Ron, welcome to the show.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: How are you today?
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Doing good? Thank you? Happy to be here.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Ron. I'm excited. When I first saw about your story,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: I'm like, wow, twenty years ago for Hurricane Katrina, and
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I'm sure there's people that are still recovering and rebuilding.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: And I'm curious, Ron, before we dive into the conversation,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: what are you grateful for to day?
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: My health, my faith in God, my wife, our relationship,
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: and to have the blessing to have the resources to
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: help people who need help. And you know, we kind
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: of after the storm. It's one of the reasons why
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: we stay behind. It's like, you know, God has given
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: us these resources, you know, financially in leadership, and we
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: need to stay. An easy thing have been for us
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: to leave, but we decided that we've been given the
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: blessings to be a provider to those and needs, and
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of people who are in need. So
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: I'm just thankful that, you know, God has given me
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: that ability to really help people.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: You know, Ron, I'm glad you brought up having the
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: resources available right because I think when natural disasters or
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: tragic moments happen, that's when everybody goes into panic of
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: where is the resources, where is the help? And I'm curious, Ron,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: when you think back to twenty years ago when Hurricane
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Katrina came through, you and your wife lost everything, right,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: And I'm curious, what did it take for you to
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: work with your grief to start fresh all over again
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: and decide, you know what, we're going to stay here
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: and help other people despite what we've already lost.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm Catholic and my mother, you know, was
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: a saint and she just taught us very early on
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: that you know, these things don't matter. And I told
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: my wife after we lost everything, we had our two
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: dogs at the time, and I said, you know, home
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: is where you and I and the two dogs are,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: wherever that might be, got four heart beats. No matter
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: where we are, that's home. These structures can be torn
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: down and rebuilt. So let's just not worry about it.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Let's let's enjoy people's company and people's personality and people's
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: soul and not get too caught up with the structures
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: the material things in this world. It really doesn't matter.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and Ron, I know you brought up about faith, right,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: and I know when we have some of these tragic
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: situations happen, we wrestle with our faith. So I'm curious
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: what did it take for you to lean more into
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: your faith and not turn away.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Well that's that's really the only place I could go,
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: you know, And I don't know why people would question
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: their faith, and you always have the folks, how how
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: can God let something like this happen? And you know,
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: you hear this all the time. It say, and this
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: is good. I make it struck by lightning here. But
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: you hear people say, you know God has a plan
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: for me. I don't. I honestly don't believe that. I
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: believe that He gives you all the resources and you're
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: supposed to make your own plan. And I believe he's
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: there whenever he need him, in as many times as
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: you call on him, He'll be there for you. But
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: I don't think God has a plan for me. I
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: think God has given me the free will to make
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: my own plan, and we all should think about making
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: that plan ourselves.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's that's a very interesting perspective, ron
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: because I mean, I think we we've all heard that, right.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: I think of what the verse Jeremiah twenty nine to eleven, Right,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: That's the first thing that comes to my mind is
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: you know, God knows what he has for you, He
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: knows the plans that he has, right. But I think
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: to your point, you know, God gave us a brain
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: to think. God gave us community, right, And just like
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: to your point, home is where the heartbeats are. Church
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: is a moving organism, right, churchesn't just confined behind this
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: pretty building with all these you know, stained glass windows.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: So I'm glad you brought that point up, Ran, And
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: I'm curious, you know, let's talk about Shaggy's right. You've
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: you've created this waterfront restaurant where now you have five
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: locations currently, and I'm curious Ron. What was the inspiration
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: behind this cheese shop that you made? Did you have
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: you always made cheeseburgers growing up? Was that? Where did
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: this come from? How did you decide on food to
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: be that healing space for people to come and start
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: to really open up about what has happened and turned
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: their situation around.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my career was in the software business and we
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: wow sold our company and you know, I'm in Atlanta now,
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: but we didn't make enough to retire, but we made
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: enough that I was ready to get out of Atlanta
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: and moved back to our hometown. We we had a
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: second home there and we moved in probably ten months
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: before Katrina hit. Pretty the place up, put the pool
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: in and then we then we lost it all. And
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: never in my wildest dream did I everythink I started
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: a restaurant. It's not something I would ever even consider, right.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: So one of the things that we were trying to
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: do everything we could to help the community, and we
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: just came up with this idea, say, there's no place
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: for everyone to come together, right, just like just like
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: part beats right, and so I just you know, let's
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: start a restaurant in the harbor. And the mission for
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: the restaurant was to build something very simple, all right,
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: and let's build it for the people. The word profit
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: was never in the equation. All right, let's build. Let's
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: build a place where people could come and feel comfort,
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: if they can feel appreciated and love, give them hope,
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: and just make them feel better about themselves. That was
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: our initial mission. And the cool thing about this whole
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: story is that today it's still the same mission. And
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: I think it's a great lesson in life. You know,
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: you hear business folks, and when I was young and
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: one of the too this big career and make money,
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: you know, you always hear that, you know, do what
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: you love and the money will follow. And it I
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: just got tired of hearing that. And it's say, this
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: is a true example if you do the right thing,
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: that you can actually focus on doing what's right for others,
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: and that translates into the money side of it, which
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: is the profits. And today we're still doing the same
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: thing and we take care of our employees and people
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: can say, oh, well, I take care of my employees
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  Speaker 2: and I put them first. I can tell you a
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: statistic is that the average tenure for a restaurant worker
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: is seventy five days. Average tenure for our employees is
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: three years. So we're creating this home environment for them
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: where they feel safe and appreciated with love, and everybody
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  Speaker 2: is happier, from the owners, which is only two of us,
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: down to ourmployees and then all that translates to bringing
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: happiness to our guests. And so it's just like this.
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  Speaker 2: It's very simple. We just put others, get past ourselves
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: and put others first. Let's take care of this these folks.
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  Speaker 2: And that's how we started day one on the original restaurant.
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  Speaker 2: Let's take care of these people. And we're still doing
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: the same thing, still the same mission.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: You know, Ron, I love how you brought up just
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: now about treating your employees well, right, because I think
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: a lot of companies say that, you know, it's more
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: of a lip service thing instead of actually showing the return.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: You're at five locations, four hundred and fifty employees, and
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: clearly they love what you've brought to them. You've given
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: them more than just a place to come to work.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: They're eager, they're hungry, no pun intended, because I'm sure
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: the food is the bomb dot com. But you've really
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: given that revitalization to what it means to be of
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: service in the world.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: Gets so confused with that. And I'm going to tell
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: you something that's kind of interesting is that I know
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: this would big. I must tell the story that it's
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: probably gonna be controversial, But I got the name Shaggy's
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: from a restaurant that was in downtown past Chris chan
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: That's that's where we were, That's where Robert Roberts is from.
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  Speaker 2: And in the forties, Shaggy's had a restaurant bar there, Okay,
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: And that was back in the day. That's my mother
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: was going to high school. Then. That was back when
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: if the blacks and white came into the same building,
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: they had to have a separate entrance. So Shaggy he
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: broke the law, and he knew that the cops would
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: be watching. So the white people came in one door
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: and the black people came in another door. And there
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: was supposed to be a partition. He had a temporary partition,
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: and he let it go, and there was a place
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: where different cultures and and and races came together to
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: kind of enjoy themselves. And that's that's that's a symbol
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: of the name and what we what we stand for.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: And I love that you brought that up too, Ron,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: because what a beautiful tribute to to this original Shaggy
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Right when in the world today there's still a lot
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: of division with all the stuff going on, right, and
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: you're still keeping your same mission of bringing community together.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: We've all got stuff going on every day in our
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: home life and work, and why not just come together
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: for a meal to talk, to laugh, enjoy some good food. So, Ron,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: I'm curious, tell us how did you settle on cheeseburgers
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: and the and the menu right? Because this your restaurants
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: are obviously on the waterfront, and I'm curious too about that.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: What made you go back to having your restaurant on
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: have on being on a waterfront considering water was the
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: devastation that caused you to change up everything that you
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: originally had.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know they say, as the horse knocks you off,
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: get right back on it. That's kind of what we did.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: But the cheeseburger is we are a seafood restaurant and
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: we have great seafood all of our locations on the
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: water great seafood. But our number one top seller in
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: any timeframe since we opened the doors back in two
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: thousand and seven. Has always been the cheeseburger. And I
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: released my book yesterday and it's Shaggy's Cheeseburgers is the
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: name of the book, and this is this whole story.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: And I started writing the book the name of the
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: book was a Shaggy Story. And then when I got
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: to the end, I said, that's just so mundane, right,
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: And it just kind of struck me. I said, you know,
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: cheeseburgers are a normal cellar. It's the name of my
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: fishing boat. It's in the Caribbean right now. And I
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: changed the name from Shaggy's Story to Shaggy's Cheeseburger because cheeseburger,
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: to me, is a metaphor, right. A cheeseburger is something,
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: uh that brings you comfort and joy and happiness in
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: a messy world, all right. And I said, that's exactly
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: what we're doing culturally, we us at Shaggy's. That's what
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: we're doing also with our people in our community. So
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: the cheeseburger is a metaphor for the way our culture
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: was created. It's our names the book Shagger's Cheeseburgers.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Ron that's a cool analogy. I mean, because you're right,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: cheeseburgers they're comforting. A lot of times they're not good
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: for you health wise because they've got I mean you
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: when you go to different restaurants, right, you've got pickles.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: You.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Me and me and my significant we just went out
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: of town for a road trip and we went through
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: the Finger Lakes in New York and I remember sitting
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: at one restaurant and they had all these unique name
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: cheeseburgers and I'm looking through what's in them? There was
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: one that was like Peb and Jay inspired, and I'm like,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: I love people a day, but like, you're really taking
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: it to the extreme, right, Like, so there's so many
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: good things right that taste amazing, but we know that
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: after a while we're gonna have to start, you know,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: doing some zoomer or whatever. But you're right, they get messy.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: We're sitting there, the grease is falling on the plate,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: and you know, some.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: Good you have to do you feel good and you know, yeah,
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: it's let's sit down and just be happy. And you know, culturally,
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: a lot of restaurants and management training and most restaurants,
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: there's there's a list of things that you know, when
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: the customer comes in, hand them menu, walk them over here,
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: take their drink order, all these steps, right, And so
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: I kind of looked at this and said, after a while,
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: this is just too much for a person to process,
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: and you've got to be going through the steps in
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: your mind. So we got rid of all the steps
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: and we said, here's your mission. The person who comes
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: in and you come into our restaurant. What is it
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: going to take to make you leave happier? Just happier
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: came in? And if you can do that, every person's different.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: So you figure it out and you engage with them
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: and do what you can to make them happy, just
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: like we do what we can to make you happy
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: as a person. We're just going to kind of pass
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: it down, right, And it's worked out pretty well for us.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: And see that's the thing ron you You put people first, right,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: That sole mission is within each of your employees. Right,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: they're wanting to be of service. They think they put
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: empathy as the forefront of their day. Right, how can
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: I make this person's day better?
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: It may not be the sole intention, but it's so
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: deeply ingrained because you've set the foundation right, And I'm
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: curious ron on a leadership note, how can more leaders
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: put their profit mindset to the side and really invest
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: in their employees to bring that return on investment over time.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: But it also really changed the culture within their workforce.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting that, you know, I came from a
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: software world where you know, software companies tend to have
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: like the strongest culture because they're trying to attract and
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: retain the best talent. To do that, you got to
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: take care of them, right, And that's kind of the
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: world I grew up in. So we kind of just
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: we transformed this restaurant which has no culture and no
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: loyalty typically, right, And so I just kind of with
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: that mindset over it's like, why are these people? Why
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: are we taking care of Why would you not take
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: care of someone? Right? Yeah, and my business partner, remember
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Covington Jr. And we laugh about this, but it doesn't
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: always work out. You know, the majority of the time
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: when you try to help people, it's they're not going
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: to be grateful, and that's fine. But you know I
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: talk about it in the book, is that I saw
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: the sign one time and it said, you know, or
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: something on the lines of don't be upset by rejection
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: and people who aren't grateful for all the great things
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: that you do. Jesus healed ten lepers. They left, only
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: one came back to thank you, so he got a
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: ten percent return. Do you think you deserve better than that?
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: And that's we always go back to that the ten
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: lepers to help us and not get frustrated when when
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: you try to help people. But that's just that's just
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: the way we are. I mean, it's it's it works.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Well when you're looking at it from the lens of
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: one life has a better outcome because I was present
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: with them, right, somebody has has a shift in perspective
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: or in their day because I gave a piece of myself.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: And you know it's I think it's part partly faith.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: I think you have to think that it's the people
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: who work for us and the people you people we
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: around us is so much more important than my boat,
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: are my condo in Atlanta. These things don't matter. And
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: if if you do have faith, if you truly believe
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: in scripture and the things that we're taught on Sunday,
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: is that you know, love your neighbor as yourself. It's
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: hard to do. I mean he didn't say make a profit,
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: you know, he didn't say, you know, go make money
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: and accumulate material things like love your neighbor. And that's
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: the that's hard, you know it if you really take
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: a step back and digest what that early means and
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: this is what we're trying to do.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't have to tell me twice. It does
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: get trying when you're working with people of different culture backgrounds,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: different walks of life, different experiences in life. So you're
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: juggling so much and you have to sometimes it's a
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: challenge to remind yourself of love thy neighbor as thyself.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: But you know, you do the best that you can, right,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you have to take that little look, I'm gonna
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: take me a quick little walk just to cool off
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: for a second, or just dump it, you know, in
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: your case, jump in the pool for a second probably
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: or the beach and then just come right back in right,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: make everybody laugh, because maybe you have a little sea
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: urch and that wanted to hit you, right.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think for us, and it goes back
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: to the lever of story, I think it's I can
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: just speak for myself. The frustration is people not appreciating
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: and still want to take advantage we help. So many
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: people say, you give them ten dollars, they want another dollar, right,
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: And it's kind of overcoming that mental and emotional disappointment.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: All expect if we love our neighbor, they're going to
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: love us back. That's not true, you know, it's just
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: simply not true. If we love our neighbor, they're going
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: to appreciate us. That's not true. And it's hard to
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: just accept that. But once you accept it, and you know,
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: only ten percent of the people Jesus help appre appreciated him,
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: is like, shoot, man, if I can get five percent,
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm in pretty good company. And that's getting
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: past that mental you know rejection. Just hey, I'm going
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: to help them and they reject me, that's fine. And
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: here's the other thing. Now, I talk about this in
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: the book. There are a lot of things that my
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: mother tried to you know, ideas and behaviors and pose
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: on me when I was young. And some of those
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: things didn't bear fruit fruit until it became thirty you know,
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: I was thirty thirty five years old, So it takes time.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: You just planting seeds and we kind of look at
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: it that we're planning a seed. They may not accept
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: it now, but one day they will. I may not
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: be on this earth anymore, but that's kind of how
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: we look at it.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you never know how things will boomerang. It may
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: not boomerang right, you know, within ten minutes. But you
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: know the thing of it is finding that gratitude in
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: the shift that does occur at some point.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Well, Ron, for our audience who's tuning in, if they
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: want to connect with you, maybe come grab a bite
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: it at one of Shaggy's. Are those amazing cheeseburgers? How
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: can they connect with you or get one of those
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: cheeseburgers at one of those locations.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Well they can. I have a website. It's Ron Ladner
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: R O N L A D N E R dot
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: com and they can go to that site and the
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: book is listed there. The book Shaggy's Cheeseburgers is on Amazon.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: They go to my email address is on the website.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: So they want to give me a call or send
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: an email, I'll respond to everybody.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Excellent, So everybody you can go to Ron Latner dot com.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: You can also use our good friend Google to probably
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: just find him or Shaggy's the Restaurant or a Shaggy's
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Cheeseburger is the book that was just recently released. Well, Ron,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: we're going to be wrapping up here soon, and you know,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: I want to extend so much gratitude to you for
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: coming on and sharing with our listeners today how you
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: really took the baton to reinvent your life after Hurricane Katrina,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: because so many people have gone through different natural disasters
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: and have been stuck as a result of having to
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: start over. So Ron, for our audience who's tuning in,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: if there's one piece of wisdom that you can leave
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: with them today, then no matter what circumstance they're currently in,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: that they can turn things around. What piece of wisdom
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: can you leave with them today?
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: It's always going to get better, you know, and you
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: have to have that attitude it's going to get better
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: and that you know. I tell my our managers all
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: the time, it's that it's okay to hurt someone's feelings,
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: all right, as long as it's something they can control
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: with they're not a good looking person, there's nothing they
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: can do about that. But they're lazy and you hurt
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: their feelings it's going to help them change, right, And
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: every time we get our feelings hurt or we get
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: into a situation, I think you have to look at
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: as this is a call somehow, a call for me
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: to become better, right to me become better. And I
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: don't think you've ever become better unless you go through
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: these trials and challenges and tribulations. You have to go
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: through that to get better. So whenever you're down, or
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: whenever you have a mishappened life, welcome it, say thank you,
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: because this is my invitation to get better and I'm
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: just going to come out of this.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: A better person one hundred percent, you know, just for
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: that reminder for all of you who's tuning in that
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: things do get better. It may take time, but you know,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: if you're constantly staying in that space of gratitude, and
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: gratitude isn't always like oh I'm thankful for this, this
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: and this. Sometimes it's just a state of being. So
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: just keeping that at the forefront of your mind. Well, everybody,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: that was mister Ron Latner that you heard from Angru
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: with Portia, and that concludes another episode and until next time, everybody,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Pizza and Hargrey's talk to you soon.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Once