Latest / Freshwater Yankee / Chasing Dragons (Stephen Vekovius Part 2 of 2)

Transcript

Chasing Dragons (Stephen Vekovius Part 2 of 2) · Freshwater Yankee

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome back to the Freshwater Yankee podcast.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: As always, my name is Wendell O'Reilly and I am your host.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: And as promised, is part two of our conversation with Steven Vicovius.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: The first part premiered last week.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: I edited a very popular episode because Steven is a very popular guy here in Shriveport, but also an extremely interesting guy.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: One thing I want to say is that there's a term in editing called killing your darlings.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the idea that even if you have some really great stuff for the betterment of the overall piece, you need to leave a lot of it on the cutting room floor.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, we lost some really good stuff, especially in the second part of this episode, involving uh Gerard Butler, Antoine Fouqua, the Euros, and a radio show in Colorado.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: But I think this is one of many conversations that I will have with Steven.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're talking about uh launching a separate podcast, so stay tuned for that.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: But this episode really kind of brings the the conversation that we had last week full circle.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: So if you did not listen to that episode, none of this will make sense, or actually, only about half of it will make sense.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: So please go back and listen to The Ugly Duckling.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: And this one is part two of that conversation.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: We left that one off on a cliffhanger.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, like I said, make sure you go back and listen to it, otherwise, this will not make sense.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: As always, thank you all for listening.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, one thing that you could do to help this show to continue to grow is to like and subscribe and uh leave us a review and a five-star rating if you love it.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Doing that simple thing costs you hopefully maybe 20 seconds of your time.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but it it allows the uh the show to be bubbled up in the algorithm, as they say, and gives us a much wider audience, which is the point of these conversations to bring culture to more people.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, with that being said, thank you all for listening.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you all for your support, and let's jump into the second part of our conversation with Steven the Coviet, which is called Chasing Dragons.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: So there was a young man there named JD.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody ever knew his name.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_03: I still don't know his name.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: He was a sweet kid, and he had to come new, and I used to take you guys bike riding.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_03: That was one of the things I did, played soccer with you guys.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_03: And so I was kind of this older person.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_03: This kind of like, you just ask Steve and he'll fix it, and then he'll come fix it.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I would, you know, I would always kind of just be called.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_03: I would I'd come, I kind of came out there three times a week, yeah, just for a few hours, but I would come out there to fix something or do something or set up something.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_03: Ask Steven and he'll fix it, right?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_03: So one day JD is, I don't know where he's from or anything.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_03: I think he works for Apple now.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: He looks at me and he goes, Steven, he shook his head and kind of laughs at me when he said he goes, What's your kryptonite?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_03: I looked at him.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't give it, I didn't say a word.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_03: I just looked at him for a second.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think I was prepared to answer that question.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I was in my 40s at the time and I was doing triathlons.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_03: So I had some guys to ride with, some young people, and they were turning their own lives into something unique.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, I've sponded many good friendships from there.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_03: But he asked me that, and man, that question has been with me for a long time.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I think I've answered it.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not gonna discover it and unfold it today.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's too long, and but it has a lot to do with the understanding the narratives of what I have been exposed to.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_03: And interestingly enough, if if you were to ask me, okay, used to write a book before I leave the planet.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_03: My book, I have three books I'm gonna write.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_03: One is called For Entertainment Purposes Only.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: And one is called Exit Through the Gift Shop.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_03: And that's truth, truth be known, everything to me is Exit Through the Gift Shop.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's like even as you leave this planet, you gotta pay.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_03: This is true.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta pay.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, the commercialism of the United States to me is laughable, but it's like it's so part of our commonplace.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's not even worth discovering, showing, or mentioning.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's just part of who we are.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_03: But it is.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_03: It is.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: But but but listen, I mean people talk smack about that all the time, but it is part of the appeal of America, is one of the things I love living in America.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: I love being able to have to be able to have access to anything I want at any hour of the day.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Without doubt.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: That oh, no, no, no, I have no truth point.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Once again.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Walmart was still 24 hours.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: I would go to Walgmart at 3 a.m.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: just because I could.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, oh, you don't know you don't know the half of it.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_03: You don't know the half of it.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: Once again, never a criticism or admonishment.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's just that's part of our narrative.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_03: Whether or not you just, it's about discernment, not judgment.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_03: Whether or not you choose to participate in that is up to you.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's not, I like you just said, I mean, you just gave this beautiful description of how things went at Moonbot.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_03: I don't hold anyone in contentment for what their decisions they make on whatever it is they want.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_03: That's mine.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, my buddy just called me in yesterday and so excited about his new Ferrari, right?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_03: Well, on golly, okay, that's fine with me.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: I'd love it.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_03: Come on up and I'll you can try it.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: Done.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: I'll be there tomorrow.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you don't even have to like twist my arm, right?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_03: So no, but my cryptite has nothing to do with that.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: It has to do with the virtues that come with it.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_03: Comparison, right?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_03: What drives you to be?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_03: If you want wealth or if you want to be a high commerce, or you want what's driving you?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_03: Is it the purpose of helping people?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: Not my decision to make.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just asking them the question, you know?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: And then ultimately, you know, who are you trying to satisfy?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_03: Is it is it a family of origin thing?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_03: So there's a lot to that.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, that comparison that it sits very closely adjacent to jealousy, right?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Without a doubt.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that is where I think people start getting into trouble.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you're comparing yourself to go, I have something I would like to aspire to because I love what they are doing and it inspires me.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, and like I like they are putting good things into the world.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: I want to do that.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of times it becomes, well, they have something that I should have.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I need to get there.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I have it.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times just stuff.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: Without a doubt.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's not even, I mean, it is that, but the shoulds of the world are dictated by society.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: You should have a big home.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: You should have this.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: But those are all societal.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Decided by marketers.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Decided by businesses who pay people who are skilled enough to create the slickest advertising to tell you that this is your birthright.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: That is the thing about American advertising that blows my mind.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's the umbrella of consumer.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: It is the most, the most compelling argument you see in American advertising is that this is your right as a consumer.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: You should have this vehicle.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: That's but that's part of consumer.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: That's the whole umbrella.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_03: You're being you're given great details of that um of that whole world that we live in.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_03: And that's fine.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's like you said, that that's a whole, you could talk about it if you want to, but it's not gonna be, it's not gonna, you're not gonna move the needle at all.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: Now you can move your own needle though, right?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: That's where you decide, that's where Steven, hey, come call, come talk to my kid.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_03: I need some.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: So here's my current like analogy of this, or my metaphor if you want.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_03: And part of this is, and this is not a plug, but my new water, remember?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you're my water.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, oh yeah, and you said where did all this start?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: But that's where it started.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_03: I was turned 50.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, this isn't for me.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of this stuff doesn't work for me.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, I mean, you could keep, I could keep making money, I could keep, you know, the let the goose lay the eggs.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, fine with me.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I could do that, but it didn't fulfill anything, right?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so but what I noticed was if you're still water, if your water is not moving in Louisiana, what happens?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_03: Just a very, very simple metaphor, between what and maybe I'll ask you, what happens if you have a bucket of water and you're outside of your house in Louisiana?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: What happens?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: What happens?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing in Trinidad.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Grows what?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: It moss and it has mosquitoes.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of it in it, and it gets grows.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: And then if we get bigger bodies of water in Louisiana, I don't know about what do we call those?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_03: Swamps.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we call them swamps here.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: And guess what we have in swamps?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_03: Let's see, snakes, yeah, turtles, alligators, gar, nutrient rats, right?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_03: Everything.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we have nothing in there that we really want.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_03: There's no desire unless you're like reptiles, which is fine.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_03: Like reptiles, I'm there.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_03: I'm using that as a metaphor, saying your water has to move, right?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_03: And so when I hear these people tell me, hey, come talk to my son or my daughter, what they're really saying is the water stopped moving.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: They're not moving.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Or it's or it's pool, it's it's plugged up and it's pooling in one area.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_03: Something has stopped the water from moving.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think to myself, how are we going to get this water to move again?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so typically, and this is this is hard, so, and I have to be sensitive, right?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: Because I'm non-therapist.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't, when it, when it comes to therapy, at least I know the levels, right?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_03: I can talk to you in this realm all day long.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_03: But once you get to a place where I can't help you, it's time for you to escalate up.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: So I really kind of play this role as it's like I'm a friend of the family.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's kind of the role I play.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_03: And so I talked to them and I asked them, I even asked them, I said, Are you talking to a therapist?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm talking to, I think that's great.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: I want you to keep doing that.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_03: And and what are some of the things that you feel like we've taken away from that?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's what they talked about.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: Is what did you take away?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_03: Like, how do you feel after doing all this stuff?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_03: Is it good for you?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we talk.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we just talk like friends, Papa.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, I have a therapist.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_03: I talked to them.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_03: This is what we talked about.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: I'll share whatever you want.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_03: So anyway, as we talk, and as we get to, I get to hear where the plugs are.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_03: I think, well, when guy's talking to you, I was like, so why?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just curious, why don't you?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you're out of you now, 31.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just curious, what is it you're waiting on?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, why aren't you, why not?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: My dad owes me money.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_03: So you're okay.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_03: So it turned out this kid, his dad owned 300 bucks or something.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: And he was staying at home, and I was like, oh my goodness, please don't.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, and this is where I stopped.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_03: Interrupted his life because of this.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: So, but what I've noticed in general is it it kind of always leans towards this family of origin, family thing.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_03: Family is hard, right?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_03: So that to me has been something that I've noticed as a common thread.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: And so these shoulds that we're just talking about, and these comparisons that we're talking about, and these jealousies we're talking about, a lot of that comes from these what I've noticed has been my experience, is is a lot of it comes from what they think their family wants for them, or their parents specifically dad or their mom.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's a great idea.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Especially so so I I I compare, I mean, uh fam familial pressures are everywhere, right?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: But I think in when you have um cultures where uh economic uncertainty is more prevalent, right?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's a fancy way of saying like poorer communities, stuff like that.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Familial pressures are I think uh they they're amplified because I always say like you're you are on a different level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: You're not talking about self-actualization, you're dealing with safety and and sort of the accumulation of things just for protection.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think sometimes that manifests itself as um these undue pressures on kids and even on parents, because it's like it is ingrained in you.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it and and that is when people start getting into trouble, especially as they get older, because they don't even realize the root causes of these things.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think I think I believe that to be true from what I haven't had a lot of experience in that specific realm.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: But I can tell you on the other side of that spectrum, it's almost exactly the same.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_03: Oh I guess on the on the on the spectrum, this is what I'll say on the if you're three-star deviations from the mean on both sides, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_03: I'll tell you this, and this is an easy way to say it, drugs and cancer, no no skin color.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: No, no socioeconomic.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_03: True, true.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_03: Because I have seen wealthy, wealthy kids that come from the the lucky sperm club die or have drug overdoses or have at the same capacity, the same amount of consumption of drugs as somebody who lives that can't even afford it.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's the same thing.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_03: And so I've I was like, oh, this is it just blows my mind.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_03: But the short of it is that when I am exposed to like even my own nephews who come come to me and said, family of origin, you know, my dad, I want to impress my dad.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: I want, and I'm kind of like, you know, at some point, you're gonna have to live your life for yourself.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_03: And whatever that looks like, it's gonna look like.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, that's gonna be part of your journey.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_03: You're gonna have to walk your own path.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so right now they're still young, and well, they're I should say they're two, they're still in their 20s, but they're definitely in that they're definitely in the candidate of yeah, hey, I'm still feeling like the shoulds, I should do this, I should do that, I should do this.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, you're still in that, you're still in that realm.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: And when so when you ask, like, when did it happen?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's when I stopped the shoulds.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I don't need a big house.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: I sh I should have a bigger house.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, people tell me all the time, you should have this.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, well, thanks.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_03: I appreciate you telling me.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: I hope this doesn't embarrass you in any way, but like when I met you, I think you were in that phase of success, right?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because when like literally when I met you, you drove a Porsche, right?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Remember you had the Porsche, and then like a few years later, you you rocked up to the studio one day in the Prius.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody's like, Well, I put your Porsche and you're like, Well, I don't I don't really like it.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and you gave a very kind of jovial, jokey, Steven response.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: But but within that, you kind of articulated like it just it just wasn't for me.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I I feel like I met you as you were sort of reckoning with this idea of the shoulds and starting to like slowly strip a lot of those away.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's that's an interesting perspective of it.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't so much about the shoulds.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: And it was more about when I was a kid, when I was in high in grade school, so me and the violinist, my friend Christian, was his name, he's his name, he and I would bring these, you know, these books of Porsches and Ferraris.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, we're seven years old looking, flipping through these books, yeah, and they're looking at them like they're dirty magazines or something, and we're looking at these cars, right?
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just, and so the guy I told you that got his new Ferrari, he became one of us in the seventh grade, right?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: And so we're looking at Porsches and Ferraris.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: And when we were kids, we loved those cars.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I mean, and so here I am.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: I'm in four or 40 years old.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_03: I can afford one now.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so it wasn't so much a should for me as it was an accomplishment that I wanted for myself.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_03: I always wanted to own one and I liked it, but I never drove it until I got another one.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_03: And then I bought the one I really wanted, and yes, I drove the wheels off of it, and I didn't care.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: So I didn't care what people thought.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_03: Then I cared what people thought, and that may be what you interpreted as a should.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: That it was way more about someone else than me.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_03: I should not have this.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_03: And that was really the should.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: The should wasn't a should, it was a should not.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: I don't need this, I shouldn't have it, and it embarrassed me.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_03: So I would only drive that car at night or in the morning.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_03: I was so embarrassed by that car.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: So you were embarrassed by a car that you wanted the entire life.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: I was embarrassed.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_03: And then I got I finally got it, and I was like, I'm embarrassed by this.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not, I'm not, I'm what was this name for?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not worthy.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_03: I couldn't pull up, I couldn't hold the the hammer, right?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_03: The hammer wasn't there yet.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't feel it.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so I sold the car and I got back in a Prius.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_03: And then I got into something else.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think I kept a car for seven years.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_03: A minivan, why not?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, whatever, right?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: A bunch of kids were in school.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: Steven wants.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_03: Well, then I bought a 9-11 when I turned 50.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, I could lift the hammer better.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_03: I can't tell you I was ready to swing it, but I could lift it.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I felt better that, you know what?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody cares.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_03: And they didn't.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think I ever had one criticism about that car.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_03: I think everybody loved it.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_03: They loved the color.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: They loved everything about it.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody criticized that car.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_03: And it wasn't even about the car.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's because they knew me.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's that was it.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: It didn't matter.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: It didn't matter about the car.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so it was fun though.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: I had loved driving, and everybody sat in and had a smile on their face.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_03: They always smiled when they rode in the Porsche.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: And it was I didn't even think anything of it.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like, there's people on the internet, like in YouTube, that do these like, well, this is the Porsche 911, 992 model, which is the newest model.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's a brand new car.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: You know, this is all the features and the new hickeys and the thing about bobs.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_03: And they get like half a million views on a Porsche.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's like, I mean, to me, that's like, wait, that's not an exotic car.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_03: Not that it's a daily driver, but I did.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I drove that car up over grass.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: I drive it in the rain.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: I drove like a toy.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_03: My friends used to tease me last time.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_03: They said, Steven, you drive this car like a Toyota.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_03: I said, it's a camel.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's just another camel, right?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_03: And it is.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_03: It's a Toyota.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: This one guy at the gas station one time.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_03: This guy comes up to me.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he's a young man in his 20s.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: He goes, Can I put your car in my, what do they call it?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: Video or something?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: Real clip?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_03: Whatever they call it.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_03: Instagram.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know what?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_03: Real, right?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_03: Can I put your car in my car?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_03: Well, of course.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: Do whatever you want.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you drive it.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I don't care.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_03: I had no association with that car for what it was truly seen as.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: I saw it as a car, but it was something that I saw when I was 17 that I wanted.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so I gotta tell you, there's this little boy.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: He's about seven years old, and he loves cars.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_03: He's my friend Emily's son, and he loves cars, and he loves baseball.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: I love baseball too.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_03: And it's so much fun to see his face, you know.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_03: I tie around.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: I have one now, but I don't have an expensive car anything.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_03: I have another portion of it.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he's just seen light up.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: It just reminds me of myself.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's so cool, right?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: Right, yeah, yeah.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, yeah, I get it.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: But I was, it was more of a shouldn't for me than a shouldn't.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: Fair, fair, fair.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: It was a should not.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: It was like, I don't deserve this.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: And it was, but as I grew past that stage, I'm like, I'm a gray-haired man.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: Who is gonna say, if anything, people respond to it so positively?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I think maybe it's because of me.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, this is the thing.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think anyone in our orbits are like, you know, because we, you know, we had um colleagues in common, friends in common, you know.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: I to a person, I can't think of any single person who like begrudged you having that kind of thing.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I don't think anyone can, yeah.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: But it wasn't about in fact, it's the opposite.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like you said, people are happy for you.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: You're right, they are.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like it was hard.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Do you, do you, just I never I didn't get there yet.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't there yet.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: I was 39 years old when I bought that.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't there.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_03: It took more, more work.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it was so you, yeah.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: So you you were kind of like in a in and out.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, yeah, I want one, maybe not.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, yeah.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: Of course I was.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: And it was like, and I just, but that's part of that world that you define for yourself.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: And at some point I decided that this is what I want.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_03: And it's taken me this long to get there.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I hope my hope for people is they can find what they want sooner without it being a definition of something somebody else wants.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: That seems to be what creates most of the turmoil in people's lives that I've seen in my experience.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: You know, when I started my business, there wasn't a day that went by that my brother and my dad would say, You need to hire more people, you need to expand it down, you need I see I don't need any of that.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: I got enough.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: I'm okay.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: I'm happy helping the people, I'm happy helping.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: I don't need anything else.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_03: They don't, but it didn't work, right?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_03: It was the constant, okay, you need this because maybe they bit more of the apple than I did.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't quite sold on the narratives of remember, I don't like to bill.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: So I still had to deal with that.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: And you're like saying, wait, you mean you want me to have more of this that I don't like to do?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: I can just see it now.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: And instead, what would I I mean, what do I need?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: So um I do want to, you know, you talked about these the five key elements of your values.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: But we when we talked last week, you talked about the idea of balance.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I like you you you are not ever really settled spiritually or like even holistically within yourself until you find balance, right?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: So what is your how do you find balance?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: I know that's a very open-ended question.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: But how did you find balance in your life?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's it.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: That's a great question.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: How do you find balance?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: I think what happens is, and this is what I've noticed.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_03: When I okay, so if you took those five values and you put them on a pie, right, and you stuck a a ballpoint pen in the center of that pie and you tried to make it so it doesn't wobble, right?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: And what I've noticed is is as you focus too much energy in one side, like for example, right now I happen to have my finances in order, my kids are in college, I'm paying for my kids' college, and both their intuition and their Tuition and their board.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: And uh their mom helps them pay for their gas and their um food, right?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: So we're good.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, and that's okay.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm okay with doing that.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_03: As long as my children are in college, I'll be glad to pay for it.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_03: Is not that bad.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's not like a super burden, right?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_03: But but as long as that's taken care of, I mean, the rest of this stuff is very balanced.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_03: I'm okay with that.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_03: I'm okay with the balance inside of the financing stuff.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_03: Emotionally, I have finally gotten to a place after challenge after challenge after challenge of giving away my emotional energy.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: That is a big deal.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: When you give away your emotional energy and there's nothing left for yourself, you are out of balance.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so you essentially balance each one of your own sections, and you'll find that the totality of it keeps the ballpoint pen, keeps the plate on the pen, right?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_03: Then your and emotional and psychological are not the same thing.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_03: Your psychological stuff is you, right?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: The stuff that chasing dragons, right?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's psychological.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_03: That's your desire.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_03: Me thinking that, hey, you know, what's wrong with being a house?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_03: Well, nothing.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: Nothing is wrong with being a house.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_03: I still have not, I mean, even I will never do it.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_03: My whole life, I will never think, oh, it's just a joke answer and it doesn't mean anything at all.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_03: To me, it will always mean that there is a dragon out there, right?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: There is something to chase.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_03: There is a truth that I mean, I remember Jim Hart, which was one of actually did, I mean, he was a very sweet man, he's a good man.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_03: He was one of Bill's friends, and he did all these movies.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Jim Hart, he uh he wrote the screenplay for Bram Sucker's Dracula, Francis Ford Cupla's.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: For years, I know he did a movie called Tuck Everlasting.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_03: He did, he did, yeah.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: But but for years he had um, I've helped him with his computers for years, and I haven't talked to him in a long time, but uh for a long time I did he called me, he lived in New York, but he called me all the time to help him.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: And one time he's up on stage at the Strand and they're talking about like this life.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: This is we were doing a sh a screening of the hook, hook, hook, yeah.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_03: He was a full.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: He wrote hook, yeah, yeah, and the Robin Williams and some Dustin all big angels in the red.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right, big deal thing.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: And he got him, you know, one of these little talks, you know, the day before the movies.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and he said something that has stuck with me.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: He goes, I still believe, you know, and it's like that's what I'm talking about.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_03: That's you.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_03: And then when you said, I'm chasing, I'm just Steve and I want to chase dragons, it's the same principle.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's a principle of humility to me.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he said, I still believe.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_03: That's all he said.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's all I remember him.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_03: Say, of course, he talks about the movie and all the fluff fluff and all that goes with it.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_03: But that's what I took from that.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I still remember that today.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: And it's been, I don't know, what, 15 years ago he said that?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_03: But that's what you have to have.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_03: You have to have that belief.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what is it that you that's the we're talking about the psychological aspect of that value system?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: Is you have to talk about what is it for you, right?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: What is it for Wendell or Steven or anybody?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: And then, because so many people get wrapped up in, you know, is my kid doing the right thing?
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: Am I being a good parent?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: I must be a failure as a parent because my child is this, or I must be a terrible person because my child is this, or my thing is this.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: Once again, now we're recreating the same family of origin that we live through.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_03: So it becomes a re a cycle, right?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_03: And then the other two, so we get so we have our our five, I talk about my financial, my emotional, my physical, I'm sorry, my um psychological, and then we have our physical, spiritual.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_03: And spiritual is a kind of a thing for me, right?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: I spend a lot of time, you know, understanding the Bible.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_03: I do.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I I can probably tell you, like there was one guy, oh, this is gonna sound terrible.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I went to Austin last year, just a few months ago, maybe.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_03: End of last year, 2025.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: And my buddy that I went to see, his name's David, I was so excited that this guy was gonna talk.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_03: His name is Ryan, something or another.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know who he is.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_03: He's written some books, and it's a book.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: He wrote a book called The Stoic or Stoic or something like this.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_03: A very well-known character.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure if I Google him, he's pretty much.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, you can find it.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's probably a big deal.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I listened to him for 10 minutes and I left.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_03: God bless him.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_03: God bless this man.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_03: I just walked out.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, oh my gosh, are you kidding me?
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_03: With all respect to him.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: And I listened to him.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: What I didn't even listen to the whole thing because I threatened.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_03: Because everything for the first 15 minutes, I was just like, what is he saying?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_03: Everything he was talking about is found in the Bible.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: If it was in the Bible, it's there already.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_03: And and and it's okay.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: His message, once again, when I speak about anything, I am not.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's discernment for me, not judgment.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't say he was wrong.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't say he did a bad job.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's not for me.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: So what does discernment tell you?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's not for me.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_03: What do you do?
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you leave.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: You leave, it's not for me.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so I realized that, but he he did fine.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, from what I heard, it was fine.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: And then I went back at the end to listen to the questions.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_03: And then they walk out, and my friends walk out.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_03: How did they go?
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: You know, they they liked it, they loved it, they were all about it, which I think was great.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_03: No problem at all.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: And they said something.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: They said, Yeah, he said, having because the topic I think that night was about wisdom and knowledge.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, um, knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_03: Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I looked at him and I said, That's funny.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_03: I read that on the internet just the other day.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and so here, here this guy is getting applause for some cliche that probably is on the it's on the internet.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_03: And I read it like a year ago, maybe.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, with with respect to the guy.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, like I said, everything he was mentioning is really almost like a biblical truth, but without biblical credibility.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right, yeah.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: And so I was kind of going, this guy's almost giving a sermon.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, I like this guy.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's a secular sermon.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: It's a secular sermon.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: And it was fine because I think people responded to it.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_03: And they, even if they take something from it, do you know how many sermons I've heard?
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like, it's like I fall asleep.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: Man, but sometimes you just get one nugget, one nugget, and it might be worthless, but it's just that one little piece.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: Jim Hart speaking, hey, I I still believe.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: Wendell saying, Hey, I chase, I still want to chase dragons.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: And it's those takeaways.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I have conversations with people a lot.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_03: And this is what your question was is how do you stay balanced?
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_03: Is you find the value in what it is that you're given.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_03: And that's your challenge in life.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: I have to find that value, right?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_03: It isn't gonna be always cut and dried, right?
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_03: The world is a messy place.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: And people don't always tell you what you but even that fella on the stage.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_03: Even he had nuggets that people could take home with them and make their lives better in some capacity.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe not Steven, but it didn't matter.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just not his audience.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: That's all.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_03: But there's millions of people who are, and those people the ones that get to take away from him.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_03: That's the challenge that we all have.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: And the last, obviously, is your physical.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_03: And man, gyms are great.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: Exercise is what you need.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_03: I think we're called to do it.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of calling to do it.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, that you know, our bodies need to move to maintain.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we don't do well when we sit still, we don't do well when we, you know, our minds don't work well when we're not.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: Psychologically, emotionally, like we need that for regulation.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: Correct.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: And these are not ideas that I've developed on my own.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_03: Please understand.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_03: The interpretation of how they affect me personally are mine.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_03: But those were given to me by my violin friend, Christian, when I was 22.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: He goes, Stephen, because I live my life, I will be honest, this is probably the most honest thing I can tell you about myself, is that I've lived my life mostly depressed, most of my life.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_03: Since 18.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I talked to therapists when I was 18, went off to college and stayed depressed until I was probably 50.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm gonna say it jokingly, but it's true.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's a sad story.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so, yes, owning a Porsche doesn't bring me joy because I didn't deserve it.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: There were so many things in life that I think I didn't deserve.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_03: And that was my kryptonite.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_03: Like that was the thing I had to come off.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like Superman, he gets around kryptonite, he becomes mortal again, right?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so what is it that does it?
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's too complicated of an answer to tell JB at Moonbot this one afternoon.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_03: But that was it.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_03: But now it's something else, right?
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: Now the kryptonite changes, right?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_03: You change.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_03: So what is your kryptonite?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_03: Is a great question to think about.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, that's how you find your balance is you find each one, each one of those, you balance each one of those to your life, and then the plate stays on the pen.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: All right, well, listen, this has been an amazing two conversations, right?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for coming by.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: This is our first double episode that we've done.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: So before I get you out today, I want to ask you one more question.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: And this is this is quite this is a question I asked for the people who have traveled from one place to another.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: And you, in your very own unique Steven way, you have done that, right?
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: If you if you could go back and say to spend like two minutes with eight-year-old Steven, what would you tell them?
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: Eight-year-old?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: Eight-year-old Steven.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_03: Well, eight-year-old, I was I think I was still.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's a tough question.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give you 10.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: How about 10-year-old Steven?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: So well, so you're a little more self-aware.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: You kind of you're kind of figuring out who you are as a human being.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: You probably are like, I want to be a a a three-story house by then.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_03: I don't honestly, I don't know that I could, I don't know that I can answer at that age, because at that age, it didn't really amount to, you know, understanding life.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like I remember one time I was, I had my son was a really voracious reader.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean that he was.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_03: He read a lot of books, more books than I've read.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, Nathan, you're 16 years old.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: You've read more books in your life than I've read in my lifetime.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_03: And um, I asked somebody one time, should he read, you know, Jay E.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_03: Salinger's catching up.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: And this was when he was young, he was like 10 or 11.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_03: And the man said, no, he has not had the life experience yet to understand that book.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_03: Which I took as a very good perspective.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_03: And he was very nice about it.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_03: But he said that, no, it's not, it's not, it's not for him.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's not a book that he needs to read at that age.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_03: So I will tell you this uh eight or ten-year-old Stephen, I don't even remember at this age who that person was.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_03: I have no clue.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I know this that when I was 12, and this is the episode three, I stepped on a nail, right?
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_03: And it went through my foot and it put me in the hospital for two months.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_03: So the eighth grade, while I went to Middle Main and the seventh grade, eighth grade, I lost half of it.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't go to eighth grade.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_03: Holy smokes.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the bigger holy smokes was that I never got to play soccer again.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_03: I never got to do any of these sports again.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so I started playing tennis, which I did then, and then I started cycling.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: And then that became a national qualifier by the time I was 16, rinse all over the country.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_03: Probably I was riding 400 miles a week in high school.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't get many dates because I think I should have showered before I got to school.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm serious.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_03: So I rode bicycles because I didn't have to bend my toes.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_03: So I rode bicycles my whole high school career.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_03: Every day up at five o'clock, I get up early and I would ride for 20, 20 miles before school every single day.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: Then I'd ride between 20 and 40 miles every single day after school, and then 80 to 100 on the weekends.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I was 16 years old.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_03: I'm with respect, I thought I wasn't gonna have kids, right?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_03: How am I gonna have kids when that moment finally comes, right?
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_03: And then I spent my entire senior year gone, didn't go to the dances, didn't go to, I went to prom and that that was it.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't go to homecoming.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't go to one prom and one homecoming in my entire high school career because I was cycling all the time.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_03: I was all over the country, went to almost every state to race bicycles.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_03: Then I raced nationals in '87.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_03: All this kind of stuff.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: So I say all that to tell you that if you were to ask me that kid, he I wouldn't remember him because when I stepped on the nail, my Ma told me that you forgot everything when you were a kid.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_03: They gave me some, I'm, I don't know, but it was some medicine or not, or just the trauma from it.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know what it was.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_03: But I was in that hospital for so long, I don't remember anything.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_03: I I don't remember any stories.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_03: My parents tell me stories, I don't know them.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_03: So so you so you rebooted.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: But you had a reboot.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: You had a soft reboot.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_03: If you said Steven at 18.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what would you tell the 18-year-old Steve on?
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you if you seriously, yeah.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you want me to give you like heart-to-heart stuff?
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: Just one one thing you would tell.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: Pass the girls out.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's legit.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: No, that's legit.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: I'm being serious.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't think I was good enough for anybody.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't think I wasn't, and this is this ties back in the very beginning of the first thing we talked about.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: Coming as a kid who doesn't look like the other kids, he doesn't act like the other kids.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not rhyme the fish out of water, right?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_03: I the ugly duckling.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_03: And the ugly duckling.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: I kind of was me.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_03: I I wasn't I wasn't ugly, which I found out much later.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_03: Of course.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_03: But of course, you don't know that when you don't know what where you fit, right?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know this.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean all my friends had girls and you know, and episodes and all these things they wouldn't tell.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I had zero stories.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't have any stories.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, I barely had one girlfriend in high school, and that was it.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_03: But if I could go back to 18, I was like, Steven, you are unique, but people appreciate that about you.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_03: At that age, you don't understand that.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_03: You think you're just an outcast or you're a wallflower or you're uh something that doesn't quite fit into this mold of life that the United States wants to promote.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_03: But it doesn't matter.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of people don't want that.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so you find that what you what anyway, that would be that'll be number one.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_03: I'd say ask them out anyway.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_03: Even if they say no.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: But I I went on lots of dates as what do you call them a wingman?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_03: Like people would have set me up with lots of girls.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I'd go out with them for one date.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_03: I'd barely kiss them goodnight.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_03: Oh.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_03: And they were all nice.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you know, that's back in the I think I remember this is in 1988, 89.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_03: And this is back when the drinking age was um 18.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_03: So people drank.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_03: I drank when I was at, I mean, I drank from 18 to 20 then.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: And that was it for me.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, I suck at this.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: I am not good at this at all.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: This is not good for my depression.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_03: It made me worse.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I was already starting to get really depressed then.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_03: And it was like, this is not good for me.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_03: And so I lived this whole life that way.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like, okay, I know this isn't good for me, so I'll stop this.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_03: And then I quit drinking caffeine when I turned 24.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, I didn't have caffeine or alcohol from 24 to 50.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_03: And even now, I had alcohol like, I don't know, a few weeks ago, maybe just to, I don't know, it was fun.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_03: But that was it.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's very, very, very, very at the very safe place to do that.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I only did it once.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_03: Like Billy used to buy me um these little drinks.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_03: When I'd go with Bill, he'd buy a drink for me, and I'd I would never finish it, but it was nice of him to do that.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Pim's Cup.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_03: Pim's Cup.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_03: And there's something that had um ginger beer in it.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_03: And it's very strong for me.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not a very strong dater.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, it's still fun.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's fun.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_03: I totally get why people do it.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_03: And as long as they're safe, you know, let them let them be, you know, just be careful.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_03: So anyway, the short of it is I would tell him that.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_03: And then I would tell them one of the struggles I had was while I was relatively smart, I wasn't very, I didn't read well.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_03: So when I got out of college, I was 25.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_03: When I got out of college, I was 21.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_03: I graduated young because I started school young.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_03: I should have been held back.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_03: But I didn't know what to do or what I wanted to do.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_03: So a lot of these kids that I talked to, I understand, I can relate to you.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't know what I wanted to do.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_03: There's a book that came out that says I could do anything if I only knew what it was, right?
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_03: This is me.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_03: I was the epitome of this.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_03: And um, so I had no clue what to do.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_03: But so I went to Dallas, I was 25, and I paid 500 bucks for a test called the Johnson O'Connor Aptitude Test.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_03: This dude read me like a book.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it was like, it was awesome.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_03: For two days I was there, I was I was blown away.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, this guy could read my mind.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_03: He knew what I was thinking.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: It was a really, really nice guy.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: He's English wild.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, he told me something.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_03: He goes, Stephen, he goes, I hate to tell you this, but you're gonna have a really hard time working for anybody.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I was 25 years old, and that's when I started my business, right?
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but I didn't make a lot of money, made$11,000 that year because people would hire me to help them out their computers.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, he said, what you would be good at is it's not like you said you'd be good, and I'm not saying you'd be a good carpenter, but I am good with fixing things.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_03: I said, but you'd be like a good carpenter for Victorian homes from the era of 1700 to 1900 in a specialized thing, and you want to come in and give your advice and leave.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's as clean.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds like IT work, right?
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_03: Sounds like IT work.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's a specialist in a field that not many people knew how to do.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_03: And you come in and you do your stuff and you would just and then you just and I would just evaporate.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_03: Evaporate.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_03: I would just leave.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I did that for 25 years.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_03: He was right on the money.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_03: And it wasn't because of that that I did that.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_03: It was more like because what made what really started me to kickstart my business.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: But if you said go back and talk, I would say learn how to read, learn how to understand words better.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so part of the part of the takeaway from that, the reason why I brought it up was because my vocabulary was terrible.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_03: He goes, You have a terrible vocabulary, you have a sixth grade vocabulary.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_03: Like I didn't know what a noun or a verb was.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_03: So by the time, so when I went to college, I learned I had took German classes.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_03: Every semester I had a German class because I just got back from Switzerland.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_03: I went out, graduated high school.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_03: I went and lived in Switzerland for the summer with a four-inch team student that had been with me.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_03: So I lived with his family.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I learned how to speak some German, and it was interesting.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_03: So I took that and I had a minor in this German language.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_03: But what I did, and I could speak German, that's fine.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_03: I don't speak, I can't speak now, it doesn't really matter.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_03: I can understand some things.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: But what's more important is I learned about the English language.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_03: What I learned from a fur from a second language is more about the first.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_03: And then he said, then I got these books on words, and before you knew it, I have all these, now I know how to speak.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_03: And because the reason why you need to learn words, and this is what I teach my students, like I teach them this.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_03: This is oh, it's so great.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_03: All 10th through 10th to 11th, 12th graders, everybody, even the kids I sit with, I tell them you must learn words because you will not be able to communicate how you feel otherwise.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's the reason.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's because you don't know how to say it.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_03: And and I even do it now for people, like they'll say, This is how I feel.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_03: I said, Well, do you feel this way?
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_03: Is this the word that makes you?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's how I feel.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_03: That word.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't know that word existed.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_03: So anyway, this is part of what I would tell.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_03: You said 18-year-old Steven, right?
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_03: Because not eight and 10, yeah.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_03: That's a different dick.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_03: But 10 year old Stephen, I would tell and ask the girls out.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_03: And just go have fun with them.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_03: Have fun.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: Learn what fun means to you.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_03: And don't take life so seriously when it comes to this sort of time in life.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_03: You don't have to worry about being um, you know, wealthy or what you're trying to accomplish in life.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_03: You don't need to worry about that at this age.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_03: You need to go have some understanding of being able to do that and learn better words.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_03: Those are probably the two key elements.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I dig it.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: I like it.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: I like it.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is that enough?
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: That is me.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: More than too much.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, this was great.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: This was a great conversation.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and again, I love that we were able to do this over two episodes.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for being on.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you're so good.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: I I love the uh I love just how insanely, and I hope you don't take this the wrong way, like how insanely meandering your life has been, even though you've been on a path, right?
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: But you have never been afraid to stop and step off the asphalt and like check out what's going on over here.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and and and I think that makes you far more interesting.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that's what now the ladies are you know, the the same ones you would have been afraid to ask off when you were a kid.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: They are the ones like, man, you want to hang out?
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: Stephen.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's that's that's what ended up happening to the ugly duckling.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's what happens when he grows up to be a swan, right?
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: So um Well, maybe I'm a swan.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_03: Not a house.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's probably what I'm gonna try to say.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: When I grew up, I want to be a swan.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, they say this, yeah, anyway.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, listen, this has been an absolute pleasure, man.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to do this again.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'd love to.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: And uh thank you for everybody for listening.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, as we stay in Trinidad, we could talk later.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: All contributing producers by David McMillan and Aurelian Millennium.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: Music was provided by Pizza Standy of the chat, and I am your host, or I think that's a good thing.