Latest / Why Not Today? with Leslie Kane / The Why Not Today? Podcast - Season 2 - Episode 26 with Mina Lucks, Synergy Design & Construction

Transcript

The Why Not Today? Podcast - Season 2 - Episode 26 with Mina Lucks, Synergy Design & Construction · Why Not Today? with Leslie Kane

0:00
Hello, my name is Leslie Kane.
0:02
I am the host of the Why Not Today podcast.
0:05
This is a podcast to celebrate people who have been courageous and said,
0:08
why not today?
0:09
I started this podcast in honor of my father,
0:11
Patrick Kane, who often did say, why not today?
0:14
I am based in rest of Virginia,
0:16
a planned community right outside of Washington DC,
0:19
and thanks for joining us today.
0:20
So my guests today, and I always say I'm excited about my guests,
0:23
and I am always excited.
0:24
My guests today,
0:26
kind of started in talking about her being guests several years ago,
0:31
and I'll never forget, I was walking out by my house
0:34
and ran into a friend of mine.
0:36
He's like, I want to be on your podcast.
0:38
And I'm like, what have you done courageous?
0:41
And he was like, I don't know, but you need to talk to Mina.
0:44
And he was telling me, so my guest today is Mina Lux,
0:48
and he was telling me about your story of your traveling.
0:51
And so I reached out to you, and it was literally a year or so,
0:55
because you were going through a lot of life.
0:57
I mean, I'm to find out you literally like,
1:00
I can throw a rock from my door and hit your house.
1:03
That's how close you live to me now.
1:05
And we met several years ago at a chamber.
1:08
I do distinctly remember one Christmas,
1:11
right before Christmas, coming into your office
1:14
and chatting with you and just talking about downtime.
1:17
And I just, I don't know, I felt a connection there.
1:19
And then, you know, you being here and walks and life happening
1:24
and really have connected with you.
1:25
And I'm super excited to finally have you as a guest
1:28
on the podcast.
1:29
And you did an adventure.
1:31
And we talked about that in some of your purge stories.
1:34
So, Ms. Mina Lux, introduce yourself quickly with like a,
1:38
and about your bio and a fast, fun fact.
1:41
Okay.
1:42
So thank you, Leslie.
1:43
I'm so excited.
1:44
I really enjoyed watching our friendship grow over the last
1:47
couple of years, and it's been a long time coming
1:49
to get to this point.
1:51
So I'm excited.
1:52
We're finally connecting.
1:53
It's awesome.
1:55
Fun are a little bit about me.
1:56
I've been in this area most of my life since I was nine.
1:59
I kind of grew up in Springfield.
2:00
I've been arrested for a couple of decades now.
2:03
And so, Native Virginia, Virginia,
2:08
and had a little bit of an unusual background,
2:10
which will kind of tie into my story.
2:12
But a fun fact is that I think I was a really angry youth.
2:16
I didn't realize it, but I was a metalhead.
2:18
First concert I did was Judas Priest.
2:21
And, oh, wow.
2:22
I never thought I'd be in there.
2:24
I never in a million years would think that.
2:26
That's fun.
2:28
All right.
2:29
So let's talk about courage.
2:30
What does courage mean to you?
2:32
So courage to me means, you know,
2:35
really following that intuition, you get that gut,
2:38
you get that little instinct of a pull towards something
2:41
that's usually very uncomfortable,
2:43
or just makes no sense.
2:45
You're like, I don't know why, but I think I need to do this.
2:49
And not having, you know, not taking the time to like talk
2:52
yourself out and be like, OK, I'm going to be led by that
2:55
feeling and that intuition and see where this goes.
2:58
I feel like courage just requires that of us to really attune
3:02
into what is next for us and start going for it and figuring
3:06
out where it's going to land.
3:09
So believe in that.
3:10
And just trusting that gut that tells you to do something.
3:13
Yeah.
3:14
And I have found really, I mean,
3:16
my life basically has followed that path, but really with this
3:19
podcast, like it is leading me to people and conversations.
3:23
And who would have known that conversation I had with,
3:26
we'll call him out in case he listens to it, Raj,
3:28
which is a whole other crazy coincidence.
3:31
But whoever would have known that that conversation would
3:34
have led to, you know, not just you as a guest podcast,
3:38
but reconnecting his friends and we've been through journey
3:40
together in the last couple of years.
3:42
And just following that gut, like, and I did keep reaching out
3:45
to you, just kept popping up in my head.
3:47
It wasn't that I was stalking you to go for a walk or to see you,
3:50
but when you popped in my head and I really tried to be true to
3:53
that in my world when I think of somebody to reach out.
3:56
Yeah.
3:57
And I was going to say, and I think that's courage to not like
4:02
get in your head and say, well, they're going to think I'm
4:05
stalking them.
4:06
I'm bugging them.
4:07
I'm like, I just felt like we had, we had a connection.
4:10
I didn't know what it was.
4:11
Yeah.
4:12
And I just felt like I loved about the perseverance in that,
4:15
um, not stalking and feeling.
4:17
I thought they cared for, you know,
4:19
and I was going through a tough time in my life and was kind of
4:21
more of an introvert and just taking some time to,
4:24
to figure myself out and you reaching out on a periodic,
4:27
but nice spaced out.
4:29
I was like, okay, you know, I'm still in her world and I still
4:32
matter to this person that I'm just getting to know.
4:34
And so it was just,
4:35
it was a beautiful way to show.
4:37
Um, and to feel cared for by your,
4:39
by your not getting into your head of like,
4:41
you know, what's going on?
4:42
And then,
4:43
when I was talking to her,
4:44
when I was talking to her about what it was,
4:46
what I was hearing and I was like,
4:48
what the hell is going on.
4:49
She's not really responding.
4:50
You know,
4:51
I was going through something and you were just giving me the
4:53
I didn't,
4:54
I didn't really know where they,
4:55
what's going on.
4:56
Yeah.
4:57
And so yeah, that's absolutely courage.
4:58
Listen to that intuition.
4:59
Listen to that voice.
5:00
I would say,
5:01
listen to the first voice,
5:02
not the second voice that talks to you out of the first voice.
5:04
Yes.
5:05
Do the thing and, you know, why not today?
5:07
Yeah.
5:08
So let's talk about your adventure.
5:10
Is it synergy design?
5:11
Synergy design and construction.
5:13
Yeah.
5:13
It's a design-built firm right here.
5:15
Yeah, it looked like construction girl.
5:17
You play with my girl.
5:20
So, but you did, had an adventure.
5:23
So let's talk about that and what, how do you want to,
5:27
you know, what motivates you to do that?
5:29
And let's talk about the adventure and what you learned
5:32
through the adventure.
5:34
And I'm kind of tying in how it ties to me
5:36
and I always talk about my dad and it definitely ties
5:38
into my dad.
5:39
So.
5:40
Perfect.
5:40
Yeah.
5:41
So, so my adventure, well, you know, this adventure,
5:44
I should say, started back in around 2019.
5:47
I was turning about to turn 50.
5:50
So I think I was just really looking at my life
5:52
and looking at what was going on for me.
5:54
You know, they talk about midlife crisis.
5:56
I didn't feel like it was a crisis,
5:57
but I just really started looking inward and saying,
5:59
you know, am I happy in the relationship,
6:02
the marriage that I was in at that time,
6:03
am I happy with my business and where it's,
6:05
where and how it's showing up right now?
6:09
And I didn't have any answers.
6:10
I just knew that I was kind of frustrated
6:12
and wasn't sure what to do.
6:14
And I was out to dinner with my husband at the time.
6:17
And it was something that, you know,
6:19
I'll talk a lot about spirit or whatever.
6:20
I feel like spirit just came right out of my mouth.
6:22
I said, I said, I don't know.
6:24
I just feel like I need to take a couple months
6:25
and drive across the country by myself or something.
6:29
And it literally came out and I was like, who said that?
6:32
I haven't been thinking about this my entire life.
6:34
Like it wasn't something that was like written down
6:36
in my goal or my journal.
6:38
Not your bucket list.
6:39
No, it just shot out of my mouth.
6:41
And next thing you know, you know, the next day he asked me,
6:45
he's like, so if you figured out when you're leaving,
6:47
because he knows me when I get my mind
6:49
it was something I kind of just do it.
6:51
And I said, yeah, I think this October, it was 2019.
6:55
I was like, I think leaving the end,
6:57
the beginning of October and then coming back
6:59
right before the holiday would be perfect.
7:00
And so that's what I did.
7:02
And 2019, October, whatever the first Monday in October was,
7:07
I hit the road and it was so fun.
7:10
What a perfect time in the world to have done that.
7:12
Not if you would have waited,
7:14
it would have been a whole different world.
7:16
Yeah, I had no idea.
7:17
You know, I came back at the very end of it and COVID hit.
7:20
Like I just hadn't,
7:20
it was literally right before COVID happened.
7:23
So how much time between when you've blurted out,
7:26
I want to go across country
7:27
until you've gotten your car in left.
7:29
And you're running a business too.
7:31
Like pulling yourself out of a business.
7:33
Exactly, we were running the business together.
7:35
We have a very strong team.
7:37
And so I knew that I could, you know,
7:38
log in remotely and be a part of client meetings if needed.
7:42
But I also knew I was very supported by the team.
7:44
And Mark knew that, you know, my husband at the time knew
7:47
I needed to follow my, follow what was leading to me
7:51
and leading me in that direction.
7:53
So, you know, he supported that decision as well,
7:56
even though it meant kind of uncertainty for us.
7:58
Yeah, so how long between when you made the decision
8:00
and when you got the road?
8:01
It was like three weeks, four weeks, within a month.
8:04
Yeah.
8:05
Okay.
8:06
And then we went on.
8:07
I was going to say, did you plan it ahead
8:09
or you just jump in the car and go?
8:11
Yeah, so I planned it ahead.
8:13
And of course me, I'm an entrepreneur.
8:15
So I first started turning it into a work thing.
8:18
So I'm like, okay, I'm going, I love,
8:19
I'm weird to talk about, I love videos
8:22
and I love interviews and I love that type of stuff.
8:24
So I brought my camera crit with me, a bunch of outfits.
8:27
And I decided I was going to go around the country
8:30
and interview women construction owners.
8:34
You know, like me.
8:35
So I'm like, oh, I'll just do like some video,
8:37
like not podcasts, but just interviews.
8:39
And I don't know what I'm going to do with it,
8:40
but that's a great thing to do.
8:41
So I started charting my course.
8:43
I'm like, oh, I'll go up the East coast
8:44
and go visit so and so up in Boston.
8:46
You know, I just, I found a couple people
8:49
kind of around the country and just started kind of spacing
8:52
them out of what I thought I would do.
8:55
So yeah, it was a little bit of planning in that regard
8:58
of just like where I was going to be when,
8:59
at least the first couple.
9:01
And I was like, I'll figure out the rest.
9:02
Did you reach out to friends?
9:04
Did you stay with friends?
9:05
Did you stay hotels?
9:06
Did you have a camper?
9:07
It was a combination.
9:08
I wish I had had a camper back then,
9:10
but it was a lot of Airbnb, some hotels, and then some camping.
9:14
So when I got over on the West coast, I loved to camp.
9:16
So I brought my tent and that type of stuff.
9:18
So I camped as much as I could.
9:20
It was October.
9:20
So, you know, going straight up into the Boston
9:23
and main area was chilly.
9:26
So I, and yes, I did stay with brands.
9:27
There was a former employee used to be a carpenter of ours.
9:30
He was up in that state in New York, so I stayed with him.
9:33
You know, as people started understanding
9:34
what I was doing on Facebook and everything,
9:37
I just started getting these invitations left and right,
9:40
oh, if you're coming my way, you know,
9:42
and sometimes I would like go their way.
9:43
I'm like, okay, I'll just stay with this person.
9:46
So just started having a life of its own.
9:48
Did you stay in places very long?
9:52
You were gone.
9:52
So you were gone three months?
9:54
Two months.
9:55
I did it in two, and it was funny just to circle back.
9:58
I ended up not.
9:59
I did like one or two interviews with people
10:02
and I realized this isn't about work.
10:04
You know, this is for me.
10:05
You know, this is the one time
10:07
not many people get a chance to do this.
10:09
So I put my camera equipment in the trunk.
10:12
I was like, I don't, I'm not doing that.
10:14
I'm gonna follow my heart and follow where I was being led,
10:17
which was work related.
10:20
So yeah, I ended up going to friends.
10:23
I ended up staying in Sedona for almost 10 days.
10:25
I fell in love with that.
10:26
I love the West Coast.
10:28
So I went up to, well, part of the journey too,
10:32
what I started realizing is I wanted to go to a lot of places
10:34
that I was little because I said I grew up in Springfield
10:37
since I was nine, but before that,
10:38
I lived in eight places before the age of 10.
10:41
I was gonna say, wasn't there a story
10:42
about your mom and her travels?
10:44
Yeah, exactly.
10:45
So I had a very unusual upbringing.
10:47
My mother, I never knew my dad and my mother was a hippie.
10:50
Literally, I was conceived at Woodstock.
10:54
And so whenever many, many jobs and I grew up,
10:56
or I was born on the West Coast.
10:58
So I lived in a lot of different places over there
11:01
in Missouri, Oklahoma, like I said,
11:03
eight places before the age of 10.
11:06
So I, and she was a long haul truck driver
11:09
as one of her last career or whatever.
11:13
And she had died in an accident at a particular bridge.
11:17
So I went to the bridge where she passed, you know,
11:20
and let that go through and allow myself to grieve
11:23
and really kind of delve into that part of my life
11:27
and my connection to her and disconnection
11:29
because that was a long time ago.
11:31
So it became a real big healing journey for me.
11:34
Did you start out thinking it was gonna be that way?
11:36
No, I thought I was gonna interview women.
11:39
That's amazing how that happens.
11:43
Oh my God, the path just totally opened up
11:45
and changed for me.
11:47
And I felt so loved and supported by the people
11:49
that were reaching out and giving me a free place to stay,
11:53
you know, right after I went to that bridge,
11:54
my friends like, oh, my friend's got a beach condo in Oregon.
11:58
You can just use that because it's all season
12:00
and was gifted this place to stay for three nights.
12:03
It just allowed me to again, process and go on
12:06
to a deeper level of all that pain
12:08
that needed to be processed.
12:10
And you were working through the courage
12:12
of the intuition too that we talked about
12:14
in the very beginning.
12:15
Yeah.
12:16
Like just being led.
12:18
And yeah, you planned it, but it hadn't been interesting
12:20
how we have a plan and then God throws it up in the air
12:22
and says, I'm gonna take you this way instead.
12:25
Exactly.
12:26
Totally shifts the plan and the open up of people.
12:30
And I think when you're open, then people are very generous.
12:33
Yes, so much so.
12:35
It's like that energy is met, you know?
12:37
It's like you're open so then the path just kind of opens up
12:41
and people meet you where you are.
12:43
I stayed with people and in places I never would have
12:46
if I'd been on my work journey that I had started at.
12:48
Yeah, so true.
12:50
We need to let go and fill our cup.
12:54
And that's one of the things I've been talking about
12:56
a lot with people is we need to fill our cup.
12:59
We are just exhausted, surviving.
13:02
And after the last three years of really surviving
13:05
and having to recreate businesses
13:06
and do so many different things.
13:08
And I think people are looking at, okay, what's next?
13:11
And what can I do?
13:12
And I've thought about this trip adventure many times.
13:16
When I was 16 years old,
13:19
I don't know what possessed my father to do this
13:23
or my parents, but they bought an RV.
13:26
And we went cross country for five weeks.
13:30
Five, yeah.
13:32
That's crazy enough, he owned his own business.
13:34
So he could work on the road.
13:36
And it's funny how much I'm so much like him
13:38
because the last few years I have done
13:39
not necessarily travel cross country,
13:42
but literally we had some stops of places
13:46
where he grew up in California and different things.
13:48
That was where he was from.
13:49
But a lot of it was like we would get up in the morning
13:52
and we would grab the then camper book.
13:56
He promised my mother that we would stay
13:58
in hotels majority of the time.
14:00
But we actually, I think we stayed in one or two,
14:02
stay in the camper.
14:03
Now the other really crazy thing about the story,
14:05
and I need to interview my mother on this about this,
14:08
is there are five of us kids at that point.
14:11
My youngest sister, the first four of us,
14:13
I was 16, so Chris was 12.
14:15
Amanda wasn't born yet.
14:17
Catherine was five weeks old when we left.
14:20
Five weeks?
14:21
Five weeks.
14:23
She spent the first five to 10 weeks of her life
14:26
on the road in the camper.
14:28
Is that crazy?
14:29
And I didn't appreciate it,
14:31
like the fact that my dad took five weeks from work
14:36
to go on a road trip with us.
14:38
And literally we would get the camper book out
14:41
when we woke up because we were teenagers
14:43
and pick where we wanted to go, stay,
14:45
because based on what pools and what amenities they had.
14:48
And then we'd stop at early afternoon
14:51
and my dad would go to the payphone and start working.
14:55
But so many cool lessons and looking back,
14:58
that I thought I really want to duplicate it.
14:59
Actually, after Raj told me about you,
15:03
that night I went to bed and I made a list
15:04
of the why not today road trip.
15:06
Oh, wow.
15:07
In all the places, and I know people all over the country,
15:09
all the places I wanted to go
15:11
and see and eventually I'm gonna have to do it.
15:14
Yeah, absolutely.
15:15
Yeah.
15:16
But I always wanted somebody to go with me,
15:17
but I'm thinking it's probably gotta be a solo journey.
15:21
It's nice to be able to do that.
15:22
It really is just to kind of have that time for yourself.
15:26
Yeah.
15:26
And I love getting in the car and driving.
15:28
So, all right, so lessons learned.
15:31
Oh, lessons learned.
15:33
Or your favorite places, your favorite people or...
15:36
So what are the things...
15:37
Did you make new friends that you never knew
15:39
and are you still connected to people on the road?
15:42
Well, yeah, so a couple of questions there.
15:44
So my favorite place I'll share it was,
15:46
I decided to go when I hit California
15:48
to a number of the places that I'd lived.
15:50
And so I went to this one place,
15:51
it's called Sunset Beach,
15:52
it's right near Huntington Beach, right in LA.
15:55
And I pulled up, I just found the place.
15:59
Like I looked online to figure out what it looked like.
16:01
I remembered it in my mind
16:02
because it was my happiest childhood memories.
16:04
And I just pulled up and I went to the beach,
16:08
I just started crying because I just felt that energy.
16:11
I was like, oh my God, I remember these volleyball nets
16:15
and the sand type of things.
16:16
I knew I was in the right place.
16:17
And then I walked directly to my house
16:20
that I had not seen since I was seven years old.
16:22
Like I just went right to it.
16:25
So that was my favorite place.
16:26
I ended up staying there for two nights in a hotel
16:29
and like ended up going to this little bar
16:31
that was in this little community.
16:33
And I had a drink for mom with the locals.
16:36
And so it was really, really cool.
16:38
Lessons learned, oh my God.
16:41
Again, obviously following your gut
16:44
and that type of thing,
16:44
allowing yourself to be really open to whatever happens
16:50
and to allow yourself to put yourself out there.
16:52
Cause I could have done this very quietly
16:54
but I went ahead and put it on social media.
16:56
And I'm not a big social media person.
16:58
I don't post a lot.
17:00
But I said, you know what?
17:01
I'm putting it out there.
17:02
And that's what opened the doors for me.
17:03
And so, yeah, somebody that I didn't know that well,
17:06
I knew of her and we had met at networking events
17:08
is Sam Horn, who's like a author of a bazillion books.
17:12
She's extremely famous.
17:14
She was like, oh my God,
17:15
if you come to Colorado, come and stay with me.
17:17
And I stayed with her for two days.
17:19
She opened up her home, we went out to dinner.
17:21
She gave me writing tips on how to write a book.
17:24
And I mean, she was just so generous.
17:26
And so, you know, it's just,
17:28
I had that happen over and over and over.
17:30
I might need her contact information for my podcast.
17:33
Absolutely.
17:37
Yeah, so, yeah, there's no words.
17:40
No words.
17:41
People are very generous and people want to help.
17:44
And what we don't ask.
17:46
Yeah.
17:46
And so being open to asking,
17:49
and I love that you put it on social.
17:51
And, you know, I love and hate social media
17:54
that I didn't even know about any of this.
17:56
You know, all these things were happening.
17:58
Right, I know.
18:00
It's connection, but then it's not.
18:02
So it's like, how do you ever gather enough information?
18:05
You just wait for the algorithms
18:06
to put the right thing in your feed.
18:08
So it's a little odd.
18:09
Yeah, exactly.
18:11
So I don't want to talk about bad things,
18:14
but did you have any struggles or anything
18:17
that took the courage to plow through with you?
18:22
Yeah, I think it was an interesting time of my life.
18:25
And we can go back to kind of when we met.
18:27
And I was kind of going through it,
18:28
that we kind of hinted at, you know,
18:30
I came back from the trip and then COVID hit
18:33
very shortly thereafter.
18:35
And so I just kind of went back into my life, you know,
18:38
went back into my business, went back into my marriage
18:40
and just said, okay, I feel better
18:41
because I just did all this healing.
18:43
So it's like, okay, then everything must be fine.
18:45
Cause I just kind of went back to life as it was,
18:48
especially when COVID hit.
18:49
Cause it was just like, oh my God, the world's ending.
18:51
Like what's happening here?
18:53
So it took me a couple more years to realize, oh no,
18:55
I do actually need to make a choice
18:59
and a decision to leave the relationship.
19:02
And then actually put more energy back into my business.
19:05
So I ended up, you know, getting a divorce
19:07
and that's when we met and was kind of going
19:09
through that process.
19:10
And then purchasing them out of the company,
19:12
running synergy, you know, we've had this for 15 years
19:14
and I've been running it for myself now a year and a half.
19:17
And honestly, we've never been doing better.
19:19
The team is incredible.
19:21
The clients are incredible.
19:22
And I just had this whole new life and energy to me,
19:26
really being able to kind of steer it the way
19:28
and the direction that I want based on the foundation
19:30
that we had created together.
19:31
So it really all ended up in the end, great for everybody,
19:36
but it took me a couple of years to figure it out
19:38
even after my trip.
19:39
Cause I just kind of went right back into that old cycle.
19:41
For the hardest part, that second level of courage
19:44
was making a choice to leave that relationship, you know,
19:47
kind of in the eyes of everybody,
19:49
a lot of people in rest and know us and know our journey
19:52
and knew of my trip.
19:53
And then two years later to say, oh no,
19:55
I actually am leaving.
19:56
Like it was, it was a little odd.
19:58
And that took probably the most courage I've ever had my life
20:01
was to make that choice.
20:03
Yeah, yeah.
20:04
Yeah, definitely.
20:05
And we all like that.
20:07
And I can see how happy you are
20:09
and how much you love your business.
20:11
And you know, those of us that own our own businesses,
20:14
we do love our business and we love to work.
20:16
And you know, one day I reached out to you
20:19
and it'd been a Sunday, I think,
20:20
and you said you went to the office
20:21
and just worked to lighten some night.
20:23
And that's when we love what we do
20:25
and we have that passion, we want to work.
20:27
It's not work, it's really good.
20:29
And I have a good friend of mine that works
20:32
for the school system and people that work like that nine
20:35
to five that whatever hours, they don't get it.
20:40
And I'm like, yeah, I work seven days a week,
20:42
but I can take three hours off on a Tuesday.
20:44
And you know, I have that flexibility
20:47
and I love what I do and it's fun to me.
20:50
And hell, it's fun for you.
20:53
Yeah, absolutely.
20:53
I love the flexibility of being able to get my hair done
20:56
on a Tuesday in the middle of the day.
20:58
Or if I need to go to the grocery store,
20:59
there's no lines because I'm not in the evening.
21:01
There used to be a lot more flexibility
21:04
or a lot more ease in doing things during the week.
21:09
But now it seems like everybody is out all the time.
21:12
There's nobody that works in Northern Virginia.
21:15
Fair enough, fair enough.
21:16
Anything else you want to share about your trip or?
21:19
Well, I will tell you, so I think it's fun
21:21
in that when I got over to the West Coast
21:24
as part of my trip, I love going down
21:26
the Pacific Coast Highway, so the whole California.
21:29
We did that in a 25-foot RV, by the way.
21:31
25, oh my gosh.
21:33
And at 16, I drove a lot.
21:36
My mom drove for 45 minutes
21:38
and my dad and I drove the rest of the time.
21:40
Oh wow.
21:40
And I was like, just got redrivers.
21:42
It was a great experience then.
21:44
Yeah, you're a great driver, I'm sure, because of that.
21:47
I don't know.
21:50
Yeah, when I was over there, I was like, I love this,
21:52
but I was kind of on a time schedule.
21:53
I had to go like to meet somebody else
21:55
that invited me or whatever, so I'm like,
21:57
I'm coming back here and renting a camper
21:59
and really spending some time on the West Coast.
22:02
So I actually did that just a few weeks ago
22:04
right around the holidays.
22:05
I flew over to California, rented a camper,
22:08
and spent 10 days over there visiting a friend
22:12
and then going out to Yosemite and just really enjoying myself.
22:15
And so that was kind of a bucket list of promise
22:17
that I had made to myself.
22:19
And I got so inspired, because I've always loved camping.
22:21
I mean, usually in a tent and everything,
22:23
but I came back, I'm like, all right,
22:24
I'm getting myself a little camper.
22:25
So I literally just bought a like a two-person camper.
22:29
It's one of those teardrop campers.
22:31
I can tie it or tug it behind my Jeep,
22:34
which was another thing that I purchased last year.
22:36
So just finding that new energy
22:39
and what really lights me up.
22:40
So I'm excited.
22:41
Yeah, I have a nice little camper that I can camp on.
22:43
And in the weekends, I can't wait for the nice weather.
22:46
I'm not a camper, but maybe you'll convince me to try it.
22:49
There you go.
22:51
So how would you encourage somebody else
22:55
to go on the trip, for do the thing,
22:58
is to listen to their intuition,
22:59
to be correct and say, why not today?
23:02
Yeah, I think because it's,
23:04
I'm thinking right now of the movie, The Matrix.
23:08
I've never seen that.
23:09
I need to see that.
23:10
Well, you're given a choice.
23:11
The guy's given a choice very early on
23:14
of going one direction or another.
23:16
And the guy who's offering the choice says,
23:18
well, you know, you know, kind of where this one takes you.
23:21
You're welcome to continue down this path
23:23
or you can go to this one that doesn't.
23:25
So I think the courage or if it's a trip
23:27
or if it's just taking a path that you haven't been,
23:30
it's a little bit more uncomfortable,
23:31
but yet it feels right to you or there's this pull.
23:35
You know where you're at.
23:36
You know where that ends, quote unquote.
23:38
So go that other path.
23:40
And I think that's always been kind of a, not a motto,
23:42
but I think it's kind of helped push me along
23:46
when something instead of just staying in my cocoon,
23:48
say, oh, but it's really comfortable right now.
23:50
I was like, no, let me just go and find out
23:51
where this leads and it's kind of scary,
23:53
but it's exciting and let's figure it out
23:55
and just know that you're held by friends, family,
23:59
you know, the energies that surround you
24:01
in your life here and beyond, quite frankly.
24:04
And isn't it so true that when you walk out
24:05
of that comfort zone and do the things that are a little scary,
24:08
that there's always blessings behind it.
24:11
Oh, you just never know.
24:13
And if you stay in the little cocoon
24:14
and don't try anything, you're missing out
24:16
in so many blessings.
24:17
I often quote Daniel Pink who wrote a book about regrets.
24:21
And he talked about, you rarely regret something you did.
24:29
We always regret the things we didn't do.
24:30
And so just do it.
24:31
And, you know, I always play the game in my head,
24:33
what's the worst thing that's gonna happen?
24:35
You know, when I put my job, it was like,
24:37
what's the worst thing that's gonna happen?
24:39
You know, the MK business didn't work
24:41
and I'd have to get another job.
24:42
And that was four years ago.
24:44
So, you know, starting the podcast, doing the things,
24:47
and sometimes, you know, and I know the struggles
24:50
were real for people.
24:51
Sometimes the why not today is getting out of bed.
24:54
Yeah, I've been there.
24:56
And there's blessings behind it.
24:59
Yeah, yeah.
24:59
I mean, mental health is no joke.
25:01
And sometimes we get to those cycles in our lives
25:04
that really, you know, really have us go within,
25:06
in and go digging and kind of get through that pain.
25:09
But on the other side is that freedom and that, you know,
25:13
it's almost like the seasons, you know?
25:14
And I think that's one thing about my trip, I'll say.
25:17
I got to experience all four seasons in two months.
25:19
You know, I got the snow, the weather,
25:21
I got the Arizona heat, you know, that whole thing.
25:24
Really got connected to how much we're living
25:27
in the cycle of life.
25:29
And the seasons include our internal experience.
25:32
Oh, absolutely.
25:32
About our world.
25:34
Yeah, I heard somebody the other day saying, you know,
25:35
you're either in a, you know, you're in a growing,
25:38
a reaping, you know, there's a time, you know, winter time,
25:42
it's cold, I'm not a big outdoor person.
25:44
And, you know, I find I kind of go in and stay in
25:47
and do some projects in the house and other things
25:50
that you put off when it's nice out.
25:53
I'm not going to be in my house.
25:54
Right, right.
25:55
And though taking the time to work on us.
25:58
Yeah.
25:59
Is so necessary.
26:00
Yeah, for sure.
26:02
Yeah.
26:03
So I love all the courage and all your stories.
26:05
I know you've got lots of things we could talk about
26:06
otherwise, but we're just going to leave it at that.
26:09
So I always taught, when I do these,
26:11
I always try to trace it back to my dad.
26:14
And I said, you've never done, didn't know my dad.
26:17
And people are like, I don't know, didn't know your dad,
26:20
heard of them or I didn't know him.
26:21
But so lots of things you said.
26:23
First of all, I remember that day at Christmas,
26:25
I came to visit you in your office
26:26
and you kind of gave me the little tour.
26:28
There's somebody you worked with.
26:29
He's like, you introduced me with Leslie Kane.
26:32
He's like, I know your dad or do you dad?
26:34
I don't know if he was still alive.
26:36
He may have been alive at that point,
26:37
but somebody that worked with my dad years ago.
26:39
So my dad's background was actually architecture.
26:43
That's what he went to school for.
26:45
He ended up doing more city planning.
26:48
So you definitely have that connection.
26:50
Obviously the trip that he did this adventure with us.
26:54
And he grew up in California.
26:57
He grew up in LA.
26:58
And I remember on our trip going to Huntington Beach
27:02
and driving past there.
27:04
And it was summertime, but I remember going in the ocean
27:06
when it was like, it was freezing.
27:09
And then also just the remote working part of the trip.
27:12
That was like what he did.
27:14
And, you know, not having a plan, which I love.
27:17
Well, and I love that his remote working was like
27:19
way before it's time.
27:21
Like if you just picture him had a pay phone, you know,
27:24
doing business like that is just-
27:25
Yeah, he was so ahead.
27:26
If you look back so ahead of his time,
27:28
because when I was 10, my grandfather passed away.
27:32
Okay.
27:33
In California.
27:34
And literally I remember coming home from school
27:35
and my mom's like, pack your bags.
27:38
We're going to California.
27:39
And my dad was on a trip and actually we met him
27:43
at the bottom of the hill in the cab.
27:45
And he jumped in the car and we all went to the airport
27:48
and we went to California.
27:49
And that was in October.
27:50
We stayed there until March.
27:54
Oh, wow.
27:54
March, I think.
27:56
We stayed in my grandfather's house to settle the estate.
27:59
And honestly, my parents,
28:00
my dad wanted to move back to California.
28:02
Yeah, that was his goal.
28:04
But he, my mom stayed there with us kids,
28:06
which I remember he, it was funny.
28:09
She has four kids.
28:10
There were only four of us at that point.
28:12
And like literally packed suitcases.
28:14
So she went to Toys R Us and popped the trunk open
28:18
and it was like Christmas.
28:19
I love it.
28:21
But, oh my gosh, we had so many fun adventures being there.
28:25
But he flew back and forth
28:26
because his business was all over.
28:28
And he worked remotely from there.
28:30
And then I remember being his kids, we'd go on trips.
28:33
We didn't necessarily go on spring break.
28:35
They just pull us out of school and we'd go on trips
28:36
if he had a job in Maine.
28:38
So we all went to Maine.
28:40
And I remember going to LL Bean in the middle of the night.
28:42
You know, because you go shopping in the middle of the night.
28:45
So yeah, we just jumped in the car and whenever
28:48
we just traveling, yeah, he did remote work
28:50
long before remote work.
28:52
Right, yeah.
28:53
What a great foundation for you.
28:56
Like what a great, just, you know, upbringing that you had.
28:59
And I know everybody has their challenges.
29:00
I'm not by any means perfect childhood.
29:03
But at the same time, it's like, what a great foundation
29:05
and what a roadmap he gave you so early in life.
29:08
That's such a, again, back to the blessings.
29:11
Yes, absolutely.
29:12
And as I'm getting older and realizing the things
29:15
and as I'm doing this podcast and talking about him more,
29:18
it's just really eye-opening that I am very much like him.
29:21
And following a path and yeah, I'm going to do that trip
29:24
one of these days.
29:25
So, well, thank you for being our guests.
29:28
If anybody listening, watching, please go subscribe.
29:32
Especially I heard the other day that if you subscribe to Apple,
29:35
the podcast on Apple helps the numbers.
29:37
But review it, rate it, share it with a friend.
29:40
We're starting to do some fun things locally.
29:42
If you're listening from the North Virginia area,
29:45
we, I'm kicking off Why Not Connects Lunch on Thursday.
29:48
And my first guest is Ms. Mina Lux teaching about Fungish Way.
29:52
Yay.
29:54
And I'm going to do some other things to gather people
29:56
and connect and build community.
29:58
And then maybe take it on the road.
30:00
Maybe that's my road trip.
30:01
Oh, I love it.
30:03
I do have Why Not Today T-shirts and cups if anybody wants it.
30:06
You can find them on the website, which is just
30:08
winottodaypodcast.com.
30:11
And keep coming back.
30:12
We are now on a weekly episode.
30:15
And I think I'm going to start adding one week with just me,
30:18
sharing lessons I've learned through this process.
30:21
So thanks again, Mina, for being my guest.
30:23
And thank you for everybody for listening and watching
30:25
the Why Not Today podcast.
30:27
And as I always say, why not today?
30:29
Thank you.