Latest / The iAlign Podcast with Flint Mitchell / #34 - Recreating Yourself in Paradise with Forensic Biomechanist Mike Sinnott

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#34 - Recreating Yourself in Paradise with Forensic Biomechanist Mike Sinnott · The iAlign Podcast with Flint Mitchell

0:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, man, when I got to Hawaii, it was like remix, dude.
0:07
SPEAKER_01: Like every I had this I had to completely start anew.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: I did.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: Like I came here with all my skills, with the same resume, with the same everything, but I wasn't this version of me that you're talking to today.
0:21
SPEAKER_01: So like that was a big part.
0:23
SPEAKER_01: I really had to change my like demeanor and my approach.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: What's up, y'all?
0:43
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Seeking Authenticity.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: My name is Flint Mitchell, and I get absolutely psyched by having conversations with authentic people that I admire about the things they value.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: Their stories and perspectives don't just make me smile, laugh, and think.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: They inspire me to wake up earlier, listen better, focus, and work harder, and help make me a better version of myself.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: And it's my hope that sharing these conversations through this podcast might do the same thing for you.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: I hope that you are all looking forward to a wonderful Thanksgiving, and that whether in person or virtually, you are able to see and talk with your loved ones.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: In this episode, I talk with Mike Senett.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: Mike is a forensic biomechanist, determining the true causes of accidents and the human and mechanical factors that have contributed to them.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: In this conversation, we talk a bit about how he got into the field and why he loves it, including a really insane story from his graduate school years and the work ethic required at a young age to pursue a field that really didn't exist yet in industry.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: After that, however, we talk about the transformation he had to undergo when he and his wife left their all-too comfortable setting of eight years in Toronto, Canada to move to Oahu in Hawaii.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: Mike lets me ask about some really solid topics, including effectively the crisis of identity that you go through when making a large career switch in life, and the difficulty of building yourself back up after those periods of change.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: This is a wonderful chat that I found quite impactful in my own life.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: So I hope you enjoyed it.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for doing this with me, Michael.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate it.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: Pleasure to be here, Flint.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: Pleasure to be here.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: I've been excited to have this uh this podcast episode since we had a chat a couple weeks ago.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: Because I first off, I love hearing stories of people kind of forging their own path a little bit.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: And it sounds like you have have one of those.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: And then the second part is it sounds like I'm following your path a little bit, coming from kind of an engineering or science field and and diving into Hawaii, which is a place that it sounds like we both have some sort of affection for and love, you know.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: It's pretty special, Flynn.
2:47
SPEAKER_01: Am I am I your first guest since you've been in Hawaii?
2:50
SPEAKER_00: Second guest.
2:52
SPEAKER_01: Oh, see, I'm already, I'm already old news, but dude, way to hit the ground running, man.
2:58
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm really excited that we're both in state on the same island to record this.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: Like that's a that's that's not a very common uh occurrence.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: No, I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about the entry you had into forensic biomechanics in your university, maybe what it is and why you thought it was interesting to pursue.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: You know, I guess first and foremost, my name is Mike Sennett.
3:25
SPEAKER_01: I I currently own a forensic company out here in Oahu called Biologic Forensics.
3:32
SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, I'll get into what we do, but to go full circle starting here.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: I I'm from the Detroit area originally.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: Um I went to school at Michigan State.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: I was always kind of good at, you know, I always um got along okay in math.
3:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
3:48
SPEAKER_01: So growing up in, you know, the Midwest and being inclined mathematically, it kind of pigeonholes you into the fields of engineering.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
3:58
SPEAKER_01: Um, in particular, like more so automotive, mechanical-oriented type stuff.
4:04
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I found myself a couple years into school um going down that road.
4:10
SPEAKER_01: And I just like again growing up in in suburban Detroit, like I knew those guys.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: I knew kind of what the future looked like.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: It was tough for me because I never really had a real interest in like cars.
4:25
SPEAKER_01: I I I like I appreciated and generally kind of understood how things came together, but I grew up, I was like way into sports.
4:34
SPEAKER_01: I you know, I I suffered enough injuries that I had spent enough time in the doctor's office, that I was also like pretty fascinated with like biology and like yeah, like orthopedics, especially.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: You know, I didn't have a real I wasn't curious about lungs, but I wanted to know like how legs worked and how muscles tore.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: And so like third year university, man, it was that late in.
4:58
SPEAKER_01: Um, I happened to take this elective, and the elective was I I won't get into it, but basically it was a class where every week we were learning about niche fields of engineering.
5:11
SPEAKER_01: So it was almost like I just stumbled into this class, and I don't know why they didn't teach you that until your third year.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know how it is, right?
5:20
SPEAKER_01: The first two years they're trying to weed you out, yeah.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, by the third year, they're like, Oh, you're still here?
5:26
SPEAKER_01: Okay, by the way, this is what you can do.
5:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
5:29
SPEAKER_01: What do you want to do?
5:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it dude, it was like a light bulb, man.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: I had this um Dr.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: Ballman, I she was an amazing professor.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, and she taught this course in like she could have been talking about anything, and I I would have been following just because she was like that type of professor where I just like I just liked her, you know what I mean?
5:49
SPEAKER_01: Like she had that look in her eyes where it was just like she gets guys like me.
5:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I always kind of felt like a little bit of an outlier in in those engineering courses.
6:01
SPEAKER_01: Because, like I said, I was I was good at math and then I got to college, and it was like yeah, no different world.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: You guys are on some next level stuff.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, so basically I had that course, man, and that course like introduced me to this field of biomechanics, and um, you know, biomechanics by definition is the study of how biological tissues respond to force in motion.
6:25
SPEAKER_01: So, like, what the hell that means is it's like engineering, but for like human bodies or you know, biological tissues, yeah, yeah, yeah.
6:34
SPEAKER_01: Everyone thinks that engineers we just like build bridges and buildings, and it's like, well, we build that stuff because we understand the materials and how they come together.
6:42
SPEAKER_01: So biomechanists are just kind of niche engineers that that focused on on usually the human body.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
6:51
SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, man, like, and then all of a sudden I was just like, I found my match um because I got to like be part doctor, part engineer.
7:01
SPEAKER_01: I started working in an orthopedic biomechanics lab um at Michigan State, where advisor of mine, Dr.
7:09
SPEAKER_01: Haute, um, one of my earliest mentors, and another guy, Dr.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: Dejardin.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: And I started getting my hands on all this like orthopedic research and kind of biomechanic experimentation.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: Was there was there anything specific in in that lab that really like turned you on?
7:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: So we worked out of the uh osteopathic manipulative medicine building.
7:35
SPEAKER_01: Um, MSU didn't have a um a doctoral or uh uh uh medical degree at that time.
7:41
SPEAKER_01: They have it had an osteopathic.
7:44
SPEAKER_01: And the cadaver lab was there.
7:46
SPEAKER_01: And I, dude, I was only like a couple weeks into this like experience of working in this lab.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: And we were at that time, we were doing some testing where we were um we were evaluating how a human knee responds to basically um an unrestrained occupant.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: They don't have a seatbelt on, they get into a frontal collision, they slide forward and their knees hit the dashboard or glove box, yeah, and there's some other you know, contacts.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: So we were simulating that in a laboratory.
8:17
SPEAKER_01: In order to simulate that, you need some things that either look like knees or hey, there's a lab upstairs, there's a bunch of knees.
8:25
SPEAKER_01: So, Flint, dude, I'm not exaggerating here.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: This is like day four.
8:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm with one of the PhD grad students, and like I was pretty quick to make it clear like I'll do stuff, like I'm not scared.
8:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
8:37
SPEAKER_01: Dude, they take it up.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: Bro, the first thing that hit me was the smell, and I was just like, oh, yeah, for now.
8:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm not familiar with that, dude.
8:46
SPEAKER_01: 30 seconds later, we go and we talk to whoever runs the lab.
8:50
SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna believe me, but the guy says, What do you need?
8:53
SPEAKER_01: Knee.
8:54
SPEAKER_01: Oh, we got a guy, we got a body over here, and I'm like, I there's no way what I think might be happening is about to happen.
9:02
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
9:03
SPEAKER_01: I don't even know if I should be telling this story, but I'm gonna tell it because I haven't said any names.
9:08
SPEAKER_01: He pulls, he pulls the the you know, the sheet back about halfway.
9:14
SPEAKER_01: He's like, How much do you need above the kneecap?
9:17
SPEAKER_01: But I'm just sitting there, dude.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: I'm stunned.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying anything because I realize, holy shit, that thing in his left hand is a saw, and he wants us to just point like, dude, it's like I'm at a butcher shop.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: I'm now at a butcher shop, but that's a human dude, but it's a human body on the table, and I'm like, Oh, this this has to be, I think, unethical.
9:40
SPEAKER_01: This has to be like morally something is wrong here.
9:44
SPEAKER_01: Well, I tell you, it there is a higher level of disgust, and that's when he got roughly halfway through the femur, the upper leg bone, and the sound between the hacksaw changed.
9:58
SPEAKER_01: The hacksaw and whatever it was sawing changed and got to be a much higher pitch.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's because he just hit his implant.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: The poor guy, the cadaver, still had stitches in his knee from the full knee replacement he had had about three weeks prior to his death.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
10:20
SPEAKER_01: As tragic as that is, to have to see someone realize the tool they have, hacksaw, is not gonna cut through 316L stainless steel.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: Bro, he had to get up there and and basically work the implant out of the leg.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, I I honestly at that point, I don't remember my feelings afterwards, but I must have just been like, well, I'm in now.
10:47
SPEAKER_01: You know, we did it not this straight.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: This is the experience that turned you on.
10:53
SPEAKER_01: That that was the experience where I was like, oh shit, this is different.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: This is different, and like that wasn't that wasn't forensics by any well.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: I guess that was like why we do forensics, maybe, but yeah, and I mean there was just there was a couple experiences like that when I worked at that lab where I kind of it was very clear to me that I didn't want to just work with engineers, I didn't want to just like I just didn't want to be pigeonholed into just doing one thing my whole life.
11:26
SPEAKER_01: I had a a boss one time he used to kind of tease, and he was an engineer himself, and he would always say, like, oh, you don't want to make uh vents for the next 30 years?
11:36
SPEAKER_01: That's yeah, that's no, hell no, who does?
11:39
SPEAKER_01: No one wants to do that, sit in a cubicle and you know, do AutoCAD for like a glove box for 30 years.
11:46
SPEAKER_01: Like, no, I didn't want to do that.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so you you had this experience in this lab, and it kind of turned you onto this like this area where you could, as you say, you know, play both engineer and play a bit of doctor at the same time.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what were did you immediately out of actually, yeah, what would be like the places these kind of biomechanists would go after college?
12:11
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's one great question, Flint, because to be perfectly honest, it wasn't, and I'm not, I don't mean to say like I was forging a new path by any means, but at that time there wasn't a real clear career path.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: Um, what was clear is that an undergraduate degree in biomechanics didn't really qualify me to do anything other than like maybe tell some crazy stories, right?
12:34
SPEAKER_01: So like I started dabbling in these fields and I appreciated right away, like, oh shit, I gotta go to grad school now.
12:42
SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, in in grad school, I started to realize like, wait a minute, I'm not this is something I love to do, but there weren't a ton of job opportunities.
12:55
SPEAKER_01: There weren't like a lot of, and that's literally, man, I saw the the kind of the PhD, the older the men and women that were older than me in my lab, they kept kind of going into this field.
13:08
SPEAKER_01: So it at that time, man, like this was a field that I never even had the you know, CSI wasn't on TV, like that word forensics meant something to me, but it it wasn't until I basically saw my peers who were working in the same lab as me.
13:23
SPEAKER_01: And mind you, like it was a small lab, but I it really planted the seed of like, oh shit, and like literally, man, I'm I there's probably five people before me from my lab that went into the field of forensics, and like for some big, big players, like you know, exponents and like companies like that that really gave me the obviously the confidence.
13:48
SPEAKER_01: You see, somebody went through your shit, has your same pedigree, and like is out there killing it in the real world, and it was like, okay, there's a possibility.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: I I mean it's a tough path for people to, I mean, in any kind of degree, not see it necessarily a future, especially if it's something that you, you know, you spent the past couple of years really enjoying.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a tough one, is to not be able to find ways of of making a living doing that.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what was your then entry or exit out of college after uh grad school?
14:23
SPEAKER_00: Did you find one of these experiences like your peers?
14:26
SPEAKER_01: You know what?
14:27
SPEAKER_01: I and that's funny because it's like, yeah, we all want to keep doing what we love.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: But I think you know, being in especially in school, right?
14:34
SPEAKER_01: Like a few of us want to do that forever, but I knew I was I was going to parlay that experience into something else.
14:43
SPEAKER_01: So I guess I was ready for a change.
14:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:46
SPEAKER_01: So when it came time to like enter into the real world, I was lucky enough.
14:51
SPEAKER_01: Man, I got a couple phone calls.
14:52
SPEAKER_01: You know, there was a couple recruiters out there, and it's it's funny because the recruiters that were coming after me, at least that I can remember, they were all there was a number of Canadian companies.
15:05
SPEAKER_01: And at that time, they explained to me that there wasn't there wasn't a real well-developed curriculum or even program in most of Canada, you know, Canada universities, it's not like in the US, right?
15:17
SPEAKER_01: There aren't hundreds of them.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: Um there's only kind of so many.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: So those those programs are limited, and the the employers that were seeking me out like the fact that I had a little bit of a mixed bag.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: You know, I had a mechanical engineering degree, and then I had all this biomechanical experience from being in a lab.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I mean, I uh I had an interview with a company that was based on the west coast of Canada.
15:45
SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I had an interview with a company in Toronto and you know, on in Ontario.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: So after graduating from your master's, you you had lab experiences, lab experience, but not necessarily any you know industry industry experience with working.
16:01
SPEAKER_01: Done.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: And this company was asking you at 24, 25, 26 years old to effectively forge this path.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: What was that like?
16:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I mean to be honest, it was sweet because someone someone had confidence in me.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: Someone wanted to hire me.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: And like I'm not trying to, you know, it's I don't mean it as a sob story, but my experience in grad school was not the golden student, was not the stick around, please, Mike.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: We can't do this without you.
16:32
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna feel like, yeah, exactly.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: When I didn't want to do it, it was like, all right, then get the hell out of here.
16:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, yeah, to be perfectly honest, Flint in hindsight, I didn't know what the hell I was doing.
16:43
SPEAKER_01: I just thought it was like a job, and I thought I was gonna get there and I was gonna be like nurtured and like, we'll we'll bring you along, you know.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: Like I was hearing what I wanted to hear.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: I was hearing like, hey, we want you to do this.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: This is something I wanted to do.
17:01
SPEAKER_01: We are, you know, this is who we are, and I I really I was really keen on the fit with the company.
17:08
SPEAKER_01: Um I wasn't eager enough to just jump into the water, but with this company, I immediately felt this like a real good kinship, and like just like because it wasn't just a job, man.
17:21
SPEAKER_01: Like, we moved to another country, so I didn't appreciate how big of a deal that was going to be, but that was more significant than the job transition, like moving away from our family and like being in another country, and my wife being on like a limited visa, yeah, those sorts of things make the job feel like just follow the protocol, you know.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I guess I just didn't know.
17:45
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I didn't know what I was doing.
17:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, and the beauty was is they didn't really know what I was doing either.
17:51
SPEAKER_01: And like, so right, they hired me and they're like, we don't have anyone who does what you do.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, we're gonna be watching what you do, and if you know, if if what you're selling doesn't sound because they're obviously really smart guys, they just didn't study bio.
18:07
SPEAKER_01: So I get there and they just wanted to make sure that you know, does this guy talk the way we talk?
18:12
SPEAKER_01: Does he investigate the way we investigate?
18:14
SPEAKER_01: Does he, you know, is he a scientist?
18:17
SPEAKER_01: Um, and then once I was able to prove that, they were like, shit, man, run with it, go with it.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: And like that was the greatest for me, dude.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: That's the greatest thing you can possibly say.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: Like, especially science in an industry setting where you you're well funded and have room to run.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: That's pretty much the dream scenario, to be honest.
18:38
SPEAKER_01: It was, I guess the only negative to it is that it was in theory, it's just say it's sales-based, right?
18:46
SPEAKER_01: So I'd be going out there and I'm presenting and like I'm loving my job because I just get to talk to non-engineers about like cool stuff that I love doing, you know, like that's that's my dream job.
18:58
SPEAKER_01: But your performance is still ultimately a function of like first, you got to get them files, and then how well do you do those files?
19:06
SPEAKER_01: And like, that's very much something you certainly I don't know that anyone leaves college with that skill set or those abilities, you know.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: What was uh what were some of the most important uh ways that you found because uh selling is not something you're taught in any sort of engineering field.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: What were the best ways you found to try to navigate conversation and and deliver your point?
19:32
SPEAKER_00: It sounds like this probably helped you now in your current job with you know presenting information in a legal setting.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: Of course.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: What were the ways that you found best to present the information, the scientific information, to non-scientific crowds?
19:47
SPEAKER_01: I honestly, Flint, and I don't mean to keep going to this, but I think I always if I for me when I got into the world of forensics, not being the guy set in the curve, not being the smartest dude in every engineering class I was in, that became a huge asset to me.
20:05
SPEAKER_01: Because like because I was now appreciating that like people learn in different ways and people like understand, you know, like anecdotally, um, providing an example is much different than like mathematically working through someone and beating someone to death.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: And like, hey man, I just don't speak your language, so can you explain it to me in a different way?
20:29
SPEAKER_01: And like I was usually that kid in class who was like, uh, I need some help here.
20:34
SPEAKER_01: I still don't get it.
20:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, like, I had a couple courses in college, and I'm pretty confident the professor just got to a point where he was like, I'm just sick of this kid coming to my like office hours all the time.
20:45
SPEAKER_01: Like, and that was me, Flint.
20:46
SPEAKER_01: Like, I've always prided myself on like I'll just outwork everyone else here.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: Like, if nothing else, I know I'll be the last one standing.
20:55
SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna be the first one to cross the finish line, but yeah, I'm not gonna stop.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: So, like, I don't have a specific, unique, like, I took this course or I did this thing.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: I and to be perfectly honest with you, that's a great question because I think I think that can only be so taught.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, like that can only be developed to a certain extent, and because I've seen a lot of people who do what I do that are much, much, much more intelligent than I am, but they're not effective as as forensic experts because they're just they just lack that ability to to communicate with people that don't speak their language.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: And like we're just a lockbox in forensics, you know, like we're never talking to engineers.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: The only thing we do with other engineers is like they're on the other side of cases is us.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: So it's like, yeah, we all speak the same language, but if you can't hand that report to, you know, your wife, your neighbor, your whoever, and they get you know their picture.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Up what you're putting down, then like how are you still that's not that's not effective communication, yeah.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: I think that's an interesting I like that your mind goes to, you know, answering that question of how do you communicate effectively, it goes to because I work hard, right?
22:16
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, no, it it I think that's fantastic.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: It's awesome because you know, it takes effort in order to communicate, especially difficult concepts to people, and so it takes a patience, you know, a patience to ask a ton of questions, a patience to to understand how the other person learns.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: I think that's an interesting perspective as well.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: You have to this, I think this is a big barrier with science, is you don't necessarily or scientists don't necessarily appreciate that other people don't think the same way.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that's a you know, that's a big one.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: If people don't have any sort of scientific background, they're not gonna understand it the way you or they're not gonna ask the right questions that you want them to ask and stuff like that.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, but before that, I I would love to learn a little bit more about what has given you this mindset of hard work is is what drives you.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: Where did that start?
23:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm I'm the youngest of five kids.
23:13
SPEAKER_01: I grew up in suburban Detroit, you know.
23:16
SPEAKER_01: So like I was actually born in the Middle East.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: My parents really uh lived over.
23:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was born in Saudi Arabia.
23:23
SPEAKER_01: My parents were teachers um from like the early 70s to the like mid 80s.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: We lived over um in Jenna, Saudi Arabia.
23:34
SPEAKER_01: So honestly, man, like I grew up hearing a lot of stories um about things I missed out on when I was either too young or not around.
23:44
SPEAKER_01: And I grew up with you know, four brothers or uh older brothers and sisters that I all saw go to college.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: They all got jobs.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: They all, you know, like to me, and I'm always real proud of my Midwestern roots, man.
23:58
SPEAKER_01: Like that's just um, that was very much a uh uh a badge to be worn on your sleeve that that you were an incredibly hardworking.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, honestly, I can't even remember growing up um hearing about like talent or ability.
24:15
SPEAKER_01: It was like hard work.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: Where I grew up, it was just who practices the hardest, who's who's running before practice, you know, like those sorts of oddities.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, like again, I I talk about it a lot.
24:27
SPEAKER_01: Being the youngest of five really instills a like, I'm gonna catch up.
24:32
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna catch up one of these days because you know, those are those are fundamental years looking up at four people doing amazing things, you know, you spend the rest of your life trying to trying to catch up.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: It makes sense.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's a pretty fantastic mindset to grow up with.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's a great environment to to hear about.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: It's it's I I grew up in the Bay Area.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: It was it was about hard work, but it was there was there was a different facade to it, I think.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: I and you know, we touched on that when when we spoke before, Flynn, and not again, like not any criticism, because I know not everyone who grows up in the Bay Area has the same experience, obviously, right?
25:15
SPEAKER_01: But like, yeah, man, I just I never went any place where anybody knew who my parents were, you know, and like I never saw my parents like really getting anything from anyone.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: Like, I just saw my parents like, and I'm I feel corny saying it, but like I just saw my parents like clawing for every every my mom was a teacher, you know.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: Like my dad, my dad was an education as well.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: So I just kind of I thought that was the only option.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: I guess for lack of a better way, is like I didn't know how else you get the hell out of anywhere without just working your ass off.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: So, dude, that's a I mean, it's not a mindset that could harm you in any way.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: I would I I would imagine, especially going into uh it sounds like some pretty intimidating experiences.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I would I would say jumping into a new field at 25 sounds pretty intimidating and requires that kind of work ethic.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: Um, how long did you do that?
26:15
SPEAKER_00: And then actually, what made you decide to leave that then and and jump back to the United States to Hawaii?
26:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, it's funny you say United States.
26:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no, no, no, I came to Hawaii.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: Um because to be perfectly honest, Flint, we were there for eight years, and my wife was, you know, when you move to a foreign country, man, I moved there on a I my visa was limited to that job.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: We eventually established res permanent residency, um, which opened things up quite a bit more.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: But by that time, my wife had gone back to school, got a graduate degree, um, and was able to teach in both New York State and Ontario.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: And teaching in Ontario is like one of the best jobs you can have.
27:00
SPEAKER_01: So there was an incredible wait list.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, like, dude, Teachers Union in Ontario owns like part of the maple leaves.
27:08
SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, the teaching in certain places is not like teaching in the United States.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: So long story short, there was a wait list, and she basically was like, Man, how much longer are we gonna be doing this for?
27:22
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Doing what?
27:24
SPEAKER_01: We're living our life, I'm moving up, everything's great.
27:26
SPEAKER_01: And she was just like, I'm kind of ready to chase my dreams and like do what I want to do.
27:33
SPEAKER_01: And you know, I kind of got quiet and hoped she'd stop wanting to do because I was real content.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: I was flint.
27:40
SPEAKER_01: Like things were good.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, by that point, I was about eight years in uh at my company.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: We had grown from about 15 to probably you know about 80 in-house experts.
27:51
SPEAKER_01: You know, I had my own little group, so I felt like, yeah, man, like this is what I'm supposed to be doing in life.
27:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I had checked a bunch of boxes, we had just gotten married.
28:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, but the second she was real honest with me about like I'm not I'm not real into this, I was like, okay, shit, time to time to detour.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, what do you need?
28:12
SPEAKER_01: What are you what are you interested in?
28:14
SPEAKER_01: And for her, it was like, I just need to teach.
28:16
SPEAKER_01: I want to be a teacher.
28:18
SPEAKER_01: And after that, we both the next thing we agreed on was like, we're not moving back to the Midwest, though, right?
28:25
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
28:25
SPEAKER_01: Um, and like I I just said all those great things about the Midwest, and like I those are instilled in me.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: I don't have to live there to to experience or know that like I'm from the Midwest.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so once I knew we were on the same page, like, okay, I can't move right away, but if you find us a good place to move to, I guess we'll uproot everything we have here and like just walk away from it.
28:51
SPEAKER_01: Again, one of those decisions where I look back on it and I'm like, I tell you what, Blyn, I didn't think about it.
28:58
SPEAKER_01: That's that's why I did it because I certainly didn't know I had no idea the change that was ahead of me.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I mean that's a it's a that's a issue, not necessarily an issue, but it's a place I would imagine that a vast majority of people will find themselves in in life are these places where you or your partner or whoever else is close to you, or for whatever reason, there's a very good reason for you to leave something that you are extremely content with doing.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
29:32
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I guess in hindsight, man, like I always had a little bit of an itch.
29:36
SPEAKER_01: I can remember even like you know, three or four years in, uh great boss I used to have, guy named Jamie Catania.
29:45
SPEAKER_01: Um he we would have our you know, my annual reviews, and he would make comments just like they kind of always knew that I probably wasn't gonna be there forever.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: And like that's not to say that I was unhappy or that they were unhappy.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, when I when I left, it was very much on amazing terms.
30:05
SPEAKER_01: Um you know, it was uh, but it was like leaving family.
30:08
SPEAKER_01: It was they were we didn't know anyone in Toronto.
30:12
SPEAKER_01: We moved to Toronto and within a week, my wife, you know, loves to tease me.
30:16
SPEAKER_01: She said, Mike, you you got through college and then you joined a frat.
30:20
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, well, if I if I knew frats were this fun in college, I probably would have joined one, but I had enough buddies in college.
30:28
SPEAKER_01: I didn't need a, you know, I didn't need a frat.
30:30
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, that's what it felt like, man.
30:33
SPEAKER_01: And and I mean that in the in the in the best ways.
30:35
SPEAKER_01: Like I left not because we needed to, just because it was like, yeah, it was time.
30:41
SPEAKER_01: Let's do something else.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: Let's do something else.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, you made a pretty large change.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean, were you able to bring your work experience to Hawaii right off the bat?
30:57
SPEAKER_01: So that was another kind of wake-up call for me.
31:00
SPEAKER_01: You know, like when you work in forensics, you learn to appreciate like, man, as long as there's insurance, yeah.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: Basically, forensics is it's just doing something you do for in a manner that can be presented in a court of law, right?
31:14
SPEAKER_01: So there's forensic accountants, there's forensic uh physicians, there's, you know, so forensic engineering to me was just like, man, I know a bunch of stuff about like property standards and like bylaws, and like I also do collision reconstruction.
31:31
SPEAKER_01: So I figured I had all these skills, but I didn't, yeah, that's a better way to put it.
31:37
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I didn't appreciate how niche they were.
31:40
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
31:41
SPEAKER_01: And you know, you moved to Hawaii and everything's real.
31:45
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's all still here, but it's just here in a much, much smaller volume.
31:51
SPEAKER_01: Um and guess what?
31:53
SPEAKER_01: It's here.
31:53
SPEAKER_01: That means they don't need you or or you know, like the problem is probably as a solution already.
32:01
SPEAKER_01: It's been solved, it's been solved before you get here.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: So that was completely naive of me.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: Um, in hindsight, arrogant.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: Like, sure, probably just I'm coming out of a big city like Toronto.
32:15
SPEAKER_01: Um, I had been killing it for eight years.
32:17
SPEAKER_01: I knew my resume was, you know, it held its own compared to other people I had seen.
32:23
unknown: Yeah.
32:24
SPEAKER_01: But then yeah, man, you move to a new region and you realize like, oh man, that skill that I had there that was extremely valued there, not only doesn't necessarily hold the same value in this new region, but like it's also seen in a different light.
32:42
SPEAKER_01: In other words, yeah, man, I see you got eight years, but like this person who has one year is actually more so what I'm looking for because I want someone I can like um mold still and like turn into what I you know, like yeah, nobody wanted to hire me, and I I was surprised by that.
33:03
SPEAKER_01: Literally, and I know I sound like an asshole saying that, but the truth is, Flynn is like I just I was used to getting along with people and I was used to like being pretty good at my job, and yeah, man, when I got to Hawaii, it was like remix, dude.
33:20
SPEAKER_01: Like every I had this I had to completely start anew.
33:25
SPEAKER_01: I did like I came here with all my skills, with the same resume, with the same everything, but I wasn't this version of me that you're talking to today, so like that was a big part.
33:36
SPEAKER_01: I really had to change my like demeanor and my approach.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: But and so I and I appreciate that, but it's also an interesting one is you know, if you have this set of skills and this set of assets, you know, it sounds really tough to just jump into a new environment where they aren't necessarily I mean like going from an experience where you're in this, you know, as you it's like a brotherhood of really cool colleagues.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: Um, you're set up, you're married, uh, you know, to a place where it was cushy, dude.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: It was cushy, yeah.
34:17
SPEAKER_00: Which is funny because you know, technically you moved to paradise, right?
34:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but it's not professional paradise, you know, like and that's I think um, yeah, what you're getting at is like I didn't have any appreciation for how hard it was going to be for me to.
34:36
SPEAKER_01: I didn't think I had to rebrand myself, I thought I could just show up and like be the same guy I was before because you know, people get hurt here.
34:44
SPEAKER_01: Why wouldn't there be the same questions?
34:46
SPEAKER_01: And that was just a very like that's a Hawaii thing.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: I can't, I don't know anything about moving to LA and being a forensic expert.
34:54
SPEAKER_01: Like, maybe I could have just shown up there as Toronto Mike and like Toronto Mike, it would have it would have gone smoothly, you know.
35:02
SPEAKER_01: But I uh and you know what, honestly, Flint, there's also you know, there's there's there's a period there where I moved out here and I I didn't wear that hat.
35:13
SPEAKER_01: I purposely like I was I was a little burnt out, you know.
35:16
SPEAKER_01: Like I said, things are going really good in Toronto, but like my life was crazy.
35:20
SPEAKER_01: And in hindsight, all I did was work.
35:23
SPEAKER_01: All I did was work, and work was my life.
35:25
SPEAKER_01: So when I got to Hawaii, I was like, you know what, I'm gonna take that engineer hat off for a bit.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm gonna like, I don't know, trim trees.
35:33
SPEAKER_01: So literally that's what I did.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: Did you actually?
35:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I worked for a tree company.
35:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, my neighbor owned a tree company, and like all of a sudden I'm working for this dude who's like four years younger than me.
35:46
SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm making less than minimum wage and I'm breaking my back, dude.
35:50
SPEAKER_01: I'm the oldest dude on the crew, you know.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, my boss was a really smart, intelligent dude, but like that's not um necessarily required in that in that industry.
36:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:04
SPEAKER_01: So again, I found myself in a really good group of people in a weird industry.
36:11
SPEAKER_01: So I could kind of like did it only, it was like a month in, and I was like, holy shit, I gotta get out of this job.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: Like, I gotta get back to using my brain.
36:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, at that time, dude, I was still I had some like carryover work, right?
36:26
SPEAKER_01: When as a forensic guy, you're working on files.
36:29
SPEAKER_01: Well, sometimes these are accidents from eight, eight, eight years ago.
36:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and now it's it's in litigation and it's an ongoing legal matter for years.
36:37
SPEAKER_01: Like, man, you moved to Hawaii, it don't matter.
36:40
SPEAKER_01: They they still need you, and like, you know, you'd be subpoenaed, you can do whatever.
36:45
SPEAKER_01: So I still had like I still had one foot in the forensic world, yeah.
36:50
SPEAKER_01: And it was uh it was much more comfortable than the foot I had up in a tree.
36:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, where I had no business, man, but that's just that's me, I guess.
37:02
SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, that looks cool, I'll go do that.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: No, but it's it's it's I mean, it's interesting because it's the it's kind of a second, yeah, it sounds like second time in your life where you just jumped into this place where you really had to kind of start into a new environment that wasn't there.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was here, but you had to create your own path here with forensics in order to make it, right?
37:26
SPEAKER_01: When it came to the forensic stuff, a hundred percent.
37:29
SPEAKER_01: Like there's there were literally, man, before I moved here, I knew of three companies that did forensic work here.
37:36
SPEAKER_01: Only one of them um did collision reconstruction and like biomechanics, and the other one just did construction forensics or like origin and cause fire investigations.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
37:48
SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, what I'm getting at is there were forensic companies.
37:52
SPEAKER_01: I reached out to all of them, none of them were interested in hiring me.
37:56
SPEAKER_01: Um, and they were all pretty honest, like, hey Mike, like your CV looks good, this and that, but like we don't really offer the services that you provide.
38:04
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I This is a pretty cool thing to hear to be.
38:07
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's exactly man.
38:09
SPEAKER_01: Like the first time I heard it, I was like, bummer, you know, like the second time I heard it, I was like, Oh, maybe a little light, but by the third time I heard it, I was like, all right, looks like I got some competition now.
38:21
SPEAKER_01: Because like I literally I took it, I didn't take it personally, but it became very obvious, like, wait a minute, man, like I know what I do is useful.
38:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe people here don't know about this service, or maybe people here are just using someone from somewhere else.
38:41
SPEAKER_01: So that that was really when it was just like, and you know, I had some like I had some conversations with you know people I really care and respect and love, like my dad, who was like, Yeah, you know, that's fine, son, but uh how long are you gonna swing a hammer for?
38:56
SPEAKER_01: You know, like where he wasn't he wasn't judging me swinging a hammer, but he was literally just kind of putting it to me, like, you know, you you can do other stuff too.
39:07
SPEAKER_01: So once I kind of knew that I had that support, and like, listen, man, support shows up in a lot of ways, but when you live in Hawaii, one of the ways it needs to show up is fiscal financial support because you want to move to Hawaii and start a business, you need money to float on.
39:25
SPEAKER_01: Um, because no one's paying your rent and you're not getting that, you're not you may sleep on couches for a couple weeks, but that's a hard place to start a business from.
39:36
SPEAKER_01: So I needed basically my dad, who is my business partner, to say, son, I want you to put the hammer down because you're spending your days and literally I'm saying hammer because I got tired of doing the tree work, so I moved into construction.
39:51
SPEAKER_01: Like I just wanted to turn it off, dude.
39:54
SPEAKER_01: I wanted it, but like you can't, you gotta make money.
39:57
SPEAKER_01: It kept calling me back in.
39:58
SPEAKER_01: It kept well, and that was the other thing is I was like, dude, I'm making 20 bucks an hour, and like in forensics, you make you know, you can make quite a bit more than that.
40:09
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, and once I basically had the support of my dad and my wife getting tired of me, like, dude, I was skin and bones, and you know, I was all broken down, and like there it was basically like, all right, stop that and start this.
40:23
SPEAKER_01: And mind you, this is gonna take a while before you get any kind of traction, before you get anyone even looking at you.
40:32
SPEAKER_01: Um, and it did.
40:34
SPEAKER_01: It took it took, I'm trying to think back on my early years and stuff.
40:37
SPEAKER_00: And totally where was your mind at when you were making this decision?
40:40
SPEAKER_00: I mean, was it how intimidating was it, or was it intimidating?
40:45
SPEAKER_01: Both.
40:46
SPEAKER_01: It was very incredibly intimidating, but I was in a place of necessity.
40:50
SPEAKER_01: Um, I really I had like I had kind of hit that that wall.
40:55
SPEAKER_01: Um, this is it's making me smile thinking about it now, but that Volvo I was telling you about, it died on us on the highway.
41:05
SPEAKER_01: Um, and we had to wait for like two hours in a car on the side of the road before a tow truck came and took it away.
41:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and then like three days later, dude, my cat ran away, and like never we never found it.
41:19
SPEAKER_01: And I remember talking to my brother.
41:22
SPEAKER_01: I have an older brother who's a business owner.
41:25
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I may have even like I'm my voice probably cracked a few times because I was I was broken, dude.
41:32
SPEAKER_01: I was like, man, dude, I had no money, my cat ran away, my car died.
41:37
SPEAKER_01: Like he he kept teasing me about being a country singer, you know, but then I I heard a I heard a crack in his voice, and it was laughter.
41:45
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, what what are you laughing at?
41:48
SPEAKER_01: He's like, Michael, I'm just imagining my little baby brother riding his bike to the bus stop and then taking the bus and then riding his bike to a construction site.
41:59
SPEAKER_01: It's like, what do you need, man?
42:01
SPEAKER_01: Like, you need some money to like keep you afloat.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, so my mind was in a um, it was in that place that I I knew, but I has I hadn't visited it for some time.
42:15
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to say it was desperation, but it was a uh my wife was here.
42:20
SPEAKER_01: My I very much I hit that the wall of thinking I could work my way out of it.
42:26
SPEAKER_01: Like that, Flynn.
42:27
SPEAKER_01: Like I at one point I thought maybe I can just do enough kind of like handyman work, and because I just I knew that forensics was an option, but it was just such a daunting task, right?
42:39
SPEAKER_01: Because I had already tried the easier option, like just join a company.
42:44
SPEAKER_01: I've done that before, I know how to do that, right?
42:47
SPEAKER_01: But eventually I got to a point where I was like, man, if I want to do that, I have to create it.
42:52
SPEAKER_01: And like, dude, in the meantime, I'm I'm putting out Craigslist.
42:55
SPEAKER_01: I had a Craigslist ad out there once, Flint, that said, if you don't want to do something, call me.
43:00
SPEAKER_01: That was my dude, that was Flint.
43:03
SPEAKER_01: I'm digging trenches, I'm working on farms and like literally, man, I'm working for dudes.
43:10
SPEAKER_01: I I the amount of times I had people who were my bosses on job sites say, Oh, you went to school, huh?
43:19
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, What?
43:20
SPEAKER_01: They're like, You got college or something?
43:22
SPEAKER_01: You got you got a degree or something?
43:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Yeah, uh yeah, yeah.
43:26
SPEAKER_01: I I I went to I graduated, I graduated from school.
43:29
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, What sort of stuff you do?
43:32
SPEAKER_01: I'm just like, why?
43:33
SPEAKER_01: What did I do?
43:33
SPEAKER_01: Did I do something wrong?
43:35
SPEAKER_01: And they're just like, No, man, you just ask weird questions.
43:40
SPEAKER_01: Just like, all right, all right, I get it.
43:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm not, you're not, you're not part of the crew.
43:45
SPEAKER_00: Maybe not, maybe not.
43:47
SPEAKER_00: Dude, that sounds tough.
43:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's really a uh from an outside perspective, it's a pretty crazy transition to go from extremely, extremely secure track, uh hype.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: You know, well-paying job with a track to success to riding your bike, the bus, go true tree.
44:09
SPEAKER_01: And I tell you what, I I think if I'm being well, I'm being far too open here, but like what it hurt the most was to realize how much of my ego, um how much of my personality had been taken up by ego.
44:24
SPEAKER_01: Um and the reality was is I didn't I didn't realize that that was such a function of my my job and my title and all that stuff.
44:31
SPEAKER_01: What do you mean until that well what I mean by that is like I thought I was just going along doing everything I was supposed to be doing, right?
44:38
SPEAKER_01: You know, you know, climbing that ladder and like just living life.
44:42
SPEAKER_01: And then I moved to Hawaii and I realized that really all I was doing was filling my life up with work and like the title and like those things, those possessions, and like you know, I I don't mean to say like all the cliche things, but when I removed that title and I started meeting people here in Hawaii, and I had to start to introduce myself as like, oh yeah, I work, you know, I I I'm a tree trimmer.
45:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
45:08
SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, that was the first time in my life I had ever gotten that those kinds of looks.
45:14
SPEAKER_01: Um, that was the first time in my life where I had ever been at dinner parties and just dismissed because before I always had the coolest job.
45:22
SPEAKER_01: Or like I was the I was the oddity from America, you know, like in Toronto, if nothing else, we were like, why are you Yankees up here?
45:31
SPEAKER_01: You know, but yeah, dude, I moved to Hawaii and I'm like just another bald dude with a beard swinging a hammer, you know, and it's like, oh shit, you gotta, you gotta really figure out who you are now.
45:42
SPEAKER_01: And that's why I say, like, you know, I didn't, I don't think people who knew me then would say, like, damn, Mike's ego is a problem, you know.
45:50
SPEAKER_01: But like, no, no, no, my confidence was was directly linked to something that admittedly, you know, I hadn't really created.
46:00
SPEAKER_01: That was just the life I was living, but it wasn't I didn't create that.
46:04
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that was uh that was a hell of a thing to realize in my like mid-30s, dude.
46:09
SPEAKER_00: No, it's uh I would say it's a better time to realize it than when you're laying in bed about the croak.
46:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know what, and that's that's exactly right.
46:20
SPEAKER_01: It's easier to learn that sooner than later, but man, I'm just so grateful that I learned it at some point, dude, because I I can I I could have easily been, I could easily still be riding that train because like I said, it was it was pretty cushy, man.
46:37
SPEAKER_00: There was lots of reasons to stick around.
46:39
SPEAKER_00: I mean, and the first thing that makes me want to ask is, you know, you become aware of this set of identifier, right?
46:50
SPEAKER_00: Your career, your job title, these kind of things that are linked to kind of your pride in yourself.
46:55
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then you have this realization where those shift.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: What did you shift them to?
47:03
SPEAKER_01: I the only thing I really had left, which was my wife.
47:07
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, to be honest, like that, that literally I had no idea how much I had been taking for granted my partner.
47:15
SPEAKER_01: Um for all those years in Toronto, you know, and that's not to say like we never we've never we've been fortunate.
47:21
SPEAKER_01: Like I we've been dating since high school.
47:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, we've never had any sort of sustained issues or any like prominent issues, but I was selfish as hell for all those years.
47:32
SPEAKER_01: I was just doing my thing and not appreciating like that she wasn't able to do her thing.
47:37
SPEAKER_01: And like, yeah, man, when I kind of had to like reinvent myself, it was this sounds kind of corny, but like it was through her eyes, you know, like and it was I knew she still loved the dude swinging a hammer, and like to her, I was still everything that she cared about, you know, and it was just that I that's what I held on to, and then it was just slowly kind of putting the pieces back together sounds so dramatic, but like it was just like kind of putting some of that stuff back in my pocket, you know, and like achieving some of those um like getting back into the ring, so to say, and like I I didn't I didn't realize how much in like this time around, it's different, it's different this time around, and it's so much more fulfilling knowing that and I you know anyone who owns a business would say, like, yeah, it's way better to build your you know house than someone else's, but like I cannot stress that enough that yes, that's one aspect of it, but the other aspect is like building a house in the way you want to build a house, right?
48:49
SPEAKER_01: Um, and by that I mean like I say that I say Toronto Mike all the time because Toronto Mike in Hawaii, my I don't generally talk in the third person, but like I get to be I get to be my 100% authentic self here, whether I'm surfing or whether I'm working.
49:08
SPEAKER_01: Like in the people here, the um clientele here, the market here, they like me.
49:14
SPEAKER_01: And I can just be me and I don't have to dress it up and like you know, literally, man, I used to have to like hide my accent.
49:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, or I would try to hide my disguise my accent.
49:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
49:27
SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, like I just started kind of having those experiences again, and because like the reward felt so much different, it changed real quickly.
49:37
SPEAKER_01: It changed quickly, and I was also able to see that like you know what getting by is fine.
49:43
SPEAKER_01: Like, I I never aspired to get by, but like when I'm getting by in the North Shore of Hawaii, like I'm living out most people's dream life, so like, yeah, well, yeah, it's a matter of choice at that point.
49:56
SPEAKER_00: You want to be happy or sad?
49:58
SPEAKER_00: Like, come on, man.
49:59
SPEAKER_00: No, I love it, and I appreciate uh I appreciate the honesty with all these subjects.
50:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's a they're it's a very cool, you say putting the pieces back together, right?
50:13
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a cool rebuild where obviously it's not a completely new uh person, a person completely new identity.
50:21
SPEAKER_00: It sounds like it's very much the attributes of yourself that you had, but weren't they, they weren't the, you know, maybe it's honesty or it sounds like it was love uh with your wife, or or you know, maybe it sounds like you have a daughter.
50:35
SPEAKER_00: Um it's it's like these aspects of your life that were the most important weren't necessarily the ones that were tied to your identity in the in Toronto, Mike, right?
50:44
SPEAKER_00: And so when you went through that rebuild, it wasn't it wasn't changing who you were, it was just kind of placing some pieces of it more at the at the the the head of it, right?
50:56
SPEAKER_00: And making them the pillars of success.
50:58
SPEAKER_01: I had to really dust some stuff off, and like that's a really like astute and honestly kind observation.
51:06
SPEAKER_01: Um I I have a son, my French bulldog Whaler, but no, no human, no human children yet.
51:14
SPEAKER_01: Um and you know what?
51:16
SPEAKER_01: No, man, I've never thought about it like that, Flint.
51:18
SPEAKER_01: That that that means a lot, and it's it's really true.
51:22
SPEAKER_01: It's really true because I think of like the things that matter so much to me right now.
51:28
SPEAKER_01: Um and like I've always been one that liked people, but I didn't I I kind of let that fade away.
51:35
SPEAKER_01: And like I eat, well, interact with them, communicate with them, do things like this silly, not this, but my silly podcast, you know, like in that I I I reconnected with some of my old buddies that you know I had fallen out of touch with because I I had a full closet of shiny things in Toronto, you know.
51:55
SPEAKER_01: So like you're right.
51:56
SPEAKER_01: I really did, you know, I didn't reinvent myself.
51:59
SPEAKER_01: It was definitely a different version of me.
52:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but yeah, it was just some stuff that had maybe fallen a little bit dormant.
52:06
SPEAKER_00: And like no, and I also yeah, I think it's also I I I I think it's true that you you kind of said when you did that here, a very important part was expressing yourself as who you were.
52:22
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a very big part of Hawaiian culture, is is it's not necessarily about the flash or the show.
52:32
SPEAKER_00: I think one of the most valuable things in this place is people who are honest about who they are, right?
52:38
SPEAKER_00: The because you know what a third per a third of I don't know how much it actually is, don't quote me on this, but you know, some huge percent of Hawaii's economy is based on the jobs are based on construction.
52:52
SPEAKER_00: So if a massive part of the economy or the the population was going around judging people for being in construction, though it wouldn't be good.
52:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's valuable here to be yourself.
53:02
SPEAKER_01: Yes, and I would I would say that there's probably few places in the world where whether you want to be or not, these people see you, they see the real you.
53:14
SPEAKER_01: You can dress it up as much as you want.
53:17
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's I don't know if it's in the water, I don't know what it is, but like I tell you what, Toronto Mike wasn't ready for it.
53:25
SPEAKER_01: You know, the first like dude, how many places, how many you know, cultures have you entered where you know you go into an interview and you don't say anything for the first few minutes?
53:36
SPEAKER_01: Like, dude, for me, not good.
53:39
SPEAKER_01: That's it, that was a challenge.
53:41
SPEAKER_01: And two minutes in, they're like, Yeah, I know everything I need to know about you, you idiot.
53:46
SPEAKER_01: Like, you're supposed to just sit there and be quiet.
53:49
SPEAKER_01: Like, like, oh man, that's so yeah, dude.
53:52
SPEAKER_01: In Hawaii, there is that, you know.
53:54
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there's people that that successfully bullshit, but for a limited amount of time, man, because not only that transparency thing, but like you burn one person here.
54:06
SPEAKER_01: Like, dude, you burn one person at a stoplight and the on a weird corner of the island.
54:12
SPEAKER_01: By the time you get home, people know.
54:15
SPEAKER_01: So, like, and I'm I'm saying that in a threatening way, but I mean it in a more like romantic way.
54:22
SPEAKER_01: Because, like, hey man, how did everyone in your in your block treat each other?
54:27
SPEAKER_01: Pretty good because they all knew each other and they all knew, like, man, Auntie's gonna catch me throwing eggs, and she's gonna tell my mom before I even get home.
54:35
SPEAKER_01: Or auntie's just gonna whoop my ass because like that's fairly.
54:39
SPEAKER_01: She raised my mom too.
54:40
SPEAKER_01: Exactly, man.
54:41
SPEAKER_01: And like, yeah, that you you wanna live in that.
54:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, who'd I don't know.
54:46
SPEAKER_01: Maybe bad people don't want to get caught, but like most of us, most of us want to live in that kind of environment, man.
54:53
SPEAKER_01: But you gotta you you gotta contribute, you gotta, you gotta be ready to to be different than nine-tenths of the people we see here, which are transient.
55:04
SPEAKER_01: Like tourism.
55:05
SPEAKER_01: Uh we got about a million people that live in on Oahu, and about 10 million a year.
55:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
55:11
SPEAKER_01: So that's uh that's an interesting demographic, and I think for that reason, the people here have gotten really, really, really good at being able to tell.
55:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, seeing through the bowl.
55:23
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna you're gonna be here next week.
55:25
SPEAKER_01: You're probably who I should rely on.
55:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, and I I think I agree, it's a fantastic environment to be in.
55:32
SPEAKER_00: Um I think it's the word that comes to mind is it sounds like an environment much more embodied by trust in both directions, right?
55:42
SPEAKER_00: If if you're the kid throwing eggs, you can trust that that woman's gonna go tell your mom.
55:48
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
55:48
SPEAKER_00: But on the other side, if you're not, right, if you're or if you're contributing, like you say, like you have to in this kind of community, you can also most likely trust on those people that are around you uh a little bit more.
56:00
SPEAKER_00: Because that's that's something that happens when you I think that the the thing that's coming to my mind as kind of one of the more uh uh central themes of this discussion is this idea of self-expression, right?
56:13
SPEAKER_00: You can trust people better when they have expressed themselves to you in a more genuine way, and especially in an environment like this where they can see through the bullshit and see if you're being honest better, most likely.
56:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, that self-expression, that authenticity is extremely valuable.
56:29
SPEAKER_01: There you go.
56:29
SPEAKER_01: You just dropped it.
56:32
SPEAKER_00: Authenticity, boom, we got it.
56:34
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, that that kind of takes me actually to my to my last question because I think we've talked about a you know a range of really interesting topics from uh your entry into the science of forensic biomechanics and graduate school, using the saw to cut through yeah, we covered we covered some stuff.
56:54
SPEAKER_00: Oh entering entering a uh a new field effectively of forensics in uh in Canada with the uh legal and insurance kind of aspects of it, and then completely reinventing yourself as you as you listened to your wife and came to Hawaii.
57:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, poor me.
57:14
SPEAKER_01: Poor me.
57:15
SPEAKER_00: And uh tough.
57:16
SPEAKER_00: My last question would just be if you uh looked back over this conversation, what would be one thing that you think that you would want listeners to take away from it?
57:28
SPEAKER_01: I don't think any of us get through life on our own.
57:31
SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm fortunate enough to have a partner and I have since I was a teenager.
57:36
SPEAKER_01: Um she's my rock.
57:38
SPEAKER_01: Uh I'd like to think I'm her rock, but beyond that, man, like it's just the network and the support system.
57:45
SPEAKER_01: These days, there's no such thing as like being alone is a choice.
57:49
SPEAKER_01: Um and like we all want people to reach out to us, but like sometimes you gotta do the reaching out.
57:57
SPEAKER_01: And nine out of ten times, like a people are well, it depends how many times you reach out, I guess, but most people are are in my experience, have not only been happy to help, but they've been happy that I reached out.
58:13
SPEAKER_01: Um, so just I think like being vulnerable is is okay.
58:17
SPEAKER_01: Um, but like in the meantime, don't be a dick or else you won't have that.
58:21
SPEAKER_01: You won't have that support system when you need it.
58:24
SPEAKER_01: Totally.
58:26
SPEAKER_00: I I it's yeah, it's a good point.
58:30
SPEAKER_00: Love it, man.
58:31
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
58:31
SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it.
58:32
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Flint.
58:34
SPEAKER_01: I uh this was fun, man.
58:41
SPEAKER_00: I want to thank Mike for that awesome conversation.
58:44
SPEAKER_00: It's always inspiring when people can be honest about the struggles they faced.
58:48
SPEAKER_00: Not only because it's a trusting thing to do, but because it gives so much more validity to the way they got out of those struggles.
58:54
SPEAKER_00: If it wasn't obvious, the thing that stuck with me the most from this conversation was the way that Mike appeared to rebuild himself.
59:00
SPEAKER_00: I honestly think it speaks to everyone in any situation of life.
59:04
SPEAKER_00: The way you want to act and the person you want to be is already inside of you.
59:08
SPEAKER_00: You don't need to go searching for it.
59:10
SPEAKER_00: You just have to choose what aspects of your character and your life should be the priority.
59:15
SPEAKER_00: Remember, all of your own actions are under your control, no matter the circumstance.
59:20
SPEAKER_00: In these high-energy times of pandemic and election stress, it makes me wonder what aspects of my character I will choose to bring out, even if I'm stressed.
59:29
SPEAKER_00: And maybe it makes you wonder the same thing.
59:31
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
59:33
SPEAKER_00: If you liked this episode of Seeking Authenticity, that's freaking awesome.
59:38
SPEAKER_00: All I want to ask of you, the listener, in return for the time and effort I put into making it, is that you take a deep breath.
59:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean really breathe.
59:48
SPEAKER_00: Breathe so that it stretches out your shoulders and your back and your chest and pushes out your stomach.
59:53
SPEAKER_00: No more of these shallow, bullshit breaths.
59:55
SPEAKER_00: They're barely keeping you alive, my friend.
59:58
SPEAKER_00: And after you exhale, go out and soak up today.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_00: Because in the end, your actions and the way they interact with the world and the people around you right now are all you have in this life.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_00: So be authentic with them.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_00: Peace.