Okera Hollis

Okera Hollis is a longtime friend and the author of Be Your Priority, Not His Option: Insights on Thoughts and Actions of Men and Ways to Respond. The conversation is about relationships, communication, and what he has noticed in how people treat each other.

He posts as OKERAH on Instagram, Facebook, and X.

This is episode 4 of Flipside Frolic. It was recorded November 7, 2024, published November 9, 2024, and runs about 2 hours and 52 minutes.

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Transcript

This transcript was generated from the episode audio. The YouTube caption file was not available. Obvious name errors were corrected. The conversation was not rewritten.

Hey there, thanks for joining us at Flipside Frolic, where we learn to understand each other's perspectives by flipping the script and having some fun. Here we go. Okera, welcome. welcome to Flipside Frolic. So, it's been a, a few years. I, I, I more, more than what, two decades or so, we think? yeah, some, something like that. Yeah. I want to say, what, 25? 25 years? I was 20, I think I was, oh, 23, yeah. How, how old are you now? I am 49 now. Okay, I'm 52. So, yeah, I was maybe 32. That was 2000. In eight-ish, I think when they closed, right, or something? No. Or was it after? It was, it was a couple of years after it was a couple of years after the- Oh, 09:11, yeah. So- That was 2008. No, that was like 2001. Maybe. 09:11 was 2001. Oh yeah, 2001, yeah. So it was, what, 2002, two or three maybe. Two or three, something like that.

All right. Yeah, we actually we both worked at Consolidated Freight doing some work with them guys But yeah, it's been a, a long time. So the part of the podcast idea my vision that's, it's still new in the workings, like as you see, we got the new sign back there hopefully you guys like it. but the vision, the, is Flipside Frolic, so we just have kind of long form discussion, talk about various things. And, and if at some point a topic comes up that we disagree on, we kind of just, we're not here to change anybody's minds, we're not here to convince anybody or anything. We're just here to express our feelings on something or the way we look@something.and, and, and then the flip side part is at some point we might try to flip the script and try to debate the other position. Okay.

So, so whether or not, how often it happens or whatnot, it's still kind of, that's just the vision. So how exactly that's going to format in the show and how often we really push for that, I don't know how often it's going to happen, but it's just a fun way, that's, that was the vision to, to, to try to look at things from other people's perspectives, to try to understand where other people are coming from, because in this chaotic time we live in, it seems there's a lot of divisiveness, there's a lot of people hating the other side for an, a view or an opinion, which is just silly. Where most people, it seems like, are just good people they, they, they, they just get lost in this idea of, you know, tribalism and, and our side's right, and, and you're evil if you don't think the same way, or whatever the case may be.

So that's kind of the vision, but again, it doesn't necessarily have to go that route so, so far very often. But but one of the interesting things that really brought me to wanting to reach out, and that's obviously module two of the point of the podcast is connect with some old friends. Catch up, see what's up, use it as an excuse to just come by and say, hey, what's going on? And, and somehow, you know, in this, in this magical world, it seems that Usually good comes from those sort of interactions, you know, whether, oh man, I didn't know you were a video guy, so, you know, I was just looking for somebody to do this or that or, you know, things always just seem to work out coincidentally when you act on things.

And, and some, I'm, I'm, I have some belief in some of the power of the universe and some of the magic that, that seems to happen when you're kind of trying to stay on the right path and try to do the right thing. And, and you get that thought in your head of somebody you haven't talked to in a while, you should probably just pick up the phone and call, because there might be a reason. Right. And what we might not ever learn what that reason is but that's part of reaching out and just hooking up and, and having some fun, man. That's, that's what it's about.

And, and your social media pages, just from following you over the years with the relationship stuff, the, the questions about, you, you, I really like the way, when, when you talk, you can, you can, whether, well, I'll, I'll, I'll let you explain what you've been up to over the last couple of years, and we'll go from there. But when it comes to social media, and one thing that the, social media companies really look for is engagement. And I don't know if I know anybody that gets more engagement because the way you phrase your questions and the way you get debates and conversations going on various topics in, in relationships and men and women and how they perceive things and stuff. So but yeah, if you want to just start off, like, let me know what, what you've been up to in the last 20 years or so and how things going. All right.

So let's, you know, after, after I left Trukin, I went, I was still in logistics. I went to I worked for some chemical plants. And I worked for Kinder Morgan and Ashland Chemical. what I realized is that I will be at work and I will say to myself, why am I here? I would always, I would, I started saying that more and more and more. And the thing is, is that I always loved the people at work, like the coworkers and, you know, which is how we connected, you know, we had friends in common still have friends in common. so I've always liked the people at work, but I didn't like how it was. Like I wasn't corporation, I guess you could say code. You know, I've always felt like they really just didn't care. So after a while, I was working at this job, and one day I was just sitting there, and I was like, why am I here? Why am I here?

Why am I here? Like, I should just go home. I should just go home, right? And a lot of times you get what you ask for. Tell you what happened. So I had this training that I was supposed to go to. So at the job, you're not supposed to have your cell phone in the yard unless it's like intrinsically safe. So I have my, I have my work cell phone, I have my own cell phone, right? And I look at the cell phone and I say, you're not supposed to take that, right? Oh, forget it. So I take it with me, right? I go in there, I'm doing the training, and all of a sudden, cell phone starts to ring. Of course, right? I'm like, so Ironically, it was a brand new cell phone, probably a day or two old. I'm getting the phone out, and I don't really cut it off. So I'm sitting there, I'm trying to cut it off, can't cut it off. A guy sees me.

He asked me, hey, is that in physically safe? And I'm like, no. He's like, is it? So he says something like, turn it off. I say something kinda like smart or whatever, right? To make a long story short, this guy ends up being regional manager of safety, and he was a prick. And so things happen, they end up letting me go, right? So my previous job offered me another job. They were like, hey, we heard about it, you know, you want to come back here? I said no. I took my luck. I just so I ended up going to massage school. I opened, I finished massage school, opened up a spa. I had the spa up until about 2020. you know, COVID hit. Was that a COVID loss bus-business-wise? Was there any advantages or any, some of those programs to try to help people out? Did you have employees or was it?

So it was like I had, we had a couple of employees or whatever. but prob-like in 2020, probably like maybe September I end up walking away from there. ever since then I've been managing rental properties and Airbnbs. Oh, wow. And, and, and again, you know, that's not exactly... It, it fits in with a lot of different things that, you know, I'm doing or going, heck, going on. Right. And during that period, I guess I should... I also wrote a book. Oh, nice. What was that? So I wrote a book called Be Your Priority, Not His Option, which is why, you know, all of the relationship talk that I, I do. I wrote a book I've actually done a couple of workbooks centered around relationships as well. So it's kind of like a hobby of mine in a way. so like I've, you know, done podcasts, I've done radio just actually last week.

me and my daughter was, we did a, a radio show or whatever. So so that's pretty much what I've been doing. Cool. No, that's the the relationship thing, obviously that was the main gist of a lot of your Those engaging cons concepts and things, and, and that's what really piqued my interest. Now, I'm by no means a relationship expert. I'm married. I got three kids. I left CF and, and I, I rode that to the, to the last day in, in that non-contractual management space figuring the guys that stick around are gonna be taken care of later if it ever was to get pulled out, figuring you'd end up some terminal manager or whatever the case may be. But I did kinda say to myself, man, this is it. You, you know, after this, I'm not, I'm not doing the transportation thing anymore. And somehow I managed to stick with that.

But I was kinda, you know, back then, I don't, I don't, I, I was I was hitting the booze quite a bit. I was, I was kinda getting, you know, staying out late, coming in late, having some issues. that's why we had some funny characters there with Tracy, God rest his soul, he had passed away with a bone marrow thing or something, which is horrible. But, you know, he'd commute in from Zion all the way down to 71st and Harlem at the brake bulk terminal there, and, and, and he'd be 2 min late. He'd be at, he'd be swiping at the wire every day with like an hour and a half commute. It just, it just seemed insane. Yeah. But he always had an excuse, so he'd be like trying to argue like there's a helicopter that landed on 294, and that, and, and at the time the terminal manager, the dispatch manager, he didn't want to hear excuses. Right.

And here was me, I'd come in 2 h late. And, and, you know, I don't, I have no excuse, so I was wrong, you know, like I won't have it again. And I'd be in and out of the office in a few minutes, you know, whereas he'd be in there for getting screamed at cause he's arguing with them. Like, there's no excuse for being late. Right. And, and they knew if I wasn't 20 min early drinking a coffee in the break room, you better start calling now cause I'm 45 min away, you know? So, so with that, I kind of bounced around, did a bunch of stuff and at the end of the day ended up so let's see, that'd be 2000. I ended up getting a city job. Okay. So, so, so I'm working for city Chicago. I'm working at the airport and, and working as a mechanic, doing snow removal equipment and, and, and different things like that.

And so it's, it's been it's been quite a ride there, but June 26, 2004, that was it for me. I kind of went from pretty much back to back to back three-year relationships. And I kind of watched How my priorities were changing with what's important to me and what should be important to me. Right. and, and so that's where I was starting to get the sign, get the sign, you know, here's your sign, like, you know, they were all great people, we all left on pretty decent terms in a sense, but it, it was always a problem that I didn't see was a problem. That, you know, they're just a nag or they're, you know, I'm just young, I don't, it's not like I got kids at home, it's not like I'm married, it's not like this.

And that's part of that whole issue with treatment and, and with addiction and, and, and alcoholism and things that, that you, you draw a line in the sand and then cross it, draw a line in the sand and then cross it. And things always tend to get worse, they never get better. And at some point when that realization happens, for whatever reason it is hopefully you can get some help. And, and fortunately I did, and I got some help and, and been sober 20 years and, and work with veterans and work with You know, different people and addiction and, and stuff like that. So definitely more fulfilling when you kind of talk to what really jumped out was that idea of showing up to work every day and not really feeling like you're fulfilling your purpose. and I think that that might be a big part of what's lacking in a lot of people's lives.

and so that was something that I tried to, you know, incorporate. And then so my, my wife, she, she, we were dating, I, we met in January after I did a bodybuilding show. So, so you knew me when I was working out pretty hard. and then our mutual friend Sue, shout out to Sue she was in the midst of me going through all this training and I, I ended up doing this NPC natural classic bodybuilding show. And then I met my, so yeah, I guess that was pretty soon after. so I met my, my my wife. At an event in January, February, and then got sober in June. Oh, okay. So, so she didn't really see a lot of the hell that maybe some of the other people have saw, so may- it might even be at times difficult for her because she doesn't really have that many bad memories of, of, of the times when I was like just being crazy or whatever. Right, right.

There was a few of them, though, if I remind her, she's like, "Oh yeah, I remember that." But we do have a tendency to forget some stuff. Our brains are amazing. But just through marriage and relationships and everything else, it's like, I feel like you're either growing or you're not, you know? So, so I, I got a few books, I've read a few books. I, I, I always try to have earbuds in at work and try to compress time and bring in information or listen to a podcast or, or do some of these different things. So fortunately, I'm in a position where that, that's pretty easy to do. but on the relationship side, It's kind of an interesting story, cause, cause I started with Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. And, and it's like, everybody's heard of the book.

It's almost like the Atkins diet, or everybody knows a little bit about it, but nobody actually read the book. Right, cause I, I've, I've seen the book. I've had it in front of me. I might have read a little book, but I've never read the whole thing. That's, I would, I would recommend it in, in a sense that it's around here somewhere, but I thought it was going to be the happy wife makes the happy life. Right. And, and it really wasn't that@all.it really dives into how we just choose to score things differently. Our, our scale of how we score things is just different. So what ends up happening a lot of times is, is we end up doing for the other person what we would want done for us, but that's not what they want. Exactly. And, and, and I'm sure that's most relationship books or, or things that's a big part of it.

And, and so that was mind-blowing, and I, I put the book in front of my wife, and I was like, if you ever wonder why I'm doing something that you think is crazy, and you can't figure out why, the answer is actually in this book. Right. But she's not a huge reader, so she didn't read it or whatever, and, and then you just continue the journey, you continue to grow, you continue, you know, try different things, whatever. so in the beginning with, with treatment and everything, it's like I did bear the weight of the world on my shoulders. So I was able to release a lot of that through, through the, through, through the program and different programs and treatment and different things.

And But then it's like at a certain point, you know, God puts, it's God seems to put people in our lives and a book in our hand when we need that to read that book. And, and I ran into another guy, we were talking about some relationship stuff, and then I don't know if you've, if you've heard or read The Way to the Superior Man. No, I've never. So, so that one is another interesting kind of book that's almost like the opposite in a sense that it talks about like When we, if we, we'll talk a little, I'm sure we'll talk plenty about toxic masculinity and some of these different things where in this day and age with all the transgender and all these different things it seems to be somewhat of a controversial issue, even though we're talking about like some genetics here.

We're talking about, you know, thousands of years of evolution with some of these ideas and some of these tendencies and passions and different natural things, right? And, and then there's, there's the oddities and there's the unnatural and, or there's natural, just people are different, and that's all wonderful too. But in, in, it's over the main, over the main thing, the way that a superior man was almost like as the man, and it's really an interesting book too, because it's very, it's very equal over It really talks a lot about gay and lesbian relationships as well. So it doesn't really talk about ma-man and woman, but it does talk about that positive and negative of, of, of this attraction.

Whereas, you know, even in gay relationships, whether gay man on man or woman on woman or whatever the scenario is, each person has a role in that relationship. And, and, and, and, and how they figure that out is part of the process of developing that relationship. And, and, and his, his id- this book's idea was like as that male or that man role in that relationship, it's your obligation to provide to the person that you care for the things that they need, not necessarily the things you think they want. Right. And so that was a pretty wild experience with, with that book. You know when I, so before I wrote my book, I went and I just, I read a lot of relationship books. I read, let me see, I read How Do You, How to Satisfy a Woman in and Out of Bed.

I, I had read a lot of pickup artist books on, you know, what, you know, how to pick up women. Like, I, like I, I read a, I read Probably, I had about two or three of those that I read. the other thing, I read a lot of psychology books. I read a lot of management books as well. And so the way that I actually approached everything was through my, my management training, because what I realized about people is whether it is somebody you are working with or somebody you are dating, people are people. And if you learn how to just talk to people, you can talk to your spouse, or you can talk, you know, you can talk to your boyfriend, your girlfriend, or whatever. you just have to figure out a way to connect to them and to have a message that resonates with them.

one, another really good book that's kind of on along, on the lines of the men are for women, I mean, you know, is love languages. It talks about that. So it talks about how different people feel loved. So, you know, and it talks like acts of services, physical touch, you know, different things or whatever, right? And so you might feel loved if someone is, like, buying you stuff, right? Somebody else might feel loved if someone does something for them. And so because you feel loved by, you know, physical touch or whatever, that's how you, that's how you just kind of assume that the other person does. Right. And so that's, and so it talks about the different dynamics you have to figure out how someone feels loved. and And like you said, it's a lot of relationships where they're not, they don't understand that part.

Like, I, I've seen a lot of men who just think, okay, I'm going to be this provider, I'm going to be this protection, I'm going to do this. You know, I go to work 12 h a day, I come back home, and, you know, I, I paid all the bills are paid, I, you know, I, I'm mowed the lawn, I, you know, I did this, I have set her up for this really nice, you know, life that she's living, right? I've provided all of these things, right? And we all know that women like that. But the other thing is, is that women like to talk. Women like to be touched. Women like to be told they're beautiful. You know, so I've seen a lot of guys who think their job is done because they, you know, they make a lot of money and they provide it a lot.

But they lack on the other thing, and then their woman who is, you know, who, who may drive a nice car, live in a nice home, feels lonely. And is not satisfied. And is not satisfied. They're not getting what they need. They're not getting what they need. And so it's just, it's, it's an unfortunate thing because it's not as if, you know, one person have malicious intent with, with their doing, they mean well, it's just not communicated right away. It just, it's, it's not received that way. And so what I've, what I've realized is that people need to be a lot more intentional in when they are interacting with their spouses, their loved ones in a romantic way. I mean, it is something that, you know, like, just because A lot of times when you are around somebody, they basically become a habit to you.

You know, just like breathing air, all of that, you know, it's like with breathing air, you don't really appreciate air until somebody puts a plastic bag over your face. And then you would change your arm for it, you know? And so a lot of times people, they just become habits. And, you know, and, and while you may love them, it's not shown every day. And you don't consciously think, okay, I need to show this person this every single day. and so what ends up happening is, is that before you realize it, there's been little gaps that comes into your relationship, and then you just start to like, you know, float apart. And it's not a thing that's intended, it's just happening because you're not consciously doing things.

And so I was reading something and it talked about You know, people, you know, who kiss before they leave every day, you know, want men live longer it ends up being a, a, a happier situation just because of the physical touch. And, you know, like sometime, you know, I have a girlfriend and I realize like some days, you know, we just, we get into bed and, you know, you're tired and She over there, I'm over here or whatever. And I know, and you know, I just fall asleep, right? But the thing is, is that, you know, she likes to be touched. And I mean, it's not like I don't like touching. It's just, but it happens and you just fall asleep and then I wake up and I'm like, like reading, I, you know, I barely even touched her, right? And so it's something that I think that we have to consciously, intentionally do.

You have to intentionally be like, you know, that's the way love is, is you choose to love a person every single day. Because on paper, there's always somebody who could live, look better or be better or whatever. but you have to like intentionally do this every single day. You have to make that decision. You have to say, okay, I value this person for whatever reason, and I'm going to intentionally do this. That's the only way I think things really work out. In a good situation, a healthy situation for a long time is if you really intentionally do these things every single day. Wow, that, that, that makes all the sense in the world.

And, and what really jumps out is, is The business management and the communication skills, and you go to these management classes, and we've had them, you know, we had them even back then at CF, and every once in a while they would do this little game where there's this exercise to break the monotony, and then you're doing these stupid role-playing things, and where if you're confronting an employee and, and all these sorts of things, but we don't really do that in a relationship to where, like, I, it really resonates what you're saying in a sense that, you know, what they want and what we want and, and, and whether it's just a little cuddling or whether it's the full, the full Monty or whatever the case may be, it, it's like their, their needs, it's difficult to know what those are if you don't ask.

But for some reason, why is it so hard to ask? Why is it so hard to break through that resistance, whether it's Catholic shame and guilt or whether it's this is taboo or this is dirty, and you don't want to sound like a pervert or you don't want to make suggestions, because then you're just criticizing. What they're doing, which is absolutely fine what they're doing, you know, and so it, it gets into this weird place where even in, in my own experience, it, it's like, it seems that, you know, who's the initiator or whatever.

And if that's a core belief that they don't feel that that's really their job, or if they don't, if they feel cheap or whatever their feelings are when it comes to that it, it's something that needs to be communicated because it's nice to get approached also, even if we're the one that wants, cause we feel loved or we feel like we're wanted or whatever. And And so that's a little, you know, thing that we can always work on, or you can do a, and it's almost like the super nanny books or something like with, with kids and teenagers or whatever. You know, it sounds, yeah, okay, that'll work with my kids.

You know, some of the silly tools or the silly things that might sound good on paper or in the beginning or whatever, but it's still going to be a matter of working@it.so like, you got these Waze light bulbs and stuff with different colors and all this other stuff, and, and hey, man, maybe it's an idea to just put on a certain color light when you're in the mood. Right. So then you know that you're not bothering the other person by trying to, you know, rub up on them or do, you know, whatever the initiation is in, in, in that relationship or whatever. But hey, if that light's purple, it's game on or whatever, you know. But again, it's those same communication skills through business and relationships that in the workplace, why would it be any different in a, in a, in a, in an intimate relationship? Makes all the sense in the world.

You know, I, when I, I worked for AVF probably a year after CF, and there was this manager, and he said, you know, whenever you find somebody in the break room and you know they're not supposed to be in the break room, he said, never make an assumption. He said, all you gotta do is ask them a question. He said, you ask them a question and they'll tell themselves, right? And so I thought about it. He's like, you know, you just ask him, so like, why are you up here? Who gave you permission to be up here? Whatever, right? He said, because you just never really know. Maybe somebody gave him permission to be up there or something like that, right? So what I ended up doing with that is, because one of the things that is very hard for people to do is manage your emotions and manage Your past baggage, right?

whatever it is, your traumas, you know, your traumas from childhood, past relationships, managing your emotions, managing that, right? Those are the two hardest things to do. But what I learned is, is that instead of assuming, so you can just ask a question, like, are you aware that when you did this, it caused this? Or are you aware or like, you know, I, I remember one time I was counseling a couple. How that happened, long story. But I was, I was counseling this couple, right? And they were, you know, they were engaged, they was about to get married. A friend of mine, you know, it was her son. And so she was like, hey, can, do you know any counselors, any therapists or whatever? And I was like, yeah, you know, I gave her a couple of names. She was like you know, I know him. I don't really, you know, I don't prefer him or whatever.

And I was like, well you know, I could ask around. And she was like, well, to be honest, I want you to do it. And I'm like, what? And so she asked me to do it, right? So I'm in, I'm, you know, I go, I get out my little thing. I create a little, you know, I'm like, all right, I'm about to go counsel these people. So I'm talking to them or whatever. And they, they told me about an incident in which he got a phone call from, I don't know if it was X, some girl. The fiance goes off the handle, right? She just goes off the handle. So many all of these things. He's like, you know, what are you talking about? You know, this, this, that, and the other, right? And so I asked her, I said, look, I'm listening to this guy speak right now. I said, he comes off like he's a really good guy, like he's a good person. I said, is that accurate?

She's like, yeah. I was like, he seems like he's honest or whatever. She's like, yeah, he is. You know, he's this, he's that. She just, you know, just went off of all these good things about him. I said, so why can't you treat him that way? And she's like, what do you mean? I said, you could have just asked him a question. Like, hey, why did she call you? Or what was that about? And then he could have just answered the question. You just said that he was a honest, good person, this, this, that, and the other, and then you could just take his word. I said, but instead, you just assume That something would, you know, you made an assumption, you go off the handle, it causes a whole situation when there wasn't even anything, there wasn't a problem. And so you could just ask him the question.

And so, you know, he's sitting there looking at me, you know, he's like, you know, she's, and she, you know, realizes, I'm like, you just said he was all of these good things. All you have to do is treat him like he's all those good things. That, that's, that's good stuff there, relationship-wise. And so, and that's, and that's what happens, that's, that's the thing a lot of times, is she, one, just didn't man, didn't manage her emotions. And whatever baggage she's had from past relationships or whatever, or non-trust thing or whatever, she just went into that mode. When you have a, a person you recognize as a good person, just ask them a question, you know? And I think that's one of the biggest problems that a lot of people have is that we haven't learned to manage our baggage and manage our emotions.

And then, you know, and a lot of people aren't even aware of like how these things affect them and, and, and then Ends up affecting others. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's multiple twelve-step programs for various things, whether you're a sex addict, whether you're an alcoholic, whether you're a drug addict, doesn't matter, gambler, and most of them are all based on the same sort of things. And, and one of the biggest premises of that is, you know, you have to be aware of the problem in order for you to even see it. And, and so that's, that's very challenging, very humbling to sort of turn the tables and write your own inventory and do these different processes to understand that and try to maybe find where that You know, where those ideas are coming from, that all men are like that, or whatever the case may be.

Now, of course, if you're new in a relationship, you don't need to go snapping the 1st time something like that happens, but if it's happening every 3rd day, obviously here's your sign. Maybe, you know, you need to question a little more accurately, like, hey, are we on this committed relationship? What's going on here? Do you really need to have, you know, five different women calling three times a week? You know, then, then that's not exactly the right thing either. So, but, but like you said, one of the things, one of the little tricks that, that I had done that was suggested for me to do was that, you know, you get a piece of paper out and you write out what you would want in that other person, whoever that significant other is.

I'd want him to be trustworthy, I want him to be hardworking, you know, whatever all those expectations are of the other person. And then you read that list, and until you're that person, Don't expect that out of anybody else. So make sure you're being that person that you want them to be in a sense, because that's not easy to do. And it's, it's not, it's not, it's not easy to do. and I, I think that a, a lot of people, especially so especially after what I've realized about like dating in our age is that a lot of, there are a lot of people who when they were in their twenties and when they were in their thirties, they learned a lot of things, right? They learned a lot of things about other people though, right? And so they may have figured out, okay, I may not, this, this behavior from somebody else is a red flag.

This is a green light, you know? And so you, you Gotten to the point where you understand what it is you don't like, right? But you haven't gotten to the point where you really understand yourself. And so while you know what other people can do that will turn you off or whatever, you don't really understand what it is that you do that turns other people off. Because a lot of people don't really get the fact that in relationships, there is normally two villains. And so people don't like to see themselves as a villain. People don't like to hold themselves accountable in their own relationships, so they go through their twenties and thirties feeling like a victim. Feeling like, you know, well, you know, I did right, they, they did wrong or whatever. Not understanding, you know, the other person's perspective or not even respecting that.

Because a lot of times what I have realized about people is if they can look at, at the other person and say, they really did this specific thing wrong, then it, for them, wipes away anything that they possibly could have done. So like, you know, man and the woman, they're together let's just, let's say the woman, she's had all these little things that she had been doing, right? He cheats, anything she did is justified just kick it out, right? So she walks through life thinking she hasn't done anything wrong. Just because she could point at one thing or this major thing, let's say, quote unquote, that he did wrong.

And so by the time they're 50, they know everybody else's red flags, they don't know theirs, and they don't understand why they're not connecting with people, because people are also looking at you and are saying, oh no, that's a red flag, but you don't see your own red flags. And I think, you know, as you get older, I think that's what happens to a lot of people dating. Yeah, that you know, another, another similarity there with even a, a step program. So, so it's interesting. Like, you see all those twelve steps when it comes to recovery or different, different things, but then you'll see in the self-help industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. I mean, everybody's searching, everybody's looking for something, everybody's missing something, everybody's this, everybody's that.

And, and, and one of them was it, maybe it was Joel Osteen, but there was like a the twelve, or the ten steps to a happier you. And hey, guess what? If you read those ten steps, they're pretty similar to those other twelve steps, which are pretty similar to these, these things that have been passed down for 5000 Years. You know, this, this is not a secret. It's simple. It sure the hell ain't easy. And, and, and it, and you read, so most people, or a large percentage of people that are even Actively looking for help through reading a book. Right. And, and so you read these things and you're like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Well, it said, get out a pencil and a piece of paper and write down. Right. It's a simple instruction, but you're just going to play that game in your head and think you're doing the work. Right.

But for some reason, when, when, when we take a piece of paper and write something down, it changes. It does. And, and that act of journaling or all these different tactics that you see, it's like, oh yeah, that's, that sounds like a good idea. Maybe I'll try that. And then you never take any action on it. And, and hence, there's never any growth, right? Right. And, and so it's inter-what really jumped out too is, is now that we have a few years under our belt. So it's a good trigger in, in, in a sense, and even my experience that You know, get a few drinks in you, you, you, you lighten up a little bit, now all of a sudden you're the life of the party, whereas I was too much of a wuss to go talk to the ladies before.

You know, whether it's self-esteem issues or I, I didn't think I was that good looking and, you know, you've al, you know, even from back then, you were always a confident, good looking man. and, and, and so you carry yourself a different way and, and, and, and that, that fine line between confidence and conceit, you know, I have another friend that was like, I, I, I gravitated to cause he's really good with the ladies. You could close the deal. Right. You know what I mean? And I'm trying to watch and I'm trying to, you know, and, and at the end of the day, I'm like, man, I don't, I don't get the, I don't get the chase thing as much cause I just assume have something to go home to as opposed to trying to find something new every, every other night or whatever the case may be.

And if you had a good time, why wouldn't you want to have another good time? Right. You know, so that was just my Kind, kind of attitude, but at the end of the day, so at the end of the day, it's like, you know, I didn't really want to be the person that I was aspiring to be through this other person that was successful at the chase. Right. And for some reason, I, I would be real good up to, it's almost like a sales thing. So like if you, if you're a salesman and you, sometimes you just gotta, you gotta make the ask. Right. And, and, and I was never good at that part, right? So, so, and then I'd pa, I'd miss the window and then be, then get a little too drunk or what, and that, and that, and then, you know, then it is what it is.

But so in, in over all these years, okay, of course now with a little life experience, if I could go back to where I was 19 years old, the game would be different. Right. And I, yes, a lot different. And, and, and so it, it'd be interesting to hear like through some of those experiences and Through a lot of that research because the funny thing is, is the how to pick up chicks books or whatever they might be work. They work. And they work for a reason. And the psychology, whether it's, again, whether it's a genetic thing, whether it's a pheromone thing, whether it's because these innate survival tactics of wanting a strong survivor.

So, you know, you get these confident men that know the game and these beautiful women that always seem to fall for this jerk that's going to cheat on them and going to do this because they were the only ones that had the balls to go up and talk to them because it was just a game to them. And it's like if you wanted to counsel a girl, I'm looking for a nice guy, whether she, you know you can walk in a bar and say, right there, see that guy? Do you think he's cute? Go talk to him. Right. And, and, and, and it's like, cause he's not going to come up to talk to you. You, he thinks you're out of his league. But if you're looking for something nice, give that a shot and see what happens. But, you know, it's, it's funny. I remember when I were, when I was younger I didn't know how to hunt.

You go, I didn't, I didn't know how to walk into a bar and, or walk into a spot and just talk to girls, right? I had friends who knew how. And so I would, you know, I would watch them just like you, you know, I would watch them. I would, you know, hear what they said, things of that, you know, that nature, whatever. I remember I started traveling. And I would be on vacation, and I would be like, oh, I don't know none of these people, right? And so I would, I would just get to talking. And, but it was like, I could only do that on vacation. Never understood. I'd be in Chicago, couldn't really do it, right? That area code thing, for some reason. Everybody's a little looser. Exactly. And so on vacation, though, the guys who I would watch in Chicago, they would watch me on vacation. They would, hey, go ahead, you know, whatever.

I realized what it was. It was just the confidence. It was the fact that I just didn't care, right? I, I, I didn't let my mind trap me. And so when I got back, you know, and so after I realized that, the 1st thing that I realized is you just have to say something. You say something, if you have a good positive kind of disposition the one you work whatever it is that you have. Like, so I had a nice smile. So whenever I would say something, I would be smiling when I said it. and, and that's what I would, that's how I would do it. The thing is, is that I never liked actually having sex with a lot of different girls. So I would just, you know, I would get numbers or whatever. I would never be trying to like go home with somebody or whatever that, that night.

So I never had that type of game, or I guess you could say, but it was more or less because that just wasn't my style. And so but those, I remember after I was probably about like 26, 27 I started reading those books. I started reading the pickup books or whatever, right? And so I'm reading these books. You know, I'm just trying to see, like, what's up with him, right? So I started trying them, you know, because it's a lot of, it's a lot of psychology in it. like the, the push and the pull type of thing, you know, say something, you know, all of that stuff. It all worked. This, these things really work. And it just, and what I would end up doing was you just figure out your own little method to it.

And basically what you have to do, or you could use, and I, I remember reading this book and it said you could either use your skills for good or you could use it for bad, right? And so like, if you like the girl you could use it in order to make that connection and live happily ever after with her, you know, or you could be a dog and, you know, and, and run the game. but I've always just kind of felt like I always wanted to do right by people, so I never used it in that way. but that's how you, and that's, that's just basically how you could build a connection because I will say this, there is a thing about having an attractive personality. And a lot of times what happens with a lot of men is that you can be a good guy or a nice guy and not have an attractive personality.

Every human being needs to hear no, because they won't appreciate you if you're just yeses. And it's just, it's really, you, you can't like You can't build passion or you can't, a person's not gonna have passion for somebody who always tells them yes. It's almost just pure human nature. You don't see it a lot. And so I would always tell guys, look, there is going to be a time when you are with your girl or your whoever, when you 1st meet, and she's going to do something or she's gonna ask for something, and you should say no. If you don't say no, you're messed up. Because she's going to look at you and know you should say no. About this. And I think that's what happens with a lot of when they say nice guys finish last.

It's because a lot of times what nice guys do is that they say no even when they want to, they say yes even when they want to say no. That, that makes sense in, in the basic psychology of even with children, right? Yeah. So, so that one, it's, yeah, it's no big deal, but just say no sometimes because they can't just, 1st of all, they can't just ex, if, if they're the kind of person that's just testing the waters to see what they can get away with, well, that's what a kid does, but it's not nefarious. Right. If they're 26 and doing that with a guy, well, then that might, that's a different level. But so with children, it's, it's natural, it seems natural to push those boundaries and to see what they can get away with in, in, in, in that kind of sense.

But to say no, even though it's something stupid it makes that other thing all that more powerful. But, and then like you said, just as out of respect for somebody that can just control his life and be able to have the balls to say no sometimes is something they're looking for, even though they really do want what they're asking for. Right. But they don't even know what they, what they need or what they want sometimes either. Exactly. That's why those psychology tricks in those books work. Yeah. Whether it's just a little touch, a little this, a little that, the small, the ba- You know, and, and it's so funny cause it, I can almost sound like I know what I'm talking about, but I sure, my life experience isn't that I know what I'm talking about in a lot of ways, but cause it was like the perfect example of that confidence level.

Was, was, and, and maybe some people might relate to this, is that you're dating this girl, things are going okay, it's not great, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and it seems like, man, these ladies everywhere I go, they're kind of all over me, you know what I mean? It's like, what's going on here? It's like, so then you're thinking, oh, maybe I could get better, and then you end up breaking up, and next thing you know, nobody gives you the time of day. Right. It's like, what the hell's going on here? And it's that same, that slight difference that you really didn't care, because you had something back home. Exactly. And that slight difference of just being a little more free-willing is, is something that's drawn, that, that people are drawn to. Yeah, it, it, it definitely is.

Confidence is, I, I, I mean, you get, you see it all the time, especially when it comes to men, right? Men, you don't always have to be the really good-looking guy. If you are confident, because people are going to wonder, why are you so confident? It, I mean, it, I've, I've seen... What's he got that I don't know about? I got to figure this one out. He's got something. Like, I'm telling you, I have seen guys who will self-proclaim I, they're ugly, walk into places and get nice looking women because of their confidence. And the thing is, is that because what a, what most guys don't realize is that most guys aren't approaching girls. And so if most guys aren't approaching girls, a lot of girls aren't being approached.

And so the fact that you come up to them and start talking to them is you, you've already started winning a lot of times, you know? at least, especially back when we were younger, right? The, the way things are now is a little different. Yeah, I don't know, nothing about all the apps and all of this and all of that and, and, and just, you know, a little bit more free loving, a little more just hookup oriented. And God bless you, if that's what you're into and that's your thing, that's wonderful. But like I said, I just assume I was that same kind of attitude like you're saying that I, I didn't, I didn't necessarily love to chase so much that that's what the addiction was, or that's what the game was, or that was the conquest or whatever. However people look at it psychologically or directly, I just assume have something@home.right.

You know, and, and then whether it works out over an extended period of time, that's obviously a whole nother conversation with, with, you know, compromise and giving, fulfilling other needs and all these other things. But but yeah, that's, it's funny because another Another thing on top of your list of, of, of that con, you know, the other thing that's, that's amazing is that fine line between confidence and conceited. That, that, you know, cause it's almost like whether it's a conversation or you'll see, you'll see authenticity. Right. Like natural authenticity, like we're just, I, you're just an old friend and we're just connecting and this is an awesome conversation and I love it.

There ain't no, there's no script, there's no this, there's no that, but you'll see other things where it's like people, you could tell, man, they're trying so hard to be authentic that it's coming across as inauthentic. Right. And I think that that's something that happens as well, right? I can see, yeah. And, and, and when they're old, when, when they cross that line, it, it goes to a, a, the complete opposite effect and it can be a, a turnoff, I think, for a lot of people. But the other aspect is, is like you'd walk into that bar and you'd see the half balding chubby guy that's got six hotties around him. Right. And then what do we think? Oh, that guy's just got money. He just got money. And it's like, no, it's not money. You know what he's got? He's got stories. Yeah. He's entertaining. He's making them laugh. Yeah.

They're having a good time. This is what they want. And at the end of the day, we can pretend that we work out. We could pretend we're jacked, but most of us, we're all disgusting. Right. For any of, any of these ladies that choose to be with our goofy naked bodies, it, does it really matter that, that they're a little more chiseled than the other one at the end of the day? Because we know that for the female side, it's more of a psychological connection than it is a physical connection. And we're all worried about our shirt button being too high or whether or not we had the wrong shirt on that day and whether or not our hair was combed right or whatever.

And nobody You know, it's, it's funny you should say that because when I was, you know, when I was in college, when, you know, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, like I, you know, I had six pack, I working out a lot of time, I was like nice, right? But I swear to goodness, it is like, you know, it, nothing changed from that person to like chubby guy, you know? Where, where I'm looking, I'm like, oh, I need to lose a couple, yeah, I can, you know, lose, lose these love handles or whatever. It's like nothing changed. Like the, the amount of attention never really changed. Like maybe, maybe it's a different type of attention, but it never really changed. And so, you know, I always, you're right. It's just women like How you make them feel when they are in your presence. That is the biggest thing.

People will always remember how they feel when they are in your presence. And if you can make people feel good in your presence, it goes a long way. Whether it's you make them feel beautiful, whether you make them feel safe, but there's just, you know, desired entertained, you know, that's what people really remember is how you make them feel. And it, and it's not enough said about that. a lot of times, you know, people wonder why, like you will see somebody like, oh, that don't really match. But it probably do match because you can't see how that person is feeling in their presence. Yeah, that, that can, man, that could stem off to opposites attract, to, to, to, the other thing that, you know, to, to, to skip back a little bit on what you had said about How you choose to use your skills.

That really resonated with me for, for a couple of reasons. And, and one of the analogies that I use is, you know, again, I wasn't a closer. I, I was looking for something to try to break me out of my skin. So even early in, in recovery and, you know, you're trying to find yourself and all this other stuff, I started dabbling with magic, right? So I'm, I get some cards out and, and we're doing some, you know, some tricks and learning some skills and, and what a world. Magic is pretty cool. You know, oh, you can never reveal your tricks, you know, your secrets. Well, that's because people don't realize that sometimes you spend a lot of money and, and you spend a lot of time. And it, it's like some of these tricks are very easy and it's amazing that people don't see what you're doing. Right. And it just ruins it for the other person.

Then you get that attitude case that's pissed off because they feel they're stupid because they can't figure out the trick. And it's just like, man, just have some fun. Get, be entertained. You know, you don't have to get defensive just because. You're getting took, you know what I mean? And, and, and, but those skills on how to do false shuffles and how to, you know, do false cuts and, and how to deal off the bottom or how to do, you know, these different card lifts and tactics and stuff, same thing. I mean, you, you get those skills down and you could do a lot of things with them. Right. And so do you want to cheat your friends at the card table by getting four aces every hand? Right. Or do you want to entertain people and bring joy into their lives? The same exact skills can be used for good or evil. Yeah. And that's free will. Right.

You know, that's this magical, you know, part of this magical universe that we always have that choice, regardless of our trauma. Regardless of the way we grew up, regardless of this, regardless of that, we got excuses, we all got excuses, but can we grow, can we learn from them, can we continue and, and try to just improve ourselves a little bit each day? And if we do that for ourselves, kind of like that sheet of paper, you know, we have to make ourselves promotable in business, right? We, we should do, we should study a little bit about our craft. You know, you read 20 min a day on, on your skills for work, you've surpassed all your coworkers within two Every time, you know, it, it's like anybody that's working on getting better.

Some, another like kind of funny story is like, like, you know, Keanu Reeves, like there's the Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, like, wow, man, this guy's, was he a good actor or is he that much of a dingbat? Right, right. You know, it was, it was impossible to tell because I don't think he's acting, right? But then you fast forward 15 years and you're like, oh, there's that goofball Keanu Reeves, but you don't understand what he might have been putting into his craft for 20 years. If he's taking lessons and learning and, and working at that craft, man, no, it's like walking the clouds, kind of a fluffy movie, but no, he did a really good job, you know, or Point Break or some of these, you know, so you get these little hints of, oh, there's the Bill and Ted.

I saw it there when he's playing a, you know, a dingbat surfer that's supposed to be stone. Right. But then you get into the matrix and some of, you know, some of these other things, like, wow, no, he's excelled. Why? Not by accident. You know, cause he's working at it, you know, and, and he probably deserves everything he's gotten because he's worked so hard at, at making himself better at, at his craft, you know. Right. And why would it be any different? Now, can we not be selfish and always put that on ourselves to self-improve? That, yeah, I guess we would have to make that active, active effort to improve the relationship as well, if we choose to work on that one day at a time, you know, in the same kind of sense. Yes. you know, I, a lot of times I've, I would always tell people when it comes to choice, your power is in choice.

You know, it's like I, I would, I joke people and I would tell them, you know, like when you have relationship problems, Relationship problems are not really problems. They're just you know, there's just decisions you may not just want to make, right? Like, you know, I, cause I, I look at, I look at, you know, the only real relationship problem is if you're talking about divorce, because then that becomes a legal problem, you know, or whatever. but I, I've always like looked at problems as health problems, money problems, legal problems you know, if like, you know, your family has some health problems or whatever, like that's, I've always kind of like grouped that as like real problems, because like if you don't have your health, you don't really have anything. Health is a process. legal problems is always a process.

money problems is a process unless, you know, you're just lucky you win the lottery tomorrow and it's over. You know, if your kids or whatever, somebody else is sick or one of those are just, like, those are processes, so that's a problem that needs to be solved or whatever. relationship problems is, I've always looked at them as it's either a decision you don't want to make, you know, as far as because you can fix if everybody wants to, you can choose to do different. and so a lot of times I've seen people in relationships and they say someone has the power. That person no, your power isn't your choice. You can always choose to be out of a relationship. You just don't want to. You know, if it doesn't go well, if it's not going right, you can always just make a choice. You can choose to make it better. You can choose to leave.

You know, that's the power. I, I just, I've never really looked at people and relationships having the power. Even if the, even if somebody has money, you know, you can choose to just, all right, I'm gonna start over. It's a hard choice to make. That's the problem. You know, that's, but that's what, but I've, you know, but at the same time, you've seen people, they just say, you know what, this is too much for me. I'll, I'll just start over, you know? And so I, I just always look at choice as the real power in the world. Yeah, and like you said, choice is, it doesn't make it easy. Right. And, and so that, that's, that, that could stem into a, I, I'm loving the relationship stuff, and I don't want to get too sidetracked on, on, on other things per se, because this is cool.

but that same choice, even though it might be easier for certain even demographics, right? So when you, when you're talking the inner city or, or bad neighborhoods or how you grew up or single families and, and, and, and not having both parents or whatever the case may be, those are all struggles. Right. But there still is a series of choices. that aren't easy to make. And, and sure, it might be easier when you, you know, you, you, you kick-started ahead a little bit, and you could look at other people like they have it easy, but they got hard choices too. And, and, and, and sometimes people don't realize is the worst thing that ever happened to somebody's life is the worst thing that ever happened to somebody's life. Right.

It might be that you got a, a flat tire on 290 and didn't know how to change it, and you were stranded for an hour and a half before the tow truck came. Like, is that the worst thing that ever happened in your life? Well, you, you got a pretty easy life, my friend, you know, cause we, you know, I know for me, you know, I, with having a different background, you know, I, I got in some trouble, and I, I, I got in, you know, to some, some legal issues and some different things, and we can, you know, I don't want to bore everybody with my story. I'll, I'll, I'll hint here and there some things, but well, I'll do that on a live stream or something, you know what I mean?

Just tell my whole story, cause, you know but it, it's, it's, it's amazing that, you know, those decisions are always there, you know, that, that, yeah, that it, it doesn't make it easy, and, and other people have hard decisions too, and hard, different struggles, and, and if those, the traumas that they've experienced, there's still trauma to them. Right. You know, I, I, I'm a veteran, I, I, I wasn't in an active front during Desert Storm, but I was there, and most veterans look at each other like you could have been. You know, you chose to serve, so you're equal. Right. And I'm looking at it like, you know, sometimes I'll piss some of the veterans off, cause I'm like, man, I don't need anything. But that guy that did four tours in Iraq, he deserves everything. Right.

You know, there's no reason that he shouldn't have a house and he should at least a zero interest loan or a government backed loan or something, not going home to his mom's basement and, and then having issues with trauma and addiction and all these other things that we see all the time and, you know, it's different therapies that may work that people are trying to stifle and, you know, all this kind of craziness. But it, you know, those choices are difficult and those choices are their traumas and whether it was sexual abuse or, or, or, or an abusive father or, or a mother that was in and out of thousands of relationship with addicted fathers or, or, or husband, boyfriends or whatever the case may be, which obviously is never good for kids or whatever. But though, you know, you still have that opportunity to leave.

And unfortunately, just like the psychology of some of those, some of those books that work for giving a woman what she needs in the 1st three interactions, or whether it's the psychology of why some, some of these people stay in relationships that they should have long been gone from. And it's the same self-esteem issues that, that, that person there every day ripping on them or call, calling them this, that, or the other gets ingrained and gets inside their head and they start believing that BS, you know, as a, instead of knowing that all those physical characteristics don't necessarily matter. But it, it, it kind of jumps out to like, like, like as a parent, I, I, I, I really, I brought it, you know, three kids, whatever. nine, twelve, and 13, and, and you learn a few things.

And when you're a new, you're a new parent, you grab, I grab the book and what to expect when you're expecting and try to read about it and, and, and, and all this early childhood development and all this craziness and, and, and the way personalities are, whether it's middle child syndrome and their firstborn is babied a little bit more than the 3rd one that gets away with murder. So my, my, Connor you met is a, he, he's, he's, he's an animal. He's a great, you know, he's a great kid. And, and, and, and I was the 3rd born too, and I know that game. I played that game. I played my parents against the, you know, cause I always got shorted. Cause everybody getting tired of going to the commits for a party. Right.

Like, so the 1st one at graduation, From grammar school, they get like $1,800 in their envelopes for this big party, and then the 2nd one gets like 800, and then I get like three. Right. You know, cause it's like, oh, the people are tired of giving to the Kmiec kids or whatever. Right. And I'd leverage that, man. I'd use that and get a better Christmas present or whatever, you know. So sometimes, all those, it's amazing too, cause, cause like even in school, it's like those same kind of skills that we're learning, good, bad, or indifferent. You know, I, I was barely a C student, and I did as little as I c-ne-as I had to to get by. And, and that was part of the hustle, right?

And, and so at the end, I know with everything in my heart, kids listening, man, is it easier just to do the work and get the A than it is to do how much work I did to just barely get by. Yeah. God, I'd talk to teachers to pull that F up to just give me the D. I'd do extra credit stuff and all this. And it's funny, I have, I have some of the books that I was supposed to read that I like fought tooth and nail because I'm not going to read this damn book. I don't, I, I'm, I don't think I read a book almost into college. I, I read the Lord of the Rings when I was in, at, at sea in the Navy. I, you know, and then when, you know, when I got sober, I started reading 20 min a day. And before you know, it's like, wow, I forgot I even remember how to read.

And before you know it, those four books that you've had on your shelf for five years that you've been meaning to read are done in like two months and you got to go book buying. Like, you know, that's pretty wild. But those decisions are the same things that, but why is it hard? It, you know, it's, it's so hard to break through some of those obstacles. It's so hard to break through the same sort of things that hold us back from a workout or hold us back from the things that we know to be the right thing. So, so, so to kind of close the loop on that with, with the relationship and what we know is right, like that, that book I referenced before, The Superior, The Way to the Superior Man, it was like when you walk in that house and you could just smell something's not right, like more than like, what did I do wrong, right?

She's in that mood. Right. And, and the, the natural thing to do is to escape to the man cave, you know, just hide out for a while, it'll pass. And that's a tactic that could work. Right. but this book was more about like, you have an obligation to snap her out of that. And, and, and it's like, You're reading this like, whatever, like I'm not, I'm not brave enough to get into that world. And then you read their suggestion, and it was basically like, what they're really missing, regardless of what they think is wrong, is love, is, is attention and, and affection and touch. So the books like when, when you walk in one day and you can just sense that, you're like, just go up behind her and lick her neck, and she'll instantly snap out of it and, and turn around and give you a hug or whatever. And you're like, whatever.

Like, that's the stupidest thing I ever heard. But it's true. And then you try it. And it's true. And it works. It's true. It works like, like wildfire. It's true. And so you do it a few times and you're like, damn, that, that crazy author, you know, he, he knew what he was talking about. It works. But then For some reason, we know what works, and we still choose to just say, you know what, not today. I'm just going to go retreat to my man cave. So are we making that effort every time? Are we making that proper right choice every time or not? That's on us. Right. And cause it's... I got to a point where the one thing that I do is I try to pay attention to my mate. So I'll never forget this. my girlfriend at the time, she, you know, she had attitude or whatever, right? And I let her have the attitude, right?

She looks at me and she says, you know what to do. You just won't do it. So I, I, you know, we was, we sitting on the couch, right? So I look at her and I'm like, you know that, right? You know, I'm like, she's like, you know what to do, you just won't do it. And so, because I had got to the point where if she had a attitude, I knew how to get her out of it. And the guy's right. I would either use a forced hug, give me a hug, or, or grab a booty or, or something whatever, or, you know, or just any kind of just random thing. Usually it is, it's because things usually go back to feeling loved, right? Whatever it is that you didn't do, the fact that you didn't do it, she felt like you didn't love her. If you, if you really loved her, then you would have washed the dishes.

Or if you really loved her, you would have taken the garbage out, you know? So it goes, it goes back to that, right? I, usually nine times out of ten, a, a majority of time, I can tell what somebody's mad about if I want to. I can, I can figure it out, right? and, you know, but there are times when I'm just like, yeah, I'm just gonna let her be mad, right? I'm just like, all right, well, I'll just let you be mad, right? And then, you know, and the funny thing is, is that, you know, maybe I'll, I'll sit there for a 2nd, you know, 20 min or whatever, and then I'll be like, all right, forget it. Like, don't let her be mad, right? because my philosophy about relationships is I wanna talk, laugh, And have sex, right? That's, you know, I understand there's going to be conflict. I want conflicts to be over with quick.

I do not, I do not understand how people sit in relationships and mad 90% of the time, you know, go, you know, a week without talking to people, this, this, that, and the other. Like I've, I've told my girlfriend, if you don't talk to me in 48 h, consider us broken up, right? You know, like you've got to say something. Hey, you better send a pigeon. You better send some sort of a communication because I, you know, if I'm in a relationship with you, I just feel like the ma- vast majority of time we need to be enjoying each other or we need to be at least cool. I don't, you know, so But there are times I'm like I'll let it be mad for a couple hours, you know?

Well, and I, and I think that that goes into the men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and what you're doing is sometimes maybe it has a slight selfish nation, nature to it, is I'm doing what I would want. Like, just leave me the hell alone for a few minutes. And, and so, so like, I, like you s- I've done some trade stuff, I've been on some job sites and some nice houses in the North Shore and did plumbing and some carpentry and all these different things. But it's the same thing, co-worker, communication, responsibility. You get two guys on the job site and maybe you got some trucker mouth going on if the client's not around and all this kind of stuff, and you, you're just living that construction lifestyle.

And at some point, something happens and it pisses you off and you're ready to throw down with somebody, you yell and scream and you might, maybe even push and shove a little bit, and, and, and finally it gets broken up and 15 min later, you know what? We're good. Right. Like, we're good. Yeah. We got that out, we're cool, we're good. Right. Don't work that way with the other side. It don't. And, and, and so sometimes when we just We just need that 10 min, man. Just leave me the fuck alone for 10 min, man. And can I just be c... And then they know that, man, they need you to come at that point. They, they need, they need your love now when they're in that point. And that's the last thing we might want at that moment. So they try to come in hugging up on us and you're pushing them away like, God, she's damn, she's clingy.

She's not clingy, she's just trying to give you what she wants. Exactly. And, and, and, and, and they, you know, it's not your fault that I'm pissed off right now, but it's okay that I'm pissed off right now. Right. And that should be okay too. I'll get through it. I'll be all right. But, but that's the same thing. Don't, don't give them what you want. Give them what they need, and, and that's what, you know, true intimacy and true relationship and, and true, you know, wanting for the other person more than what you want for yourself and, and, and not being selfish and all that other kind of stuff, you know, is all part of it. And, you know, the, the one thing that I like to try to caution people with is that you can't always make something one person's responsibility, though.

You know, because what ends up happening is if I have to manage my emotions and I have to manage yours, then I become exhausted. And once a person becomes exhausted, what ends up happening? It's like, you know, I'm tired. You know, so now that once you get tired, you, you, something's gotta give. You know, we, you know, you used to work out, right? You're doing the set, you're doing the set, you're doing the set. Before it's over, you know, it could be on your neck, right? And so I think that's, that's one thing that I think both people need to be conscious of, is that both people need to be doing, needs to do the work. Because you can't just put it on one person to always be the person to maintain everything, because they will become exhausted.

and so that's, that's one of the things that, like, I've, I've always said, you know, because there are a lot of people who do what I would like to call, like, run out into the street, right? And they do this thing where they run out to the street and they hope you come and save them. You know, but one of these days they run out into the street, you're too exhausted to run after them, and they get hit by the car, and then they wondering what's happening. It's like, yo, I'm not running out in the street no more. You're playing the odds. Right. You get, you keep running. Signs are gonna come up. Yeah, so it's just, you know, and I, I think that people really just need to be conscious that there needs to be two. There needs to be two people working because, you know, it's, it's just like parenting, in my opinion, right?

Parenting is a two person's job. Now, yes, one person can do it, but generally speaking, it's a two parent job. Like, there are times, like me and my daughter's mom, we're no longer together in a relationship. We split, my daughter, you know, tied with my daughter 5050 or whatever, right? I get a lot of help from my mother. my mother and my daughter are like best friends or whatever. And not only that, but I have, my father is extremely supportive as well. And, you know, I got a lot of people who are willing to help me, my brother, his wife, or whatever, right? There are, you know, especially like in the beginning, you know, cause I, we, except we, you know, broke up probably when my daughter was like three.

In the beginning, I used to be like, man, thinking to myself, if I didn't have all of these people, plus, you know, her mom, you know, whatever, it was like, this, this would be terrible. You know, and I'm, I'm getting one child up. Like, you know, I, I knew my, my mom, you know, she, single mom or whatever, she had to get three kids up, you know, and, and I see other people who've had to get, you know, multiple kids up or whatever. And I just, you know, I think about it, and I'm like, man. And so whenever you have situations where two people should do work, if the two people are present, both should be doing the work, you know. And it kind of goes back to, you know, one of the things you were talking about we were talking about like backgrounds and, you know, different things or whatever.

The one thing I never do, I never think anybody has it easier. You never know what the catch is. Like, there's You know, obviously there's a, a, a thing where, you know, sometimes people are in better economic positions, and so maybe they have opportunities, you know, like maybe education, things of that nature. But a lot of times you don't know what comes with that. You know, you don't know what their parents are like. Like, to me, I don't think there's anything better for a kid than to have good parents. Yeah, that's... You know, you could, you could have rich parents and they'd be the worst parents ever, you know because I don't care, human is a human. We have these certain things, wants, needs, whatever, desires to be loved, for connection.

You could have all the money in the world, your parents could have all the money in the world, and they not give you that, and you can be on drugs tomorrow, partying and have, you know, acting a fool or whatever. So I never, I never look at people and think, They have it better than me because they had something I don't have. I've never done that. That's a great attitude to have cause it's, it's, like you said, it's impossible to know the struggle.

You know, you can see it in movies, you can see it in all kinds of stuff that like you know they have the best schools, but then they have all that pressure and then, you know, the God forbid, the fear of rejection cause they, they, they got a B on a test and it's, you know, next thing you know, they're, the, the trauma they're receiving at home and the shame and the guilt just from getting a B, you know, or whatever, that it's just a different world and, and, and, and that's their trauma. Yeah. It doesn't make it, you know, obviously any sane human being can look at the trauma of a, of a veteran in, in, in an active war front and the atrocities they see is horrible. So that should be worse. Yeah, makes sense. That's worse, but again, if that's the worst thing that, that's ever happened to that person, their brain don't know no different.

Their brain don't know any different, that is true. You know, and, and, and so, you know, so, so you said your father's around still, your mother's around still, they're still a part of your life. When, when did they split up, when you were younger, or how, how did that play out? Like, they were, they were always apart? Do you remember a time together, or was it? No. So my mom and my father divorced when I was, officially divorced when I was two. Yeah, so I don't remember my father living in the house with us. Okay. Like my brothers do. Like, I'm the youngest, I'm the 3rd child. So I'm the 3rd child of my mom's. So, yeah, I don't remember my father living in the house with us. Okay. And, but he was always a part of your life, always in your life, or kind of in and out?

He was, well, I, I would, My father was, if I ever asked for something, he would always bring it. But he didn't, like, come and get us a lot, you know, he didn't spend a lot of time. But if I, if I needed, like, if, you know, I was like, Dad, can I have some candy? You know, he would bring some candy. What, what I did not understand at a young age is the type of father he was. So it's not as if my mom prevented him, but my, my father, you know, he, he, he, I guess he, he'd like to enjoy himself or whatever, from no better, you know, he was on the bowling team, he was, you know. So he didn't, he didn't come and get us. You know, also, he had two other kids who he lived with or whatever, right? But The thing about my father was I have never, ever met anybody who would tell me something, I'm going to do this.

Every single time he's ever said anything, he has kept his word to the T. I mean, it could be, Dad, can you do this? Well, I'll let you know Friday by 07:00. Before 07:00, he has let me know. Like my father, he's never was, you know, I was never a kid who was like sitting, waiting on the porch, waiting for my father to come, you know, like he told me he was going to come and get me. And then, you know, so I didn't really understand that at a young age. Like if I had said, you know, Dad, could you come do this or, you know, whatever, he would have done it. Now, obviously, I don't think that would have, that should have been on me to do it, but You know, he wasn't that type of, you know, so I, I never, it was never a situation where we had like ill will.

I didn't, I never knew that, you know, I never had him in the house, so I didn't like miss him. I didn't realize until I was much older the, I guess your ramifications of everything, the understanding of everything, you know, until I was like probably in my twenties, you know, I, I used to, when I, when I finally figured out and realized like exactly the type of person he was, I used to, you know, I was like, huh, why did he never come get us? You know, it was kind of like that thing, cause it's not like he's some bad guy, it's not like he had like some kind of drug problem or something like that.

You know, he, you know, he's a, you know, he's a great Grandfather, you know, I, you know, I'm cool with my brother and my sister, whatever, talking about him when he grow up, you know, they talking about him and, you know, things that he did and how he was, you know. So sometimes it's just kinda like, you know, but you just never know kinda like from his, his perspective, you know, you know, and of why he did and whatever, or what it was in his mind, you know, you just never. Yeah, yeah, and that's, that's where, you know, sometimes it is what it is, and we can be grateful for what we have in some ways and not use it as an excuse, kinda like you were mentioning and things like that. But to have that phone a friend, if needed, is a lot more than a lot of other people have. Exactly.

So, so you can, we can try to stay positive and look at the good aspects of it or whatever the case may be, and you still had a father figure in your house, you still had somebody, you know, that you could talk guy talk with or, or, or try to Get some of that need met or whatever. But it's funny you say, like, because we don't understand, like, my mother and father were together. My dad was a, a city worker that barely graduated high school, if he did. I think he did, Tully, back in the day.

And, and, and he ended up doing door knocking and doing the work and working with the aldermen and being a precinct captain and, and, and, and ended up getting a city job as a mechanic and made some pretty good money for the time and, and was Raised a family and gave his four children, three, and then ten years later, another one came, which was my sister. But we had three boys. I was the youngest of three, and he gave them the opportunity to go to college, which is a success in any man's vision of what would be better. So we can talk like generational wealth kind of scenario where each generation seems to try to get, is a little bit better than the last, and that was my experience, right? Like from barely high school education, my mom ended up going back to college later and finishing college.

and, but all thr-all her children had the opportunity, but 50% graduated. So me, me and my younger sister did graduate, but the 1st two did not. One, because it was too easy. And instead of the same kind of attitude in a sense that, like, instead of just doing the work and getting the A and getting through the semantics of that paper degree that's supposed to matter, whether it's debatable, but some jobs required it or whatever the case may be. And, and so he didn't finish just because it was out of boredom and, and just not being challenged. He might've been a genius, who knows, you know, but, but that's part of it. And the other one was more just playing games and, and, and stuff. But the funny thing was, was I go to college and I take an intro to psychology class, and we're learning about dysfunctional families.

And I'm reading this stuff and it's explaining the middle child syndrome and then the firstborn and the tendencies and then, then the, the thirdborn. It's like, wow, they're describing me and my three brothers to the T. Like, I'm like, but it's under the dysfunctional section. Like, how could that be? Right. Cause my house was normal. Right. You know, and, and, and in 1985, when I'm in grammar school, oh my God, that guy doesn't have a dad or that, you know, there wasn't like that guy's got two moms or, or some of the, you know, some of the different things today, but there was still like somebody that was divorced was a little more on the rare side in my neighborhood, which was north side of Chicago, northwest side of Chicago, Cicero and diversity kind of area.

And and it was just kind of funny that you're, you're reading this like, if my parents were together, then we have a normal family. Right. And, and that's obviously not necessarily the case. But there is a lot of good and, you know, the discipline or whether sometimes that's not, you know, textbook these days or whatever, but hey, we turned out okay. Right, right. You know, and, and, and, and there, there wasn't all the self-help books and parenting books and help and counseling in school and, you know, all these different resources that are available. And yet we can sit here and say that there's not enough resources available for a lot of different people in different situations and needs and stuff today, but we, we, we can just do the best we can with, with what we could do, you know, it's, it's a challenge.

But yeah, those are, but I, so I can relate to the You know that but... You know, the interesting thing was growing up, I lived on a block that was kind of closed off or whatever in Chicago, and it was like twelve houses, you know. growing up, my mom was the only single mom. What, what area? south side of Chicago, in Roseland, like a hundred and 27. Okay. my, my address like one 2508, yeah. And my mom, we were, she was the only single mom. when we moved to Matson, out of like all of my friends, I was, my mom was the only single mom. Like it wasn't... And that's predominantly African-American community. Yeah. how was the crime on, in the neighborhood? No, we didn't... There wasn't too much? No.

So when we 1st, when we lived in the city It was in our area, I think you could, like, maybe gangs just started coming, like when I was around 6th grade, like right before I went to 6th grade, like gangs just- That's like 80, eighty-ish, early eighties. 80, 84, 85. Yeah, mid-eighties. Right. So gangs just started. So it was like, you know, it wasn't and then we moved to Matson when I was ten, so it was like 85 is when we moved to Matson and then Matson was suburb or whatever. So Matson was a lot nicer than the actual, what we would call inner city south side of Chicago, which right now is not great. Yeah. So I don't, you know, I don't know how the neighborhood, like that, cause see, you know, in Chicago, there are certain sections On the South Side that like, that is not a problem, you know?

And so, cause I don't, I don't know, you ever been on the South Side of Chicago? Yeah, sure. I didn't live there, but work, different work opportunities are different things. Yeah, you could, and for anybody that's a tourist or traveling, yes, you can make a wrong turn and be in a pretty bad scenario. So don't just go driving around to check it out per se. It could be very dangerous, but there's good people living in good places. And so in, in the area that I grew up in, even to this day, is not bad. Now, probably about a couple of blocks over, like some blocks over through little where there's a particular area that is bad. That's hot. Yeah. but like where I grew up at It's still actually pretty, it's not, cause like, you know, every once in a while, cause we have, we own property in the San, it's like the Roseland area.

So we own property there in that area. So we, you know, we go around, like, you know, I usually, I'll drive through there or whatever, and it's still pretty okay. but there are some areas that's not, you know, that far off or whatever that... And those areas when you were in the, in the, in the early eighties when you were a kid, were those still not as nice areas as where you're at, or it was all kind of the same? So when I was a, when I was a kid like, when I was a kid, I used to walk blocks and blocks, 3rd grade, you know, from, you know, Miles, and not even be concerned. like in Matson, it's just, it's, it's the suburban feel. You know, it was, you know, when we 1st moved to Madison it was probably 60, 70 per- 60% white. now it's, you know, middle class black. it's pretty much the same type of neighborhood it was when we 1st came.

And originally moving was because the neighborhood was starting to go, or it just seemed like you had a better opportunity for a single family house out there, or- My mother, my mother is She was single, a single mother at the time with three kids. Yes. So, so how did she manage to get from the south side of Chicago out to the suburbs? My mother- And was that an apartment or a house, or what was- House. House. Like I've, you know, only time I've ever lived in an apartment was when I was by myself, single. But my mom, you know how women are. They, okay, I like this. I want to upgrade. Okay. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. So, you know, she so yeah, she just, her and her friend my mom had bought her like 1st building as a, you know, rental property. She 1st bought it like when I was in 3rd grade to like move our family into it.

and then, you know, she started to, you know, use it as an income, you know, extra income property. She was a teacher. so, you know, she started, you know, getting more degrees or whatever. Chicago public school teacher or, or was private school or college? suburb. She, she called in the Oaklawn area. Okay. She, Richards High School or whatever. Okay. So you know, so, you know, she started, you know, she was what do you call it, a special ed teacher. So she got more degrees, you know, money started to be a little better, so. She decided I'll move my kids to the suburbs. that's the American dream. Yeah. by the time, by the time I was in, by the time I graduated for college she was able, you know, my mother paid for my college. and then she ended up paying for my brother's college. so two of us, two out of three of us, we graduated.

My other brother my oldest brother, he he worked@roadway.um, you know, he worked on the dock at roadway, stayed there, retired probably about two years. Nice, yeah. Made a living. It's, it's a good gig. That's and, and then you said, what was your degree in? Logistics. Oh, it was? Marketing and logistics, yeah. Marketing logistics, yeah. So it was, so at the time when I graduated from college, they didn't have straight up logistics degrees. And logistic is more transportation oriented? Okay, so. Transportation, warehousing, all of that. Gotcha. Everything that has to do with, you know, trans- transporting goods or whatever. So they didn't have specific logistic degrees. What we had to do was, it was under marketing, so, you know. So it was marketing with you know, focus and logistics. That's cool. You, you remember Paul Knutson?

Yes, I do. Actually, he was, he's one of my 1st guests here as well, and we're, we're, we're definitely still connected, and he's an Army veteran, and we we've done a lot of stuff with the veterans and stuff in the area. So he's still around, so he'll be interested to see you're doing well, everything's good, because I'm sure he'll remember you. And then the Jim, the Jim was another guy that I brought in, and it was kind of funny because you just say marketing degree or a degree in logistics, like, it seems like it was, it was funny that when they were looking for more dispatchers at the time they're like, you know, if anybody knows anybody, man.

Were really, we needed some help and, you know, it was the 12 h shifts and it was a kind of rough gig and you, you, you had to be organized and there were some characteristics you needed in order to be successful at that position and some of it was a little bit of ball busting and being able to tell older people to hurry up, which is not always easy and, you know, and I was driving a truck when your mom didn't even have her 1st period, you know, and it's like, how do you argue with that? You know, I mean, it's like, I see more dispatchers come through here, you'll be long gone before, you know, and, and there's a lot of truth to that, but it was funny.

So we had these, we had somebody with a double masters and, and transportation and all this other stuff and, and then, so when I, I told my, my buddies, I don't even know if I, I talked to Paul, but, but it was interesting that when, when he was like doing a, he was working as a temp agency, at a temp agency as maybe in a, as a nurse cause he was a corpsman in the army and, and He, he, he had, he had kids early, you know, and he was living in an apartment in the old neighborhood down the street from his mom's house, and he's got four or five kids, and, and, and, and I'm like, man, you're working at it. I was like, here's me just kind of balling, making 50 grand a year at 25 years old or whatever I was, and, and I was like, what if I told you I can get you a job making 50 grand a year starting Monday? And he's like, yeah, right.

Cause, you know, I was like, how much money did you make last night? I think he's like 26,000 or something. I'm like, you got four kids. And so I'm like, get me an applicat, you know, get me a resume. And so I brought the resume in to, to the dispatch manager at the time. And shout out to Mike, right? That was Mike. Mike Iwanaga. Iwanaga, that's right. Yeah, he's a good guy. Like I said, he put up with a lot of my crap, that's for sure. And, and, and so I bring him in and just dump him in in the morning and then, sure, thank you, okay? You know, and then I'm out there working and, you know, an hour goes by or something, he says, Carl, can you come in here for a minute? And yeah, sure, what's up? And he goes he's like, do you realize that neither of these two applicants have any experience in the transportation industry whatsoever?

And I'm like, yeah I'm like, the last two guys you hired that had double master's degrees, where are they at? You know? And, and it was it was one of those where I'm like, look it. You need some computer skills, you need some communication skills, you know, you need some organizational skills. One's a veteran, one's got, they got that. So, you know, it's up to you. And he's like, okay, you know, and he ends up hiring them both. And then, and then ten months later or six months later, he calls me and he offers. He's like, you know, I was really shaken about that, but it worked out really well. They were kind of kicking ass and taking names and, and, and, and it was a good scenario and you're able to help other people and, you know, it feels good.

My, you know what's the funny thing about Mike is the 1st time I interviewed there, I interview with him. And I was not supposed to interview with him, I don't think, because he was the dispatch guy, right? And I was interviewing for the doc. And so I interviewed with Mike. And, you know, he's, you know, he, he's, then he's, he painted the worst picture of the doc he possibly could, right? And I just sat there and I was like, okay, right? And he's looking at me and he was like, you're hired, right? And I'm like, really? You know? And so and so then I, you know, I, you know, I left or whatever, right? And then they called me back because I was not supposed to interview with him. Nice. And I ended up having to interview with the other Mike. Yeah, I don't remember all the names. Yeah, okay.

He was the, he was the terminal manager at the time. Yeah, yeah, something with an M, I remember. Right, and I ended up having to interview with him and then, but Mike he wanted. I wanna go, yeah. I wanna go, sat in on the interview or whatever, and I ended up, you know, still getting hired. But yeah, he was a, he was a classic. He had some skills when it came to that. He had that attitude with the interview process that was a good one. And I, and I'm, I'd be curious to know how, I haven't had an interview in a long time, and, and I'd be curi, I, I, he would, in this day and age, man, he would fold some people that would apologize and walk out. I didn't realize, I didn't mean to offend you by applying for this position. Cause, you know, cause like, like he, he had those good questions, you know? Right.

Like, what's your, what do you think's your biggest fault? Yeah. It's like, who the hell wants to admit that in an interview? But if you don't know, it was kind of goes back to what we were talking about. If you don't know, you, you can't be working on it if you don't know what it is. Right. And, and, and one of his questions for me was was Some people say that I'm a hard person to work for, you know, and, and I could be kind of a jerk and blah, blah, blah, you know, what do you think about that? And then my answer at the time was like, well, sir, I, you know, I've been in the I've been in the military. I've had drill sergeants. I've had this, I've had that. I'm like, I think I've had my share of, of asshole bosses out there in the past. So I'd be curious what you think you got that I haven't seen.

You know, it was almost like the challenge. You know, like, you can't, you can't break me. Right. And, and it was just one of those, it was a good relationship, you know. He was, he was a good boss. He was a good boss. Yeah. I, he never was my boss, but I always, I did like him, you know. I, you know, it was, that used to be a fun job. it used, I, I remember in the beginning I had My my manager or whatever was my, whatever, FOM, is, is that what they call him? Yeah, was was Matt Matt, was it Lysak? Oh, yeah, yeah, that's the name, that's the name. Yeah, a different person, but, you know, everybody, that's the deal. Everybody's got their own ways and some work and, you know, some, some don't and, and some work for some people and not others and I don't know, you know. Matt, I have Matt. Then that Joe, Joe Terzivia was there.

I, I've, I think I've seen him on Facebook or a few things and some of the.guys I've, I might still be mutual friends with or whatever, but. I have Matt, then I have Bubba after, after Matt. And I, I remember, you know, a lot of people did not like Bubba, but I, I liked him. Sometimes, like, like I've had you, you know, The one thing that I can, I can tolerate pretty hard attitudes and all this kind of stuff, you know, like, you know, firm but fair is, is always fine. Yes. And I don't care how firm you want to go. The hard part is when you start getting into like a bipolar guy, where like some days are good and other days not so good, and it's just like you never know what you're going to walk into in that day. If it's consistent, man, I, I can, I can deal with it.

But but yeah, it's, it's that's, that's a pretty wild, you know, dealing with bosses and, and, you know, all that kind of stuff is. Whole new world. But again, it's, it's part of that same, you know, that same, you have a choice, you know, and at the time it was pretty good money, that's for sure. Yeah, it was. You know, I couldn't complain, running around and, you know, 12 h shifts and, you know, back then when I was training, it, it, you know, I had this shout out to Randy Lobono, my trainer at the time, and, and he'll be coming on. but he, he, he did some stuff on water and did some stuff on fitness and, and what the training That same fitness schedule that I was showing you for my thirteen-year-old was very similar to the way he did it, and he was a near professional bodybuilder.

He almost got his pro card and competed like six shows in 62 days or something crazy. And, and, and and, and but yeah, he, he was real big on, you know, go tell those excuses to somebody else, 'cause, yeah, I'm not playing that game. Yeah. You know, so it was at the point where I had twelve-hour days, twelve, and, and still worked out and still did this and still did that, and then it's like, man, can't even imagine a job where you only work eight-hour days. Like, how easy is it to do everything else? You know this, but I've been so tired lately, man. It's, it's been hard to try to stay focused and motivated and get all the little odds and ends around the house and different things done, but. I remember the 1st time I worked an eight-hour schedule after growing up working, you know, the 12 h.

I looked around and I thought something, I, I, I thought they were joking when they told me I could go home. I, I was, I was really uncomfortable with only working 8 h. They were like, all right, you know, like, you know, shift's over, and I'm like, like. And that was salary. And it was salary, yeah. Before. Yeah. So that's why it's like it, it, so now, like sometimes they offer overtime, and, and if I work twelve-hour shifts with snow, usually if there's snow on the ground, we're, we're probably working. And with a twelve-hour day, there ain't much left to do. You know, there ain't much time left. By the time you get home, do a few things, get, get a meal in ya, it, it's almost ready for bed. And so I'm back to those excuses, which I know, it's bullshit. I could still work out. I could do this, I could do that.

And so what, but then you go back to those eight-hour days where they, right, like right now they cut some overtime with the budget crisis and billion-dollar shortfalls and all this fun stuff. but it's like an eight-hour day, it almost feels like a half day. Yeah, it does. You know, but again, you know, we're, these are our Cadillac problems, because it's, you know, that's the, that's, if that's the problems we're having, you know, that we're doing okay for ourselves or whatever, but. Right.

Yeah, that's, but that, it was interesting with just, you know, some of the talk and about the south side of Chicago and, and, and what's happened to the neighborhoods and we got different mayors and we got different things and coincidentally in the eighties, what do we know happened in the middle of the eighties was the start of the war on drugs and obviously, you know, some of the, some of the things that happened with the, isn't actually helping. You know, so we could dump a lot of money, dump a lot of advocacy work and nonprofit organizations and all these different things into problem areas and doesn't seem to be helping for a lot of various reasons.

And, and that's why even when it comes to more of your expertise in relationships and whatnot, sometimes where we came from obviously repeats itself, and we have to be aware of that and, and try to provide that. Like, like one of the things was, you know, my father was, he worked in the garage, did the inside work. He was a mechanic for the city of Chicago, worked on police garage, mostly for squad cars and different things. And, and our joy time was helping him in the garage, right? That was like our, you know, alone time and special time. Or, or if he'd say, "Hey, you want to go over?" His buddy had a machine shop, you know.

And so we, we get to go to the machine shop and we're six years, ten years, eight, six, six or eight or ten years old or whatever, and there'd be a naked girl cal, snap on calendar hanging in there, we're not supposed to see, and you know, all these little things that we'd hear them swearing, you know, this old German guy, motherfucker, and we'd be like, you know, and, but those, it's so funny that, you know, sometimes we get, with multiple kids, you get into these areas where you go out for a family thing. And sure, those are fun, but those really aren't the memories. You know, that one-on-one time is pretty important, so a lot of times I'll grab one of them and just say, let's go get a hot dog or whatever, because, you know, that's my dad, and I don't think he ever said I love you, and I don't think he ever said thank you.

But you help him out in the garage and you go for a hot dog, that was his way of saying thank you. So those communications, it's kind of like One funny thing is like you look at like an Italian family and these old, these old Italians that are screaming and yelling at each other all day long every day, but when one of them's lost, they are lost. And that love is there. That's just the way they communicate. It looks crazy to us, but who are we to judge? You know, they got their thing, and if they're fine with it, a big, actually, I guess a big transition into a big part of a lot of the problems in the world are being offended for other people. You know, like if they're okay where they're at, you don't have a right to dictate or demand what they do or don't do. No, I, I, I agree.

You, and you know, it's In the guise of, like, relationships, right, you see that a lot of times with, like, friends, where a friend is holding a grudge against your spouse or your, you know, like, if they're good, then you should be good, right? If, if, if they're not mad, then you stop being mad. and I think a lot of times, you know, as friends, you have friends who will interfere in relationships when they should not. I, I, you know, now, I'm not talking about a situation if Dangerous or something where it's like you... Right. You know, it's, I'm not talking about that. You know, I think that life and death situations or, you know, abuse situations, you know, obviously you gonna, you gonna do what you can to keep somebody safe.

But just because, and I, I remember watching this, this podcast and this guy was, he was talking about how his mom, his father would be working, his mom's sister or friend or whatever would come over and they would be just drilling his mom's head with, oh, you should be doing this or he should be doing that. So and so got this and this, this, that, and the other, whatever, whatever, whatever, right? And then they'll leave his father come home and she'll be pissed off@him.he has no idea what's going on or whatever. It will all be because They're planting poison in the, in the, in the garden. Yes. And so a lot of times, you know, you, you see that. That's, and that's a real, real thing that goes on.

I've experienced some of that, and, and, you know, and some of it was because their friends thought they can do, the, the person could do better, and, and I wasn't in the great, in, in the, in the, the ends of my, I wasn't, there was a lot of self-justification going on, right? Like there was a scenario where, you know, you have a relationship and she happened to be a paramedic, so she was 24 on, 48 off. So 24 on, she's at work. Well, that's my time to go shoot some stick with the boys and hang out and throw some darts and blah, blah, blah. Shouldn't be anything wrong with that. Right. I'm supposed to sit home by myself and twiddle my thumbs every other waking hour I try to spend with you and not, you know, but that's all part of the every time they drove. Happened to drive by on work and there's my truck at the bar.

So that, that's, you know, I was just a social drinker, you know, I only went out to shoot darts and play pool and, you know, and then it's pool league on Tuesday and dart league on Thursday and the Cubs games on Friday and oh, it's football and, you know, so, so things progressed. and, but again, all, all great people. and fortunately I didn't really treat anybody horribly. Right. So I don't have too much of that baggage to try to fix or, or, or whatever the case may be, but, but that, you know, that is, is, is, is part of it, you know. I, I kind of lost my train of thought a little bit there on what, what you were talking about. the friends interfering. Oh, right, right. So, so yes, so there was some meddling in some ways in people in their ear, and then you just get resentful for them, even though they're probably partially right.

But one thing is for certain, they sure as hell don't know the whole story. Exactly. They're never getting both sides of the story. Never getting, yes. And, and, and that's usually not a good scenario. Yeah, for sure. I've definitely had a relationship where friends interfered. it was, it was, it was interesting because I would tell her, like, I had, I had told her because I, I knew her friends, right? And I had told her, I was like, yo, your friends are nosy. because it was another, a situation where they had interfered in another, you know, somebody else's thing. And I was like, don't ever let that happen to us, right? Don't let them do that. But just like clockwork, she allowed it, right? And so... That hen house is hard to resist.

Yeah, and so, you know, I, me and her were having discussions, and I would tell her, you know, you need to stop, like, tell your friends to shut up. They grown and they can do, you know, da-da-da-da-da. And, you know, eventually it led to us, you know, not working out. But what I would, what I told her, I said, listen, if you can't get your friends to stay out of your business, It's either one of two things, or both. Either they're not good friends, or they don't have any respect for you. Either way it go, it's not good for you. Right. Because the one thing that I do know, that if any of my friends felt the need to, like, interfere in my relationship, and I told them to stop, they would know either they stopped or we're not friends.

So, you know, and, and that's the thing, because if, if your friends are interfering, because they're, you know, her friends were interfering in the situation that was pissing me off, and she's wanting to be with me, and this is hindering that. And so you want to be with me, and they're doing something to hinder that. You can't get them to stop. Like, I, I just never understood that, and it wasn't as if it was a situation where I was being abusive or I was, you know, doing whatever. Cheating or this or that or running around. Yeah, it was none of that, right? It was, it was just little, little, little silly stuff where they, you know, and so it was, it, cause it basically what happened was she would tell them things, but she wouldn't tell them both sides, right? And so... It's propaganda.

Right, and so, cause I, I remember like, you know, after the whole situation was done, whatever, one of the friends, we had a conversation, and she was like, well, you know, she telling me all the things she know. I was like, well, this is the part you didn't know, right? You know, and so but I would, I, I just, I don't, I never understood that. I just could not understand why she couldn't get her friends to stop. You know, and then you, you take a step back and you understand that They have the best intention in their heart most of the time. Right. Now, there could be the one that's a little jealous and trying to poke and, you know, they're just trying to destroy other people, and by all means, that toxicity, it's not worth it.

It's not worth dealing with that, even if you think you're trying to help them or, you know, again, it, it kind of goes into treatment or, or different things. Like, if somebody doesn't want help, there ain't shit you're going to be able to do for them. True. And, and especially if somebody thinks they know everything, well, they're unteachable. They can't learn nothing. You already know everything. Your brain's full. Like, God forbid you get a little humility and try to learn something, you realize, you know, it's my little tagline that I love saying is, is the more you learn, you, the more you realize how little you know. So I try to get dumber every day. Right.

You, you know, and that's the magic of, of a book or reading or whatever, because it's like, then that book triggers something and you're, you, and then so it refers another book and then you read that book and before you know it, you're like, I have a book on metallurgy or something like, like, how did this get here? You know, but sometimes it's funny that when we are reading a book, it dominates our conversations. Like, like it's, it's, it comes up everywhere. Yeah. Like, that's so weird, man. I just read that and, you, you know, cause I'm, I'm actually, me and my thirteen-year-old are rere, I, I'm rereading Animal Farm. Which is just because he's probably going to have to read it soon, and it's about kind of current conditions and politics and some different things, so it's, it's a fun discussion.

And then I never read 1984, so that's kind of on the list too, but I, I have a, a wide variety of different stuff that, because of that, I'm in different books that, you know, that, that reading, and leaders are readers and all this other stuff, but it, it, it, but again, it's like we can have our definition of what we think's the right thing, but you have to allow individuals to kind of live their own life. The best example, especially when you look at liberals, you know, politics and different things in the atmosphere, and, and like Ted Nugent is the epitome of toxic masculinity in the eyes of a lot of people out there today. Because he's old school, he's a hunter, he's a, you know But he's managed to live his whole life without doing drugs or drinking, which is rare, you know, and it's particularly in the rock and roll lifestyle.

Now, with that, he definitely had his little addiction with, with the ladies and, and, and all the honeys throwing themselves at the rock star and all that kind of stuff. And at the end of the day, he's older now, he's got a beautiful older wife, and calls her cupcake and plays grab ass and, you know, all this kind of thing where some people or different people these days would look at that and say, he's, he's misogynistic or, you know, that toxic masculinity or, you know, all this other kind. Well, just, well, just from flirting and, and, and, you know, but it's like, that's their scenario. She knows what's going on, and if she loves him for what he is and how he is, and that's the way they talk, like, you don't have a right to be offended for somebody else. Yeah.

I mean, if you feel so obligated that you got it's really eating me up, and I'm, been kind of praying about it, and I got to tell, oh, I got to mention it to a man, you know, fine, mention it. And once it's out there, you're done. Yeah. But like you said, it's not your place to push it. If you want to just say, hey, cause God forbid something happens, I want to make sure I, I threw it out there and I let him know, or I, I'm thinking things are getting a little goofy or whatever, you hear from enough people, then maybe it could trigger a little self-evaluation.

So, so it's okay to express that sometimes, but, but not to meddle or not to, because that, that propaganda, Even if you're girls will be girls, or that's what they do, but it, it gets in there, and you catch you on the right day, and, and those wheels start turning, and then there's this and that, and it's, it's just, you know, the, the negativity is never great to surround yourself with people trying to tear down other people. Yeah. If we're, if we're here to try to build each other up and try to help each other and, and be a positive experience to each other, then, yeah, that's worth being around. I, I, I agree with that. cause I've always said, you know, I don't, I don't like negativity coming from anywhere, right?

Like, I don't, I don't allow people who are, like I'm in a relationship with, you can't be in a relationship with me and complain about me all the time, right? I, I do not accept that. you know, I, I tell everybody, you got a choice. You can state your grievance. I will let you know whether it is something that I am good with, as far as I like mys- I like this about myself or I'm cool about myself, and it will not change. Or, okay, I'll try to change, I'll work on it, right? But if I give you the answer of I'm not going to change, then you have a choice. That choice is either leave or shut up about it. Because I've already let you know that I'm not going to change, but what you cannot do is continue to bring it up. Because to me, the person you love has the Biggest road to your self-esteem.

And if you continuously complain about somebody and something they're doing, in my opinion, you're basically sending the message that they are not good enough. And so I'm not going to let you sit, sleep next to me telling me I'm not good enough. Well, that, that's that same propaganda though, like whether it's coming from the hen house or whether it's coming from your actual partner constant tearing down is going to eat away at the foundation. And, and, and, and eventually the house is going to fall over. and I guess, you know, to, to, to bring it in even with the kids and all these, you know, all the parenting books and all these sorts of things that you can read is this, it's, it's almost that same rule, like, here's a tip. One negative for every ten compliments. Good luck with that.

You, you want to challenge yourself, well, try not to say anything negative unless you said ten positives. It's gonna work, I can promise you, but do I do that? I, you know, I can self-evaluate right now and on the spot and say, okay, maybe I should try to implement that, and, and I think that sounds like something that would be helpful because you try to do that with kids, because you don't want to tear down their self-esteem. Exactly. So, man, you did a great job with this. Man, you did a great job with your... Oh, man, you know, at least give them three positives before you throw that negative in there. Right. You know... Why wouldn't it be any different to our spouse? Exactly. cause like, one of the things, cause like, you know, I've heard that. Like, I, I...

Like, my daughter, right, cause a lot of things that as adults we may find negative about kids, like my daughter, she talks a lot. I mean, she, she talks. They do that. You know, she's kind, but I always tell her, that's a good trait. Being able to talk to people, being able to, like, my daughter, since she's been three, four years old, you know, we go to the playground and she's like, hi, my name is Joy Hollis. That's my father. His name is Okera Hollis. Is this your kid? That's how she was walking up to adults, like, at the playground. They'd be like, yes, can I play with them? And then they'll look at their kid and be like, play with her. You know, and the kid be looking like, who is she? Right? Like, why I gotta play with her? But, you know, I tell my daughter all the time, you talk a lot.

To some people, you know, you, they might be irritated by that, but it's a good thing to be able to talk to people and to talk a lot or whatever. You never know what that can do for you in life. I said, but What you have to do is you have to know when to say when. You can't be a distraction in class. Yeah, or they can, or they can, you can help her to learn those cues of when it's like they're giving you signals here, you got to pick up on some of that, that like it's enough and you don't want to. And so that's what, you know as far as like when there's negative things that I want to say to her, I try to, I, I, I do my best to try to like frame it in a way that I'm not trying to make it personal in the sense of like like she, you know, like she will internalize it, you know. Now, and that's difficult.

That is the, that is the difficult part, right? No question. That is, you know, because You know, you're not, and like, I, like I've never actually said to my, you know, like, you're bad or you're being bad or this, this, that, and the other. I've never ever phrased anything like you're being bad or whatever. I would always, you know, I would probably say, you know, like, I remember she would go to class or the teacher would tell her something, she wouldn't do it. So I would always try to like phrase thing or bring things out in the question. And so the teacher told me that you didn't, you know, you wasn't listening to what she was saying or she didn't do what she was saying. Like, why did you do that? Like, why wasn't you listening to your teacher? And she, she told me, cause I didn't want to. And so. Thank you for your honesty.

And so I, you know, had to turn around a little bit, laugh a little bit, you know, and I said so I, I said, do you, do you like your life? Right? And she's like, so, so she's like, yes. I said, do you like all the, the toys you have? You like, you know, grandma gets you this and papa gives you that. You, do you like that, that stuff? And she's like, yes, yes. I said, well, listen, I'm not going to have a disobedient child. I said, if you continue to be disobedient, I'm taking all those toys. You know? And I, you know, I said, I love you. You know, and I would, every time I would tell her something, I would always say, I love you. I always, you know, this, this, that, like I would, but I'm not, but you can't, you know, you can't be that. You can't be disobedient.

You, you know, and I would, I, it's so difficult not to Be negative or to, you know, fee, you know. It's, it's cool to, it's cool to be aware and try your best. Yeah. But, and, and I assure you, with three or four and some of these people with even more, like, oh God, how do you even know how, where they're at? You know, it's, it's hard enough with one for sure. But the only thing that matters is love and attention. Yeah. If you can give undivided attention in at least short bursts here and there. Yeah. Again, that's, that one-on-one time, like I was talking about, is way more valuable.

But, and then at the, we could try to choose our words carefully, and at the end of the day, it's almost like that kid when you slip up one time, all of a sudden they got that swear word going all day long, and there ain't nothing you could do about it, and everybody's laughing, and now you're screwed. It's over. But how do they manage to use it in the perfect contents, it's, it, context? It's hilarious. Yeah. Like, it's amazing, and, but they're watching everything, and that's why, again, it's try to be an example, try to practice 20 min a day on piano, whether, you're not, you're not announcing, hey, everybody, I'm practicing now. Right. You don't have to do that. Right. They see it. You just, yeah.

And, and, and if they want to take up something, and so, so again, like, I, kids are in scouts, they, you know, I, I think the scouting organization is unbelievable because it, it gives the opportunity to experience different things, and that's all we can do is provide the opportunity for experiences. Right. And something May resonate. Where's that come from? I don't know. Past lives, who knows, learned behavior passed down. Why does somebody gravitate and have a passion for something? And what causes that? I sure the hell don't know. But sometimes the things that make us excel and the things that make, give us drive are not necessarily good things. Right, right. You look at Michael Jordan's story about being told he should just quit basketball. You ain't no good in 6th grade or whatever. Who the hell would say that to a 6th grader?

Like, what a prick. But if that's that little thing that built a little chip, or I'll show you, mother. Right. And that's what gives you drive to put the hours in and get that delayed gratification, but By putting the work in and, and seeing the outcomes and continuing and working harder than everybody else. Shit, I, I'd hate to use that as the tool that I try to manipulate my kids by saying negative stuff, cause we don't know how it's going to work out. Right, cause they can, they can, and that's, that's the danger with the negative things. Yeah. Because it can go either way. Yeah. It could either be a motivator or it can, you know, be their future. And, and it's almost like the, the, the ant and the elephant is, it, it gets into conscious and subconscious mind.

And I, I think it, it's a pretty, it's a, it's a real short book, but it's, it's a story that, that the subconscious mind thing is like, it doesn't speak the same language. So we can try, it's like hypnosis, right? So, so like, basically they think that meditating or relaxing to this certain Calm state, kind of like halfway between conscious and unconscious, is where this avenue might open up to be almost direct with this subconscious mind. And so that's where not barking like a chicken or any of these kind of hyp-hypnosis tricks, parlor tricks that are out there charlatans can use and learn. but there's maybe some benefits, but it's very tricky. And that's why it's not something to toy around with, because when you're in the midst of that conscious and unconscious state, the subconscious mind does not interpret data the same way.

So it, it, it, it, it's almost like where power of positive thinking, manifestation principle, all these kind of things that are out there in the self-help world, I kind of, like I'm not smarter than anybody else. I, I, I have my experiences and I read some books and I have some ideas and, and it almost seems like, you know, there's this swirling effect of things becoming clearer as you try to develop down this spiritual journey, journey of life, whatever. Right. And, and it's all kind of the same, you know, all this magic is kind of the same, whether it's a god or whether it's a higher power or whether it's manifestation principle or whether it's power of positive thinking. but it's like, like the debt thing or, or, or negativity brings negativity, right? Right. So, so do we want to, you want to soar with eagles?

Eagles don't wallow with worms, right? Right. You want to know how much money you're going to make next year? Average the income of the five people you hang around with the most. It's probably close. So are you going out of your way to better yourself or to learn new things, even if it's not about the money, but it's about starting a business, so you surround yourself with people that started businesses, because I got questions and, you know, all these different things, and it really seems to work. But the thing that, that positive idea is basically like, if you're focusing on debt, you create more debt. So it's like your subconscious mind, you're thinking about debt all the time, so it wants to help you. You're thinking about debt, so it's going to help you. We're going to create more debt. That's not helping me. Right.

It don't know no different. But it doesn't, right, it doesn't know the difference. Right. And so if you just pot, focus on making, generating more income, then it'll help you generate. Then your debt goes away. So it seems like some of this magical crap that somebody's selling a book or a video on, but for people that experience things, and, and it's almost like religion or all these different things, it's really just somebody else trying to explain to other people what worked for them. Right. But when it becomes dogma or my way's right and your way's wrong, you miss the whole point. Right. Now you're lost because that's taught in scripture and everything else that I don't really care how you get there. Get to a place where you can love your neighbor as thyself, share, share some, help each other and learn.

You go, you think the, you know, you're sitting on a barstool and some dive bar and thinking the whole world's a bunch of jerks and charlatans and three, three card Monty guys and pool hustlers and Yeah, that's what you're surrounding yourself with. So you think that that's the world and it, and, you know, go show up at Habitat for Humanity with a hammer and a tool belt on a Saturday a few times and, and volunteer your time to build, help build houses for veterans or whatever. And, and you're like, okay, those two people are court mandated for community service hours, they have to be here. Right. But what about these other twelve? What's in it for them? Right. So now you start trying to figure out the game or the angle, because our whole, my whole life was angles.

Like it was all, every, this idea of altruistic service to help somebody else without expecting anything in return, why? That doesn't make any sense. You know, it didn't compute with my brain years ago. But today, that's where most of my value comes from. Or, or self-worth or purpose or whatever. I'm a happier person cause I do that sometimes, so I'm just gonna keep doing it cause it worked yesterday. Right, right. You just go with what works, you know? And, and whether you believe that I believe doesn't matter, you know what I mean? I believe and, and, and when somebody comes along that has nothing and their whole life sucks and everything's not working and they got all these problems and they got all these addictions and all this other stuff, well, you wanna try something else? See what happens. Try it for two weeks.

If it don't work, stop. Do it your way. But that was my experience was my best thinking got me right where I was. And I had a gift of making bad decisions. I had a gift. If I did the opposite of what I thought most of the time in my life, I thought it, it would have had to have turned out better. Prior to, you know, getting, getting sober and, and, and trying to live, do the next right thing, and amazing how fast things can turn around. But that's, that's all part of that, that magic and, and trying to tap into some of that positive energy instead of negative energy, and it seems to work out, you know.

But that's, to, to close the loop on that, it's that even Dianetics or the Scientology, you know, I, I kind of went through this little phase of really researching world religions and, and, and understanding that There's some sort of magic that seems to be working, cause my way wasn't working and this way seems to be working. So I'm trying to figure it out and trying to see where I fit in and I read every, I was reading all kinds of stuff. You know, Dianetics is funny cause it ma, half the book is about the process of how the brain works. That's the science, scientist, Scientology part of the Scientology. And I, I'm not a Scientologist. I, I don't but half of the book is about the process of the way the brain works. And then the other half is their program.

And their program is not a hundred, not all that dissimilar from understanding some of these awarenesses and different things that, that if we can be aware of this problem. So they have almost a meditative kind of way of therapy in a sense that you keep, like what does a therapist do when they're talking about relationships? You ask the same question. Multiple times over a period of time. Like, what the hell is that therapist writing down on that notebook? You know, you're, you're all self-conscious about everything. You're in there trying to get therapy. What, what did I say? What did he write down there? Or what, you, you know, you're, you're all worried about everything. Right. What's he writing down?

Well, sometimes if you ask the same question six times over a 45 min session, and then the 4th time they said, they answered it different. Like, what's, what was different? And that's kind of when you start getting into, okay, there's something deeper there. Right. Right. And then you could maybe dive down deeper into some of those holes. And if we can expose that, then maybe we can relieve ourselves of that trauma, because now it's in the open. It's not stuck in that self-conscious mind or whatever. But I don't pretend to know. That much about it, but it's, it's amazing that how little we know, you know, we think we got it figured out, or we think we figured out a lot of things, which we un-undisputedly did figure out a lot of things. but we got a long way to go. I mean, we don't, we don't know shit at the end of the day. Yeah, we don't.

And so yes, we can play God and try to manipulate by saying negative things to kids. You end up, you know, like raising Cain or some crazy movie with some psychologist that's trying to, you know, do some sort of experiment with his kids. But, you know, but why, I, I, I do have a extended family member, and I was like, I asked, like, what, what was the earliest memory you have of your father or something like that? And she said he called me stupid. And I was like, wow. She's like, I can remember where I was at. I can remember what I was wearing. I could remember what he was wearing. Like we have this visual picture with grave detail of this one situation. And it was like, that's weird. Cause he seems like a pretty nice guy to me. I, you know, I wouldn't think that that's something he would normally say, but was a straight A student too.

So, so it was that same kind of scenario that, man, that, that really... Is that your drive to why you studied hard to try to get approval for where you thought there was disapproval? And the way we try to appease people, we try to please other people, and we try to be a part of the tribe in the community, and you, you know, all that sort of stuff is all genetically in there somewhere that we have these desires and these wants and these needs and these Dreams and aspirations. You just, and that's the thing, you just, you just never know which way it's gonna go. Yeah. You know they can believe you, or they can spend their life trying to, you know, prove you wrong. And, you know, and so you just but, you know, I, like, like Kanye West, right?

I don't know if you ever saw the, the thing on him when he, he, like when he was coming up or whatever. Did you ever see that? A little bit. Like when I look at his mother, like his mother was, you're the greatest, you're the this, you're the that, like, you know, baby, you know, I, I know you're gonna be the, you know, she was just, she was nothing but positive, encouraging energy. And when you see the conf, I mean, you know, like, say what you want to say about him now, whatever, but just coming up, you know, the, the, the positive or the, the confidence that he had, you know, I just know that a lot of that came from his mother. Well, well, for sure. And, and, you know, there's plenty of stories.

I mean, you look at, look at Kid Rock or look at, you know, where most of these scenarios, there was somebody that was encouraging, you know, them, especially when it comes to something creative, like artistry or music or things like that, because the norm then was sure as shit, like you better have a plan B. Right. You know, where there's books that tell you, You got to delete that plan B if you really think you're going to make it, and it's not an easy road, and luck's involved, but sometimes we create our own luck because of our passion, and there's multi-level marketing companies with sales tactics that are all based on those same sort of psychologies, like, because the, it's true that if, if like the, the story, a, a great story with that is the, the founder of Home Depot, like, like he had his vision. Arthur Blank?

What's the, what's the name? The st, just from, I could be wrong, so leave a comment or something, but, but I, but I'm pretty sure it was Home Depot where he had his vision and trusted his vision. Like, or you talk about the muse and creativity, and you got to trust the muse, or you got to give Honor to the muse, and the muse will reward you with these ideas or these, you know, the song just comes to you, the rhythm just comes to you. Where, where did that come from? It comes from, you know, a lot of different places. Where... And so we... Okay, good night, buddy. Love you too. but yeah, so, so respecting the muse or, or, or, or giving respect to those ideas, like, so, so like we've all had those ideas and we don't take any action on them, right? But we can go crazy on all these ideas too, you know, sometimes. Right.

But sometimes you just get a feeling, and, and if you, you take action on those feelings and turn it into reality, it's probably the right thing. And, and, and so what the Home Depot story is like, He went around to venture capitalists and tried to sell his idea. He had his passion for his idea and his vision, and hey, this is what I got. And he'd go in the doors, it'd get slammed in his face. Like, okay, you want to do a hardware store? You see what's happening with Ace Hardware and True Value right now? Like, they're dying, and you want to do this at a grand scale? Like, good luck, son. You know? And sometimes it's like if it was that easy, yeah, somebody else would have done it.

So, and that's where some of the most passion and motivation that I see in people when they, when they, I have a friend that was supposed to be on last week, but he's going to push it off a little bit, but he, Andy had this vision and this idea of a startup gap because like people struggle. Like you'll hear their story and then there's always these years in between that you just missed. Like what happened from 82 to 87? Right. Then you got this lucky break in 88? You know, you were, what were you doing for those four years? Failing, failing, determined, keep going, keep going, keep going. How did you do that? Because that's the interesting part. So he's getting the door slammed, he can't get no capital, he didn't have no money, but he had those tier systems. He had the racks, the Costco, the wholesale club kind of vision.

And then he didn't have money for inventory, so he ended up getting empty cardboard boxes and putting them up there and getting the stickers like for the lawnmower from the manufacturer to put on the boxes so that they were all empty boxes up there because he, he had to hold true to the vision of what this is supposed to look like, even though he couldn't afford the inventory for all that extra stock. So his grand opening, a lot of those boxes were empty, but It looked the way his vision told him to make it look. And now you look and loews and menards and everybody rips off and duplicates and tries to, you know, build on that. And it's innovation and building off a good idea. And if you, if you don't keep making it better, somebody's going to come along and, you know, do it or whatever.

But it's still that, that idea that I always try to go with the original. You know, and I was in the salt, the saltwater aquarium industry for a long time doing saltwater tanks, even back then, I think. I had my 1st saltwater tank when I finally got a little money and got a better light system. But there's a fit, you know, Rod's Food is, Rod is a friend of mine that started a food company with frozen foods and, and, and, and crushed it, worked his butt off and marketed it and went to every store and had a great reputation and image in the industry and everybody loved them and And he, I think he's interna- he's definitely international with his frozen food. And he had a guy that came by every once in a while and would hang out and just chilling, looking at what he's doing, just hanging out, just a friend.

And then lo and behold, he's starting his food company. And guess what? It was never as good. You know what I mean? And, and the same thing, like if you really know the story, thanks, you, you might be $4 cheaper, but I think I'm just going to go with the original thanks. Right. Cause you know the quality and you know where it came from and you know the story. And an educated consumer, if we really had that more, I think people would choose that over, you know, the other known.

But that's, that's part of the vision, you know, that's part of How this magic seems to work if we just try to do the next right thing and, and try to stay positive and stay away from that negativity and stay away from that constant criticism of yourself or of others or to, to, that, that was part of this, the part of the Scientology thing was like, it's huge to stay away from that to them. That, that negativity is poison and you just try not to purposely put yourself in those scenarios. And of course, that's helpful, you know. Sometimes, sometimes you, you can't pick your family and other things and, but you don't have to choose to be around them all the time either. You can be helpful or you can have your hand out if they need it, but I don't have to purposely surround myself with that. And that's the, and that's the power.

The power is the choice. Yeah. You know, it's, that's, that's the power. The power is the choice. You, you get to, once you are of age, you definitely get to choose your environment. And, you know, that's one of the things I, I try to teach my daughter is that, you know, right now you're a child and, you know, unfortunately for you, you know, you're at the mercy of your parents or whatever. but, you know, as you get older and when you get older, you have more power more control over your choice and, and the environment you choose to be in. And, you know, once you get control of that, everything is on you.

Yeah, we can make mistakes cause the kids all, they don't want to listen to dad and, you know, they got to make their own mistakes sometimes and how can you trust somebody if you don't give them some trust and, and, and let out the leash a little bit and it's, it's challenge. Yeah, it's, it's, it's definitely a challenge. You hope that mistake don't kill them. Yeah, you know, and, you know one of the things you know, me and my daughter you know, we, we talk a lot. Like every, you know, every day I take her to school. So we, we have a lot of conversations and I try to tell her so one day she asked me, she asked me about God. She's like four, something like that, four or five years old, whatever. She says, Daddy, so, you know, what do you think about God? And I say, what you mean? She's like, I don't know about God, Daddy.

I've never seen him, right? So, so I'm, you know, I'm looking, and I, I, I really didn't want to answer, you know, because that's something I, I, I kind of want her to, you know, make her own decisions or whatever. And so I said, look, no one really knows. And she's like, what do you mean? I'm like, no one living really knows. I said, people think they know, people probably, you know, whatever. I said, but nobody really knows. I was like, anything most people, you know, knows about God is something they read in a book from somebody who is not living now. So they, you know, whether it's true, whether it's not, or whatever, technically nobody really knows.

I said, so, you know, what you gonna do is you gonna grow up, you gonna Three different things, you're gonna see different things, you're gonna have different experiences, and you're gonna make that decision on your own about how do you feel about, you know, all of it or whatever, right? And so that's like when she's four, right? So at ten, we had a conversation maybe about four, like three months, three weeks ago, three, four weeks ago, something like that, right? And we're, we're discussing everything, you know, and she says, and I, you know, she was telling me some things like her mom said you know, I was telling her, you know, like how I feel about it or whatever. And then, you know, she spends a lot of time with my mother. My mother's you know, like really religious or whatever, right?

And so after I, you know, voiced, you know, what my opinion is and how I see it, she said so daddy, do I have to Believe what you believe. I said, absolutely not. I said, I want you to like, you know, study whatever and, you know, you go and figure out what you want to believe. I said, look, this is, you got your own life, right? I'm like, your life's not my life, you know? And so she's like, she said, daddy, you're the 1st person to say I didn't have to believe what they believed. She was like, you know, mommy told me I had to believe, you know, grandma said, you know, like you're the only person who ever told me, like I didn't have to believe what you, what, you know, what they believe. I was like, you don't.

I'm like, you, you got your own life, you got your own mind, you gonna grow up, you gonna, you gonna see things, you gonna read things, you gonna come up with your own answer. I said, because The reality is everybody talking to you, nobody really knows, you know? And so, you know, so I, I try to have, cause I, I don't, I want my daughter to have an open mind, you know, even when it comes to like relationships or whatever. You know, I don't say, you know, boy should do this, boy should do that, this, this, that, and the other. My generation is not her generation. The rules for me may not be the rules for her. There's one thing that I tell her, he must protect you. He must be protective of you. That's my only thing, cause, you know, I'll die protecting you.

If I'm not there and there's another man who's claiming he loves you is there, I'm gonna need him to protect you. Any other thing is going to be your rules. and that's just because it's, it's, it's what she's happy with. It's not, I don't live that life. I don't live her life, you know? And I think that a lot of times as parents, you know, it's like we want our kids to be an extension of our lives or something. And, you know, I just want my daughter to be happy with whatever she's doing. That is the end of it. And safe, obviously, like you said, right? Yeah, and safe, you know, but whatever she's doing, whether that be, you know, her career, her relationships, her friendships, you know, with family or whatever, you know, obviously I want her to be safe, but I want her to be happy. With the relationships, with the interactions or whatever.

Well, I think that's the, the best advice you can give it is that we don't know, and, and, you know, to seek or to question or to try to learn a better understanding, you know, you can say 5000 years, been a whole lot of people that believe there's something. Right. And that's something worth looking into. And if we on the side of caution and, and if, if it's a, if it's a, a scenario that's telling these id, you know, giving these ideals of the way we should be that are good. Right. And love your neighbor and, and turn the other cheek and don't carry resentments and don't hate people. And I carried a lot of hate for a long time. And, and, and so if, and, and, and part of those You know, those steps is kind of defining something, and it doesn't have to be what grandma taught or what mom taught or anything else.

And so that was an interesting revelation too that I didn't receive until I was 35 or whatever, whereas she got that at four and, and, and, and tweaked it at, at ten or whatever. And that's a good, that's a good place to be, you know, and because it's, it's, it truly is just like you said with being an expert in human relationships or being to, to have to work at a relationship with another human being or have to work with a relationship with a boss or a coworker or a significant other. In my experience, that's kind of the same thing, that you put in what you, you, you get out what you put in. Exactly. And so if you on the side of worst case scenario, I live a better life and I'm happy. That's usually most of the time when it comes to people that have some sort of belief. Yes. And, and, and that can't be all bad.

And like, like, it's the acid test, what works and what don't. So there's got, completely godless people that seem to be pretty miserable. Yeah. And medicated and whatever. Okay, well, I don't want what you have. Right. But these people over here seem to be happy, joyous, and free, and helping others, and have some purpose. You know, I'm actually, I watch this I'm watching with my thirteen-year-old that we won't go into the zeitgeists episodes that are pretty amazing. If you've ever seen those, they're pretty interesting with astrological and, and history and science and the stars. And, but then there's this old, there's, I have a book here. I, I, I saw this video and then I couldn't find it. I was looking for it. It was about the, the, the Mayan calendar decoded. And, and, and so there's a lot of aspects of that that people don't get.

There's some aspects that people don't understand. We can interpret and think we have a theory, but one of the things that's interesting is one of their calendars was based on a number scale of where you feel right now in regards to your purpose, right? So, so like you said, when you're slaving to the grind and you're showing up to work every day and you're like, this can't be what's in the cards for me. I'm making pretty good money, but something's missing. There's something there. And, and that, that missing of purpose, whether it's through creativity or what, what did we miss? You know, and we can try to evaluate that maybe it's music, or maybe it's art, or maybe it's sculpting, or maybe it's the right hobby. I don't know where your passion is. Let's try to find that.

Let's seek and find that thing that resonates with us and try to explore that a little bit. And whether it's a podcast, whether it's part of a vision of what the science is supposed to look like and what the studio is supposed to look like, and just trusting the muse and, and connecting with people and, and not wanting anything out of it. I, I don't care if I ever make money. I'm gonna Hold off on commercials and things as long as I can. It'd be nice to pay for hosting or different things or whatever, but at the end of the day, it's just about connections, it's just about conversations, and God forbid we help somebody else with, with, you know, what, what we talked or how we connected or something, and that's, that's all it is. Yeah.

And that's authentic, and that's real, and, and, and, and if I feel like I'm doing a part of my purpose because I'm trusting my vision and following through with it, even though I got a job that most people would kill for, you know, can't, I had a buddy one time, I was dabbling with some coffee sales things and some different things, and it was like, dude, why can't you just be happy with what you got? I'm like, well, it's not a, it's about growth. Right. It's about doing other things.

It's about, man, like, if I could turn over my tools So, so like, let's, let's say if I'm reading 20 min a day, if I'm bettering myself in my craft or other crafts or other areas or other hobbies or other things, and I can find a way to support my family with the, the same money I'm making or even more or not, or just content or happy or whatever, and I could take this job that most people would kill for and leave it early, which nobody does. You're gonna, your pension and this and that, it's a trap, right? Like, like if I follow my, my vision and I'm rewarded as a result of it through this magic of the universe, however this stuff works, and get lucky all of a sudden, and I could step aside and leave that position for somebody that has nothing else other than the skill of fixing a car. Right.

He's got nothing else but knowing how to turn a wrench. And I could provide that opportunity for him to support his family with those skills because I've developed other skills. I, I've moved on. I've evolved. Right. My journey's continuing. And that's a, that would be a gift, you know, even though it might be scary or it might be this or it might be that, you know, but that's all part of those choices. And if, if we have some faith and we have some trust and we, we know we're doing the right thing, my kids are never going to starve. Right. You know, I know that, but, but we try to do the best we can and, and at the end of the day, you know hopefully they're protected and hopefully, you know, You can give them some of these skills and be able to communicate and, and, and that sort of thing. But it's beautiful.

I mean, that's, that's the journey. Yeah. You know, that's the connection, and that's, that's what this is all about, you know, hooking up and remembering and seeing where people are at and, but it's been a, it's been a great talk, you know. It's, we're pushing almost 3 h, bro- buddy. Can you believe that? Yeah. I mean, it goes fast, man. It's, it's good stuff. But your book again? Be Your Priority, Not His Option. And is that audio? Is that, is that a, is, is that just a digital book or is it, is it paperback? It's paperback. It was published? Yeah, 2009. Awesome. That's cool. But we're gonna, we'll stay connected. Yeah. Instagram, Facebook, whatever. Okera, H O K E R A H on Facebook, Instagram X. Nice. Yeah. All the social media sites. Yeah. Yeah. No, I love it. All right. Well, we, we will wrap it up.

We got a, a Flipside Frolic challenge coin that our guests get. It has the on the back, it actually has the episode number that'll be on the website. Okay. It's and it's available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and all the different podcasts that, where you get your podcasts from. And and we got a few other little choices. We got magnets and poker chips and, and we'll get you a hat, and we'll go from there. All right. It's been awesome having you on, buddy. Yeah, I enjoy it myself. Great conversation, man. It's good connecting. I love you, man. It's, it's, it's, it's been so long, and you could, it's amazing how you can still feel so connected in such a short period of time, even after, you know, quite a few 24 hours, man. So it's, it's, it's awesome having you out, man. Yeah. Appreciate it. Thanks for joining us at Flipside Frolic.

We hope you enjoyed the conversation and maybe learned a little something about other people's perspectives. Don't forget to subscribe, share, and throw us a like on the video. Comment if you have any questions, and we'll see you on the next episode.