The Inspiration of Now
The Inspiration of Now
S1 E3 // Guest: Frank Cronin (Comedian / Founder of Rough Set)
Francis Cronin is an ex UN Quick Reaction Forces soldier, Irish Army officer, touring standup comedian and is the creator of Rough Set. He is also the ambassador to Homeless Healthcare Los Angeles. Check out all of Frank Cronins projects and links to his work on our website:
www.TheInspirationofNow.com
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Welcome to the inspiration of now podcast. I'm your host Timur Bootzin and my goal is to inspire you through the different perspectives of each guest. Our guests will vary from musicians, entrepreneurs, filmmakers, athletes, artists, you name it. Each episode. I will be bringing on a new guest who I've been inspired by in one way or another. And want to share that inspiration with you. This season is proudly sponsored by Adam audio, German precision engineered studio monitors for any studio size, shape, or budget on this episode of the inspiration of now, I'd like to introduce our guests, Frank Cronin.
Guest: Frank Cronin:Hey, how are you, mr. Bootzin?
Host: Timur Bootzin:I'm doing very well. Thanks Frank. Welcome to the show. So Frank is so much more than a comedian to me. It's even hard to categorize exactly what it is you do, Frank, because you're so many different things. Your standup comedian, you're an actor, but you're also the founder of rough set. Just out of curiosity, Frank, if I wanted to, uh, let's say, go to San Francisco, how long would that take me to drive there? Do you think?
Guest: Frank Cronin:And no traffic, probably five and a half to six and a half hours. How many miles would you say that is roughly? I know exactly how many it is. It's it's well, it's roughly 500, but it's four 87. If you walk it, how do you know that exact distance Frank? Well, I walked it, I walked from San Francisco to LA by two years ago and that was the first rough set. And then last year I walked across my, my home nation Ireland and both walks were for, uh, two different homeless charities. One was homeless, healthcare, Los Angeles, which I happened to be the ambassador of. And the other was for the Simon community in Ireland, which is like one of the major homeless charities in Ireland where I'm from.
Host: Timur Bootzin:Okay. Wow. That's amazing. I mean, I walked to the store and back in, I'm already tired. So first of all, tell me more about what rough set is and how you got involved with creating.
Guest: Frank Cronin:Oh, cool. Yeah. Well, first off point, I, uh, the reason I had the idea was I, the few years I've been on this planet, I've lost a few friends who, uh, had become homeless, you know, to, to either drug addiction or some other problems in their life. And I had met a few homeless people that I really liked, and I had had long conversations with them and, you know, uh, fascinating, very grounded, uh, individuals, many of them, whether people are really struggling out there. So that was, you know, the motivation, the inspiration was that. And then I was doing a show at a comedy club and I mentioned that I was going to be doing the walk and the sound engineer came up and suggested homeless healthcare, Los Angeles as a charity. So that was about three weeks before the walk. And I thought, well, if I'm going to walk, I'll raise money too. And, uh, I'll use my social media to put it on blast and we'll raise money and I'll film it and share a content along the way. And we'll direct all the money that comes into a charity. The first one that San Francisco to LA when after six weeks we are in$20,000. And then the second walkers, we got a little bit better at it. We managed to raise 18, close to$20,000 in one week. So we're getting better.
Host: Timur Bootzin:Wow. Wow. That's amazing. Congratulations, Frank. And that's amazing what you're doing to help all these charities. And tell me more about why it's called rough set.
Guest: Frank Cronin:Rough Set is called rough Set because I sleep rough, which is outdoors every night. And then the set is what we do in comedy. We perform a set on stage, so I would sleep rough and then get on stage in front of audiences. And it was, it was pretty thrilling, dude.
Host: Timur Bootzin:Okay. That sounds like a big adrenaline rush. Why was it important that you sleep outside?
Guest: Frank Cronin:I had to add something to make it, you know, captivating. So I thought, well, what happens if everybody, when they're going to bed and they're resting at home and they have their head in the pillow has to think about the guy out there who has no pillow. Who's probably cold. Well then all of a sudden I become representative of the homeless population. One of the most rewarding things about it was that I would get text messages of people saying, Hey, I was just settling down for the night. And I started to think that you were out there. And then I went, I got into my car and I brought homeless people, some food and some clothes. And I got that more than once. And I'll tell you that makes you that little, that'll make you walk 20 miles a day. You know, when you start seeing people, I'm getting emotional about it now, but I had never felt so useful, brother. You know, there's, there's, there's many different reasons to be homeless and out on the streets, as there are individuals on the planet. And some people are, some people are out there by choice and a small percentage. And a lot of people think a lot of people out there are on drugs. It's actually only a better third. A lot of people, a lot of people move onto the streets and they're completely clean or they move into the car. But over time, things start to disintegrate and then just to get a good night's sleep, they might start smoking or drinking a little bit. And just so that they can sleep in a noisy environment or in a cityscape. And before you know it, you have the deterioration of a human and then they miss their job or they miss their work. And then once you miss your work, then you can't put gas in the car. You can't get a taxed. And then before you know it, you're in a stationary car, then someone takes your car. Then you're out of the car and you can't afford to get the car and all your belongings are in the car. So you're in the doorway and then you're in the doorway and you've been smoking weed for three weeks. And you say, you meet a guy who's sitting beside you and he hands you something you don't know it's crack. I mean, it's people think they're, you know, it would never happen to them, but, but I met so many beautiful people out there that, you know, if it weren't for just falling on hard times, they would have been like, they're generally sensitive souls or artistic beings, you know, who just really, they weren't given the tools to, um, to kind of to navigate this, this, this world, you know, but over time that really degrades your psychology. And, uh, I, I thought I was more robust, you know, coming from the Irish army, I had served in the United nations in Liberia, West Africa. I had been an officer. I had been in a 21 months of like people roaring at you and running up Hills and getting debriefed in rivers. So I thought I was, I got this I'm mentally and physically tough. The first few days I can tell you, we ran into some serious troubles. If you'd like to hear about those. I'd love to hear about those. Okay. So the first night I'm leaving the golden gate bridge and I've I had what we used to call in the military leaders, legs, a lot of energy pumping through the body. Yeah. So I leave San Francisco golden gate bridge and make my way to San Francisco. I stop off at Chinatown. I've got a documentary crew with me, so I do a little bit to camera. And then I hit a comedy club called the punchline from my first show with the writer on the Simpsons Dana Gould. Right. So he lets me open from great dude. The show goes well, and I'm adrenalized after the show. So I do another 10 miles. And then I jump over a fence and lay down on this lovely little grassy place beside, uh, beside the highway. Right. I woke up the next morning, I'm looking through the fan. So I'm doing a piece to camera to try and like, you know, capture the environment then. And then I turned my head just slightly too fast and I get a stick right into the corner of my eye. Oh my gosh. Yeah. First day, first, first day out of six weeks and I lost 33% of the cornea. So really? Yeah. Look, look,
Host: Timur Bootzin:But your cornea is like, that's the main part of your eye.
Guest: Frank Cronin:Yeah, it's the front it's. They said, well, one of the great things, apparently the STEM cells in your cornea. And if I had lost much more than I would have lost a percentage point too much to, for the cornea to grow back. But what they did was they gave me, um, I found this, this lovely nurse. I told them what I was doing. It would have cost me tens of thousands cause they were in America, which he gave me free eyecare. And she gave me a fake lens to put on my eye and to change it every day. And I put drips in my eye while I was sleeping out and lo and behold, my eye is back to normal and uh, no big problems.
Host: Timur Bootzin:Wow. Well, I'm glad you were recovered in that your cornea regrew itself I'd say. Right. But in that moment, did you want to quit?
Guest: Frank Cronin:One of my mantras is dude, and I think you're kind of in, in a similar, you're a driven fellow yourself is that I like to dig myself a hole. So deep, my only way out is to succeed. That's like my that's my quote, dude. Yeah. So I, uh, yeah, so I like to throw myself into the deep end, so I never, it never really crossed my mind to quit. I was just very worried for about a week that I would lose my eye, but I thought, you know, what what's meant to be is meant to be, if it gets really drastic, I'll pull into another hospital. Like when I say pull in, I'm in a walking. Yeah. But uh, yeah. I never thought of quitting. I never thought of quitting, but I was very, very worried about my eye. And, and uh, and, but what really struck me about that was it's like, Oh, well, how do I use this to express to the people that I'm making the content for and who I want to donate, that this is what homeless people might face. So I started making videos and as soon as I showed people, my eye and my suffering, the money for the homeless charity started rolling in. Wow. So I'm sleeping in behind the Bush. My eye is falling apart. My legs are sore. It's like day one or two. And the documentary crew, I E one person, John Ray, I'm getting a little bit like short tempered because I'm under a lot of pressure and a lot of pain. So everything's kind of coming to a crescendo, but we pushed through. And once the money started coming in for the charity, it was like, it was like a battery back, man. I was like a Duracell bunny, nothing was going to stop me. I also went walking one night with it. I met this ex-convict who was finding it hard to get a job. And so he was living in the streets and he, he also, we shared a bit of food. He was kind to me. So I was kind to him. He gave me what's called a kick down in homeless circles, which is basically when you help someone who's not doing so well, even though you don't have much yourself, you give them a bit. So he helped me. And then I came across some money. So I helped him. So we're out there walking under the Moonlight, ex-convict myself and he pulls out his, his phone and he shows me here, this is what I went to jail for. And there's this news broadcast of him stealing a cop car, the cop chase and him being interviewed while he was drunk. So I still talk to him to this day. Very nice guy. Right?
Host: Timur Bootzin:Wow. That's a, that's a really interesting story, Frank. And the fact that you still keep in touch with him to this day is pretty funny. So we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. This season is proudly sponsored by Adam audio. Adam audio was founded in 1999 in Berlin, Germany, since then the company has been developing manufacturing and distributing loud speakers in the field of professional audio. You can find precision atom, audio monitors, and world-class studios around the globe. Welcome back. And we're here with our guests, Frank Cronin. So Frank, can you take this crazy journey from San Francisco to LA, but we still have to remember during this trip, you're still doing comedy shows. What was that like for you?
Guest: Frank Cronin:Uh, say arrive at a comedy club. And I haven't seen anybody in 48 hours and I'm really tired and I have a sore eye and my shins are sore. And I think I've just been tracked by a mountain lion and nearly eaten alive. And I've walked with this dude. I think I've met God. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm on another planet really. Right. And I'm also so vulnerable, but I'm still sharing content and you know how everyone hates sharing content about themselves for fear of judgment. So I'm super vulnerable. I'm still sharing content. All this stuff has happened. And then I get, say to one of my friends, preacher Lawson, very nice guy. He, he let me jump on one of his shows and he sells out big crowds. So I'm coming from complete isolation and like kind of scared them and living in shivering at night and having to get up in the middle of the night just to keep warm and walk around. Right. And he, uh, he lets me on stage and I do a set and the warmth of humanity when people laugh and applaud, dude, like it's, there's one thing doing comedy every night. But when you do comedy after a deficit of empathy and connection, the human connection coming at you will blow your mind. And it, uh, you know, one when I finally got to LA, uh, six weeks later, you know, four weeks longer than I thought it would take. And, uh, it was such a deceleration. I kinda, I, I think I experienced the first maybe melancholy stroke depression I've ever had in my life. And because there was so much good stuff, you know, happening and then all of a sudden, just a hard stop. Yeah. And you learn a lot about yourself, dude, you learn a lot about yourself when you're suffering. You know, like all the diamonds are in the darkest cave. So when you're really suffering, man, whether it's physical or mental, it's like the waves are crashing on you. You're trying to get out to the calm water, but they just keep crashing. But if you work your way through those ways and you navigate out to the calm water out there, then all that experience and all that struggle means that you can surf in on a big wave. And then getting back out is really easy. So anytime you do something hard like that, I know for a fact now after my childhood, then the army and then some of these little adventures I do I've I've really, if I could like promulgate any idea, if I could push any idea, it would be like, do really hard stuff because it expands your comfort zone so much. It's, it's rocket fuel for the brain. It's rocket fuel for success in other fields. And uh,
Host: Timur Bootzin:Yeah. Wow. Wow. Yeah. I love what you just said there, Frank. So why is it so important that you challenge yourself more than you would expect from yourself in that sense?
Guest: Frank Cronin:Um, well I think you can skills atrophy, you know, like if you don't do mathematics after you leave school, you kind of forget how to divide and do long division and stuff. So you reach for your calculator or whatever. And it's the same with social skills. If you're locked away, like we all are during the pandemic, right. When we go out and we're trying to chat up girls after this, it's going to be very different. Right. But hopefully they're feeling the same thing. So the awkwardness will be music. Yeah. Yeah. But so, so things atrophy and, um, but there's a real, like, you know, you can, you can become, there is, there's a real need. I think, for people to push themselves to the limits of what they're capable of. It's, it's, it's the same with doing hard stuff. The more hard stuff you do, the easier everything feels like if someone said to me tomorrow, Hey, Frank is, can you, can you walk through San Francisco? I'd be just like, yeah, no problem. Like, that's a weird level of confidence to have. Right. Strangely weird. Yeah. It's almost like you might've seen it yourself. Maybe your listeners have seen it is you build up habits, you get into rhythms, you get into patterns in life. And if you maintain those patterns long enough, they become of your molecular being or something like that. I don't even know what it is, but it's an energetic state. It's like being positive all the time or being melancholy all the time. You can, you can kind of generate a way of being that can carry you further than you ever thought. For example, all that fitness was conditioning me for 20 years. I've been conditioned to do, uh, you know, fitness. I've been doing adventure races. Uh, some went well, others went bad. You know, I did a two day adventure race. Once on the second day I was airlifted in a helicopter. I got a hypoglycemic. I lost, I had gone so far and I, I didn't take on enough calories. And you know, most people would say, well, that was a failure you lost, but I learned so much, you know? Yeah. And then, uh, by the time I'm doing this walk from San Francisco to LA, I have very little, there's very little extraneous cognitive overload. Like I don't have to think about a lot of things. The fitness I know I had to do because I've been doing it all my life, the navigation I know I had to do because I was in the army. There's the content creation and the content posting. I know I had to do cause I'm in the arts, I'm on social media and I'm pushing my career forward. In that way. All of that conditioning allowed me to kind of be a good conduit for people to understand the plight of the homeless, to raise money and to complete the task of the 500 miles, which ended up being about 700. Cause I kept getting lost along the way.
Host: Timur Bootzin:Wow. Just that one part you said right now, get it. You got lost along the way. What, what, what is the importance of learning from your mum
Guest: Frank Cronin:Sticks? Or one of the, the great trainers of Conor McGregor Owen Roddy, Conor McGregor's trainer was following along and sending me nice messages. So that was pretty cool. Yeah. But he goes at it. You either win or learn. There's no such thing as losing also, man, at some point you realize that losing is really just a concept that is to give your ego an excuse, to kind of feel bad, you know, as well as me and I do stand up comedy and to get reasonably good at standup comedy got to do a thousand shows. They got to call your name out and you got to kind of bomb publicly on stage in front of people, a minimum of 50 to 100 times and only then does it start to get easy. So I'm just so used to losing. I I'm a big believer in increasing my rate of failure. Like that's one of my favorite things to do is like,
Host: Timur Bootzin:I like that a lot. Frank, it's a very good a attitude you have. Yeah.
Guest: Frank Cronin:Also I'm very aware that life is short. That's one of the biggest, one of the, one of the things, uh, you know, we get caught up in this concept that, uh, Oh, we've got to look a certain way and present ourselves a certain way for certain people to appreciate us. And if they appreciated us, then we'll get certain things and we'll, we'll be, we'll be good. And we'll be in good standing with society and we're going to be great, you know, but, but the reality is man, like we're here. What another 80 years max, unless we're really lucky. And nobody really knows why we're here. Most people didn't ask to be here. As far as I know, we're not really what's going on. You know what I mean? Like it's not, it's not like put it this way. Every narrative, every reason that's pushed at you for why we're here is just a gas, you know? So failure is really not a real thing. It's just someone else's perception of what you ought to have achieved. There's so much sadness. And so many people who would like to tear you down that there's literally no point in tearing yourself down for any mistakes you make. And when you get to a certain age, I've noticed in myself, from all of my friends and my older peer group, my parents, you get to a point where you realize that no one else's opinion really does matter. Everybody's kind of faking it so well while I'm on the planet for a short period of time, I'd like to alleviate the suffering of others. Why would I want to do that? Well, because everything else is kind of null and void in terms of importance, right? Everyone is suffering just plenty of suffering to alleviate. You'll never be out of a job and you're going to feel good when you do it. And the person you helped will most likely bring value to you in the future.
Host: Timur Bootzin:Right? Right. Yeah. I absolutely love that. Like that's just inspiration and like that's fuel to my, like my veins are now Frank, just hearing that is like really inspiring. And I hope the listeners right now are truly inspired by that as well, because that's the truth at the end of the day, as you said, a big part of this life is perception of, Oh, you need to be this. Or you need to go to college to make your parents proud or to show your sister, your older sister that you're better than, or whatever. I think it's just all perceptions perceptions of who you have to be. When in reality, you just have to be who you, who you want to be in. Like what what's important to you.
Guest: Frank Cronin:Yeah. And, and if you, if you listen to what you want to do and what you don't want to do, so someone presents you with an option. Someone says, do you want to do this? And you don't want to do it. And you say, yes, well then you're dishonoring your inner child. And all of a sudden you're out of sync with yourself. And you're wondering why you're depressed later that day or that week, or if you do it consistently over time before you know it you're so far away from yourself that you're completely out of alignment with who you are.
Host: Timur Bootzin:Yeah. I think, I think tying back to what you're saying, it's like this pandemic that's happening right now. I think this helps us understand more. This is a low point, but this low point is going to be what makes it that much better and us not taking that for granted.
Guest: Frank Cronin:Yeah. I mean, this is the, this is the darkness where the diamonds are ABRO, right? This is where all the heart, like whenever you go to hardship, there's insane lessons to be learned. And I think, for example, after this, I think most people won't take their human connection for granted so much. I think we're less likely to take our freedoms for granted and someone like yourself, man, smart, dude. Who's, you know, putting a lot of energy into the, enter into your creations as a result of this. You're learning that even in the dark times, you're like a wartime general. You're, you're stepping up, dude. You're not beaten down by this hardship you're creating when others are, you know, not so, so that gives you a sense of self. Maybe that's a little more than you were before the pandemic right now, if you had just been cruising and everyone had been giving you a Pat on the back for doing nothing, you would never have to sharpen that sword that you've been sharpened. You've never like you're just becoming a more and more lethal weapon dude. That's what you're doing. The more hardship you push through, the more, the more sharp you are and the easier you will navigate future.
Host: Timur Bootzin:Yeah. We have to understand, like these challenges are to make us better sharper and more aware human beings.
Guest: Frank Cronin:Yeah. These things are really humbling. You know, like, uh, everyone's got, you know, people are losing people and people are very worried. We're starting to realize that we're not that tough. You know, a lot of people came in contact with their mortality in the first few weeks of this thing where they realize they have to sit with themselves in silence alone for the first time in a long time. And they had to realize that they were just whittling it away plan. I don't know, expo now Xbox or smoking weed or whatever, which is cool for a while. But at some point, you know, when you're going to meet your maker at 80, you want to be able to look back over your life and say, you know what? I use this point of awareness to do something less than suffering and drive the world forward in a positive direction for the people who are coming after me and hopefully leave a few kids around so that they can do the same. You know,
Host: Timur Bootzin:I personally take away a lot of positive thoughts and motivation from that just as our listeners are now. So speaking of motivation, Frank, I like to end each episode with a quote that I have asked the guests to prepare and how that quote is inspired and motivate them. What was the quote you prepared for us today, Frank?
Guest: Frank Cronin:Well, I didn't know that it had to be someone else's. So the one that I've been kind of telling everybody, cause I really believe it is truth has a gravity so strong that when you speak it, it pulls people in. I genuinely think that we can orientate ourselves on this planet and move in a positive direction and have a lot less suffering for ourselves and others. If we try and be honest about our actions, our thoughts and our words, and it's not easy, it's not exactly clear what that is, but our inner child and our intuition that's been around a lot longer than, than we've been conscious of it. Right. And knows exactly what it is. We sense it, we sense when we're being honest, we sense when we're being truthful. So I would just say speak truth act as honestly, as you can and watch how that draws people towards you.
Host: Timur Bootzin:Right? Right. Wow. Frank, from the moment we started this podcast to now, I'll be honest with you. My perspective on many things has been altered and in a very positive way, and it is really a pleasure and an honor to have you on this episode on this podcast. And thank you. So thank you, Frank.
Guest: Frank Cronin:You're very welcome. And now I'm out to fail as quick as they can so I can get good at things. All right, brother.
Host: Timur Bootzin:Thank you, Frank. Take it easy, man. If you want to learn more about Frank and his work, including rough set, go to our website, the inspiration of now.com for links to all his work and current projects. Thanks again for tuning into this episode of the, of now I hope you took away a new perspective and motivation from our guests. I want to thank Adam audio for being the season sponsor and reproductions for creating our theme song. In season two, we will be taking questions from our audience that our guests will answer. Go to our website, the inspiration of now.com. See how you can submit your questions. I look forward to our next episode and I'll catch you all on the next one.