The Circle of the Panda Podcast
Circle of the Panda is a podcast about rising, rebuilding, and leading with purpose. Host JD Ross sits down with leaders, entrepreneurs, and everyday fighters to talk faith, business, mindset, and what it really takes to get back up when life knocks you down.
Whether you’re growing your leadership, navigating challenges, or fighting your own battles, these conversations will encourage you forward and point you toward truth.
The Circle of the Panda Podcast
Jeff Doig
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Jeff, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I appreciate it too. This is this is a wonderful opportunity.
SPEAKER_00So you have some things going on in the background I'm uh just have to know about, man. You you had a dream of collecting rare spiders and scorpions. Am I saying that right? Or is there something else to that?
SPEAKER_04Pretty pretty close. So, you know, growing up, I had a lot of exotic animals, um, a lot of snakes and things like that. Uh, monitor lizards, I had two of them. So I've always had an interest in um exotic animals. And a couple years back, I started getting into tarantulas. So I started with one. I started with uh Grammasola pucra, which is what they call uh the uh black lab of the tarantula world because they're so docile, easy to care for, um, very long-lived. And so I started with that one and I started diving into a little bit more, and pretty soon I ended up with, well, I've got 49 uh tarantula species behind me. Well, 48, and I've got one purple huntsman spider, and then I got some scorpions because they're available, and I don't mind the scorpions, they're pretty neat. They bite you?
SPEAKER_00Uh are they poisonous?
SPEAKER_04There's so they're all venomous, right? Every spider is venomous. Um, you you can rank them in into like whether they're dangerous to us or not. So they'll they'll usually say something like medically significant or non-medically significant as a way of separating them. So medically significant, it's not necessarily deadly, but it's gonna make you have a bad day if it were to bite you. So, you know, when you talk about some of the spiders that are deadly to humans or you know, very dangerous to humans, in in comparison, it's you know, just a small handful of them around the world. All the rest of them are really pretty much harmless. Um, with tarantulas, new world, the new world tarantulas you hear about the most, that's where people would say, well, you know, it feels like a bee sting. And it probably does, and they've got some pretty big fangs. So if they bit you, you know, there's a lot of mechanical damage as well. You get to the old world ones from Africa, Asia, India. Now, you know, you're talking about something a little bit different, and you know, some of them, you know, they can cause like cramping, nausea, sweats, and you'll you'll get through it and you live, unless you're really old or really young and have some kind of underlying condition, and even then that's rare. Um, so it's it's really unpleasant. So, you know, that'd be considered medically significant. I have never had an issue with any of mine.
SPEAKER_00Oh, oh, good, good. Do you raise them and sell them? Do you work somewhere?
SPEAKER_04I I I at this moment don't sell them. Um, I have looked into uh breeding, so uh there are some that you know they're they're becoming uh critically endangered in the wild. Like I have what they call uh P metallicas or post lithia metallicas. The common name would be goody sapphires. Um they live in India in a like a 100 kilogram uh kilometer range, and they're losing their habitat to harvesting a firewood. So in in you know, five years they could be extinct in the wild. But they do really, really well within a tarantula hobby, so a lot of people have them. I happen to have five of them back here.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_04And my my thought is when I have the males, I find somebody who's gonna breed them, send the males off for breeding, and they were actually preserving you know some of these species that are disappearing in the wild. Yeah, absolutely. You can play a role in keeping it alive. Myself, you know, I'm in an apartment, so I have a lot already, considering I'm in an apartment. Um, breeding, it's not off the table, but there's a lot of stuff that goes into keeping taking care of the slings, and you end up with you know, 300 slings to take care of. You know, you're gonna want to be able to place those those baby translators somewhere, and it's possible. There's a lot of people getting into the hobby every day, it's growing. Um, it's amazing how many people have gravitated to spider keeping. A lot of people with arachnophobia, they get over their fears. Um yeah, it's just been really, really, really cool just watching watching how everything kind of unfolds.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're it seemed to me that they're a bit misunderstood, like so many things these days. A bit misunderstood. Yeah. Right? Am I like saying that correctly?
SPEAKER_04No, you're you're absolutely correct. Um, so I'll go with the the old world ones. Um I've I never get any threat poses from them. You know, these are the ones that you know you look them up online and they're you know, they're dangerous to keep. And I've never had a single threat pose. I give them a place where they can run. Chances are they're not gonna stand their ground and fight unless they're cornered and they have no other option. They don't want any business with us, they don't even like walking on us. You know, so yeah, they're they're really misunderstood. They they keep a lot of our pests and stuff under control. Um, we have them in our houses, whether we want them there or not. Now, you know, you you said you're from from the south, right?
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04So you have a lot of brown recluses.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. I was bitten by one time, actually. Yeah. Ooh. Yeah, I I think it was what you know, you never tell, but afterwards I saw it and it started the viewers and listeners are going, What? I wish you wouldn't go there, but it seemed to me like it started swelling quick and it started getting a certain coloration about it.
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah, yeah. The thing with these spider bites is you have to have caught the specimen or seen it in person as it bit you, or it's not considered a confirmed recluse bite.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that was the thing, because I said it sure looks like one. Of course I did the and you can call me out on this on the nonsense of this, but I did the old, let me see what Google says. And and they said, Oh, it looks, you know, it looked like one. So I rushed immediately to the to the doctor and and they gave they said, Well, we can't confirm it, but here's some stuff to help. Um, so maybe it wasn't, because those might be a lot more serious than that, what I hear.
SPEAKER_04And it affects people differently. You know, some people, you know, they get over it and they're they're fine. Other people, you know, their bodies react to it differently. Um, I mean, I know it's not it's not a great site, nobody wants to be bitten by a brown recluse. Um, but yeah, everybody's different. You know, and the honest, the honest fact is is a lot of the stuff is unstudied. I mean, brown recluse is probably a little bit more just because it's a brown recluse, but you know, you start talking about uh tarantulas, most of their venoms are unstudied. Some of them now they're looking for medical uses, you know, different different uses within the medical field, so there's a lot of studying starting to go on with them, but it's all unknown. And then you start talking about the stuff from Asia. We don't it sometimes you don't even know if the the name is correct. You know, it's it's completely it's it's always changing, you know, things are getting reclassified.
SPEAKER_00You know, you mentioned when we talk when we when we first talked on the phone, and I am from the south, so I'm probably gonna write everyone knows from the south can relate to this roaches. Roaches. So you have a what are they called? Hissing? Am I saying?
SPEAKER_04So I have I have four Madagascar hissing cockroaches. Um I do not like roaches at all. Okay, so let me uh I can I can and I can go on to why. I can go into why there's a very there's a very specific reason why. I have these four. I've had one male and three females in the same cage for well over a year. They've never populated. There are just four of them in there. I bought them for food and nothing ate them, so I just have them in there.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. That's why. So anybody that's watching this, that uh please don't send me the hate messages on this, but I do I do one of this. I'm gonna have a lot of questions one day when I get to heaven. But why you made a hissing cockroach is one of the Lord, why would you make a hissing cockroach? So what is it so you bought you bought them to feed something else, but they actually hiss at you?
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah, no, they make they make a striation hissing sound if you you tamper with them as like a kind of like a defense mechanism. And you know, here's the thing. So because I got these, I started looking into the the cockroach world, and man, there's only like five of them in the whole world that actually infest human homes. There's a ton of them that don't. There's people that are actually really serious hobbyists that keep a lot of different types of roaches, they got decorative ones. You wouldn't believe it. Um so I actually by having them it it um it challenged my belief. You know, you know, at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_00You just gently you just gently corrected me on my perception of a cockroach.
SPEAKER_04You just I mean my perception was not much different. You know, I had I had some experiences, you know, and I just like man.
SPEAKER_00So my apologies to your hissing cockroaches. You're living in Fargo.
SPEAKER_04Yes. Yeah, I'm out in Fargo, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, how did you end up in Fargo?
SPEAKER_04I relocated out here. So, you know, pre previous to this life that I'm living now, I had been incarcerated in prison. I was in for uh um nonviolent drug crimes, a combined total of about 13 years in in federal prison. And part of part of my plan for release was to go somewhere where I didn't really know anybody and to start completely fresh. I wanted to start completely fresh, and I had heard that there's a great job market out here, and I wasn't wrong. I mean, it's been great. You know, I've been able to thrive and do pretty well out here.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's terrific. And I believe you mentioned something earlier because of your your dream to have what you have behind you there, is you're now being asked to consult a local store, right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so I I work, I work part-time, I'm on their payroll, and I I consult, and now I've really just set up like uh invertebrate can enclosure. So they they got some tarantulas in today and some millipete, and um, what else was there? Oh, those uh tailless whip scorpions. And I went in there today, it spent a couple of hours and I got them out of their packages, made sure they're alive and housed them correctly, and then I'm available. So if you know customers have questions that no one's able to answer, I can answer their questions to the best of my ability.
SPEAKER_00And um when did this dream so going back, when did this dream start about having your collection? How old were you?
SPEAKER_04Oh, I mean, I've always I've always liked exotic animals. So ever since I was real little, you know, five, six years old, I'd always be out catching frogs and snakes and stuff like that. I grew up in northern Minnesota, so you know, we had long winters and the short summers would come out, and you know, I was always out there um you know, being a kid, catching frogs, you know, catching snakes, turtles. I used to I've really had a big fan of turtles. And you know, down the road as I got older, you know, and I got into reptiles, I had happened to come up, come up on two um Grand Stola roseas or rose hair tarantulas. So this is you know, we're talking way back in 1997, 98, and they used to be all over in all these pet stores for like $20. You know, people had them everywhere. No one knew how to really care for them, and I really didn't back then either. We didn't have the internet like we do now. If you did, it was dial up and it was very slow. No information on there. So I'd had two of them way back then. I didn't really think I was gonna get this far into the hobby right away. I started with the one and then I got two. Um, I started I got one for my daughter as well. You know, so she'd had some translators for a little while. She just didn't take with her as well, she didn't do as well with them. Maybe she'll try it again. You know, she had mentioned that, but um, yeah, I just started seeing all the different varieties, and you know, it's it's just kind of a cool thing to focus on.
SPEAKER_00You mentioned uh being incarcerated, so if you don't if you mind, I'm asking one question about so there's a lot of people there there's probably two groups, I would think, on this listening to this. And when I say watching it, so anybody listening, we're gonna take clips of this and put it on, feed it out in the social media outlets, and I'm really excited to get your message out, Jeff. So there's probably gonna be two groups, one that that have never been incarcerated, and then some that have been. So what what message would you give those people that have never been incarcerated about maybe a perception that we would be dealing with? And then another message for those that have been incarcerated have been incarcerated.
SPEAKER_04Well, you know, for I guess for the the people that have never been incarcerated, um, there's a lot of clickbait stuff, you know, on YouTube, um probably podcasts. Um I I see this huge, I I don't know what to call it, prison genre stuff, you know, and I guess I can understand the allure of wanting to hear about how things are done. You know, to try to explain to somebody that at one point we were making an oven out of a mop bucket to make pizzas, you know, utilizing a stinger and water, you know, I can see where that's intriguing, but it's also misleading as well, because it it's it's not really it's not it's not it's not really completely honest. You know, it's just glorifying some of this stuff. You know, it the the big thing is is you know, there's a there's a lot of struggle, you know, when someone gets back out. A lot of the people that are getting back on, I'm not gonna say everybody, because there are some people that just really don't care. That that that person does exist, but a lot of people don't want to go back, they want to come out and succeed.
SPEAKER_00You know, so what could we do? What could we do to uh uh in help with that? What could we do?
SPEAKER_04Um so so my experiences with with federal prison, I'd never been in the state prison system, so I don't know anything about that. With the federal prison system, one of the one of the biggest things they do have what they do have programs. Um, the re-entry programs, what they call re-entry into society, but it's just a shell of a program. So a lot of stuff is outdated. I'll use myself as an example. So I when I was getting ready to get released, I took resume classes, job searching classes, I did all this stuff prepare myself. I had a big stack of printed up resumes that I can hand out, and it was obsolete. Oh nobody wanted the paper resume anymore. No one, you know, the way you went about finding a job was completely different. You know, everything was outdated. So there's a there's a there's a lot of um there's a there's a lack of updated information for people, you know, no one has the resources to really know what's going on. Somebody's been gone five years, ten years, and they're paid their debt to society, and they gotta go out and they've got to relearn how to buy things in the grocery store. I remember the first time I went to Walmart, you know, um I left with nothing. I couldn't find anything, and I panicked and I left. And it was the bright lights and all the people crisscrossing around me, and everything seemed like it was in a different place and I remembered it. You know, and now I see that's a regular thing. You know, uh stores will just move things around sometimes, I think, just to make you walk around. But that was, you know, there's a lot of little challenges. I would sit in line and watch how someone used their car to pay for food. Because the first before you didn't have to insert your card with the chip, you just ran it down the side. So I would sit and watch and see how they were paying for their food with their car.
SPEAKER_00That's fascinating because I never would have thought about, I'm not sure many would have thought about that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, lots of challenges. And I you know, honestly, a lot of people give up. I see a lot of people give up, especially you guys that are older. I have I know somebody right now. When I was in prison with him, he was a very good worker. We worked together in the kitchen. I mean, this guy, he didn't he didn't break any of the rules. He programmed and did everything he was supposed to be doing. Model inmate, got out, and he's in jail. And he doesn't look happy. I see his mugshot on there, and he looks like he's got the face. It's like, oh, again. And you know, he get he probably gave up. He he he slipped into this comfort zone or what he felt was comfortable. And I, you know, that's the that's the key. You know, when you when you get on, you want to stay out. This is for the guys that have been incarcerated and want to stay out, you know, or the people, is you gotta learn how to live into discomfort. You know, when you spent the time to when you when you spent the time to learn a skill that you didn't know how to do in there, you know, you maybe you're working out and that wasn't easy starting off and it got easier. You know, that took discipline and it takes time. You gotta apply that to your life out here with everything. Nobody has it perfect every single day. Everybody has setbacks, you know, things happen, and you gotta be willing to overcome that and say, you know what, this is part of normal life. And you gotta be able to just live in a discomfort. You know, that that's the key.
SPEAKER_00Living in a discomfort. So when you feel that discomfort, you do what what do you recommend that that we would do when we're in that discomfort? Like you reach out to somebody else that's been through something similar. Do you what do you think?
SPEAKER_04Um you can. Um you know, I I've got some friends that are doing pretty well, and I'll I'll talk to them. You know, like recently I had to get a new job because my other job was shutting down. And there was, like I said, it's nothing I did wrong, it's just life, you know, and it was happening over the holidays. And you know, not none of that was comfortable. And so I got on indeed and I put my resume up and you know, I applied. I got a pretty decent job now that I worked at. Um, I also just to make sure, because I did the math on unemployment, I was like, man, I'm not gonna make it with this unemployment. So I built my credit up, I spent this time building my credit, so I took out a quick personal loan and I set that in the bank and just left it there. So this way, if I ended up where I didn't get placed into a job right away and I was on unemployment, I can supplement it with money from a loan, and I won't be in a situation where I feel like, okay, I'm running out of time, I'm gonna lose my apartment, I'm gonna lose my car. Yeah, you just you know when things are good, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta hammer it down. You know, you gotta be able to prepare yourself because it's not always gonna be good. And then when things are are looking a little rocky, you know, if you need help, you know, don't be afraid to reach out and you know, try to look at it, try to look at it as if you're viewing somebody else in that situation and not viewing yourself. You know, that's the hardest thing. You know, I don't know how else to explain it. It's like, you know, I'll call it a camera check, right? Imagine you're the camera in a room watching yourself, and you see yourself, you know, going through whatever it happens to be, you know, whatever whatever misfortune life threw at you, and how would you do it? It's like when you watch someone play chess, right? You know all the right moves for someone else's game.
SPEAKER_00I have never heard it put that way. Where did you get that from? You just learned it, or did you Yeah, I just learned it.
SPEAKER_04So so one of the programs that was a really good program that I did was called RDA. So it's uh it's um a residential drug abuse program, but really what it was was a cognitive rehabilitation program. So it taught you how to change the way that you think and feel about something, right? So I mean, it's it's really valuable, and more people, you know, there's a lot of people that take the program, some really take it for what it is. Um a lot of really, really valuable tools, you know, and it that's where the camera check came from, because that was actually part of that program. But it was it it it take it teach you how to take a situation, you know, it could be something you know real simple that you go through the day, maybe you felt frustrated, right? So you write it down, you know, you know, somebody cut in front of me a line. I felt angry, and then what the reaction to that could be, right? And then on the other side, you might write, you know, camera check, you know. So now you're viewing it from some other perspective. Somebody cut in front of me in line. You know how could you change that the way you thought feel to make your outcome differently, right? Because this is all stuff that goes through all of our minds, but it's in split is you know, it's fractions, it's you know, fractions, it's a boom, and the whole thought is long gone.
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SPEAKER_04Don't realize it this takes that little tiny fraction of thought and breaks it into a process, right? And you know, to be able to take that and use that in a time where you know you're gonna have a lot of challenges, you know, and I mean being incarcerated for all that time. I I tell people if they ask, Well, you did all that time, was it hard? To a degree. I mean, there's there's good times, you know, and there's bad times. The hardest part is getting out. The hardest part is change. You know, you go from making 40 decisions in an entire day to making hundreds or thousands of decisions in a single day. Yeah, that's the challenge, you know. Um, that that's where it gets hard. It's you know, doing the time itself, I mean, it's not pleasant. And don't get me wrong, nobody wants to be doing it. It's not fun. But is it really hard? Sometimes. You know, um, it's hard, it's harder to stay out. You know, once you get out for a while and you establish yourself, you're good. You know, um, you gotta have things that fill your day. That's that's part of why I got all these translations. You know, I go to work, I come back, I still got some kind of something that I got responsibilities for. And, you know, it's like something I could focus on and keep my mind off of some of the stuff that you know may um affect the way I think and feel.
SPEAKER_00You know, you know, there's so much truth in what you said. Thank you for going through that. And there's three I could probably pick out ten things. There's three that really stood out. And one was you make hay while the sun's shining, which is you referenced. Why things are going well, you make sure you're set up. Two reach out to people if you're in a bad place so you can get support of. And that stepping outside yourself and looking back, I've never heard it put that way, but but that that's almost like you're it raises your self-awareness by stepping out and looking back at what you're going through, like you're watching it through a movie.
SPEAKER_04That's yeah, absolutely. You you nailed it right on the head, you know, and that's that's hard. And you gotta be able to do it, and you know, like I said, you know, when you find out you're losing your job over the holidays, you know, that's not pleasant. And it's even less pleasant to have to talk about it to your loved ones, be like, well, look, you know, this is what's going on with me. But you have to be able to make a sound decision, and sometimes that's what it takes. You gotta be able to do it unbiasedly. You know, even though you may feel a little bit of sadness or or anger or disappointment, you gotta kind of set that aside and you gotta look at it objectively and say, okay, well, this is where I'm at. This is where I want to be. What kind of goals and what kind of steps can I take to reach my goals to get somewhere else?
SPEAKER_00You just hit the next question I was gonna ask, which is almost where I think it would be a great way to close this out. Uh I kind of mentioned to you that when we started, I would probably ask you 30 questions. I'm very curious about uh so being aware of your time, I want to ask this. And so you mentioned goals and looking forward. Uh what are your I mean, you don't have to get really specific on them if you don't want to, but in terms of your goal, do you set specific goals? Do you look at them on a regular basis? What's your process for looking forward?
SPEAKER_04Um, right now, I mean, I'm just happy I got started in this in this new job, you know. Um, and I'll be honest, this is a first that this is a second job that I've had since I've been out because I've had the other place for a while. First time I worked around a lot of people, and I do feel somewhat of an alien in there. You know, because not only am I new, but you know, I'm a little bit different. Um but you know I'm gonna stick with it. It's not a bad job. I actually I don't mind doing it. I'm I'm making windows for Marvin Windows. Um so right now it's just kind of maintaining where I'm at. I'd like to eventually buy a home. So, you know, right now I'm just looking at I'm 43, so I'm trying to set up for some retirement. I don't want to work until I'm 90. So if I can make it where I only work until I'm like 65 or 70, I'd be happy with that. You know, so um, yeah, I'm just I'm keeping it simple. I don't really have anything concrete.
SPEAKER_00Day by day, keeping it simple.
SPEAKER_04Yes, yeah. Keep it simple day by day. I have an idea of where I want to be, you know, and I'll get closer. I'll know when the time is right.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna ask one last, well, two last questions, but my last one you kind of answered there was okay, so we talked about you and your personal journey, which is fascinating to me, uh the listeners. And then we kind of gave advice to the people that have not been incarcerated, and then advice for the people that have been now, and you kind of stated already. What at what parting advice would you give anybody that's listening to this?
SPEAKER_04Um yeah, don't you don't take don't take life for granted. And you know, honestly, just just because you have something that's not not pleasant when you're going through it, doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad thing. Change isn't bad. Change is sometimes uncomfortable, and you know, it's it's just what it is. That's that's life. Everybody goes through it. You know, nobody lived a perfect life. You know, social media, I think, has done a lot to change people's perspective, and they really think that this is how people live. Music, you know, all of that stuff, and that's not the truth. You're just not seeing that. You're only seeing this the shiny side. You know, they've cleaned everything up real nice, you know. They maybe vacuumed, they straightened it out, they took a picture, they threw some filters on it, and they put that up, and you think, well, this is their life, but that's not their life every day. You know, that's just not what it is. Um, you gotta give yourself some life balance, you gotta have life balance, whether it's you know, involvement in the community, you know, family, you know, your work balance. You can't live, you can't live to grind out for the dollar, you know. That that I think that's a lesson I had to learn the hard way. You know, so uh you you need money, you know, because of the way our society is. And if you if you could be a uh a prepper or uh a homesteader, by all means, but you're still gonna be working for that. You know, so but don't don't make it your entire life, just give yourself some balance, you know, appreciate the stuff that you have. Um, there are plenty of people that you know they don't get any great opportunities, you know, they don't get clean water. And you know, I I see this a lot, you know, as I'm getting older, and people talk about like the receding hairline and stuff like that, you know. And it's a privilege to be able to grow old. You know, and it's not we're not entitled to grow old, you know. That's a privilege. You know, so you gotta take it, you gotta take what you get and you know, you appreciate what you have. It just doesn't mean you can't strive for more.
SPEAKER_00Jeff, I wish I would have asked you this question 30 years ago. It would have been a lot easier in life for me. I wish I'd ask you it 30 years ago. Um, so I if somebody's curious about your collection and where they can get in touch with you, a little more information about um um, you know, your collection behind you. I was gonna say the roaches and the scorpions, whatever else you have you for you, the tarantulas, how would be the best way to engage with you?
SPEAKER_04Um, I'm on Facebook, you know, so yeah, I'm on Facebook just under my name. And I'm also on TikTok. I don't have any other social media platforms other than that, but on TikTok I go by Transla Jeff.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Oh, that's cool.
SPEAKER_04So yeah, and then if they're in the Fargo Moorhead area, you know, they can go to the uh Tropical Oasis, uh Tropical Oasis Pets and Fish, I believe it's called, and I'm I'm there all the time. They call me the Transula guy there. It's their nickname for me. So, you know, if they're in that area, they ever want to check that place out. You know, they got all kinds of stuff there, and um it's a good great way to get a hold of me as well.
SPEAKER_00So Jeff, thank you so much for being on here with me.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, thank you for having me. This has been great.
SPEAKER_00Yes, sir. Take care.
SPEAKER_04All right, thank you.