Ep 33: "The Makings Of You: Exploring Your Personal Ecosystem"

In this episode, we break down the concept of a personal ecosystem which consists of the habits, relationships, tools, and environments that shape your daily life. From your career and finances to your health, technology, and social circles, we explore how each component works together (or against each other) to influence your outcomes. Through a Gen-X lens, we reflect on how our ecosystems have evolved and why intentionally designing your personal ecosystem is critical in today’s world. Whether you're juggling career demands, caring for family, or trying to reclaim time and focus, this episode gives practical insights on how to optimize and take control of the system that ultimately drives your success and well-being.

Intro and Outro music by Erin Garris and Khari Garris 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:15

Yo, yo, yo, what it is, what it was, what's it gonna be? Welcome. Welcome to the latest episode of the Gen Expertise Podcast, episode 33. We hitting y'all with that Patrick Ewing today. Entitled The Makings of You, Exploring Your Personal Ecosystem. We are your hosts, Maine Advance, aka PWA. Podcasters with attitude, yo. What's up, good brother? What's up? What's up?

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Everything's good, man.

SPEAKER_03 0:53

Yo, but before before we start off, son, before we start, B, before we start, you got the horn ready? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do it. Let's give it a test. Let's give it a test first. Yo. We want to announce 1,000 downloads. Hit the bull horn. Shout out to Ghostface. As you can tell, he's probably one of our favorite artists. Yo, we did 1,000 downloads.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

In a 30-day period. Yeah, one thousand in a month.

SPEAKER_03 1:33

Yeah, your favorite podcasters. Y'all just don't know it yet. You know what I'm saying? We averaged a thousand downloads for the month. All thanks to you guys. So salute to you guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Yeah, appreciate you.

SPEAKER_03 1:45

You know, we appreciate y'all.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Cheers.

SPEAKER_03 1:48

We definitely couldn't have done it without you. Um, 1,000 downloads, that's a big step. You know, milestones. We're big on milestones. No, there's no such thing as a small milestone to us here, especially when we're building something from nothing.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Yeah, everything's significant to us. And I yeah, I definitely want to echo that, man. Like I definitely appreciate it. Um all the friends and family, all the strangers, whoever just just happen to randomly discover the podcast. Yes. Start listening and downloading. Um, we appreciate all of it, man. All the good energy is needed. So um, so yeah, it's it's it's incredible. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 2:26

Yeah, yeah. We're super excited about it. Uh tiny steps, great distances, as I once heard someone say. Um, you know, we have a long way to go, but we've already made huge accomplishments in our goals. So it's all thanks to you. Thanks again. We can't thank you enough. We always say we're never gonna stop thanking you guys. We can't thank you enough for your support.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 2:50

Uh for the now that we're on YouTube, we're getting people watching our YouTube, uh, you know, listening to us on all the streaming podcasting devices, and uh, we're ecstatic about this. So we we celebrate. And you know what's done now. Bang there you go. There you go, man. That's what. And one more thing. A lot of people since our last episode have been um asking me about sprouting and main, my man my mellow, just just made his first sprout jar over the week. So, um, and also we have a book here. So I have a book for you guys. It's called The Sprouting Book by Doug Evans. So, this is everything that you need to know about sprouting.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Did you tell me about this book when we're talking about sprouting?

SPEAKER_03 3:39

I think I might have made mentioned his name. I think I might have mentioned his name.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

I don't know, man. I feel cheated. I feel like you're cheating the audience better than better than me. We were talking about sprouting for like at least a couple of weeks. And now you bring out the book. All right.

SPEAKER_03 3:55

Yeah, man. We had the sprout. I I found it. My wifey was cleaning out the house, and she was cleaning up the book corner, the book corner, and there it was lying right there, the sprouted book. Nice. So Doug Evans is an author, it's everything. Tap into the power of the planet's most nutritious food.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Right. You know, and and for those of you that follow us on Instagram, I did put a little reel up showing like the progress um to sprout, to actually sprout seeds, all you really need is a is a jar. Probably want to get a jar with a with a lid that can strain out water because you have to first soak the um the seeds on the first day. Like you kind of just leave them soaking, and then over the next like three to five days, you need to just rinse them twice a day and just leave them out. Um, they don't need soil, they don't need sunlight, and you'll find that the seeds start to sprout like within that amount of time. Like it just takes maybe three to five days. So a little bit of patience and some water, a jar. Um, and then you put it on the beans and lentils you have in your house, basically. Yeah, and you can sprout beans and lentils, um, not just the seeds, or you can order seeds, you know, you can order seeds online for sure. There's also there's all sorts of companies that that will give you seeds. Um, you could even order them on on the uh the company that we need to stop mentioning. Of course, so we get some affiliate links going or something, man. Like, but but anyway, I'll just say Amazon. Yeah, you could go to Amazon if you want to do it really quick and get started. You can order the jars, and you can also order some seeds from Amazon. And like I said, all you need to do, throw the seeds in a jar, soak them in some water overnight, and then in the next three to five days, rinse them twice a day, and you'll find that you go from seed to sprouts within that amount of time, and you have, like Rant said, one of the most nutritious foods on the planet.

SPEAKER_03 5:36

Endless supply, yo.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Yeah, and an endless supply, pretty much. And and you it would take you to eat bowls and bowls of vegetables to get the same amount of nutrients you'll get from like a handful of um sprouts or like a like a half a cup of sprouts, right? So it's definitely interesting. I I I ate them for the first time today, or at least the one I've had sprouts before, but the ones that I actually grew, I ate them today. They're kind of an acquired taste, right? And I realized that maybe I shouldn't just grab a handful and eat them, to be honest with you. But I think I'm gonna throw them in other foods and like put them on salads and stuff like that, throw, throw them in my meals. You can make smoothies and co that's yeah, that seems to be the way to go. Like to mix them with other stuff, that seems to be the way that I'm gonna go. Yeah, because I I think it's gonna take me some getting used to to just grab a handful and and throw them down, right? So pause. Me and look into that. Yeah, pause. But look at but definitely any everybody out there, if you're interested in in like the most nutritious food, probably known to man, or one of them, yes, um, definitely look into sprouting your own seeds because it's a very easy way to get a lot of nutrition. Um so yeah. And it's cheap. And it's super cheap.

SPEAKER_03 6:43

Super cheap, like a bag of beans. You can literally go into your the your grocery store, grab those two dollars one ninety-nine, one seventy-nine bag of beans and sprout them, and you can have jars and jars of endless nutrition. Do you know what I'm saying? So there you go. Do you know what I mean? We're all about health, knowledge.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

And I also put some information on the on the Instagram. Like I put some of the health benefits behind it too. So there's some information there. If you follow us on Instagram, follow my reel on on my my little sprout experiment, and you'll see that I put some information in the comments um about um basically the highlights in terms of what nutritional benefits you get from that. So um, so yeah, check that out.

SPEAKER_03 7:23

There you go. So the makings of you, exploring your personal ecosystems. I like to give a lot of references on inspiration to uh some of these episodes. And before we even started, Main and I were talking about um this episode. I was inspired, I was watching the movie Claudine.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Classic. Yeah, classic.

SPEAKER_03 7:44

Classic Claudine starring that fine Diane Carroll and James L. Jones.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Yeah. We were just talking about how they they don't really make love stories in that way anymore. Like, I don't really see, especially to be honest, I don't really see black love stories that much. Um at least that that type, right? Like where it's just two regular people, um, and they're like they're kind of living in a struggle in the movie, too. Um, but that movie is definitely a really, really good classic love story. Um, I don't know, I forget what year that is something like. 74. Oh, 1974, okay.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

Yeah, 74 came up.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

And the soundtrack is Curtis Mayfield, right? Curtis Mayfield.

SPEAKER_03 8:24

Actually, the soundtrack is Gladys Knight and the Pips, did the soundtrack.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

But isn't that aren't all those songs written by um Curtis Mayfield?

SPEAKER_03 8:31

Curtis Mayfield, because they they sang um The Makings of You, which is from one of my favorite artists and one of my favorite songs. That's the title for today's podcast.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Right, right, exactly. That's that's what ties it all together.

SPEAKER_03 8:44

If you haven't heard The Makings of You by Curtis Mayfield, as soon as this podcast is over, you need to listen to it. You know what I'm saying? That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Yeah, that's another that's a classic. Yeah, that's a classic song from the from the movie.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Matter of fact, that whole soundtrack, like The Makings of You is uh obviously a classic, but that whole soundtrack um for Claudine is awesome. But yeah, the makings of you. Um Rams was inspired by by the movie and by that song um for the title for the for this particular episode. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:17

So if for those you who of you who do not know about the movie, the movie is about Diane Carroll, who plays Claudine, of course, and she's a maid. And she has she's a maid on welfare, and she has six children, and she lives in Harlem. And uh she meets James L. Jones, who's a garbage man, yeah. Who pursues her, this woman with these six kids, and it's basically like a really good uh love story, like Maine said, of the struggle and how you life is what you make of it, basically. If you want to be happy, if you want to find happiness, you gotta work hard to get it. So that's you know, that's like the main the main thing of the movie. Like, and they created their own kind of little personal ecosystem with them and the children, and they made it work.

unknown 10:03

Right?

SPEAKER_03 10:04

Another fantastic movie. If you haven't seen that movie or heard of that movie, when this episode is over, play that Curtis Mayfield and watch that Claudine.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Yeah, absolutely, highly recommend.

SPEAKER_03 10:18

So um the beauty of the personal ecosystem is it's just that it's your personal ecosystem because so it changes from person to person. Uh Main's personal ecosystem and my personal ecosystem is probably totally different when it comes to certain things, but because we've been friends for so long and we run in some of the same circles, there's a lot of similarities in our personal ecosystems as well. So that's the beauty of it. It's basically what you make of it. Uh, and and you you're really dealing with like an internal and an external, uh, internal, where it's like your mindset, your beliefs, your health, the people you surround yourself with to a certain extent, because it's like choice. I I interpret it as like personal choice. Um controlling the controllable things that are basically in your hand. Uh health isn't always in your hand, but knowing how healthy you are is totally in your hands, you know, with regular doctor visits and things of that nature. And then you have like the external part, which is like your home, um, your workplace, and also the people around you and the information that you surround yourself with, social media, what you read, what you watch, what you listen to. Um so that's what my interpretation of of uh your personal, my personal ecosystem is. And through this episode, you'll hear both of us talk about certain aspects of both of our ecosystems which are similar and different all at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Right. Right. And it's it's um just to echo what you're saying, right? Like each each person is gonna have, to a certain extent, a unique um idea of what their personal ecosystem is. They're gonna have unique components of it. But some of them um are kind of universal, I would think, right? Like, like um or they or the themes of them are universal, right? Like they're gonna be unique in terms of the specifics. Like when you talk about relationships, right? You talk about relationships with your family and your friends and your community, those things get into like, you know, granular detail where we're talking about, you know, some people might have 10 friends that they might call their best friends, whereas another person might have one best friend and that's it, right? Like they don't really consider everybody their best friend, or they might have a community at work that they consider almost like family, right? Where some other people might say, hey, my work colleagues are my work colleagues, and when I get home, that's my family, and my friends are my friends outside of work. But at work, these are my colleagues, and they kind of limit it to that, right? And I'm just giving that as an example, right? Because it's really unique in terms of how you kind of um get granular with with those components, but but in a universal sense, all of us have have some sort of community that we might deal with. At least in the ideal situation, whether it's big or small, you have some sort of relationships that are important to you. Some some things that are kind of like staple to your your happiness. Um stuff like you know, your resources and whether you're focused on it or not, your your wellness, right? Um and whether and and the thing is like focusing it on it or not can mean all the difference. Like you said, like regular doctor visits and just paying attention to what you're putting in your body, paying attention to how much you're how much movement you're getting in the in a within a given amount of time. So yeah, I I I just wanted to echo what you're saying because I feel like in thinking about this, it it there's unique aspects, but then there's things that are I think are universal that people are really going to be able to relate to um, you know, as we as we talk about this.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

So to give a uh a definition of your personal personal ecosystem, it's the interconnected network of habits, environments, people, and resources that shape an individual's life and well-being. So that's like the official definition that I looked up of your personal ecosystem. Um so today we're gonna talk about some things that involve your personal ecosystem, uh, mind, body, your physical environment, your digital life, uh, your social network, things of that nature. But the thing that I find most interesting is that everything is connected. That's what you find out that every single thing is connected uh within your personal ecosystem, and that's why it's your personal ecosystem, because it's all happening basically under one umbrella, you know, and and things interlock and intercede each other at the same time. So um one of the things that we both have in common would be our social network. Right, you know, so as you know, Maine and I have known each other for going on 40 years, close to 40 years now. We're almost there.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

Yep, God willing, we'll get there.

SPEAKER_03 15:11

Yeah, yeah. So um, if you've been listening to us, you've heard a lot of our stories. Uh, have the other person involved in it. A lot of the people that we know are the same people who we know. We went to the same high school. Uh, we knew each other before we went to the same high school from a program that we went to. Um, so there's stories that I, you know, there was one thing that I was thinking about, and this was um a friend of mine. We were talking about like Christmas. Christmas just came up, and I even remember, I don't know if you remember this, but I remember one year we went down, like we didn't know what to get our mothers, and we went down to Macy's, and we both bought our mothers the same watch. We was just like, yo, and we bought them like the same.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

Yo, and I honestly don't remember that specific story, but that sounds like something I would definitely have.

SPEAKER_03 16:00

Yo, we was like, yo, said what we gonna get. We went into Macy's and the watch was like, yo, yeah, that sounds like something I would do. So we gotta like the same watch.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Yeah, it's not like our mothers were gonna hang out or anything. So that sounds like something I would have done just out of like, you know, expediency. Like, I would just be like, all right, well, this is nice.

SPEAKER_03 16:21

Yeah, yeah, I'd have been fine. Last minute shopping, boy. At a young age, we we were early, we might have been home from college or something. We was last minute shopping. But the friends, our relationships, our um, our colleagues, they intersect. So these have these have been important aspects of our lives. The fact that the two of us were doing a podcast because we both wanted to do a podcast, always wanted to do a podcast, and didn't even really know that the other one wanted to always do a podcast. You know, and you can't always control everything in your life, but you can control the people that you surround yourself with.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

True.

SPEAKER_03 17:05

And though who you let into your ecosystem is uh once again, when I go back to the control, the controllable is the people that you you hang around with. Like they say, show me your friends, I'll show you who you are.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Right.

SPEAKER_03 17:17

I feel that we've managed to surround ourselves with a dependable, reliable uh group of friends that if we're in trouble, whatever we need, we can go. We always have somebody to talk to. We always have somebody that can relate to us in a certain manner, whatever we need. Uh there's no embarrassment, there's no shame. If we're up or we're down, we can always go to somebody that we know in our circle. And that's a very important that's very important.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

Yeah, definitely right. And like when you when you talk about that, like you and I are part of each other's personal ecosystem, right? And I didn't really think about that when we when we first started talking about this topic. Um, I didn't think of it quite that way. But the fact is that we are, right? And and it has led to this, to this, um, this podcast. The fact that we both wanted to do this, we both have a similar interest in something like this, and then we talked about it and we decided that we would be the perfect kind of you know, people to help each other kind of manifest it and and or bring it to fruition, right, is part of the reason why our personal ecosystem is so important, right? Because the personal ecosystem involves to a great extent, right, your relationships. I think one of the most important aspects is probably the relationships, right? And it's gonna sound yeah funny coming from me as like kind of the introvert, you know.

SPEAKER_03 18:37

Introvert of the group.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

Like the least, probably the least social of the group of friends that you're even describing, right? Like I, you know, I I don't want to claim that as a title or anything because I'm not proud of that exactly, but but if if we had to if we had to like take a poll, I'm probably the least kind of like social butterfly of of the of that little group of friends that we're talking about, right? But the but the idea is that we still do have each other and we have that as our as part of our ecosystem. So I would say that that's still one of the most important aspects. Even to a person like me that considers himself an introvert and to have like very few people that I would that I'm I'm really, really close with or that I'm in regular, even regular contact with. I still feel like even for a person like me, the you know, the relationships are probably the most important part of that ecosystem because those are the things that motivate you and drive you and give you kind of strength at those times where you, like you said, like if you need help or if you're in trouble, there's still people that I rely on. There's still people that I consider like confidence if I need advice, right? Um, there's still people I feel like could relate to me in such a way where there's no, there's no shame and there's no there's no need for me to hide stuff. Like I I could tell them straight up, hey, here's what's happening. I need your advice, or I need your help, or I need, you know, I need to talk about XYZ, whatever it is. So yeah, I just wanted to say that because I I feel like the the the community aspect of the personal ecosystem is an extremely important part that we can't take for granted. And yeah, the other aspect of it that I thought about is that you have a responsibility to realize that you're part of someone else's personal ecosystem.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:11

Because there's something to be said for kind of optimizing your own system or you know, what you consider your own personal ecosystem. But I feel like it's a big responsibility that we should take seriously, a big um piece of accountability that we should take in knowing that you're also part of somebody else's ecosystem. Like you're the person that they're relying on, or you're part of that of what makes their environment work, right? Or you might be part of what makes their environment difficult, right? So you just gotta take stock of that sometimes too, man. I don't mean to go off on a tangent on that part, but but um it just this whole topic has made me think like about my responsibility and and how I play into somebody else's environment, right? Um what I mean to them, you know, whether it's good or bad.

SPEAKER_03 20:55

Yeah, but the craziest thing is being the introvert, basically the introvert of the group. Maine is bait is the one that knows where everyone is at at all times for the most fucking because you could count on me to keep it, keep it low. Because we we don't know always know where each other are. We don't always know where what the other person is doing. We may go a year or two without speaking to each other. We may we may not see each other for more that longer than that. But the funniest thing is whenever you get out of a conversation with Mae, and it's like, yo, did you see such and such? Yeah, yeah, he's doing this, he's doing that, he's doing this. I just spoke to him, I just spoke to that. A lot of times he's like the hub.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

Yeah, not not I mean, not always, but yeah, like like so like a lot of times, yes. Because um maybe I'm the person that you could rely on, like not to really like if you're trying to be private or you or you need some time by yourself, like you like to talk to me is is easy, and then you don't really have to open yourself up to everybody else, and I'm not gonna like make sure that everybody else gets in contact you at a with you. At a time where you may want to just be quiet or you got something you're dealing with or or stuff like that. So I I guess I've been that to people, right? Like I'm not the person that you know, like the vault, like where you could just talk to me real quick and be like, hey, I don't feel like talking to anybody. Yeah, I kind of leave it at that, right? So yeah, that's that's an interesting point.

SPEAKER_03 22:21

Um I'm the guy that drops off the face of the earth from time to time. Like I tend to drop, I tend to disappear for months at a time.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

So yeah, and and I thought of myself as as that type of person, but I guess not I I guess yeah, I guess it depends on, you know, you're different things of different people. But that speaks to the point, right? Like that that you have to kind of take stock of yourself and understand that there is some responsibility to be had and some accountability to take, that you are part of somebody else's ecosystem. Somebody may be dependent on you for their environment to work, right? Like we're all in a little fish tank of our own, and and we're all trying to make sure that you know that fish tank has an optimal environment for ourselves, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

And you might be part of somebody's environment. So it's just something that I had to think about, man. Like I had to take stock in like how I'm impacting other people that that I that I have any sort of relationship with. Um, you know, how am I impacting them? Is it negative? Is it positive? Am I encouraging people? Am I scaring them? Am I am I too worried when they give me an idea of the of the, you know, like it could be a family member. Somebody comes to you with a new idea. Like, what's my first reaction to a new idea? You know, and that's important. Like, people come to you and they say in a vulnerable way, hey, I'm thinking about doing this. What is my reaction? Like, am I like, oh man, you better worry. You better, you better not do that, because you know, you better think about all these things that could go wrong. Or am I that person that's like, oh, you could do it. I definitely think you're gonna be able to do that. Like, what like tell me your plan? Let's let's go. You want to go over the plan? Like, do you have, you know, stuff like that, right? Like, are you the encouraging friend? Are you the person that's gonna offer advice and help and encouragement? Or are you the person that's nervous and scared and and and just um, you know, maybe offering not on purpose in any way, maybe just out of concern, you're offering like all the negatives that may happen. It's just something that I I I've been thinking about lately, especially as we do this podcast and we talk about, and you and if I and you and I have had this conversation like about making sure that that we're talking to people that's gonna support us and and gonna be helpful and and and constructive, right? Um, so so it's just something that that's come up really, you know, especially recently. It's come up before, but especially recently as we're getting further in this journey of doing our podcast, it's something I've really started to consider a lot, you know. So this topic is right on on time for me personally.

SPEAKER_03 24:42

Yeah, yeah. So watch your social network, man. And as I said, I think it was, yeah, it's episode 10 and the 10 life commandments. Mind the company you keep.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It all it comes it comes full circle, man, because these things are like kind of like universal, and and some of these components are gonna come up in other topics because it crosses over in a way, because it's all part of part of our lives, right? Like whether you're Gen X, millennial, whatever the case may be, these things are gonna seem to keep coming up as themes because they they should.

SPEAKER_03 25:13

And then we have our physical environment. We did our social environment, then we have our we had our social network, now we're doing our physical environment, our network, which is our home life, our work life, and our community life as well. So inside your home, immediately outside your home, which is your community, and then outside of that would be like your work life. Um this is very important because it's it's almost like one of those things they say, never the two shall meet. I feel like you should try as best as you can to keep your work life from your from your personal life so that it doesn't leak into the home. You don't bring bad days home and you don't bring you don't bring your life into work and you don't bring your work into life, so to speak. Um so your physical environment, your community as well as but I I you know, community isn't the same as it used to be when we were were coming up. Right. You know, like everyone doesn't always know all their neighbors. Uh we used to be outside playing all day, sports, whatever. You know, you if you went outside, you tried to be on your best behavior because you knew uh all eyes were on you. And if you got in trouble outside from si somebody who's a neighbor, you knew you would you couldn't go home and tell your mother such and such, yelled at you or scolded you. Right because you'd get in trouble. You'd get in trouble. Double trouble. You know what I'm saying? Like Miss Johnson ain't got no reason to lie. Miss Johnson ain't got no reason to lie to me. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Right.

SPEAKER_03 26:49

So it's it's very important that you keep your home life stable with your family, your wife, your children, your partner, whatever, and at home, keep your work life. You know, try to be a decent person in all three of these layers. If you could be that person, that dependable person at work, that person that people can depend on at work, the hardest work in the room, so to speak, then that's that's that's a positive impact on your personal ecosystem. As Maine said earlier, what you do leaks over into other people's the closer you are to somebody, the more that you impact their life.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

Yeah, that absolutely, man. And and I wanted to ask you this. Like, so speaking of like the physical environment, right? Now you're talking about like kind of the separation, and I I have an opinion on that too. Like over the years, like I've kind of gone in a different direction in terms of my opinion of work-life balance and what you're describing as like kind of keeping work at work and the home, you know, kind of very separate, right? But I wanted to ask you this in terms of physical environment, do you think of the physical environment as just like literally your work environment versus your home environment, or do you see it as more granular than that? Where what I was thinking was that this is literally like how you keep your surroundings, not just not just like whether you're home with your family and and kind of like focusing on that, which is very important, or focusing completely on work and kind of compartmentalizing the two and making sure that they're not bleeding over into each other and you're not bringing the work stress over to your home, which I I honestly agree and I think that's important. But when I thought of the physical environment, I also thought of like kind of the the the feng shui of it all, right? Like where you you're optimizing your environment. So when you come in, you're like, ah, this is peaceful, right? Like you put enough, you put up the posters that motivate you, or you put up, you know, you put you decorate in such a way that that it's it's optimal for you. Or some people keep keep a little office space, or they keep a little space where they sit down and it's really clean, or they got a space where they read or they listen to music and they curate that space in such a way when they when they go there, that's their space. Like some men might have a like their basement or garage, that's their man cave or something like that, right? Like yeah, so that also came into mind when I thought about the um the whole idea of of the physical environment, like where even in the office, some I I know people in the office, like I work in a corporate environment, and I'm the type of person, like you were saying, I kind of I kind of like to keep things separate. So I don't keep pictures of my family really in the office too. I I mean at one point I did because people kept coming in and saying, hey, I noticed that you don't have any anything on your desk. And after a while, just to stop that conversation, I started just putting a little picture of my family up. Like I think it was just a Christmas card, an old Christmas card that I folded and let and stood it up on my desk, to be honest with you, because I always felt like, hey, this this is not a permanent space. Like somebody could easily say, hey, um, you know, we need this office, like you need to move over to somewhere else, right? Like, so I never wanted to be packing up stuff and moving, or God forbid, something happens and I get you know canned or something. I I hated the idea that I need to pack stuff into a cardboard box and leave. So so I wouldn't really decorate much in the office. But the point is that there are some people that they curate their space even in the office to make it really um pleasant for themselves, right? I've seen all types of things. I've seen people put put up decorations, I've seen people put up different types of lighting, like things that look like almost like Christmas lights. I've seen all types of decor, right? Like I've seen people with family pictures, pictures of people that just motivate them. Um and and all of it is is valid to me. Like I think it's all whatever, whatever you need to kind of get through the day, or whatever makes you feel most productive and most positive, I feel like that's what you need to do. It's just that for me personally, or just I know I'm just there to kind of do my my work, and and that's enough for me to focus on. Um but yeah, I just want to know your thoughts on that. Like what like when you say physical environment, does that come to mind at all? Or are you just thinking like, hey, like I'm in one environment when I'm at work, I'm in another environment with my with my family, and that's what I care about.

SPEAKER_03 31:03

That is what I care about, but I think of it more a lines of uh I I kind of separate it where I divide it into like micro and macro. You know what I'm saying? So the micro is me. The micro is what I I'm lucky enough to be able to, because I move around a lot from my line of work, like I train people in their homes, I train people in their personal gyms, I train people outside. I get to kind of create my own workspace. And that's the beauty of what I what I do. So in my mind, everything depends on me. It all depends on me. I can make the best of it, I can create. If I come in with a certain mindset, I feel I personally feel like I can will a good session out of somebody if they come back. But there's one thing that I've learned across the uh along the years as regards of my personal impact on a physical, a physical environment of a a physical space is that you always it's more important the way you walk into a room than how you walk out of a room. So if you walk into the room, let's say you're having a really bad day, right? And you walk into a room and you just wake up on the wrong day and say you the kids are getting on your nerves, whatever, you know, you you're late for work, everything. You come into a room, you have a meeting, or you're in a conference, and no one knows you, and you walk into this room, you walk in with a scowl, you don't want to speak to anybody, you're sitting in the corner. This sounds familiar. Uh but you're just a little bit as but as it but as it starts as the conference goes on, let's say you start getting a little more comfortable, you you s you decide like, you know what, I'm here, let's make the best of it. This is something I'm really interested in. Let's see, and you start to become more receptive.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Right?

SPEAKER_03 32:52

So now maybe somebody next to you where they didn't want to come up to you, now uh your body language is more welcoming. You come and you speak to somebody, and before you know it, you're laughing. When you leave, they're like, you know what? That main guy, I didn't know about him when he came in here, but when he left, he's not a bad guy. He's a pretty cool guy. He's he's informative. You've kind of transformed the way these people think of you and look at you. All right. Um now, let's say that you come into the room angry and you leave the room angry. You may not see these people ever again, but they may see people that know you, or they may, they may do business with people that you work with. They have nothing good to say about you. You've left no good thought in their mind. They have nothing about just like yo, that dude main, yo, he's a jerk. And then that's it. There's nothing, yeah, man, he's a jerk. He's this, he's that. So you've now imposed. You've imposed, and this goes on in a lot of offices and a lot of just workspaces in general, that somebody can just come in, like you they call them, what do they call them now? Uh emotional vampires and such. Like someone can you can come into a room and just destroy the whole atmosphere. So someone could have had a great morning, and then they come in and they gotta look at you all day. Being evil and mad and not want to go to, hey, you want to go to lunch? Nah, no, nothing. You know? Um sometimes you come in in a bad mood and you like look at that person who has the lights up, who has the motivational pictures in his at his little cubicle and his desk, and you may be the lone desk in the whole office space that you know, maybe maybe you play a little Curtis Mayfield, maybe you play, you know what I'm saying? You never know, whatever you're doing, the person next to you, you can affect the person next to you who can affect the person 10 rows down because it's kind of like, you know, boom, the only strongest weakest link, so to speak. So I've I really feel you have the ability to affect your physical environment by your internal attitude.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_03 34:54

You know, and that's how I feel about it.

SPEAKER_00 34:57

Yeah. That's really interesting and and kind of profound because if if it feels like what you're saying is that you're bringing a sort of an energy, right? Like this is all of this is energy and what they call vibes, right? You literally bring in your vibration, and you can bring a negative vibration or you can bring a positive vibration, regardless of what the physical, the literal physical environment is, when you come in, you kind of you impact that for everybody else, right? Like so when people are in the environment, you're coming in with a certain type of energy, and you're impacting their mood and you're impacting the way they feel in that environment just because of the energy you're bringing or the vibe that you're bringing when you walk into a room or into a space. And that's definit that's definitely true because I've I've probably been on both sides of that, where like someone may come in to my space and and impact my energy. Like I try not to let that be the case, but it's it's sometimes unavoidable. Like, you know, we're we're social creatures and and we pick up on stuff like that from each other. It becomes infectious where somebody's negative attitude can can impact you. Then I've I've seen where somebody's positive attitude has kind of changed my day, right? Like, because a lot of times in a corporate environment, I don't want to speak for everybody in a corporate environment, but sometimes it's hard to keep your spirits up. There's a lot going on, there's a lot of pressure, there's a lot of um, there's a lot of like scarcity and and and manufactured deadlines, and um, there's a lot going on when you're in a corporate environment that can cause burnout or can just cause you to to feel like a little bit less than than yourself, right? Um, so sometimes, you know, the opposite happens that you don't get the negative vibe doesn't happen. People, like you said, they'll they'll come in and they'll they're so determined to make it a good day, yeah, that they're bringing that energy and that kind of infects you too, right? So the positive energy can affect you the same as the negative energy. And I've had times where people have come around me and they just were so positive and happy to be there and upbeat that it kind of changed the way my mood went for the rest of the day, right? Yeah, um, and vice versa. I'm sure that I've done that for people too, like where they started out in a negative mode and I and we just talked for a little while and they felt much better after having talked to me. I definitely understand that. That's that's a that's a really good way to look to look at those things. Um but yeah, yeah, it's it's it's a good thing. And and I think both are important. Like honestly, like I think curating your space does something for you. Like, like I said, like when people have those pictures up, like because it's it's it obviously does, right? Because there's there's people that might have a plant in the office, right? Like they might have a plant that they water every other day, make sure they get sunlight and they're keeping that plant alive next to them in the office. They might have pictures of their family to remind them, hey, this is what's really important, or this is why I'm doing this work, or whatever the case may be. Or just it may just make you happy to see your family happy in a photo, right? Like some people have pictures of their dogs, and then at home, it's definitely people that that curate the space for reading or drinking their tea, or when a uh when company comes over, there might be a little space special place that you sit with them, or whatever the case may be, right? So yeah, I think I think both things are important when it comes to physical environment. Like the energy you bring is definitely, definitely paramount. But I also think there's something to be said for like putting those physical cues around you that remind you to kind of like perk up. Some of those things you might consider cliche, but but it it's but they're reminders. Like when you read it, it's a quick reminder to your brain that says, hey, positive, positive vibes only, even no matter how how many times you see it.

SPEAKER_03 38:30

Yeah. And then that brings us into like the mind and the body aspect of your personal ecosystem, which is your health, your self-awareness, right, and also motivation. And a lot a lot of misunderstandings are just two people who don't want to step into the other person's shoe. Like if someone is having a really bad day, we act like we've never had bad days before. You know what I'm saying? Like everyone is gonna have a bad day. But you don't never stop to say, like, yo, maybe something's going on in their life right now, and vice versa. They never stop to say, maybe something is going on in Main's life or something's going on in Rance's life. He's not usually like this. Maybe I'll wait and cool down because they don't look like they will talk right now, and then maybe I'll gradually see, like, hey, what's up? You want to go out for lunch? You want to get a cup of coffee, you want to talk? Or I like to always say, I'll never ask, but I'll always listen. That's what I tell like my closest friends. You know what I'm saying? Like true. I'm like, I'm not gonna ask, but I'll always listen. When it's all said and done with, it's not a lot of problems that haven't been recycled. True. True. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 39:36

There's nothing new under the sun.

SPEAKER_03 39:38

There's nothing really new under the sun at all, man. There's too many people on the planet and there's too many situations, all right? So the self-awareness of it all is just knowing that, hey, everyone is allowed to have a bad day. Everyone is allowed to wake up on the wrong side of the bed. It just so happens that their bad day is is is uh connected to your happy day, maybe. So maybe try to maybe try to do the best that you can, maybe to help them out a little bit. They'll appreciate you for it. They may not, they may walk into the room angry, but they may leave the room with a smile on their face.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

Right. And and and and that's that comes up quite a bit, man. Even in the in the corporate environments, that comes up a lot as um discussions about like what they call EQ or emotional quotient or emotional intelligence. Yeah. Um, which to me really um the basis of that is really empathy, right? Like, like you said, the ability to put yourself quickly in that in that another person's shoes and kind of understand that try to understand at least to the set extent that you can what they might be feeling or what they might be thinking or going through. Just and just considering that for a moment in your responses, right? Um, in making this the decision of of whether to respond or and how to respond to a person, right? Thinking about what the other person may need, even if it's for you to kind of be silent or go away or just listen, like you said, like not really ask a lot of questions, but just be a shoulder to lean on. To me, that that is a big part of, like you said, like the whole mind and body thing when it comes to um you know emotional intelligence, that's definitely important. And the other thing I think about when I when I think about the mind and body and like kind of the the the um the health aspect of that and and the the ecosystem is that it made me think about self-talk, right? Like how not only are we affecting other people, but we're affecting ourselves, right? Like, and and I know it sounds obvious, but a lot of self-talk is at least for me, it tends to be like more on the negative side sometimes, where it's like, oh, I should have done this, or why didn't I do that? Or this was stupid, or or I I I missed my workout yesterday, and or I ate this snack, and what why what am I doing, right? And oh, I said something stupid to my to my family, and now they're mad, or like, you know, whatever the case may be, or I didn't finish this project on time. And there's a lot of the a lot of the self-talk tends to be around like what is missing or what is lacking or what I didn't do, as opposed to um what is what is actually there, what is abundant, what am I doing right? Like what is what do I feel good about, you know, in terms of myself and and and what I'm bringing to the table. And I feel like that's really important for people to take note of. When it comes to mind and body connection, think about like your own self-talk, because it's very easy to get into the negative, but you have a lot of control when it comes to how you speak to yourself. Like if you if you're intentional and you're conscious about it, you can be your biggest motivator, your biggest fan, and um your biggest cheerleader, so to speak, right? Like, like you need to speak life into yourself. You need to be your biggest fan because you're all you got. Like you, you're you're living in this vessel, and and it's it really starts with you. Like, like you gotta love you enough to to give yourself encouragement. Even when you mess up, even when you screw up something real bad, you gotta be forgiving and gentle with yourself and encouraging with yourself because it really starts there. Because, like you said, even that impacts the energy that you're gonna bring when you're interacting with other people, right? Because people can feel like when you're when you're low on confidence or when you're down on yourself. And honestly, that that feeling it rubs off on other people, and nobody wants to be in that in the presence of that all the time. Yeah, so if you can keep yourself kind of encouraged even when you mess up, if you can keep that self-talk as positive as possible, like be your own, your own cheerleader, be your own encouragement, be your own motivator, that is gonna rub off in the way you you interact with other people, right? They're gonna feel that from you, and they're gonna like a lot of times they're gonna reciprocate it, right?

SPEAKER_03 43:44

Yeah. Yeah, it's like what motivates you. Like I've always I've always felt that I belong in every room that I step my foot into. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 43:53

That's another interesting one.

SPEAKER_03 43:58

You know, I always feel like I belong. Long in the room. I always do. It doesn't matter. And that's why we work. That's why we work.

SPEAKER_00 44:09

No, no, but not just that. But it's funny because, you know, like I suffer from, you know, imposter syndrome a lot of times, right? Like, and especially, you know, you're working in a corporate environment, and you and I have talked about this before. Like, I've worked really hard to get to a certain point in my career in technology, right? But it has been like peaks and valleys, right? And I've gotten certified in a bunch of stuff. I've played a lot of different roles in technology. But sometimes I feel that imposter syndrome. Even after years and years of having different experiences, working on different projects, working with all levels of like, you know, from management to like, you know, entry-level technologists and stuff like that. You know, like I've worked on all levels. And I still feel that little bit of imposter syndrome sometimes where I gotta I I shake it off, you know, eventually like I shake it. But but I don't I don't always start with um, and because I guess that advice is to myself too, right? They're about the self-talk and about the mind and and and the body connection, just being your own cheerleader and your own encouragement is important because it's important to me, right? Like because I think that that I'm saying that because I need to say it to myself, not just our audience, not just to whoever may need to hear it. I need to hear it a lot of times because I don't always start out with, I belong in this room, right? Whether it be at work or sometimes in social settings, like I just get this weird feeling, like maybe I don't belong here, or maybe I'm not, you know, I don't know, maybe I'm not adequate for this, for this, or up to this task in in certain environments, right? Um but that's that's a profound thing you bring up because I, you know, I know a lot of people like yourself, they they start out with I belong here like anybody else. Like I'm here and I belong here, I have a right to be here.

SPEAKER_03 45:52

Yeah, I got two two quick stories. When I was my first my first ever promotion when I came home and I started working, I turned down one my very first promotion. I was like probably 19 years old, and um I didn't feel that I was ready. Right? And then when my boss promoted somebody other than me, they were terrible. And I spent the next year like, yo, son, I could have been a better job than this.

SPEAKER_01 46:22

Right.

SPEAKER_03 46:22

And and then I started to think that first of all, whether I thought I was ready or not, somebody thought I was.

SPEAKER_01 46:31

Right.

SPEAKER_03 46:32

You know what I mean? And I always said right then and there, I'm never going to, first of all, not accept a promotion. Never again, no matter what. If I don't know, if I didn't, yo, there's been times that I've gotten promoted, right? And it was like, yo, can you do this? Yeah, absolutely. And I was like, yo, I don't know how I'm gonna do it. But I'm like, yo, I've never not done, not been able to do it. I've never not been able to walk into someplace, not know it, and go out not knowing it. So I was like, yo, I'll just, I'm just gonna figure it out. So that was one of the things that I program that I just kind of I guess it's kind of as an imposter syndrome, also where I'm like, yo, there's no way I feel like I'm ready. But in my mind, I go, um, well, it doesn't matter if I don't think I'm ready. They think that I'm ready. So if they think that I'm ready, then I've shown them whether I like it or not to myself, that I've shown them something that they believe in me. So from then on out, I was like, yeah, yes, thank you, yes, thank you, yes, yes, yes, I can do it. Yes, I can do it. Um and the other thing is when I was younger, I was told so many times by by outside outsiders that I was too small to do this, or I wasn't bright enough to do that, or I wasn't gonna be able to do this, that I kind of started it started, I started to believe it a little bit, right? So much so that when I came across somebody like when I came across my my coach, the man that taught me how to play tennis, when I came across the man that taught me, he was telling me that I could be great at something. And I was so messed up that I didn't take it seriously and I didn't believe it. So I was like, yo, I'm never going to not I'm never going to let anybody tell me what I can't do, so much to the fact that I start believing it. So that when somebody came and told me that you can and you are, I didn't believe them. So I was those are two interest inst instances in my life where I was like, yo, I'm never gonna, I'm never gonna allow this to happen again. So I just I just walk into anywhere like yo, I'm here because I'm supposed to be here, son. I don't care. You gotta prove to me that I don't belong here. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 48:34

So and and and that that's that's really that's profound and it's important, right? Like that people kind of take that message because I've I've heard it said before that um if you if you're offered an opportunity, say yes. And even if if you think you're not ready or you have a lot to learn in order to to kind of step up to that opportunity, say yes anyway, and then learn later, right? Yeah, even if you even if you know that, hey, I'm not qualified for this, and somebody offers you an opportunity, take the opportunity and then learn on the job. Like you won't be the first person to ever do that, right? And like you said, the part of your story that resonates with me is that somebody else gets promoted and they're they're not they're not good at it. Like they're not as they're not even or they're not even taking it as seriously as you would have. They're not making the effort that you would have made to get up to speed and to make sure that you're qualified and make sure that you are learning enough to to step up to the plate, right? Um, so that that's a that's an interesting aspect of this, man. Like sometimes, you know, there's another there's there's another saying that I've heard about like, you know, there's there's um somebody, you know, less qualified than you that's that's just going for it while you're sitting around thinking that you're not qualified. I'm paraphrasing it, but but there's people out there that are half as qualified as you have half the experience, but because of their confidence, they're being promoted and they're being uplifted because they're they're kind of exhibiting that they want it, that they they're willing to try and they're willing to put themselves out there, regardless of if they have all the qualifications or not. And a lot of times opportunities pass us by because we're not we don't feel that way about ourselves, right? And um, to me, that that's just what comes up when I when I think about that whole mind and body thing. I think about the like the empathy aspect, like I said, the um emotional intelligence that you have to have when you're dealing with other people. But I also think about like how you treat yourself and how important that is because it does it it can either um lead to opportunities or cheat you out of them, right? Um you can kind of trick yourself out of out of a lot of good things just by self-sabotage of not um believing in yourself or not encouraging yourself. Kind of like what I call experiential knowledge, that everything that you that's been thrown at you, you pretty much got through it somehow, right? Like there's nothing that that when I think about people like especially like people that have gone as far as we've gone in different things, you didn't really fail. Like you may you may not have been as great at everything, yeah, but you didn't fail, right? Like, so if you have a track record of not just straight up failing, or there's never been a time where we didn't try at least, right? Like we didn't give it our best shot. So if you know that it's it's in your character to give everything your best try, um that should be enough for you to for you to accept any opportunity.

SPEAKER_03 51:17

And especially if you have people like like people to motivate you, like we're married with kids, we have families. True. You know what I'm saying? Like one of one of our the motivations to get up is just to just to uh provide, you know. One of the motivations for us doing what we're doing now, our podcast, is because we wanted to make kind of like a a a capsule for our children and our grandchildren or or something along the way where to say, like, look, this is who your father was. This is who your grandfather was. Like, you know, I want them to know what type of person I was, but I also want them to know what type of man I what type of man I was. I want them to know some of my principles and some of my standards and what I stood for and the people I surrounded myself with. Um one of the great misfortunes I feel of my life is that I didn't get the opportunity to really know my paternal grandparents. Right? I have like no memory of my father's father and my father's mother. I have like one memory of her house uh when I was a kid being in there, and each year a a piece of that apartment disappears from my memory. And I always wish one of the things that motivates me when we do this is I'm like, yo, when my family, when my children have children, and my children's children have children, they'll have something regardless of if they know a lot about me or they remember me or not, they have something to go to a reference to be like, oh, right, that's that's my lineage, my lineage.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

Right. Yeah, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 52:53

So absolutely, and and motivation is where you find it, man.

SPEAKER_00 52:57

Absolutely, man. And I know we had talked about that before too, about creating like a time capsule. Because it's not just you know, there's a lot of aspects to this, right? Like we're trying to provide information, a little bit of entertainment. Um, people say that they're learning a little something when we do the podcast, they're laughing when we do the podcast. Um so that's what it that's a big, a big factor of it, right? But the other factor is like you said, the time capsule, right? Where years from now, if if this is still on on Apple, Spotify, still if they keep if they keep this going, if they archive it or something, I don't know what happens after 10 years.

SPEAKER_03 53:33

We'll always have YouTube.

SPEAKER_00 53:35

But yeah, how however long this all lasts, right? Like they'll have like a time capsule of what we did and um and what we thought about certain things, and and you know, even our voices, man. Like something silly, like a voice. Like, you know, you may not remember after a while, like what your father's voice sounded like, you know, uh over the years, and then what your grandfather sounds like you said, like, you know, my my grandchildren may look at this one day and be like, hey, this was my grandfather, like, okay, that's cool. Yeah, and this is what I what he thought about things, this is what he did.

SPEAKER_03 54:03

Um walking around with the bedpan and yeah, this one he had a sense of humor.

SPEAKER_01 54:15

Like, yeah, mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 54:16

But but yeah, stuff like that is important too, man. Um, to to kind of create a a a time capsule is is the gift of of this medium, right? Um, that we could record this and just keep it. And for for as long as it lasts, our children, and maybe our children's children will have it as as something that to look back on and be like, oh, this is what my grandfather thought of things. And and you know, these guys were you know, he's kind of corny, but yeah, but but uh there was some some information in there too, if you can sit through it.

SPEAKER_03 54:49

Yeah, man. You know, which brings us to uh uh next one uh um uh digital life, which which which is weird. I feel like it's weird because when I was looking, one of the things was digital life and like well, digital life and like your education. So basically it's like consumption if you think about it. You know what I mean? Like educational uh consumption, your information, social media, uh your engagement with your ex with external forces, i.e. me social media, Instagram, whatever, however you communicate with people outside of outside of your in your individual household and education, how far you've gone, what you uh what you've consumed, do you read? You know what I'm saying? And we talk about this all the time about the importance of how there's been this movement of how um college isn't important or necessarily important. Um a degree and this and and knowledge isn't always well I'm not gonna say knowledge because it must always be acquired.

SPEAKER_00 55:56

Right. I I think it's a debate over the importance of of going to a traditional college as opposed to kind of um a trade, you know. And and and but but I think the mistake that people make, just to touch on that a little bit, because I don't want to go off on a tangent with you, but but I think what happens in the mistake in the argument is is automatically applying the education to whether or not you're able to make a lot of money with that education, right? Yes, and I think that that's a mistake because education is about much more than making money. Of course, that's extremely important, and it's it today's society, it's all about getting the bag, and we all know that that money is is is a form of power, it's a form of freedom. And I get all of that. I'm not I don't want to diminish any of that, but I just want to want people out there listening to know that education is about a lot more than whether or not you can make a bag after you get out or how much you owe in loans, right? I know all of that is all of that stuff is impactful and it's important, but when it comes to that argument over, and I know this is not exactly what your point, but yeah, but I just want to reiterate this because I think it's really important, right? Like when it comes to the the debate over whether whether college is important anymore, or whether young people should just go find a trade and go start making money right away, or even in technology, they say that you can just get certified in something and just go right into the workforce because all the employers are looking for is that you have the skill sets in order to do the job, right? But you know, when you get if you just if you do decide to go to college and you can and you can work it out, you know, financially and all that stuff, there's a lot more to college than just whether or not you're gonna get paid a lot when you get out, right? I know that that's that's an extremely important aspect of it, but there is there's other aspects of it, like like we talked about the social, emotional stuff, like uh like emotional intelligence, your EQ, um, your ability to have the time and space to kind of learn and and and like you know, study topics that you may not otherwise be exposed to. Yes, if you didn't really if you didn't go to a traditional college. Like there's things that happen in in college that you're not gonna experience just by going to a trade school. And then there's there's trade schools that are gonna give you that that skill set right away that's gonna allow you to make a living and and feed your family and all that stuff. So neither one of them is is is either you know like better or worse. There's no wrong answer there. To me, the answer is always it depends on your personal situation, it depends on what you're looking to get out of it, what your goals are, what resources you have in order to get through that, what whichever whichever path you choose, what are gonna be your support systems and your resources to get through that? What is gonna be the impact of it after you're out? Like not just the student loans, but what type of job are you gonna be able to get? What's gonna be your network after you get out, right? So there's a lot of different aspects to education, and I feel like the argument that happens online is really all about oh, well, I got a friend that graduated and he can't find a job, or I got a friend that graduated and they got X amount of student loans, or I have a friend that graduated and they only make this much, and I went to this tech school and I make this much, right? And it's really not all about that. And I think what pe what society is kind of fooling us into is thinking that this is all about how much money we can make right after graduation. I don't want to diminish that because that's extremely important to people. Everybody has to make a living. Um, but but I don't want people to be tricked out of out of like getting that traditional education. Because if you see a lot of the people that that say that, these employers that that even encouraging people to just go get certified in something and come right in and start working, a lot of those people that are top, top, you know, executives, they have degrees, right? And and their degrees and their networks and their their advanced degrees have gotten them educated to the point where they are able to run a business. They are able to understand different aspects of business and finance and and um you know different things that that that make them qualified to say who they want working for them and whether or not that person needs a degree to work for them. It's just something that I want people to think about when when who's who's making these arguments and um who is it benefiting if we're making the argument that that young people no longer need to get a traditional education, right? Yeah, who benefits from that?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:27

That's social that's social media engagement. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:32

Right, and that goes back to the digital life. Like we have this digital life that's telling us what is the digital life feeding us and what is it telling us, right? Like that and it's it goes right into your personal ecosystem where you have to be careful about and intentional, like we always say, yeah, like, or I always say all this, you know, intentionality is is extremely important. Like you gotta be intentional about what you're feeding yourself, and then you gotta be balanced and in like kind of you know, when you read an when you read a certain argument or you have a certain opinion, sometimes you have to go find information that contradicts it, right? Yeah, and then you make your decision, right? Like you can't make a decision based on your gut feelings all the time or your personal opinion, especially if you don't have, like I said, it's experiential knowledge again, right? You gotta if you don't if you lack experience or something, and every if everyone that's talking to you lacks experiences, you have to go go the extra mile of not only researching your actual opinion, but you gotta find any information that contradicts it, and then you make a decision, right? So that's kind of a more scientific way of coming to decisions like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:35

This is like a recurrent statement of this episode. It's your personal ecosystem.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:40

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:41

Right? So you're you're trying to control your personal ecosystem the best as you can. So don't let somebody outside of your ecosystem control something that you should be controlling yourself. Unless you just don't want to do it, don't let somebody talk you out of it. You know what I mean? Like don't let somebody tell you that um, you know, school is school is whack. You know what I'm saying? Like college is whack, which is whack. You know what I mean? If you if it's something that you want to do, you do it. Don't let somebody don't let don't turn on your phone or your computer and see somebody telling you that they make this much money and they didn't even do this or they didn't even do that. Because honestly, you know, a lot of social media is a farce, man. Like a lot of these people are just posing for the camera. It's it's like the um it's like the I saw a thing, uh uh a sketch with a guy talking about how to get how to be a millionaire. And basically they have no idea how to be a millionaire but convincing people to sign up for them, telling them how to be a millionaire and becoming millionaires by telling people you ever saw that with the yeah, yeah, you sign up for my course. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:54

And it's like, yo, you did so well. Now you're on to level four and now you're on the level five. Yeah, it's it's it's almost like the new version of the multi-level marketing schemes, right? Like the pyramids, yes. Yeah, so it's almost the new pyramid where like if you sign up for my course for X amount of hundreds hundreds of dollars, I'm gonna give you a booklet, I'm gonna give you the workbook, I'm gonna give you free access to me so I so we can have one-on-one sessions and all that stuff, right? And I'm gonna talk you to death about how you don't need this and you don't need that. Here's all you need. And then you're gonna go about your your day, and and I'm gonna go about my day, but I'm gonna be a few hundred dollars richer.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:32

You're gonna be a few hundred dollars richer.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:35

And and and yeah, and and I don't and I don't want to bash or like I'm not trying to bash people that don't provide that too.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:41

There's plenty of legitimate legitimate, yeah, wholesome, good information.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:45

And and there's plenty, and like I said, like we've talked about this before, so I don't want to beat it to death, but there's there's plenty of alternatives to traditional um college, right? I think we went off on a little tangent here, but like the point is that there's alternatives to to traditional education, like college. But but the key is to kind of like do your own kind of thinking about this, do your own I hate saying do your own research because it sounds so like conspiracy conspiracy theorists, like I did my own research, and you know, like I don't want to I don't want it to sound like that, but literally these are things you could research in fact, right? Like you you could research like the statistical data on how much college graduates make on average in in comparison to their their peers that that didn't go to college, right? You can do statistical data on how many people that start businesses close within a year, you know. You know, like so there's a lot of information you could gather. Like you could do statistical um analysis of of how many people are successful after going to ex-trade school. Like if you're the if you're trying to be an electrician or plumber or whatever the case may be, just research it. Like college is not for everybody. Um entrepreneurship is definitely not for everybody. And then and trade schools may be for some people, right? Like, so but I I think that that what what kind of concerns me though is the blanket statement that you don't need college that I keep seeing on or especially on social media, when you look at the comments, people are like, Well, my friend went to college and they the all they got was loans, and that's definitely not the case. I'm here to tell you for for the one thing I can tell you for a fact is that some people that go to trade school they make a lot of money, right? But I can also tell you for a fact that some people that go to college make a lot of money, right? So if that's what's important to you, depending on what you take in school, depending on what you do after that, depending on what type of network you have and and what type of work ethic you have and what you're willing to contribute, you can make a lot of money after college, and you can make a lot of money in trade after trade school. So I guess that's a takeaway. For those of you making that argument, it really depends on you. And like Rand said, it's a personal thing. Like, just like your ecosystem is personal, your story and and and what you get out of your education is a very personal and subjective thing. Some people go through a lot of peaks and valleys before they reach some level of success. Um, and some people get right to the bag. Like if so, if that's what you're interested in, that's out there for you. But it really depends on you and and for you to think it through, for you to get the right help, the right network, the right major when you're in school, stuff like that. For you to be very, like I said, intentional. Is probably the key word for for any avenue you're gonna take, you have to have some some intention behind it. And you have to have a plan, right? You're you know, the the people that that kind of fall into categories where they don't do so well after they finish any of these things, is because they didn't have a real plan. And and you can't blame everybody. Like at 18 years old, 17 years old, and you and me graduate from high school, yeah. You have to be ready, once you're out of there, you got to be ready for the workforce and plan your whole life out, right? Like, so that's very difficult. But the more you can like learn as you go, the more you can take on like people in your ecosystem, those relationships and and those those those people that that encourage you, those people that give you advice, those people that have done it before you, the more you raise your percentage chance of success regardless of the path you take, right? So that's kind of I just want to have that like drilled in, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:21

Um because I I hate seeing that argument like because it's so hard to make a like a a real uh to have a real discussion or a real debate based in fact within the comment section of some social media post.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:34

Yeah, man. So but the one thing about your ecosystem is that once you master it, you know what I'm saying? Once you become a master of your own personal ecosystem, you'll realize that the most the most trouble is basically an imbalance somewhere. And if you keep your circle tight, you'll know, like, for instance, I'm having a bad day. I have I have a 10-month-old and a toddler. I haven't slept in years. Because a lot of times there's a reason why sometimes I'm not always in the best mood. I can always trace it to that. And then I set myself on the right call. So the people that's around me, they know you know he ain't sleeping, man. So so take it easy on him. Um, health and wellness. You may not be taking care of yourself, you may not be watching what you eat. Like these are all things that you can control. I've I've read somewhere even while I was doing a little bit of research for this, for this podcast, how, you know, journaling, find an outlet for yourself, write down your thoughts every day, get a diary, journal. Um, you know, what did you do? What did things how did things go wrong? How can things go right? How do you handle certain situations, but especially make time for yourself. Meditate. Um, have a time for yourself where you can sit down and reflect and think and work things out on yourself. Because I like I said, I always think how a room reacts is how I walk into a room. That's just the that's just how I react. And you and you I'm sure we've all been places where you've you can literally see sometimes a room gravitate towards a certain person. Like you know who's the top dog in the room, you know who's the comedian, you know who's the moneymaker, you know, you know who's the toughest person in the room in the gym and and things of that nature. You can sway, you can kind of sway sway the crowd towards your way. But are you gonna sway it towards the positive or are you gonna sway it towards a negative? Right. And it all depends on uh you and lack of progress, how far you get in life. Every now and then it is out of your hands. Uh-huh. Sometimes it's not your fault that you didn't get that job. And sometimes it's not your fault that you didn't get the position. But a lot of times you can look and self-reflect and be like, well, I didn't get this promotion because this person has this degree, or I didn't get this promotion because this person was willing to go back to school, or I didn't get this promotion because I'm late three days out the week. Or you know what I mean? My work always has to be double checked. Or I call out a lot, whatever. Like, first look at yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:13

Wow, I feel attacked.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:14

You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:15

No, just now I'm just joking. No, I'm just joking.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:19

Last week now with the big arches, and now with the with the tries and the big arches, and now you know you're not having a good two weeks, bro.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:29

It's two times in the week late.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:33

No punctuality matters. What are you doing? You you didn't pass that test? Did you study for that test? Be honest. You know what I'm saying? Did you did you study or did you use Chat GPT? You wrote that paper, you got an app. Did you did you use the same format that your entire class, you know? Did you did you show that you can think outside the box? Are you not being able being creative enough? You know, these are all things that you have. Control the controllable. You know, and that's if there's anything that you get from this, control the controllable physically, mentally. So there you go. You got anything else to add, my brother?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:11

Um, nah, not really. I think uh I think we covered it, man. Um yeah, this is this has been a good conversation, man, because it it it definitely hits home for me that one of the key things, and I guess I do have some more to add, which we seriously, like I'm I'm glad we had this conversation and we and we talked about this particular topic because it it really is something that resonates with me that I have to try my best to optimize my my own personal ecosystem, man. Because, like I said, I I liken it to like I'm joking about it, but I kind of liken it to like a fish tank, right? In order for your little goldfish to thrive and survive, that environment needs to be optimized, right? Like you gotta have the right temperature, you gotta have oxygen kind of pumping through the water, you gotta put some food in there, but not too much food, right? Like you gotta have maybe your little rocks in there, a little, a little, you know, whatever, like a uh uh thing that sucks on the glass and everything.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:07

The you gotta have the thing that cleaned the the little that ugly little succubus looking thing that just cleansed.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:14

Yeah, the thing that clean yeah, it cleans off the you know the algae or whatever that's that's yeah, man. Yeah, the little those sucker fish that might clean off the algae off the tank and stuff like that. Um you need the little habitat that it can swim through so it has a little place to for leisure time. And I joke about it, but those are all the things that as human beings we need too, man. We need the kind of the the lower level stuff, like the hierarchy of needs, where you need like your your shelter, your food, your water, your warmth, you know. Um, but then it gets a little higher where you need like human interaction, like you need your relationships, right? You need your family, um, you need your your the closeness of of your friends and all that stuff, your confidants and whoever you're dependent on, right? And then it gets into stuff where you need downtime, you need leisure, you need to relax, right? Like you need growth, you need to have a feeling that you can be mobile, you can have mobility, you can have movement, um, not only physically, but in a in a proverbial sense too. You need to have the freedom to kind of move in the way that that you that you want to, at least uh optimally um and ideally, everybody would want to to have the freedom to kind of move around the way they the way they see fit, right? Um and then wellness, right? Like you you need to be healthy in order to to bring all of that stuff together. If you're not healthy, none of those other things will will really matter much if you're not keeping yourself relatively healthy, if you're not well, if you're not mobile.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:42

Um pour from an empty cup, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:49

You can't you can't pour from an empty cup, exactly. So so you're it's not just a physical thing, this is a kind of a like you said, like a as a tie of the mind and the body, right? Like um, where you gotta feel those things as well. You gotta have certain resources in order to feel those things too, right? So, yeah, when I think of the ecosystem, then like this is an important conversation, and um it's it resonates with me because of the the fact that I know that personally, I need to really optimize those things. I think I have a lot of those things in place, and I think it's obvious that I do because I think you you and I both do, like we're doing well in our lives, but I feel like because we're doing well, we have an opportunity that's unique to a lot of people in the ability to optimize all those things, right? Like to not be complacent and think like, oh, I got my ecosystem's fine, you know, it's all right. I'll just relax. And I feel like, you know, one of the other things is not to be complacent, to be, like I said, like I keep saying this, and I've said this in several podcasts, but to me, the word intentional is probably one of the most important things, right? Like you gotta um look at these things and look at how you're gonna optimize them, right? Like, what's what's what's gonna make this keep growing? What's gonna make this stay? If it's great, how are you gonna make it stay great, right? If it's good right now, how do you make it better? If it's not optimal, how are you gonna optimize it? Right? Like if if if it's less than great, like what are you gonna do about it, right? And like you said, control the controllable, and I think you'll be on a on a great path. And and that's something I like as I say it, I remind myself of that, not just saying it because for whoever might be listening. Um, I gotta remind myself of that. So that's why this episode resonates um with me quite a bit.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:30

Yeah. And back to the whole fish tank thing. Don't be a fighting fish either, yo. I don't know if you've ever I had a fighting fish when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:37

What of the betas, those little beta fish?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:39

Dogs, no, the fighting fish. First of all, they're beautiful. They have like these long, luxurious fins, right? But you can't put them in a fish tank with anything. They like to be a bit more. But isn't it the beta?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:51

That's not a beta fish? Because I've had beta fish where they said that they need to be alone.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:56

Maybe that's what they call. Maybe the crap fish is another name. And they're kind of long, they have like long.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:03

Yeah, on both sides, the top and the sides, and they come like I had a black one, or was it a navy one? Anyway, they like bite all the other goldfish's fins. You wake up the next day, your goldfish.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:12

Yeah, I think you're talking about a beta fish. They're supposed to be alone.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:15

You put them in a, yeah, I had to put them in like a little tiny fish tank next to the fish tank, yeah. So don't be a fighting fish, yeah. Don't be a fighting fish, yo. You know what I'm saying? Get along with others, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:26

We're taking that this this fish analogy of the tank very strong. But no, but it it applies. It applies.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But one more thing before we end, I want to say a special RIP to Barry Caldwell. A lot of people do not know who Barry Caldwell is, well, was, including myself, but I found out he's also a native New Yorker, but he is an animator, a director, and a storyboard artist. Um Animaniacs. He worked on the Animaniacs, Osmosis Jones. Remember the Chris Rock movies?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:04

Tiny Tombs, The Smurfs, Alvin and the Chipmunks. He was a good friend of Paul Deany. Many people may be uh familiar with Paul Deany's work. He did uh uh that fantastic, that Batman, the Batman cartoons. Wow, that bat that cartoon was dope. Paul Deany did a lot of that uh DC. Yeah, the the Batman cartoon. Um and he was a close personal friend of Paul Deany's and a lot of his a lot of his um fellow creators called him one of the finest artists and someone who could elevate any project he touched. So shout out to Barry Caldwell. I wish I I don't you know what? I don't wish that he died a month earlier so that we could put him in the in Black History a month. But I feel it's a name that we should know. So R. Peter Barry Caldwell, man, animator, director, storyboard, artist. Uh he recently just passed at the age of 64, and I had no idea that that he was one of the the main animators and the brains of the storyboard behind like tiny tunes and Animaniacs, which was a dope cartoon. We were watching Animaniacs in college, bro.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:15

Yeah, that's a classic.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:16

You know what I mean? So shout out shout out to him. I know, I know probably Sacconi, one of the guys that we know who's uh who's an animator and an artist. He probably is well aware of who he is. So episode 33 that Patrick Ewan is in the book, show you what I mean now now. Shout out to our day 33s, our day ones and everyone in between. Absolutely. And as usual, and as always, shout out to our day one, day one, you know who you are. You know, and you know what, man. Since we are prolific, that's right, my brother. He says it with the greatest enthusiasm. You are prolific. We will be back next week. Same Gen X time, same Gen X pace place with another episode, and we'll see you then. And control the controllable. If you haven't learned anything from today, control the controllable, we gave you a movie, we gave you a book, go check out that Claudine, that Claudine with that fine Diane Carroll boy, and um pick up that Sprout book and uh power to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:41

Power to the podcast.