More Than A Haircut

Every once in a while you meet someone who reminds you that the most meaningful work does not come with a flashy title. It comes through presence, curiosity, and the ability to truly listen.

Matt Trukovich is a barber, but what happens in his chair goes far beyond a haircut. From factory floors to cleaning bathrooms to running an MMA promotion, his journey is built on saying yes to opportunities others might overlook. Along the way, he has developed a philosophy rooted in purpose, empathy, and the dignity of all work.

In this conversation, we explore identity, masculinity, growth, and what it means to build a life with intention. Matt shares how travel reshaped his worldview, why many men struggle with purpose, and how learning to “enjoy the toil” can change everything.

This episode is about more than a career. It is about becoming the kind of person who shows up, listens well, and keeps evolving.

If you have ever wondered what your work really means or where your path is heading, this one will stick with you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

You've gone from working in factories to cleaning bathrooms to cutting hair to doing things that sometimes people wouldn't be willing to do. What has that taught you about the dignity of all work?

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Probably three or four years ago I realized, okay, these aren't things that you must do. This this isn't bondage. Because clearly I enjoy doing this. Clearly I enjoy being busy and I love having a task. So instead of approaching it as something that I must do, as if it's a job that I have to do, this is what I like to do. My mindset in there is like I'm this is a project. It's a it's art. It's not something that I'm tied to or is a must. I get to do it and this is what I love to do. So now I enjoy it, enjoy the toil.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Hey everybody, this is CallerID. We're calling about your identity, your direction, and what you're doing with your life. I'm Brandon Davis Wells. Let's dig into what we're really doing here.

SPEAKER_03 1:14

Every once in a while you meet somebody who reminds you that the most interesting stories don't always come with impressive titles or flashy resumes, but they come with presence, curiosity, and the ability to truly listen. Today's guest is one of those people. If you've ever sat in a barber chair and walked away feeling like you got more than a haircut, you already understand his philosophy. Time in the chair is so much more than a haircut. Matt Trukovich currently serves as a barber at 419 Barbershep in Ashland, but his journey is wound through factory floors, entrepreneurship, running an MMA fighting organization, and even more impressive, a relentless pursuit of meaning, discipline, purpose, deeply philosophical, but also at the same time intensely practical, very kind, and one of the most thoughtful people I've ever met. We graduated from high school in the same time frame, but our paths didn't really cross until the last few years, and I'm grateful that they did. Conversations with Matt tend to linger long after they're over, and that's a good thing. So this episode, though, isn't about barbering. It's not about any certain roles or titles, it's about identity, purpose, masculinity, discipline, failure, growth, all the things that we talk about on the Caller ID podcast week after week, and why listening might be the most underrated leadership skill that we have. This is my call with Matt Trukovich. Matt, thank you for jumping on the call, my man.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

It's an honor to be here. I'm truly honored.

SPEAKER_03 2:43

I met you sort of by happenstance because I needed a haircut and was walking down Main Street and said, This place looks cool. And I popped in and you guys were so busy, you're like, yeah, you got to make an appointment. And so I made a I made an appointment, and growing up as somebody with a mother who ran a hair salon, I'm very particular about who I let cut my hair. Uh but I knew after my first appointment I'd be back. And it wasn't that the haircut brought me back, although it was very good. It was the fact that we had conversations immediately and I felt seen and heard. What does that do for you? And why did you jump into the barber profession after years of doing other things?

SPEAKER_00 3:26

That's the reason I love barbering. Everyone that I talk to is a chance to learn something, regardless of where they are in class, society. I've learned things from people that you know most people wouldn't even take the time to listen to, and that's that's amazing. But what led me to barbering was my barber, my factory was getting ready to close, and because they considered us losing our job to foreign trade, I got a trade readjustment allowance for education. And I was talking to my barber about what was going on, and she said you should go to barber school. And it ever since she said that it clicked and we I ran with it.

SPEAKER_03 4:03

How do you describe when somebody asks you what you do? How do you describe it? Because I I I would say, and my mother would probably agree with this as a longtime beautician, you might say, Well, I I cut people's hair, but it's so much more than that, right? She always felt like when she had somebody in the chair, it was like her chance to speak into their lives, but also to listen. How do you explain that when you talk with people?

SPEAKER_00 4:27

When someone asks me what I do for a living, it's barbering. The haircut is where the financial transaction is taking place. The real fruit's free for me and for them. And the conversation is what brings people back, and it's what I look for. I there's days I'll look at my list of the clients and be like, today's gonna be amazing. And and I'll pick up, we'll pick up right where we left off in the last conversation. I know what their dogs' names are, I know what projects are that are working on the house, what what traumas they're going through. There's a lot of there's some days where someone's celebrating, getting ready to be married, and then someone's got getting ready to go to a funeral. The emotional roller coaster, it's it's a lot, but I I love it. I and just learning about the human experience is what keeps me going to work and loving it.

SPEAKER_03 5:11

You're sort of shepherding people while they're in that chair, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Yeah, but it because I'm only a barber, you know, it's not uh it's hard to get canceled when you're just a barber and you say something that someone doesn't agree with. But yeah, there is some shepherding that happens, and I'm I'm being shepherded as well. The more the more life experience that you understand, then the more wisdom you can gain and apply it to your own life as well. It's my life.

SPEAKER_03 5:35

I love the fact that when I sit down in your chair, we don't always agree on everything, and that's awesome, right? But I've walked away at least being able to think and process through either some things that I brought in or that you brought to me, and we walk away going, Well, that was fascinating. When you were 18 years old, did you ever envision yourself doing something like this?

SPEAKER_00 5:55

No. I actually worked for Geb Hearts when I was in high school. I was sweeping the floor, running the registry. It was part of my schooling program. Yeah. And he tried to tell me to go to barber school right out of high school. Like he was gonna pay me and have me as an employee, and I just couldn't see myself doing that, and here we are.

SPEAKER_03 6:13

So I just took a a little bit of a detour. What did you do when you came out of high school at 18?

SPEAKER_00 6:17

I worked a few factory jobs in Ashland, and then my cousin called me. He was at Ideal Electric, and he was the IT guy, and he said they're hiring on a job to take out the trash and clean the bathrooms, and then he asked me what I was making at the time, and he I was gonna get a three dollar an hour rage running a machine to cleaning bathrooms, and me that was a no-brainer. And then I was there for 17 years after that.

SPEAKER_03 6:40

What's the biggest thing you learned doing that?

SPEAKER_00 6:44

How important your co-workers are, your relationship with your co-workers. I mean, I was in a factory, but I was always in a job where I could move from place to place. I was never I was just never standing in one position for the whole shift because I can't do that. But the relationship, because I was 20 when I started there, that place raised me. Like I was most of most of the people I worked with were older, wiser. They took me under their wing. I wasn't from a lot of their backgrounds. I mean, I miss I miss those people so much. Not the job, but the people. We were a family.

SPEAKER_03 7:15

I've talked about this before, the importance of what coworkers bring to your life, because you spend more time with them generally than your family, right? Yeah. I spent a lot of time when I went on the road working uh in television production, I was pretty narrow-minded. I will admit that. Because I just I grew up in a really kind of conservative, sort of tight window of of how to think about things. And then when I traveled the country with people from all over the country, I I I learned so much, but it took me some time to open up to some of that. And I'm sure there was probably a little bit of that when you started working when you jumped out of high school.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Yeah, even though it's Ashland and Mansfield and people are similar, but you can live on the outside of town, and then someone I grew up on Cleveland Avenue and Virginia Avenue. The people that live out outskirts of Ashland and the people that are living in town, it's it's a different lifestyle. We might have similar mindsets, but my travels when I when I've traveled to the States or even abroad, that's when I my eyes really opened up because there is more than one way to do this thing. And if you've only done it your one way, how can you know that that's the only way or the best way to do do things? That is narrow-minded, and that's it's a epidemic.

SPEAKER_03 8:28

Tell me more about your travel. Where have you traveled that you found incredibly interesting, that you pulled away from something from a from a life, you know, learning, whatever that you traveled and you said you came back different?

SPEAKER_00 8:41

One of my jobs at IDEO was on the test floor. We test motors and generators, and then part of our job was giving hospitality to the to the end user. So these people are coming from Egypt and China. I'm meeting people from all over the globe and talking culture. Well, one of our engineers was from India, and him and I created a friendship, and he knew by talking to me that I was just in love with culture and new ideas and things that weren't the norm. His brother was getting married in Hyderabad, India, and he invited me to go for the wedding. Wow. And he's like, you know, you can stay with my family, the only thing you have to pay for is the flights. And so I jumped on that. That my trip to Hyderabad, India was the most profound experience that I've had.

SPEAKER_03 9:23

Tell me more, because number one, the fact that you had developed such a relationship with a with a colleague and and to be invited to their siblings' wedding, right? That I want to hear more about that.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

So so it was a Muslim wedding. It was an arranged marriage, it was the what you know, your standard, what you hear about. But I stayed in their house, and the call to prayer speaker was right outside my bedroom window. So in the morning, the call to prayer is going off, and they're going to the mosque and they're they're praying. And every morning they would greet me, the the neighborhood kids, like they're 14, 10 to 14, 16, they're all waiting outside in the morning. They're treating me as if I'm John Cena. Just because they don't they don't get very many Americans that will actually go down into the neighborhoods and be with them and see how they live. And they were so they were so nice and so welcoming and so warm, even though that I've been told that Muslims are our enemy, or Muslims, we should be afraid of these people. And here I am in the middle of them, and I've never felt more welcomed anywhere I've ever been. It was just profound.

SPEAKER_03 10:31

It is why I think people need to travel if they can, right? It's easy to say, yeah, you should. If you're able to afford to send your kids somewhere, to go somewhere yourself, to get outside of where you grew up, whether that's Ashland County, whether that's Summit County, or whether that's Manhattan, you need to see how other people live and it exposes you. I spent a semester abroad in college in Cardiff. Now, I sort of chickened out by choosing an English speaking country to do my my exchange program, but I will say it still was revolutionary in the way I looked at life. You've landed in working in a service industry. Was there a moment when you started doing this where it felt like it clicked?

SPEAKER_00 11:14

I mean, there's days that feel like work and I'm tired, just like any other job. But there's there's never been a day at any other job where I left work and said to myself, I can't believe I get to do this for a living. That happens two or three times a week being a barber. There's days I walk to my car and like this is incredible. And I'm making more than I made when I was working in a factory, and I don't have I'm my own boss, and I it's it's free and I can say the things, things that I want to say and make connections, and it's uh it's ever changing. It's just it's a beautiful place to be.

SPEAKER_03 11:45

Would you uh have appreciated this if you had gone right into it out of working at Gebhart's at 18?

SPEAKER_00 11:52

I don't think so. I don't think so, because the trip to India wouldn't have happened. Who knows? I could have been burnt out by now. I I don't think I would. Becoming a barber is hard to to build your clientele. With me being from Ashland and running the fight promotions and being being well known in Ashland, I have a lot of friends and connections. The it was not hard to build clientele at all. Maybe three months and I was off and running. But that in itself was a blessing too. So I had I had made my bed beforehand, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 12:22

You did some years of running MMA promotions. Tell me about what started that, what prompted that, what was that like? Because as somebody who has never really dove into that world, I find it fascinating, but also from the outside, it looks like it can be toxic from a masculinity standpoint, whatever words you want to use on that. But tell me more about that because I'm curious.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

My brother, he fought in tough man competitions, which is like amate amateur boxing. And then he, you know, he would hype it up and all this, and then I in 2000 I looked at him like, I'm gonna do tough man, it's not that it's three one-minute rounds, it's nothing. So I went and did that, and then MMA started to gain popularity, but I could not wrestle. I had no ground skills at all. I met a guy that was a jiu-jitsu instructor, and then I met a couple AU wrestlers, so I started cross-training with those guys, and then we would go to fights. I I started as a fan, I would pay this money and go to these fights, and there would be a 90-minute intermission for the promoter to sell beer. You wouldn't get home until two in the morning. So we would go to these fights and we had fighters. We opened our own gym and we had all we had fighters, and we'd take five fighters and fill half oak hard. And then uh my friend Tony Prey, who was a police officer in Columbus, he started training with us, and he was looking around the gym. He's like, We could run our own promotion, we don't really have to. We can start, we can start our own organization. Without him, I wouldn't have never started. But he's he's the one that helped that talked me into starting it. And then once we got rolling, he was too busy with being a police officer and his wife. They traveled back and forth from Japan. He gave me the promotion, basically. We were partners, and then it became my wife and I.

SPEAKER_03 14:03

You're doing this on the side while working at Ideal.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

Yeah, yeah, it was more of a hobby than it was. It never really paid the bills, but quick pause.

SPEAKER_03 14:12

If you're enjoying this, make sure you're following or subscribed wherever you listen. It helps more than you think. If it's hitting home, take 10 seconds, five stars, share it with somebody who needs it. Just a quick reminder. That's okay, but it but it it scratched an itch, though, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Yeah, for 11 years, it was amazing. We on Saturday, the fun the most the funniest part about it is Saturday night, you know, there's 1200 people at Fairhaven Hall, and we it's we're rock stars on Saturday, and then Monday morning comes I'm pushing a broom again or whatever it was. My boss had no idea what was actually happening. None of my like my older family didn't even know. They these uh news journal would get behind our stories and there'd be pictures of the crowd. I don't know if they thought we were running a fight club in the backyard or what, but it was cool when they first came and saw that it was a legitimate thing we were doing.

SPEAKER_03 15:01

That that you know, I talk about it in every podcast you've heard me say with that whole Ike guy thing, but about you know the four circles that come together, and hopefully you can do something you love, something you're good at, something you get paid to do, and something the world needs. And sometimes I I've told people, I've told friends, I've told students, um, I've told clients, sometimes you have to piece those things together with multiple things, and it's kind of like what you're doing. I mean, not that you didn't necessarily love cleaning bathrooms, but probably not, right? I mean, you did it because it filled some of those other roles. What would you tell somebody when it comes to sort of combining those efforts to try to reach that center of Ikigai?

SPEAKER_00 15:40

I tell people that all all the time. So if you're working a job that's not fulfilling but it's paying the bills, you need a passion project, a hobby that you're passionate about. Because a lot of times your your passion will create the next avenue for you to go down. So so you need to pay your bills. That's what that's the reality that we live in. So you're going to work 40 hours a week, you have so much more time that we waste on binge watching or whatever it is. Find something that you're passionate about. And five three years from now, you could be making$150,000 pursuing your passion, and that your hobbies become your job. That's what's missing in a lot of young people is their passion. There, there's not a passion. There's not they don't know what direction to go in. How are we failing them then? Well, the the mindset that it's harder today for them than it was for our parents or for us. Things are more expensive, but I think that that mindset that's being sold is to to keep people where they're at. I don't buy into that narrative. Things are always hard. Things are hard every generation, and we could all say that. We could all make the excuse, well, it was easier for my parents. We shouldn't, we should not allow that into our minds. It's a that's a disease, and it it can keep you down. This that voice that you tell yourself, that's your reality.

SPEAKER_03 16:57

That fixed versus growth mindset that I know a lot of people have talked about in the last few years. It's it you're not wrong. Um you're deeply philosophical, but also practical, I would say, you know, uh in how you approach those things. Where do you think that kind of blend came from?

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Probably my life. My life up until this point. I mean, I was 19 and my I my when my daughter was born. I was in a lot of trouble when in in my teenage years in Ashland. And once you're in trouble in Ashland, you're if you don't if you're not squeaky clean, you're gonna continue to be in trouble. I mean, I think I was on probation for six or seven years. And then my daughter was born, and that changed the trajectory of my life. Certainly. That it wasn't about me, and I what didn't my the rage that I had from my childhood was not gonna help my daughter, so I had to get over that. I had to redirect for sure. But just the trials that I've that I've lived through and the things that I've done, the more you do, the more you see, the more insight you'll have.

SPEAKER_03 17:57

Yeah, I think that's fair. Listen, you've gone from working in factories to cleaning bathrooms to cutting hair to doing things that sometimes people wouldn't be willing to do. What has that taught you about the dignity of all work?

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Yeah. And the garden. And the gar yeah. Yeah, the toil is really where it's at. The toil is where it's at. I'm a kind of guy that has to be has to be busy. I'm always doing something. Probably three or four years ago, I realized, okay, this is these aren't things that you must do. These aren't this this isn't bondage. Because clearly I enjoy doing this. Clearly, I enjoy being busy and I love having a task. So instead of approaching it as something that I must do, as if it's a job that I have to do, this is what I like to do. And just that mindset switch alone has made right now. I'm remodeling a bedroom, and it's my mindset in there is like I'm this is a project. It's a it's art, it's not uh it's not something that I'm tied to or is a must. I get to do it and this is what I love to do. So now I enjoy enjoy the toil.

SPEAKER_03 19:04

You get a lot of men in your barber chair and they'll open up and a lot of men don't open up in other spots. Why is that?

SPEAKER_00 19:15

I'm not sure. Because I kind of I I honestly think that that's that was a God given gift. Because I've always had that. When I was a kid, I used to my friends would stay the night and they would get homesick and they'd cry and I'd cry, and my dad's like, What the why are you crying? And I think I just I feel that I feel people's energy. I feel I'm I'm an empath. I know that word gets thrown around around a lot, but I can feel when my family's here and things aren't right and everyone's acting like everything's right, but I feel that there's something off with them. Or there's when I was in barber school, uh, one of the older Puerto Rican guys, he said that I had the force because the way that people would open up.

SPEAKER_03 19:54

I love that.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

And it's something that I I don't take for granted. I do love it, and I cherish the things that people share with me, and I know that it's sacred and and and it's private, it's between us. That's something that needs to be it should be written in every barbershop wall that what's said here stays here.

SPEAKER_03 20:12

Like it almost like a Hippocratic oath for that document.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Yeah, because because if that goes away, then we lose the magic of our craft. If we if someone comes and tells us something, then we run around and tell everyone else. That's that's a terrible place to be.

SPEAKER_03 20:27

What do you think most modern men are struggling with the most, but don't admit?

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Purpose is a big one. And but the with the young men, they won't say yes to that cleaning the toilet job. That's holding them back. Because when you say yes to one door, you open the door and there's 15 doors behind that door that you were you didn't want to open. So by me saying yes to all even though it was a three dollar an hour raise, saying yes to the cleaning the toilets, I I had five other jobs in that in that building, and I just kept bidding up and bidding up. The test floor was like the second-paced, highest paid job in the in the shop. And I I I learned so much about how electricity works and generators work, but I had to say yes to cleaning the toilets for me to get to that point.

SPEAKER_03 21:11

Do you ever feel judged for not going to college?

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Oh, yeah. Yeah, but not from my not from people close to my in my family and my close friend circle. My little brother's the only one in my family that's ever gone to college. So it wasn't like a family thing, but yeah. But now society's starting to realize that a lot of those college degrees is it's just an added bill that you have.

SPEAKER_03 21:35

It's just uh you're an early adapter.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

Early adopters what you need to tell people, right?

SPEAKER_03 21:40

Yeah. I I ask people that sometimes, you know, cautiously because I like I also know that it's not a necessity, and I worked in higher ed, and you know, there were occasions where I had students come in and I I just short of would have to like push them towards are you sure you should be in college? Like that this is the right path for you? Like you're spending a lot of money or your parents' money or debt or however and those conversations are difficult. Do you see this is way down the rabbit trail or rabbit hole or whatever, but do you see the trades continuing to uh explode like they have been lately?

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Yeah, absolutely. Because not only is it a trade to make money, but it when you learn a trade, you're bringing something let's say the grid goes down. The the grid goes down and our our our local communities are our tribes. What is it that you bring to the tribe? You could go to a university and a hundred out of a thousand degrees aren't are worthless when that when the lights go out. But if you if you if you have a trade and you can build a house or you you're an electrician or whatever it may be you're actually bringing something to the tribe. And I that's another thing that young men are lacking today. If the lights go out I mean this is a terrible way to say it but a lot of people are just another hungry mouth to feed you know your your personality and your cute jokes they're not gonna they're not gonna help us sustain things. So if every if every young man just had one thing that they could bring if if shit hits the fan yeah then they would feel better about their about who they are as a person, what they bring to the table. And a lot of people tell you well we don't need those skills but it but do if we're not mentally well without them you know if we feel like part of us is missing maybe we do need that skill.

SPEAKER_03 23:21

Yeah. Whatever it may be what was the hardest professional season of your life?

SPEAKER_00 23:28

The end of the MMA stuff was probably the most emotional emotionally hard. Because that was a hard huge part of who I was for as a man to let it's probably hard for women too but I can't speak to that. But as a man we uh we build this identity for ourselves our persona and a lot of it is wrapped around our jobs or what we what it is we do for a living. Yeah and to to close one a chapter that that that that means that much to me or means that much to my persona to close that chapter and start anew that was hard. It was definitely a season of you know there there was a season of death there. Yeah it's much but it was I didn't love it anymore.

SPEAKER_03 24:05

It was time for for me to move on I think a lot of people stay in those things so long because of exactly stay too long into in those things because we often wrap our identity into the things that we do what advice would you give people out there that are maybe in that cycle where they're trying to figure that out any any wisdom for them?

SPEAKER_00 24:26

Well it's not just that we are wrapped in it we don't want to be the the male ego doesn't want to be the new guy. That inner voice even when I was walking I was 39 years old walking into barber school in in in downtown Cleveland and it was like 30 30 30 whites blacks and Puerto Ricans I was out of my element the voice inside my head was literally trying to get me to go back to my car. Like what are you doing? All the way into the school what are you doing? What are you doing? Go back to your car. So that voice you have to walk through it and the next day it was there but it was much quieter. The next day you know it just gets quieter and quieter. That that voice will literally keep you if you're paying the bills you're at a mediocre job it'll keep you there if you let it but if you say no to that voice and yes to whatever it is that you want to pursue each day that the the no voice gets quieter. It gets quieter and quieter. But it's in all of us and a lot of people will look at you and say oh it's easy for you no it's not easy it's not easy. But if you do it once you know you can do it again to reinvent yourself is that's what evolution is that's what we're supposed to be doing here.

SPEAKER_03 25:33

I can relate on various levels to all of this and I I think when we share these stories about the struggles that that of that inner voice that's sometimes two competing voices right is what I I look at and some people say yes the angel here and the devil here whatever but like there is a little bit of that being able to fight through but how how do you go about discerning which is the voice you should listen to and which is the voice that you shouldn't when it comes to career and and those sorts of decisions.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

Well through like through my spiritual practice and learning about spirituality and religion you know the truth when you feel it you know the truth when you hear it you know the truth when you see it. So anything that's self-deprecating is not you know that's everyone thinks the devil only tempts you with glitz and glamour. No the devil can keep you right where you're at through that shit talking voice that wants to keep you where you're at like anything that's not anything that's gonna keep you uh keep you still or idle the idle hands are the devil's playground that kind of stuff is like we should always be working towards bettering ourselves yeah and going towards the truth whether that be Christ or whatever it is that you choose. I feel like once you hear the truth it you it just resonates with you. Yeah the Holy Spirit in you you know what the Holy Spirit is and you know what the ego is yeah it's like when you get your feelings hurt when you get your feelings hurt or someone someone makes you mad it's always the ego. Oh if you step back for a second realize okay that's yeah that's part of me that I don't yeah it doesn't have to be affected.

SPEAKER_03 27:05

How do you define a good career right now?

SPEAKER_00 27:08

Something that contributes to your community something that allows you to make enough money to meet make ends meet and to travel my wife and I we were talking about travel and how important it is and you said it it is a luxury for sure it's a luxury but we just had a conversation last night about buying less less things that aren't necessity around the house. You know Amazon makes it so easy to just purchase things and then you have five seconds of gratification.

SPEAKER_03 27:37

One of the things that my wife and I talked about when we moved to North Carolina because we got rid of so much of what we had in in Ohio because we wanted it to be easier to move but there was also a purpose behind it similarly was I want to be a little I want to be a lot more of a minimalist. So if 18 year old Matt walked into your shop today and he sits down in your chair what would you want to tell him or what would you not want to tell him yet that's a great question.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

I would tell him to believe in himself to quit listening to that voice to the the voice of doubt and the that even growing up there's a lot of people in my family that were doubters like when I went to start the fights they're like you know how much insurance is going to cost is just there's always reasons to not do something. Just don't listen to those voices you know you follow follow your dreams and your passions show up for work don't call off because you can do both at the same time believe it or not. Yeah that's real that's probably what I would tell them.

SPEAKER_03 28:40

I always ask people this question about uh Larry David from curb your enthusiasm or Ted Lasso. Working in the service industry you you'll have a I think a unique perspective on this but what situations trigger your inner Larry David your frustration or misalignment or insecurity in your sort of daily grind at work?

SPEAKER_00 28:59

People not seeing what I see in them when they don't see it in themselves it for it frustrates me. Or like where we were raised to lead by example sometimes your example is not not witnessed you know sometimes you can do do these things that just start a start a culture but it's not even being seen or with those types of things or when people come in and just regurgitate what they saw on the last Fox news clip.

SPEAKER_03 29:24

I like when people come in with original thought like what what do you how do you actually feel I know you just saw that but you're just repeating what you just heard so what brings out and we talked about this a little bit before we started uh recording your inner Ted Lasso like what brings you the most purpose joy uh you know excitement about your day when you know you look at your sheet and you go oh here's these four or five people are coming in today I I can't wait for this what brings that the connection because it's as if we're growing together there's people that are studying their dreams and they're telling me about their dreams so now I'm gonna I have to go home and I I have to uh read if I don't have to but I'm that now I'm passionate about learning more about what dreams are the maps of dreams and maps of meaning so next time when I we talk again I'll have a little bit more understanding about that.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

This might be a layup for you but how do you hope people feel when they leave the barbershop I want them to feel better from how they look but I want them to feel hopeful motivated I mean the the look thing is there because I everyone knows that feel when you leave a barbershop you just feel crispy and everything's good. But I want them to feel deep a deeper purpose driven motivated there was a kid that worked in a pizza shop and he was slinging dough and he was talking about how he was just sick of all this and I'm like dude there's there's a job right uptown that pays four or five dollars more an hour and it was like one of those three 12 hour shifts on the weekend deals he quit his pizza job got that job just bought his first house is getting married so sometimes it's just one conversation to make that flip flip that switch in people's minds. If I can do that once a year it's that's worth it all day long. When you look ahead do you see yourself doing this forever yeah yeah I'll do this forever as long as my body will allow the good thing about barbering is like I don't have to it's not like a construction job where I have to punch in for 10 hours. If I'm 60 I if I'm 60 65 I can do three or four haircuts a day and call it good let's do a little word association success. Fulfillment failure a learning opportunity identity ever changing yeah you can be yeah you can become whoever you want to become the only the real you is the story that you tell yourself that's that's a money energy system say more about that I often tell my clients ever since I quit worrying about money I haven't had to worry about money. So in a in our in our western culture we have this idea that you're gonna make this money and then you're gonna stockpile it and save it until when you're older and then you're gonna spend it a money um an energy system isn't an energy system unless it lets go of itself. So if I spend all day cutting hair and let's say I have I have three hundred dollars and then I go to my favorite restaurant and then I tip my favorite waitress two haircuts worth of tips that's an energy system. I I took my labor turned that into an energy system and then fed it into something else that I would that I approved of voting with our dollars all that is important. If we only spent money on things that we believed in the world would look so much different. So it's an it's an energy system.

SPEAKER_03 32:51

I've never heard it used in that phrase and I it it almost kind of revolutionizes the way I think of it. Not that I didn't think of money as a tool but it's another step to call it an energy system.

SPEAKER_00 33:05

I think that's what I believe that's what God is.

SPEAKER_03 33:08

God is an energy system that let go of himself and here we are ambition purpose ambition gives you purpose it really does it gives you direction a n a northern northern star really I will give you the last word and it is what piece of wisdom or insight would you offer to somebody that's trying to figure out their work identity purpose right now going forward that's that's a heavy burden it's a big question you know I mean but you try to you could always try to narrow it down like one what's one thing you want somebody to to walk away from Matt Trukovich the wisdom that you've gained say say yes to more doors even if it looks like an opportunity that everyone expects to say yes to the job that they want for the rest of their life and if it doesn't look like the job they want for the rest of their life they turn it down like if you if you see a construction boss in a truck and a house and all these things that that you would like for your life he probably said yes to running that shovel and then he worked his way up like say open more doors say yes to to more things and then you'll be amazed how many more opportunities will be available to you and and find a passion find something to do that you're passionate about some kind of hobby outside of just consumption we Western culture we we consume television we consume reels and find a passion that's outside of just consuming we just be have have to be mindful of that too Matt thank you so much for jumping on the call I can't thank you enough you have thrown 35 minutes of nuggets at us here today to think about no thank you I was nervous and wasn't sure if I was going to have the words but as soon as I heard your voice and saw your face I was ready to go.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

You're too kind that's Matt Trukovich podcast please don't forget to like share and subscribe with all of your friends on all of your social media platforms. Thanks again signing off brandy