Unknown Parent Podcaster (4:31)
West of the smoke. Okay, Copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger. Oh, women, baby. Give it to me. I mean it. You're cleared hot campaign. Cleared hot. Well, here we go. This first question is about parenting, and I'm going to tack onto a little bit of what I said in the intro for the parents out there. I. I see you the oftentimes, especially to those that don't have kids, invisible trenches that, as a parent, you can very surprisingly find yourself pulled into and ambushed with. There's no perfect kid out there. There's no perfect parent out there either. A great combination. Of course, not a lot of people understand the highs and lows that I mentioned when I first opened the episode, but I do and I see out there. And even as chaotic as my day was yesterday, there was not a single moment in time during that day where I thought that the answer was, let's just give up, let's just stop. I think in those moments when things are being chaotic and you find yourself in a few positions like I did yesterday, where I didn't. I don't have the answers. I don't know what to do. There's no fucking instruction manual when it comes to parenting. I guess there actually probably is a book out there called the Instruction Manual to Parenting. I don't know if it's any good. I haven't read it. You do the best that you can. And at no point in time yesterday did I arrive at a place where I thought, well, I guess now is time to throw in the towel. But what I did feel like multiple times yesterday is that this is my opportunity to be the parent that I know my kids deserve. Regardless if that feels amazing or shitty to you as a person, because it's not actually about you as the parent, it's about your kids. If you make the choice to have kids, it's not a six pack or a 12 pack of eggs. You can turn back if a couple of them are cracked, especially when they're 14 and you really want to. For whatever reason, and trust me, I am not parent of the year. I'm not super parent, I don't have the answers. But for whatever reason yesterday constant thought was this is your chance. This is your opportunity to show your kids, or kid, depending on what's going on, how you behave in these situations when they probably realize that the wheels are coming off the bus as well? What do you do? Do you succumb to it? Do you. Do you let the emotional just absolute vice and press cook off steam and react emotionally instead of trying to work your way through it objectively? Or do you just become the best example of the best parent that you can possibly be? I tried to land on the ladder yesterday. Not so sure that I did. Today's first question again is about parenting. I don't have all the answers. I have only my experiences and I have a daughter, which this first question is based around. So let's get into it. Question 1. How do you feel about the trend over the last several years of young girls wearing a century essentially lingerie out in public? I'm basing this off my 17 year old niece and her friends. As every picture my brother sends. I am in shock. They were allowed to Leave the house dressed that way. This has been going on for years now. I don't have children but most of my friends do. I always forward the pictures to my friend who has two little girls to get her opinion for the last or latest, I should say prom picture. My friend was actually able to see my niece's nipple in her low cut cleavage booming dress. I mean shit, what are these parents thinking? My brother included though he is divorced and his insane ex wife is the one who buys the clothes. Maybe it's just me and my group of friends. We're all middle aged but even in my prime I was conservatively dressed, never felt the need to show off my goods and I fared just fine in dating. Anyway. I find it gross but wanted your opinion since I know you have a daughter in the same age group of these girls growing up dressing this way. Thanks for what you do, including sharing your dad with us. Well, let's talk about sharing my dad. He's on Instagram. His name is Vaughn Stumpf. V A U G H N Stumpf. He went out and bought a tripod to put his phone on so he can continue doing his Instagram lives. For those of you who want to follow my dad, understand what it is that you're getting into. You're probably 90 days away, if not less than that. Him forgetting to turn off the live or forgetting how to turn off the live, both terminating in the same thing. Him still broadcasting while he's probably in the bathroom taking a big old hoss. And you guys are going to join him on that journey. That's at a minimum. Maybe he'll do some of his Instagrams in just his robe that he likes to hang out in the house in. It's not a large robe. I don't know why he wears it. I don't know why he likes it. Maybe it's because it's breezy. If you follow my dad on social media, understand what it is you're getting into. Having said that, he is really enjoying connecting with people from a different generation. He is a late adopter to social media and by late adopter I mean last week at the age of 78. He does have some wisdom. I give my dad a lot of shit, but he helped raise me into the man I am today. And my mom and my dad deeply oriented my moral compass. I think it was refined over time by the people that I left my home with and worked with for nearly 20 years. But they were my true north and they helped me find my true north a lot of the things I've been able to accomplish in my life are because of things that I've learned from my father. So having said that, watch out for that robe. And if you're on one of his lives and you think he has forgotten to turn it off and he's headed towards that bathroom, do yourself a favor, just go ahead and turn it off. Okay. All right. To the question. I have a daughter who turned 17 this year, actually next month, because this is the first of May, as I record this the day before it comes out. I feel you with this question. I don't remember. I don't remember anybody being comfortable wearing as little clothing when I was growing up. As people who grow up in this era, in my daughter's generation. Do I remember when I was growing up. And maybe this is just purely a metric of my age. Maybe I am naive. Maybe I lived in a place where this was missed. Maybe it's only a European. I mean, those people are walking around just cocking balls out all the time. No idea why they do that. I don't think it benefits society in any way, shape or form, but whatevs, that's their choice. Across the pond, um, like a G string bikini or like a thong bikini was scandalous, don't get me wrong. At 17 or 18, I probably would have loved to see it, but I don't remember seeing it. I don't remember anybody being comfortable wearing that. I don't remember it being celebrated. I don't remember it being promoted. And again, this may be purely my naivete and what I was not paying attention to, but I did grow up in a beach city, and we did go to the beach quite a bit, and I did junior lifeguards for many, many years. And I saw a lot of people in swimsuits. And that's, of course, one example of, I think, this trajectory and trend towards women, young women specifically, even though I'm seeing some very, very short men's swimwear out there as well. And I mean, I don't know. I guess that's the good. The male version of showing you the goods. I don't know where it comes from, but I do. There are two places that my daughter has been deeply exposed to it. If you want to go on to. And I'm not saying this is social media's fault, but go ahead and go onto social media and look at the sexualization of young women. You want to see women that have massive followings, and it's. I'm not saying all women that have massive followings but it certainly seems to be a formula. And that formula, not very precise terms at all, would be the tits and ass formula, or as AG would call it, the science formula. And does it get attention? Yeah, I mean, demonstrably, yes. You could look at, I mean if you go to those accounts, which do, if you want to, don't if you don't. I'm not here to judge anybody's Internet consumption. If you're a consenting adult, do whatever you want to do. I'm here to tell you it's not really my cup of tea. Does it come across my feed sometimes? Yes. Do I sit there and spend any time looking at it? No. It's just not my jam. If you go to somebody who, let's say has built their platform on tits and ass, see if you can find one of their posts that deviates from that formula and take a look at the post, specifically the engagement and what you're going to find, it's not even in the same galaxy. So what is that reinforcing to that person who maybe is making their living through that medium? Maybe they're a little bit more insecure and they are driving their social capital and the way that they feel about themselves through the likes, follows, shares, what it comments, whatever it may be, what does that tell them when they put something up? A broad term, a more wholesome post? Again, no judgment associated with that Engagement goes down, comments go down, sharing goes down, or you even see people on there commenting. This isn't here what I. This isn't what I came here for. People get real and rough and edgy on social media sometimes specifically around this topic. It is reinforcing and rewarding the sexualization of young women. Maybe there's a thing where it's doing it with octogenarians and 7 year olds and 6 year olds and Fitch. I don't know. I'm not, I don't think I want to know. But that's one of the ecosystems that it plays in. I have no data to support this, but I 100% believe that that leeches out of the device in those social circles and it makes its way into real life because you're so used to seeing it, you're so desensitized to seeing it, that it somehow has become the new normal. Now, as a parent, to answer your question directly, how do I feel about that? Terrified. I am divorced. People who follow the show know this. I'm not saying I have an insane ex wife and I'm going to get to specifically that section right There. But if my wife bought those clothes, allowed my daughter to get ready for her prom with her nipples visible in a prom dress, I would lose my mind. Not on my daughter and not on my ex wife. I mean, I would lose my mind that that happened. That's a conversation with the ex wife for sure. It's a conversation with my daughter for sure. And that conversation is based around. To me, the conversation with my daughter would be how she values herself, what does she want to present herself as to the world. And what may not seem like a big deal right now could really have impact later in life. I was actually, I was spending time with my daughter today and she was talking about 18 year olds that she knows that start only fans as soon as they turn 18 years old. And I asked her, I was curious, what are your thoughts on that? And she said, there's no way that I could do that. And I said, thank God that that's how you feel. Why do you feel that way? Her words paraphrasing slightly or as much as I can directly remember the conversation, not mine. I want to have a family. I want to be a professional. I want to be taken seriously. And the last thing that I would want to do would try to be make money like that and have it hanging over my head for the rest of my life. Let me tell you, as a parent, that felt really good to hear my daughter say that. I didn't coach her into that, I didn't prompt her into saying that. I just asked her a question and I sat back and listened, holding my breath, hoping to God I shouldn't say that. Actually I'm not a religious person. Really, really. Hoping that she would say something along the lines that she did made me proud as a parent. Not everybody feels that way. If you're over 18, I understand that by definition you are an adult. But I tell you what, by real life experience, you're a child, probably even into your early 20s, especially for young men. But to put myself, you know, it's the divorce and insane ex wife who's the one who buys the clothes. Okay, If I were that dad, I would do everything I could to strengthen my relationship with that daughter, to grow and build that relationship to a place of trust, to a place of communication where you can have open conversations with your daughter about what she is showing to the world, about how she values her body, what she wants to present to the world about how she values her body by wearing things that are like that. My daughter, what is the. There's like a cut of A swimsuit that's like in between a thong and a normal set of. I don't even know what the hell you would call it normally covering swimsuit bottoms. My daughter, for whatever reason, likes the one that's in between the two. I don't like that at all. For one, I don't need to see my daughter's ass hanging out. Not, not what I'm like, intra, like, come on, don't do that stuff. Just like, she probably wouldn't want me walking around in a pair of like, tidy whities. Nobody wants to see that on either side. Do her friends wear that stuff? Yes, they do. Does it probably make her feel more comfortable fitting in with them in some way, shape or form? Yes, it probably does. Can I accept a little bit of that compromise if I have to, but I still have those conversations with her. I try to have the most open and honest conversations with my daughter. One of the biggest issues that I have with social media is not that it is demonstrably a horrible influence that does nothing but drive anxiety through the roof. Social pressure, an inability to escape being contact. There are so many negatives to social media. One of the things I hate about it the most too, is that it can live forever. You can make a mistake. You could put something on thinking, you know, hey, it looks great in the moment, not that big of a deal, and it just can live forever because people can record that shit, they can save it. And this is. I mean, this is an even deeper conversation. I was having this conversation with my daughter today too. We were hanging out with some law enforcement personnel. She was asking, is it a crime if you're in high school and a young woman sends a naked picture to a young man and he shares that? Break the legal threshold, which sometimes apparently it does. It can be considered child pornography. This, that or the other. I took the conversation to the place of why would you ever send that picture in the first place? You have to remember that anything you do on the Internet lives forever. And even in a moment where you might think like it's a good idea, you have to take a step back, hopefully before the picture is even taken, but definitely before that picture would be sent. And think about to the best of your ability, is what I'm doing helping me in any way, shape or form in the future. I have seen only examples of negativity coming from people sending those pictures, whether they're being scammed or legitimately sending them to somebody that in that phase of their life was a significant other, that that point in Time changed, their relationship changed, and then that picture made it out into the wild. Whether it was on a revenge site. Internet in general, you fill in the blank. Not hearing a lot of stories about positive feedback and benefit from doing that. But the Internet is full of people who regret ever doing anything like that. As a parent, this is your job. It is your job to. You can't protect your children from everything, but you can be their moral compass for a little bit and then you can help them orient your moral compass off of your own. Will their social circle have an influence on it? Yes, it absolutely will. Will social media have an influence on it? Yeah, it absolutely will. But I'll go right back to the episode I released on Monday, Angel Q. Especially until the point where they get to a place where they can be reasonable with their Internet usage. There are tools available now that can help navigate children away from this type of behavior that can have a lifelong impact if they are not careful. I don't know how any mother would feel comfortable letting her daughter wear something where her nipples are hanging out. I'm gonna assume that it was like, not gross. As in like, just not gross is like ick, but like a gross amount of that particular area of your body was hanging out the edge, right? I don't even know how the to talk about it. The edge hanging out as opposed to like the. The whole thing just blasting out there. As a parent, crazy or not, if you were to see that and be okay with that personal opinion here, you're a piece of shit. If you let your kid go out in public and specifically that example, like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you do that? What message does that send? You want to send somebody out looking like that and tell them to have respect for themselves and that other people need to respect them. Like, what? What are you doing? Could you possibly conflict messages even more when somebody gets to that age where they're able to legally make decisions on their own? And you want to stop being a parent to that point because, oh, they're an adult now, whatever. I mean, that's your choice to make. But if you think your influence stops at that point, you're out of your mind. It absolutely doesn't. As my children are getting older, I'm developing deeper and longer lasting relationships with them. We have the ability to communicate through a much more complex language than earlier. Their interests are changing, they are evolving, they're growing, they're thinking about things in a different way. They come to me and they ask me questions. Honestly, I think up until 18. You know, you have, you have an immense amount of impact, but I think you can match that even beyond by having these open and honest conversations. But it starts with helping them orient their moral compass. Why would that girl feel comfortable wearing that? I don't have the answers to those things because I don't understand it at all. If I saw a picture posted like that, my daughter went to prom like that because my wife, my ex wife allowed her to. Honestly, I think I'd go get her because no, I'm not going to allow that. There is not a single positive thing that is going to come from that. It's just all cascading negatives. So that is my opinion on that counts for only me. People can sit out there and be like, oh, you're too old school. This, that or the other, whatever. Feel free to feel that way. You asked for my opinion, I gave it to you. Question number two. This episode is brought to you by Stopbox. 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My sister corrected me she had cervical cancer that metastasized and ended up in her lungs. Survivability rate almost identical. But that is actually what ended up killing her. Back to the email. I lost my dad to cancer 10 years ago. This is the person emailing obviously. I have always hoped that my mom would find a companion to do the things she and my dad had planned for their retirement years, but she has zero interest. My parents were married for 46 years and have been together since they were kids. I just want my mom to have happiness even though I know no one could ever replace my dad in her heart. My mom will be 75 in July. It hurts my heart that she isn't living her dreams because my dad isn't here to share it with her. She lives in a 55 plus community near me and I found myself asking the gentleman I talk to if they're single. Not that it matters as she won't even flirt with the idea of dating again. My father in law passed from cancer just months after my own dad. My mother in law remarried within a couple of years. Granted their marriage, my husband's parents had been a dysfunctional one. Our relationship with her is pretty superficial one for many reasons, but I'm happy she's not alone. She's traveling the world and doing all the things that she wants to do. How did you feel about your dad remarrying? Were you relieved that he found happiness again or was it difficult? I've read that men who were happy in marriages and are widowed, if that's a word. Widowered was the actual word that I'm looking at. I'm just going to shorten it to widowed because I think that's how you say it. Or widowered might be a word that I'm not aware of. I've read that men who are happy in happy marriages and are widowed are much more likely to remarry. I'm guessing your parents had a strong marriage too. I want to believe my parents had a strong marriage, but I'll say this, there isn't a perfect marriage. I did not spend a lot of time really checking the pulse on the health of my parents marriage. I left largely and only returned very sporadically when I was 18 years old. Did they argue? Yes. Did the arguments get pretty heated from time to time? Yes, they did. Did they have times where it was just absolute ice coldness between them? Yes. I remember those things. And I remember the opposite of all those things as well. And again, I'm not here to judge anybody else's relationship, but I'm yet to find one that's actually perfect. So I think that those lefts and rights, ups and downs are a little bit natural. Probably the amplitude and velocity or the amplitude and frequency of those things could be deb. Debatable as to healthy versus unhealthy. But I think all relationships have ups and downs, lefts and rights. I just want my mom to have happiness even though I know no one could ever replace my dad in her heart. Have you asked your mom if she is happy and I'll get to your question here about how I feel about my dad remarrying. I don't think anybody wants their parents to be unhappy or parent to be unhappy unless they had a pretty gnarly upbringing and experience with them in that upbringing. So I think it's a very universal feeling that you want your parents to be happy through all phases of their life, but maybe even more especially in their later years where they recognize they maybe have limited time left. So squeeze it in. Well, you can get it. But I think it's a mistake to define for somebody else what their happiness is. And most people will tell you what makes them happy. So my first piece of advice to you is this. Have you had a conversation with your mom and asked her about the place that she is in? Does she want to be in a 55 plus community? Does she want to be somewhere else? Is she happy? Are there things that she is leaving on the plate that she is unwilling to do because she doesn't feel capable doing them or because she doesn't want to do them without her late husband? Having those answers I think will help you. You might find out that she is very content with where she is and what she's doing. Maybe she's not though, but it might not have anything to do with a partner in the sense of the word when it comes to marriage. She might just not want to do it completely by herself. And I'm here to tell you right now that's a great opportunity to spend some time with your mother or father in their later years. It may not be exactly what it is that you want to do at that moment, but imagine yourself in their shoes and if it was your children and they made the choice to help you complete and fulfill the things that maybe you want to do and you just don't feel like you have the partner to do anymore, but you don't want another partner. You still want to do those things, but you don't want to do them alone. Ask the question. Be really cautious defining other people's happiness for them. We're not all the same. I know people that are completely unhappy unless they are in A large social circle. And I know people who are completely unhappy unless they're almost exclusively alone. Who's right in that situation? I don't know. How about both of them? Because that's their life. That's their truth. That's what they like. Where was I? There was another part in this as well. Okay. Oh, she's traveling the world. We're skipping forward ahead to your husband's parents. Your relationship with your ex mother in law is superficial. One for many reasons. But I'm happy. She's not alone. She remarried. She's traveling the world and doing all the things she wants to do. Cool. Maybe that's what she is that she wanted to do. Maybe that's what fills her cup. Don't. Don't compare happiness with somebody else. Comparison is the thief of joy, for sure. In almost every regard. If that fills her cup with that person, awesome. If it doesn't do that for other people, also awesome. How did I feel about my dad remarrying? Man, this is a hard one to answer because it took me a really long time to deal with and process my mom's passing. I had a very short period of time. When I came home from overseas. I was notified via a Red Cross message that my sister initiated. And I was home within 72 hours. Actually not of receiving the Red Cross message. I was home within 72 hours of starting my travel home. I think I started my travel home 48 hours after that Red Cross message, but rapidly from a place where my mindset was very different than the mindset of others that I arrived home to. I was very cold. I was very calculated. I was very shut off and unavailable emotionally for a variety of reasons. I had been exposed to death pretty significant amount in the year of 2010 before my mother's own passing. And I was in a really binary headspace. Black, white, action. Reaction. Took me a while to get out of the headspace. You know, just because you get out of that headspace doesn't mean that you have dealt with anything that might have happened while you were in that headspace. It took me a really long time to unwind. I didn't have the goodbye that I wish I would have had with my mom. I didn't have the last conversation that I wish I would have had with my mom. If I could go back in time, there are very few things that I would change, even the ones that absolutely sucked, because I've tried to learn the lessons from those and become a better person from it. But I would change the final conversation that I had with my mom. I don't believe that I was the son that she deserved in that moment. And that is on me. She was literally laying on her bed in her last few hours on earth, and I could have done better, and I wish I could have. That fucked with my head when it came to my dad remarrying. Nobody can tell you how much time somebody else should take after a relationship, Whether it ends in a earlier life divorce or later in life death or an earlier in life death. I suppose. I mean, shit comes for us all. Last I checked, life is fatal. And we don't really get to say when that's going to happen. So it could happen. I mean, plenty of people I know who lost their significant others in their 20s as well. So it's really easy to judge the velocity that somebody makes the decision to get back in the game, if you will. It's really easy to judge, but you shouldn't because you never walked a day or a mile in their shoes. I've been the person who's been judgy like that. For me, if I'm being completely honest, the reason I'm saying you shouldn't judge because you haven't walked a mile in their shoes is because that's what I did. I was judgy. I was real Judgy McJudgerton. Not vocally, but it rubbed me the wrong way when my dad got together with his current wife, which is nothing against her in any stretch and actually nothing against my dad. All of this bullshit was my own doing, but I worked my way through it. I worked my way through it by talking to people who know how shit in your brain works. I will never stop talking about the positive impact in my life that counseling has had, because this isn't a good example of something that allowed me to objectively look in the mirror about what was going on. Was I pissed at my dad? Was I pissed at his girlfriend at the time? No, I was pissed at myself about how I had failed to deal with and process my mom's passing. Never walked a mile my dad's shoes. Would I want my dad to be unhappy? Would I want him to be alone? No, I wouldn't. And again, those are his decisions to make as to when he feels the five Ws. Who, what, when, how and why. Not mine. God, it's easy to judge. So my issues on that came from something else, but they were. They were tied to that a little bit. Was I relieved that he found happiness again, or was it difficult? I think I've talked about what made it difficult, what it grew into was happiness. Because I saw my dad being happy again as well. For anybody who's ever been around someone who's had a catastrophic loss like that, it's like a candle that almost goes out. It just. They. Everything shrinks in and you can find yourself worrying about whether or not it's ever going to come back. And, I mean, I know some people have made the decision to snuff out the remaining flame on the wick themselves, which is horrible and not something that I would ever want, but when they find that happiness again, you see that flame coming back. If you can't be happy for somebody else being happy, God, you're a right. If you can't be happy about somebody else's success, I'm going to say you categorize yourself as exactly the same thing. You're a right. Like, get over yourself. Get past it. Live your life. Don't sit there Monday morning quarterbacking and reliving somebody else's life. Because again, you're not walking a mile in those shoes. Why do you care about how they fit? You know, obviously if it's your parent, you don't want them wearing clown shoes. But, you know, that's a metaphor that doesn't really fit in this example. I've read that men who were in happy marriages and were widowed are much more likely to remarry. I have no idea the stats on that. I think if you were happily married, I mean, let's walk through this in absolute real time thinking about this. If you deeply love somebody and you're happy in that relationship and it ended catastrophically, and you knew the type of love and happiness that you could get because that's what works for you. That's what fills your cup. And not everybody's like this, obviously, but if you are that person that I'm talking about, I could see that. I could see them wanting to have that again. I don't know if it would ever be the same. I mean, man, being married for 46 years, I believe my parents were married for over 40 years as well. How does anything compare to that? I don't know. I was married to my ex for 19 years and 11 months. I've been married to Leah now for almost three years. The relationships could not be different. I don't know what Leah's relationship will be like in 19 years and 11 months. But I know that it's going to be way different than my first one and it's going to be way better. And I'M not saying anything negative about the other half of my failed marriage. It's just different. So I think you can match it, and I think you could be better. And I think if you've had that experience, you probably would want to have it again. So maybe I could see the stats on that. I hope that answers your question. It was tough for me and I removed myself from the situation a little bit. I think I was one of the last people that actually agreed to meet my dad's wife. I don't regret that decision at all. She may still to this day be pissed at me about that, and I don't care because she wouldn't have wanted to meet me before that. I would have been a complete asshole. I wasn't ready. I needed to get myself into a place where I could deal with that before pouring my bullshit out like hot wax onto somebody else. I didn't need to burn anybody else with my bullshit. I needed to put that out for myself. So, yeah, it was tough. I am glad that you found happiness. And yeah, I can see it that if men had a happier marriage, they'd be more likely to remarry. And I hope that's the same with women as well. Question 3 this one was too long for me to screenshot, so I'm gonna read it Public Speakers what's up with that? Longtime listener, Enjoy the podcast very much. Thank you for your service and putting on your show for us listeners. You're very welcome. And honestly, I get a lot out of it, probably more than the listeners do. It's cathartic for me. It challenges what I believe, who I am, and I learn from it a lot. I buy just about any coffee beans on sale, but I will buy BRC when I find it because it helps support what you do. Anyway, a thought and a question. I work at a Fortune 100 company and we have speakers that periodically come to speak to us celebrities, athletes, and soft guys, special operations forces. Now, if it said sf, that would be Green Berets. Soft guys is special operations umbrella writ large. Every branch of the military is going to have a component of that. So SOF means all of that. SF means Green Beret. The message is some word salad of do what you love. You'll never work a day in your life, find passion, et cetera, et cetera. It's not terribly inspiring. Here's why Michael Phelps likes to swim. So do I. I do it when I'm not working. Tiger woods hits balls all day until his hands bleed. So do a lot of guys when they have a day off. Kobe would stay after practice and shoot more baskets. No kidding. So do a lot of 14 year olds. A lot of soft guys went into their calling along the lines of I always wanted to do this. It's a hard training but what they really want to do, I gather is shoot, stay fit, be active and a commando. Natural manly impulses and God bless them for it. But for 90% of folks in the workforce, no one would do what they do but for the money. Period. That's why they call it work. It's arduous, repetitive and or stressful. Mostly without the kind of awards that make your death bed enjoyable. In any event, I think a well adjusted adult understands there are trade offs and sacrifices in life that you need to be productive and trade labor for consumption and that you need to be productive and trade labor for consumption. And that generally speaking, especially in a wealthy country like the us it's a fair trade. I wonder if you meant compensation. I think I can see it either way. However, the lessons learned in air quotes on the lecture circuit seem to come almost entirely from folks who come from the do what you love contingent, directed almost entirely to an audience of I have to do this to survive audience. What a great description. I don't know if you speak to audiences but but do you get this dynamic that some sales executive doesn't think the battle of IMO Jima necessarily is a good lesson for hitting their quota? That maybe people who haven't actually experienced the grind in something they didn't even enjoy aren't in the best position to give advice to the plebs keeping their trains running on time. Why don't 30 year janitors speak to NFL teams? Seems they'd be far more inspiring about adversity. No one wants to clean shitters. People love to play football. I've listened to your podcast for a while. Your emotional IQ or eq, whatever it is, is off the charts. I. I'm not so sure about that. It's a bold claim Cotton, so I know you've probably spun this through your head. Take care. You will leave the rest of that out. I actually have thought a good amount this. I do a good amount of public speaking. I did a speech this morning actually at a local hospital and I was talking about leadership and I was talking about culture and I was talking about accountability and responsibility. There is a in the speaking circuit a tug of war between entertainment and inspiration I would say can both come from the same thing. Sure. Is everybody who has achieved something that is inspirational going to Be able to translate that to an audience that can actually get something out of it? No. Is it unfair that certain people. I love this example at the bottom. Why don't 30 year janitors speak to NFL teams? Well, here's the hard truth. People care more about NFL athletes than 30 year janitors. Even though the 30 year janitor understands the grind maybe even more than the NFL athlete. And if I have time, I'll get to that because I have some thoughts on that. I wish, I wish that it was a more fair and balanced system. The reality is this. Certain jobs, whether they deserve it or not, certain individuals, whether they deserve it or not, are going to be given that stage because of a title that they have earned at some point in time in their life that for whatever reason we give social equity, social equity and capital. I have been to some of these speeches where somebody has done something, one that I had no interest in doing but was pretty exceptional, talked about it for a good amount of time. Couldn't have told you what they talked about because it had no bearing an impact on my life whatsoever. What's the value of that? Well, if the person coming in is only looking for entertainment, I mean, you could probably give them a passing grade on that. But if you're trying to give or have influence on the audience, if you're trying to educate them, harder to give them a passing grade, and that's the balance, that's the tug of war. Inspiration versus education. Again, this is just my opinion. I'm only speaking for myself. Yeah, somebody talking to an audience about what they did to get to the top of a mountain because they were an anomaly in many ways, doesn't always land well with an audience full of people who feel stuck because they have to be there to do their job. So when I approach public speaking, I don't do it from an entertainment perspective. I don't tell war stories. I don't think I've ever told a war story on stage ever. If I am asked to do so, I will say no, because although it might help pass the time and be entertaining, what is the actual value there? So I try to focus instead on look at me and look at what I was able to accomplish. Break down what are the things that I learned in my time in this. Fill in the blank. And how could you take 1, 2, or as many things as possible from the path and trajectory that I was on and apply it to your life? Fortunately for me, leadership I believe to be the most impactful and powerful tool that human beings have access to. It has applicability in your personal and professional life and everything in between parenting, relationships, crushing it at work. Leadership. You thinking of yourself as a leader, then acting as if you are a leader. Man, you want to put yourself on a rocket ship in any of those environments, that's the secret sauce in my opinion. So I am glad that people pay attention to me or want me to speak because of my military background. But all I try to do or take the mistakes that I made and the lessons that I learned from other people and pass them on through a vernacular that makes sense to that audience because I get it, you may not want to do the job that you're doing. It might be the actual just economic requirement and you don't give two shits about it. At some point in time you will find something that you give two shits about. You will find something that you're passionate about or whatever you're doing in your off time. I want to impact you in that area. I do want to make you better at your job. And I do believe that focusing on you, acknowledging the fact that you are in a leadership role, regardless of what it is that you do for a living and who it is that you are, you have to think and then act that way. I believe that that can have an impact. Lessons learned from a janitor over 30 years. Could that help help an NFL team? Fuck yeah it could. Would they listen? No, they wouldn't. And that's not fair. But the fair is in Iowa and there's a merry go round and there's cotton candy and popcorn probably dipped in caramel. You can go there, you can ride the rides. But that is not what the real world is based off of. So many things. I don't have enough terabytes on this SIM card to talk about the things that are unfair in life. I would love to sit down with a 30 year janitor and talk about the things that they had to put up with the discipline required to last for that long. The lessons that they learned in life, the lessons that they learned. You know what I'd like to know about a 30 year janitor? I would love to know about a 30 year janitor going back to an NFL team that worked in an NFL facility picking up after those players, the differences in personalities, the debutante players versus the humble players, the different levels of communication, the different ways that those individuals treated that person. Because a lot of the time you know that type of person, a janitor is invisible to most and it shouldn't be that way, but it is they don't give them a second thought. You know, you pair up the janitor with the craft services person or the person who does the food and the lighting and all these other things, and the trainers and all this stuff. Before you know it, you have a network of hundreds of people that make those NFL jobs even possible, that allow them to perform at a peak level. There's just this upswell of individuals and occupations that are supporting somebody that gets to go out and shine under the lights on the field, and they get ignored and they shouldn't. And I don't know how to change that, because at least given where we are right now, it's not the shiny object, even though they might have the best lessons learned. To me, it's fascinating, but you're probably never going to crush it on the speaking circuit unless you have a really interesting way, a compelling way to take those lessons that you learned and package it in a way that it can have impact for others. And that's regardless if you're Michael Phelps, Tiger woods, all the other examples, you can have all these people who've done great things. I was actually having this conversation this morning. We were at a hospital. Would you rather have the best surgeon on earth on your staff or a guy who's 90% of what that best guy is, but he is the best mentor that you've ever seen, and he can raise the level of all, all the other surgeons. Everybody's going to go for the latter guy. Unless you need brain surgery, then you're going to like the best guy in the world. But I think you get the point. So what's the point of those amazing experiences if you can't pass them on to me? Entertainment. If it's purely just for entertainment, like, hey, we need you to come speak 30 minutes before a dinner. We just want you to entertain the audience. Like, I get it, if that's what you're looking for. But come into a Fortune 100 company, and unless it's happening at an event right before dinner, so I guess those two things could be the same. Other than that, I think you have to craft your message on impact. What in the world that you're coming from that you are getting ready to speak about could have meaningful impact on the people that are going to receive this. That's how I structure it and that's how I view it. I totally agree with you that this exists. And what's amazing to me beyond that is the amount of money that some of those people get paid to talk about things that will not impact other people's lives. But whatever. I don't write the checks. So that's up to the people that do. Hope that answers your question. I'm gonna go take it easy. I'm gonna go hang out with the ween. I'm make out with him a little bit. I'm not gonna lick his face, but I'm gonna some kisses on the nose because it's been a week. Yesterday was a day, today was better. Tomorrow is Friday. Take it easy. So hope this finds everybody well on Friday. See you guys all on Monday.
