August 1, 2025 • 16 mins
For Shop Talk, Coach Bill tells the story of An Army of Normal Refugees who changed America... at least in one aspect.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Everybody. Welcome to an army of normal folks. It's Shop
Talk number sixty three. Welcome in the shop, y'all can
talk now, Welcome in the shop. Say hello, Hey, Alex
brought us whole clan to the shop today.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Well they were here for the Alex's Lemonade stand event.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
That's right. Did you all enjoy that?
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Did you? Oh? We have a visitor.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Who's that down there?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Oh? It speaking to this thing? Who is that?
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Landry Adams?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Landry Adams and she is Howld eleven and she's from Oxford. Yeah.
And was she go to school buddies with your neighbors something? Yeah?
All three. So we got Alex's four kids, so you've
been introduced before, and their new friend, Landry, popping in
the shop today. Hey Landry, do you have some money
(00:54):
to spend in the shop. Well you're gonna have to
get out, okay. So today is shop Talk number sixty three,
and we're gonna talk about nail salons. Landry, would you
like to get your nails done? Well, you need to
go to a spa. This is a shop you can leave.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
They are. We were driving up and I was telling
them about today's shop Talk. Yeah, and they were so
shocked that you love nail salons.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Oh no, I love getting my toes done. Oh yeah,
you gotta have a pedicure. No, it's the greatest to
get George George.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
You're raising him to be a man, George George.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Real men get pedicures, say that loud. No, George George says,
there you go. Real men get pedicures because it cleans
up your feet, so they're nice and pretty for your
lady friends. And it feels so good when you're doing it.
So everybody, this is not a children's shop talk, but
(01:50):
there are children in the shop. Shop Talk number sixty three.
We're gonna talk about neil salons right after these brief
messages from our general sponsors. Hey, everybody, welcome back to
(02:13):
the shop. We uh talking about my.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Love of nail salons.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
And I think I said something about it in a
past show.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
J Andrews, What was it, Andrews.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Jen Andrews, That's what it was, and you've been giving
me crap about it ever since.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
But of other listeners, Mitch commented on Facebook pill, what are.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
You doing really well? You? I take my shoes off,
y'all take your shoes off, and my stuff's gonna be
straight and you'all gonna be mappy. And so that's just
the way it works. So all right, let's take a poll.
Who would like to have their toes done? One? Two
versus not one, two, three, four, five against two. We
(02:54):
win five to two. Y'all are losers.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Okay, four of those were girls. But you're going.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Apparently we have massacre misogynistic what are you? Yeah, yeah, something,
something's wrong with y'all. All right, anyway, we loved it.
So today the Shop Talk, we're going to talk about
the little known history of the now eight billion dollar
nail salon industry and how this industry grew thanks to
(03:23):
an actress, her stunning fingernails, and some refugees. Here's what happened.
The story of the modern nail salon industry starts with
the Vietnam War. I'm not joking. This is what Alex
has done research for me, and Alex, you really need
to do something else on your Friday nights. The United
(03:44):
States took in one point three million refugees from Southeast
Asia after the Vietnam War. After the fall of Saigon
in seventy five, what was called Hope Village in California
became one of the first non military sites for Vietnamese refugees.
About seven hundred to one thousand refugees came through there
(04:05):
for a few weeks the months before resettling elsewhere, and
twenty of them got up close personal with a famous
actress named Tippy Hedron.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Do you know who she is, well.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Tippy Hedron.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
No, well, I'm about to tell you.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Oh oh, who oh. She was the girl in Birds,
Alfred Hitchcock's movie Birds. Okay, so that's Tippy Hedron. So
twenty of them got to be friends or acquaintances with
Tippy Hedron, but her interactions with these refugees led to
a far greater legacy. Tippy apparently had a heart for refugees,
(04:43):
which now I'm a Tippy fan, and was an international
relief coordinator for a nonprofit organization, Food for the Hungary.
She worked with twenty Vietnamese women at Hope Village and
tried to help them find vocations that they could do
in America. Tippy said, I loved these women so much
that I wanted something good to happen for them after
(05:03):
losing literally everything, And do remember these people lost their home.
They were fighting against communism, so they lost their liberty,
they lost their country, and they left everything behind to
flee to the United States after the fall of Saigon,
a horrific part of the story. Many people forget and
why there's a large Vietnamese population in the United States,
(05:26):
and Tippy recognized these folks lost everything. Some of them
lost their entire family. They all lost everything they had Vietnam,
their homes, their jobs or friends. Everything was gone. They
even lost their country. I brought in seamstress and typist
any way for them to learn something, and they loved
my fingernails. That's what they wanted to do, which was
(05:49):
not exactly what Tippy had in mind, but she went
with it. Tippy flew in her personal manicurist to teach
them the art of manicures. She also recruited a local
beauty shop to help teach them, and then she helped
them get them jobs all over South Carolina, South Carolina,
Southern California, and these Vietnamese refugees then gave the Nail
(06:10):
Slim business a radical makeover. The BBC said that Alex
couldn't have come up with something that creative. What Alex Wu.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Then whatever it was. I was trying to be cue
with the language, but it didn't work out.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Oh what are we right here? And the Vietnamese refugees
gave nil slim business radical makeover? The BBC said that, yeah, oh, Alex.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
You get that play on the words. They gave the
nail slum business a radical makeover.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Ha okay, no I missed, but leave it in there.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
The BBC wrote that, not me, I get it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
In the seventies, manicures and pedicures cost around fifty bucks.
Are you kidding? In the seventies that cost fifty bucks?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And look at how much they are costing today's dollars.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Which would be three hundred dollars in today's dollars, I'd
still pay three hundred dollars for good pedicure. That's how
good it is.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
It's how normal you are.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Oh whatever, that's fine for actress like Tippy Hedron. I
don't pay three hundred dollars for a better cure. But
I'm just saying that my feet are nasty and I
want to relax for an hour. I would Oh. I
hope people at my pedericure place aren't listening to this
because they're going to raise my rates. Okay, so three
hundred bucks, well fifty back then three hundred days money.
(07:21):
That's fine for an actress like Tippy Hedron, but most
American women couldn't afford that. Today, a mani petty can
cost twenty bucks. No, it can't. It's more like forty.
Largely because of Vietnamese American salons that dramatically lowered their
prices so they could compete with existing salons, and because
of this, they dramatically expanded the market to nel salons
(07:42):
being accessible to almost every American woman and man, forging
today's eight billion dollar industry. This is really interesting, it
is cool. So this Tippy actress felt for some refugees.
The Vietnamese loved her nail. They learned how to do it,
(08:02):
lowered the cost of doing it, and then exploded and
made an entire market for the common person to be
able to get manicures and pedicures instead of just the
alters rich because of what they learned, and then took
across the country starting to get it. That's pretty cool.
Today fifty one percent of nail technicians are of Vietnamese descent.
Are you serious? Wow? And in California it's eighty percent.
(08:26):
Tippy is still alive at ninety five years old, so
she's been able to see this whole wild story play
out while she enjoys her wildlife sanctuary outside of La
No Doubt. With pretty Nails. She set of the industry.
Now it's dominated by the Vietnamese. I sure wish I
had a percentage of it. I wouldn't be working so
(08:47):
hard to keep these lines and takers fit. That's funny.
So it's a story just an army of normal refugees
and an actress who cared about twenty Vietnamese people that
changed our world. Just yet another story of a person
(09:08):
seeing an opportunity of need, recognizing a way to fill it,
and doing what she can with twenty people. That has, now,
I guess, fifty years later, turned into an eight billion
dollar industry and provided hope for a lot of Vietnamese
folks that didn't have something to do. What a great story.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
So when you talked about your love of nail salons,
reminded me of this, and it's it's one of my
favorite stories I've ever come.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Rover, Oh, you knew this story before? Did you really?
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Well, you're making me good nails what are you doing
studying nail salons?
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Someone else told me this.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Oh yeah, it's my my friend. It's like it's like,
my friend has this ailement. Well, I'm asking for my friend.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
You go to Neil Slon's, and you didn't know this story.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
I do go to nel Salon's on a regular basis
and I will be going soon.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Do anybody like to join me?
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Yay? Yeah, yeah, I know. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
With these refugees. Even Lord, the prices for you too, Lord,
the prices.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
For everyone, Thank goodness, because it is kind of expensive.
But man, it's so good. And by the way, all
of you guys out there listen to me, we're like,
I cannot believe this dude gets a pedicure. Here's the deal.
Sneak off one week afternoon. You don't have anything to do,
and look, don't get your feet painted or anything that's
that guy thing. But get your toenails flipped and cleaned,
(10:30):
and then let them size your feet and do what
they do when they do pedicures for guys. And I
promise you you will never go back to being a
non pedicure person. And Alex, if you had any any
guts at all. You trot once.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
If we have an Army convention one day, which I've
always dreamed of, maybe we'll have to have like a pedicure.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Absolutely no, I'll have a pedicure stand outside of the ballroom.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah, all of Vietnamese.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Well, I mean, we don't want to discriminate, but it
fifty one percent of them would be Vietnamese because that's
the numbers. So that's it. How'd y'all what you want
to come? Yeah, that'd be awesome, wouldn't it. Yeah, y'all
could get yours painted. I don't get mine painted. I
just want a time, all right. So that's shop Talk
(11:18):
number sixty three, all from Alex making fun of my pedicures.
Yet another story of how the most easy, simple, mundane
thing can change lives. Anybody can do it. If you
have a passion and you see an area and opportunity
and you go to work. You never know what's going
(11:38):
to happen before we end everybody. I hope you'll really
hear me on this one. I'm stoked our next live interview.
By the way, I'm going to time stamp this. We
just had one today that was could you tell that
I was about.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
To cry a little bit at one point.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah, there was twice that I had tears in my
eyes so much that I was just kind of looking
in her direction, but I wouldn't get an eye contact
with her because I mean, man, if.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
You're such a man, you should be willing to cry
a good health I'm willing to cry. Kids actually make
fun of me for this when I cry. But a good,
happy cry is one of the best things in the world.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
It's the greatest thing in the world. And I was
happy to cry, just as I'm happy to get a pedicure.
But when you're interviewing someone, you need to stay composed.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
You know, that's a better interview if you cry.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Okay, Well I started to cry. I didn't know, but anyway,
got to be.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Vulnerable, all right.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Well that was today and this live interview which spoiler
alert listened to, the Alex Lemonade stand Foundation interview. It
was a live one we did today. It'll be coming
out soon. Man, what a story. But I'm stoked because
our next one is going to be in Oxford, Mississippi,
(12:53):
home of the greatest university on the face of the planet,
the finest academic institution ever created. The town Square that
reminds me of Camelot and the greatest place in the world, Oxford, Misissippi,
on August twenty eighth, four days after my birthday. So
y'all need to start thinking about what you're going to
(13:13):
get me. Okay, that's right. On August twenty eight I'll
be interviewing Sparky Reared. Sparky was the Dina Students at
ole Miss when I was a student there. He became
a confidant. He became a mentor for me and for
thousands others, and everybody that thinks they have this personal
(13:34):
relationship with Sparky is going to be hurt to know
that Sparky's the kind of guy that could have a
personal relationship with a thousand people or more. And he did.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
He does.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
He's still alive as a Dina students, And I know
he's still alive because we're interviewing.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Good God, I'm just saying I see him. He's still
a legend in Oxford. He's a walking legend.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
He is a walking legend, and he deserves to be.
But this legend who taught me a leader ship class
back my junior in college and who helped me when
I was in some leadership positions at problems and walk
me through it would never give me the answers, but
would help me arrive at him just an unbelievable guy.
He is now my friend. Anyway. He's got this new
(14:17):
book called The Dean Memoirs and Missives. And if you're
going to be in and around Oxford on August twenty eighth,
or you're going to be going to the ballgame. So
if you're in down for the ball game, if you're
in down for this, join us. It'll be a really
fun night. He's one of the wisest, the most loved
(14:37):
human beings in Oxford, in the history of the university,
basically on Earth. And the good news is it's not
much work for me. I can basically turn on the mic,
introduce them and just sit there and listen. Because he's
that guy. I guarantee it will be inspirational, thought provoking,
funny and no one sparky. He'll also say something I'll
(15:00):
make you think very deeply about your place on Earth.
So for my fellow miss fans, it's Thursday before the game. Come.
If you're from out of town and you're going to
be in town, come to learn more about when where,
what and how to RSVP. Please go to Sparkyreardon dot event,
Bright dot com, Sparkyreardon dot event, bright dot com. I
(15:24):
guarantee you this evening will not disappoint. If this episode
inspired you to get involved, super rate it and review it,
Subscribe to the podcast, Join the Army at normal folks
dot us. What else do we need to do? Guys?
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Shop talk ideas?
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Shop talk ideas Email me anytime at Bill at normal
folks dot us. And I think that's it. That's shop
Talk number three sixty three. We're leaving, kids, gather up
your stuff. We're out of here. We'll see you next week.
(16:07):
M
Everybody. Welcome to an army of normal folks. It's Shop
Talk number sixty three. Welcome in the shop, y'all can
talk now, Welcome in the shop. Say hello, Hey, Alex
brought us whole clan to the shop today.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Well they were here for the Alex's Lemonade stand event.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
That's right. Did you all enjoy that?
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Did you? Oh? We have a visitor.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Who's that down there?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Oh? It speaking to this thing? Who is that?
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Landry Adams?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Landry Adams and she is Howld eleven and she's from Oxford. Yeah.
And was she go to school buddies with your neighbors something? Yeah?
All three. So we got Alex's four kids, so you've
been introduced before, and their new friend, Landry, popping in
the shop today. Hey Landry, do you have some money
(00:54):
to spend in the shop. Well you're gonna have to
get out, okay. So today is shop Talk number sixty three,
and we're gonna talk about nail salons. Landry, would you
like to get your nails done? Well, you need to
go to a spa. This is a shop you can leave.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
They are. We were driving up and I was telling
them about today's shop Talk. Yeah, and they were so
shocked that you love nail salons.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Oh no, I love getting my toes done. Oh yeah,
you gotta have a pedicure. No, it's the greatest to
get George George.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
You're raising him to be a man, George George.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Real men get pedicures, say that loud. No, George George says,
there you go. Real men get pedicures because it cleans
up your feet, so they're nice and pretty for your
lady friends. And it feels so good when you're doing it.
So everybody, this is not a children's shop talk, but
(01:50):
there are children in the shop. Shop Talk number sixty three.
We're gonna talk about neil salons right after these brief
messages from our general sponsors. Hey, everybody, welcome back to
(02:13):
the shop. We uh talking about my.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Love of nail salons.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
And I think I said something about it in a
past show.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
J Andrews, What was it, Andrews.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Jen Andrews, That's what it was, and you've been giving
me crap about it ever since.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
But of other listeners, Mitch commented on Facebook pill, what are.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
You doing really well? You? I take my shoes off,
y'all take your shoes off, and my stuff's gonna be
straight and you'all gonna be mappy. And so that's just
the way it works. So all right, let's take a poll.
Who would like to have their toes done? One? Two
versus not one, two, three, four, five against two. We
(02:54):
win five to two. Y'all are losers.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Okay, four of those were girls. But you're going.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Apparently we have massacre misogynistic what are you? Yeah, yeah, something,
something's wrong with y'all. All right, anyway, we loved it.
So today the Shop Talk, we're going to talk about
the little known history of the now eight billion dollar
nail salon industry and how this industry grew thanks to
(03:23):
an actress, her stunning fingernails, and some refugees. Here's what happened.
The story of the modern nail salon industry starts with
the Vietnam War. I'm not joking. This is what Alex
has done research for me, and Alex, you really need
to do something else on your Friday nights. The United
(03:44):
States took in one point three million refugees from Southeast
Asia after the Vietnam War. After the fall of Saigon
in seventy five, what was called Hope Village in California
became one of the first non military sites for Vietnamese refugees.
About seven hundred to one thousand refugees came through there
(04:05):
for a few weeks the months before resettling elsewhere, and
twenty of them got up close personal with a famous
actress named Tippy Hedron.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Do you know who she is, well.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Tippy Hedron.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
No, well, I'm about to tell you.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Oh oh, who oh. She was the girl in Birds,
Alfred Hitchcock's movie Birds. Okay, so that's Tippy Hedron. So
twenty of them got to be friends or acquaintances with
Tippy Hedron, but her interactions with these refugees led to
a far greater legacy. Tippy apparently had a heart for refugees,
(04:43):
which now I'm a Tippy fan, and was an international
relief coordinator for a nonprofit organization, Food for the Hungary.
She worked with twenty Vietnamese women at Hope Village and
tried to help them find vocations that they could do
in America. Tippy said, I loved these women so much
that I wanted something good to happen for them after
(05:03):
losing literally everything, And do remember these people lost their home.
They were fighting against communism, so they lost their liberty,
they lost their country, and they left everything behind to
flee to the United States after the fall of Saigon,
a horrific part of the story. Many people forget and
why there's a large Vietnamese population in the United States,
(05:26):
and Tippy recognized these folks lost everything. Some of them
lost their entire family. They all lost everything they had Vietnam,
their homes, their jobs or friends. Everything was gone. They
even lost their country. I brought in seamstress and typist
any way for them to learn something, and they loved
my fingernails. That's what they wanted to do, which was
(05:49):
not exactly what Tippy had in mind, but she went
with it. Tippy flew in her personal manicurist to teach
them the art of manicures. She also recruited a local
beauty shop to help teach them, and then she helped
them get them jobs all over South Carolina, South Carolina,
Southern California, and these Vietnamese refugees then gave the Nail
(06:10):
Slim business a radical makeover. The BBC said that Alex
couldn't have come up with something that creative. What Alex Wu.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Then whatever it was. I was trying to be cue
with the language, but it didn't work out.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Oh what are we right here? And the Vietnamese refugees
gave nil slim business radical makeover? The BBC said that, yeah, oh, Alex.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
You get that play on the words. They gave the
nail slum business a radical makeover.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Ha okay, no I missed, but leave it in there.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
The BBC wrote that, not me, I get it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
In the seventies, manicures and pedicures cost around fifty bucks.
Are you kidding? In the seventies that cost fifty bucks?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And look at how much they are costing today's dollars.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Which would be three hundred dollars in today's dollars, I'd
still pay three hundred dollars for good pedicure. That's how
good it is.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
It's how normal you are.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Oh whatever, that's fine for actress like Tippy Hedron. I
don't pay three hundred dollars for a better cure. But
I'm just saying that my feet are nasty and I
want to relax for an hour. I would Oh. I
hope people at my pedericure place aren't listening to this
because they're going to raise my rates. Okay, so three
hundred bucks, well fifty back then three hundred days money.
(07:21):
That's fine for an actress like Tippy Hedron, but most
American women couldn't afford that. Today, a mani petty can
cost twenty bucks. No, it can't. It's more like forty.
Largely because of Vietnamese American salons that dramatically lowered their
prices so they could compete with existing salons, and because
of this, they dramatically expanded the market to nel salons
(07:42):
being accessible to almost every American woman and man, forging
today's eight billion dollar industry. This is really interesting, it
is cool. So this Tippy actress felt for some refugees.
The Vietnamese loved her nail. They learned how to do it,
(08:02):
lowered the cost of doing it, and then exploded and
made an entire market for the common person to be
able to get manicures and pedicures instead of just the
alters rich because of what they learned, and then took
across the country starting to get it. That's pretty cool.
Today fifty one percent of nail technicians are of Vietnamese descent.
Are you serious? Wow? And in California it's eighty percent.
(08:26):
Tippy is still alive at ninety five years old, so
she's been able to see this whole wild story play
out while she enjoys her wildlife sanctuary outside of La
No Doubt. With pretty Nails. She set of the industry.
Now it's dominated by the Vietnamese. I sure wish I
had a percentage of it. I wouldn't be working so
(08:47):
hard to keep these lines and takers fit. That's funny.
So it's a story just an army of normal refugees
and an actress who cared about twenty Vietnamese people that
changed our world. Just yet another story of a person
(09:08):
seeing an opportunity of need, recognizing a way to fill it,
and doing what she can with twenty people. That has, now,
I guess, fifty years later, turned into an eight billion
dollar industry and provided hope for a lot of Vietnamese
folks that didn't have something to do. What a great story.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
So when you talked about your love of nail salons,
reminded me of this, and it's it's one of my
favorite stories I've ever come.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Rover, Oh, you knew this story before? Did you really?
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Well, you're making me good nails what are you doing
studying nail salons?
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Someone else told me this.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Oh yeah, it's my my friend. It's like it's like,
my friend has this ailement. Well, I'm asking for my friend.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
You go to Neil Slon's, and you didn't know this story.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
I do go to nel Salon's on a regular basis
and I will be going soon.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Do anybody like to join me?
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Yay? Yeah, yeah, I know. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
With these refugees. Even Lord, the prices for you too, Lord,
the prices.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
For everyone, Thank goodness, because it is kind of expensive.
But man, it's so good. And by the way, all
of you guys out there listen to me, we're like,
I cannot believe this dude gets a pedicure. Here's the deal.
Sneak off one week afternoon. You don't have anything to do,
and look, don't get your feet painted or anything that's
that guy thing. But get your toenails flipped and cleaned,
(10:30):
and then let them size your feet and do what
they do when they do pedicures for guys. And I
promise you you will never go back to being a
non pedicure person. And Alex, if you had any any
guts at all. You trot once.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
If we have an Army convention one day, which I've
always dreamed of, maybe we'll have to have like a pedicure.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Absolutely no, I'll have a pedicure stand outside of the ballroom.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah, all of Vietnamese.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Well, I mean, we don't want to discriminate, but it
fifty one percent of them would be Vietnamese because that's
the numbers. So that's it. How'd y'all what you want
to come? Yeah, that'd be awesome, wouldn't it. Yeah, y'all
could get yours painted. I don't get mine painted. I
just want a time, all right. So that's shop Talk
(11:18):
number sixty three, all from Alex making fun of my pedicures.
Yet another story of how the most easy, simple, mundane
thing can change lives. Anybody can do it. If you
have a passion and you see an area and opportunity
and you go to work. You never know what's going
(11:38):
to happen before we end everybody. I hope you'll really
hear me on this one. I'm stoked our next live interview.
By the way, I'm going to time stamp this. We
just had one today that was could you tell that
I was about.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
To cry a little bit at one point.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah, there was twice that I had tears in my
eyes so much that I was just kind of looking
in her direction, but I wouldn't get an eye contact
with her because I mean, man, if.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
You're such a man, you should be willing to cry
a good health I'm willing to cry. Kids actually make
fun of me for this when I cry. But a good,
happy cry is one of the best things in the world.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
It's the greatest thing in the world. And I was
happy to cry, just as I'm happy to get a pedicure.
But when you're interviewing someone, you need to stay composed.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
You know, that's a better interview if you cry.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Okay, Well I started to cry. I didn't know, but anyway,
got to be.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Vulnerable, all right.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Well that was today and this live interview which spoiler
alert listened to, the Alex Lemonade stand Foundation interview. It
was a live one we did today. It'll be coming
out soon. Man, what a story. But I'm stoked because
our next one is going to be in Oxford, Mississippi,
(12:53):
home of the greatest university on the face of the planet,
the finest academic institution ever created. The town Square that
reminds me of Camelot and the greatest place in the world, Oxford, Misissippi,
on August twenty eighth, four days after my birthday. So
y'all need to start thinking about what you're going to
(13:13):
get me. Okay, that's right. On August twenty eight I'll
be interviewing Sparky Reared. Sparky was the Dina Students at
ole Miss when I was a student there. He became
a confidant. He became a mentor for me and for
thousands others, and everybody that thinks they have this personal
(13:34):
relationship with Sparky is going to be hurt to know
that Sparky's the kind of guy that could have a
personal relationship with a thousand people or more. And he did.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
He does.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
He's still alive as a Dina students, And I know
he's still alive because we're interviewing.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Good God, I'm just saying I see him. He's still
a legend in Oxford. He's a walking legend.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
He is a walking legend, and he deserves to be.
But this legend who taught me a leader ship class
back my junior in college and who helped me when
I was in some leadership positions at problems and walk
me through it would never give me the answers, but
would help me arrive at him just an unbelievable guy.
He is now my friend. Anyway. He's got this new
(14:17):
book called The Dean Memoirs and Missives. And if you're
going to be in and around Oxford on August twenty eighth,
or you're going to be going to the ballgame. So
if you're in down for the ball game, if you're
in down for this, join us. It'll be a really
fun night. He's one of the wisest, the most loved
(14:37):
human beings in Oxford, in the history of the university,
basically on Earth. And the good news is it's not
much work for me. I can basically turn on the mic,
introduce them and just sit there and listen. Because he's
that guy. I guarantee it will be inspirational, thought provoking,
funny and no one sparky. He'll also say something I'll
(15:00):
make you think very deeply about your place on Earth.
So for my fellow miss fans, it's Thursday before the game. Come.
If you're from out of town and you're going to
be in town, come to learn more about when where,
what and how to RSVP. Please go to Sparkyreardon dot event,
Bright dot com, Sparkyreardon dot event, bright dot com. I
(15:24):
guarantee you this evening will not disappoint. If this episode
inspired you to get involved, super rate it and review it,
Subscribe to the podcast, Join the Army at normal folks
dot us. What else do we need to do? Guys?
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Shop talk ideas?
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Shop talk ideas Email me anytime at Bill at normal
folks dot us. And I think that's it. That's shop
Talk number three sixty three. We're leaving, kids, gather up
your stuff. We're out of here. We'll see you next week.
(16:07):
M
Host
Bill Courtney
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