June 12, 2025 • 13 mins
In this episode, I fire up the mic and ask what we’re all quietly screaming about at 2 am: Are we totally fcked?* Spoiler alert — it’s not all doom and gloom. But it’s not rainbows and unicorns either.
So, if you’re over the hustle, and just want someone to say what you’re thinking out loud… you’re in the right place.
Listen. Laugh. Cry. Repeat.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
hey, there you
(00:00):
are, and hope you're doing well.
This is unscripted.
And, as usual,
I think everything looks pretty good
today.
Kind of got it all lined
up, and it's looking good.
All right.
Actually, even cleaned up.
I look a little good today,
as opposed to have been looking
for the past couple of days.
I've been pretty over here.
All right, so what's unscripted?
It is me with few notes, talking about
talking shit.
(00:21):
Let's be honest. Talking shit.
I'm a Gen Xer. I like to talk shit.
I don't take shit either.
This is this video is about.
I don't
I don't really know how to start it,
so I'm just going to learn it out there
right now.
If you're a small home,
solopreneur, business
entrepreneur, what have you,
(00:42):
you are stuck
between a rock and a hard place.
All right.
It's it's really hard
to run the business.
There's a lot of challenges
to running your business.
You're struggling
and fighting more than ever.
And it has been.
I ain't gonna lie.
I spent about 20 years
worth of struggles. All right.
Up and down, up and down, up and down.
(01:03):
And it seems like the down
parts are getting shorter.
And the up parts, the short,
the longer drama is getting longer.
And that can leave you feeling burnout.
That can leave you feeling
stressed out, anxiety,
all of those good things. All right.
Oh, that's good things.
(01:24):
And so, you know, if you're like me,
there are times where I wake up
in the middle of the night and I think,
I don't know if I can take this anymore.
I don't know if I can do this.
I can't get up every day
and continue to fight.
I don't know if I have
the energy left to do it.
And I'm sure
if you're watching this video,
if you know who I am,
you know that you're in the same boat.
(01:44):
I feel like I've talked to enough people
over the past couple
of months to know that
we're all feeling the same way,
and the refrain that keeps coming up
is, I don't know what I would do
if I don't do this.
I don't have a ton of money in the bank.
Things are running down.
I've got all this debt to pay people.
(02:05):
There's a little bit of interest,
but nobody's like signing
on the dotted line.
I'm not getting any deposits.
What do I do?
And so there's this tendency
for us to think, okay, well,
I can just jump back into industry,
all right?
And I've fallen into that myself.
I'm like, well, you know, I'll just.
I'll just take an industry
job again, you know?
Fuck it.
I'll be a creative director somewhere.
(02:26):
An art director.
And I'll just sit back.
I'll get my paycheck,
you know, do this, do that.
You know, life will be great.
I won't have to worry about making
the bills and paying things.
And to that I
say good luck.
Good luck.
If you're like me, you are now strapped.
(02:48):
You are stuck
between a rock and a hard place.
And there's a reason for that.
I am not a spring chicken.
I'm an older Gen Xer. I'm the.
I'm Gen-X,
close to being a boomer,
but I'm a Gen Xer, all right,
so that means I'm in my 60s.
I'm 60. Actually.
I can't believe I said that to people,
but I admitted it. I am 60.
That does not make me appealing
(03:08):
to the design industry
in any way, shape or form.
No day, no day.
I am like Kryptonite to them
because to them I am old.
I'm out of touch.
I don't understand how things operate.
I don't understand
how to speak to the kids, so to speak.
All they see me as is old white guy.
(03:33):
I mean, that's what I am.
I'm an old white guy.
They don't understand the value
that I bring to it.
Now, the other side of
that is
they also see us
as potentially being difficult.
All right.
I admit it.
I can be very difficult at times.
I can give you a list of names of people
(03:54):
who will back that up.
I'm a I'm a punk.
I grew up in the 80s, you know, like
the 80s was my time.
I'm always ready
to, like, question
authority and question things
and push back as much as I need to,
until I feel comfortable with something.
I do tend to do
a lot of assumption
reversal on people that they don't know.
(04:17):
So there will be times
where I would be in a meeting
and they'd say, let's do this.
And I'd be like,
but what about if this happens?
And then I'd be branded difficult?
But.
That's
the problem is they see us as
you've been running
your own business,
you've been doing your own thing,
(04:38):
you haven't been answering to a boss.
Clients are a boss.
And not only have I been answering
to one client at most times,
I'm juggling 5 or 6 projects at one time.
All right? 5 or 6 projects at one time.
That means that that's
at least 5 or 6 bosses.
I have to answer to all of them
(05:00):
thinking
that they are
the only client that I have. All right.
So if and if I was in that position
of hiring people,
I'd look at them and say, well,
look,
this person is really good
at time management.
They're really good.
Yeah, yeah.
But that's not how industry sees it.
All right.
They also see us
as wanting to be expensive.
(05:20):
And let's be honest,
we are all right
I'm I'm an expensive bitch.
All right.
I come with a price tag.
I freely admit it.
Because I've put in the time
I've put in the effort.
I know how to.
As I put on my resume,
I put it on a resume.
A couple of months ago,
I was looking for a quick side
gig and somebody wanted a resume.
(05:41):
It's hard to throw one together,
and it was like
my tagline was I get shit done.
Like, that's that's what I do.
But they don't see it that way,
all right? They don't see it that way.
They see us as very old, very expensive,
that we're going to want insurance.
We're only going to work from 9 to 5.
We want one to work.
We yeah. I don't I don't do any of that.
(06:03):
Did I mention I'm fucking 60?
I don't want that.
But what I bring to
the table is so much more.
Now, the other side of it
is that they don't really
want to pay you. Like,
it is really disgusting
that I see design jobs that, but
five, ten years ago,
(06:24):
would have been paying $35 to $45
minimum, an hour
minimum are now like $17.
We'll pay you $17.
And the laundry list of shit
they want from these
employees is just, like, staggering.
Like,
you scroll through it and you're like,
Holy shit, no one has all of this.
No one's going to willing to do that.
(06:45):
Sadly there is.
Someone will do it.
So those are our problems
as being older consumers.
So we are older business owners.
We can't really jump out of our business.
We are kind of stuck where we are.
All right.
I mean, sure, we can
we can close it all down
(07:05):
and go work at McDonald's,
but that's not going to pay the bills.
And you're going to work harder
and you're going to be more miserable
than you would now.
So what?
What are our options?
Honestly, there ain't a lot.
One of the things that helps me now,
I know that it's
not necessarily
(07:25):
like money in your pocket,
but join my tribe, be part of the group,
get in touch.
Because we're just doing,
like, group
chat sessions,
discussion groups and things.
I do feel better when I talk to people
in the same boat.
I mean, it doesn't get me a new client.
It doesn't bring in.
But what it does do, what it does do is,
(07:47):
I feel energized afterwards.
I feel less
weight upon me,
and therefore I have more,
you know, when I say aggression,
I am a bit more motivated.
Let's let's go and motivate that.
That's a better that's a better word.
I'm more motivated to then say, okay,
(08:09):
I can tackle this, I can do this.
I can figure out ways to get around it.
Now, the other problem with
this is one of the other things
that I used to do
heavily back in the day.
It's a little harder
with where my business is now
as far as education and learning.
But I
used to network like like fucking crazy.
(08:30):
That is a very expensive endeavor,
all right?
It's a very expensive endeavor.
There is.
I don't know what it is to join,
but when I, the last time I joined
a group was before the pandemic.
So like 2018, 2017, something like that.
All right.
Maybe it's now 19.
Yeah, somewhere around there.
And it was like $700 to
(08:54):
just to join the branch group.
And then every month
I think the chapter was like,
like $200, 100 and something.
And granted,
you got a breakfast with it,
but it was a lot of money. All right.
And to come up with that every month,
which is
side note,
which is why networking doesn't work
for a lot of people,
but that's a whole separate video.
(09:18):
That's a lot to come up with every month
if money isn't coming in.
All right.
So
I kind of wanted to develop alternatives
to networking,
traditional networking,
because I do believe
word of mouth marketing can work.
I've even done courses on it.
I've done basics on it.
I got many caught.
You name it, I believe it can work,
(09:40):
just not the way it is now.
Which is one of the reasons
that I'm trying to get these, like
less formal networking groups started
so that we can kind of develop
personalities, personality,
they just kind of
really get to know each other.
So make sure you follow me
because join the tribe.
Go on.
My website, join our.com,
and we can start getting these going.
Because as I said,
it feels somewhat better
(10:00):
once I've talked to people.
All right.
I feel like I'm not in the same boat,
I am in the same boat.
And that,
you know,
together as a group, we can
we feel more empowered. All right.
Now, as far as getting more clients, I'm
you know, it depends on your business.
You know,
if you're relying on foot traffic
(10:21):
and there's no foot traffic,
there's not a lot you can do.
Even if you go on social media,
you're going to get
some people to come in, maybe,
you know, a handful,
but that's not
that's not what you need
as much as you did before.
Like you need
you need massive numbers
to make this happen, to make this work.
(10:41):
And so that's not going
to balance things out.
But social media is you got
you got to be on there.
You got to start talking to people.
You got to start working with people.
You got to get them to,
engage with you, make content.
You know,
there are things that we can do.
There are ways we can help each other.
(11:02):
That can really, really,
really move the needle for us
and help us feel like
we're not stuck in where we're at.
All right.
Kind of get
a little long in the tooth here,
and I feel like I'm rambling,
so I'm going to shut it off here.
But this is a constant conversation,
and I think we need to always have.
I think we need to jump back into it
every so often.
(11:23):
But like I said,
I feel like there is, safety in numbers,
so to speak.
So let's let's start
getting together with like
and especially if you're local,
if you're local, Orange
County, California, get in touch with me.
Let's start getting together.
Let's have a coffee somewhere.
Let's,
you know, have dinner together
and talk business.
(11:43):
One of the things I wanted to do
before the pandemic, it's
I'm going to try and get it,
and I'm gonna try
and get this in quickly,
with these sort of supper clubs
where we could get together, have dinner
just to get to know each other,
maybe talk a little bit of business.
But I feel like getting
to know each other
and getting to know the person
that is the business
will lead to more business.
(12:03):
But I'll talk about that
in another video, I guess. All right.
I'll have jump on over to join.howard.com
while you're there.
There's all kinds of great stuff.
There's some free content,
there's all kinds of worksheets
and many courses, very affordable,
many courses, to help
you get where you need to go.
You name it, it's there.
All of my old content
(12:23):
is there on the YouTube page,
so definitely check that out.
Make sure you like and follow me.
I'm Howard everywhere.
Do not forget to join the tribe
at joining our.com
so we can start, interfacing.
All right?
I think that's everything.
I think I'm pretty sure
I covered more than enough. So.
All right,
I will see you in the next video.
Have a good day.
(12:44):
And, you're not alone. Bye.
hey, there you
(00:00):
are, and hope you're doing well.
This is unscripted.
And, as usual,
I think everything looks pretty good
today.
Kind of got it all lined
up, and it's looking good.
All right.
Actually, even cleaned up.
I look a little good today,
as opposed to have been looking
for the past couple of days.
I've been pretty over here.
All right, so what's unscripted?
It is me with few notes, talking about
talking shit.
(00:21):
Let's be honest. Talking shit.
I'm a Gen Xer. I like to talk shit.
I don't take shit either.
This is this video is about.
I don't
I don't really know how to start it,
so I'm just going to learn it out there
right now.
If you're a small home,
solopreneur, business
entrepreneur, what have you,
(00:42):
you are stuck
between a rock and a hard place.
All right.
It's it's really hard
to run the business.
There's a lot of challenges
to running your business.
You're struggling
and fighting more than ever.
And it has been.
I ain't gonna lie.
I spent about 20 years
worth of struggles. All right.
Up and down, up and down, up and down.
(01:03):
And it seems like the down
parts are getting shorter.
And the up parts, the short,
the longer drama is getting longer.
And that can leave you feeling burnout.
That can leave you feeling
stressed out, anxiety,
all of those good things. All right.
Oh, that's good things.
(01:24):
And so, you know, if you're like me,
there are times where I wake up
in the middle of the night and I think,
I don't know if I can take this anymore.
I don't know if I can do this.
I can't get up every day
and continue to fight.
I don't know if I have
the energy left to do it.
And I'm sure
if you're watching this video,
if you know who I am,
you know that you're in the same boat.
(01:44):
I feel like I've talked to enough people
over the past couple
of months to know that
we're all feeling the same way,
and the refrain that keeps coming up
is, I don't know what I would do
if I don't do this.
I don't have a ton of money in the bank.
Things are running down.
I've got all this debt to pay people.
(02:05):
There's a little bit of interest,
but nobody's like signing
on the dotted line.
I'm not getting any deposits.
What do I do?
And so there's this tendency
for us to think, okay, well,
I can just jump back into industry,
all right?
And I've fallen into that myself.
I'm like, well, you know, I'll just.
I'll just take an industry
job again, you know?
Fuck it.
I'll be a creative director somewhere.
(02:26):
An art director.
And I'll just sit back.
I'll get my paycheck,
you know, do this, do that.
You know, life will be great.
I won't have to worry about making
the bills and paying things.
And to that I
say good luck.
Good luck.
If you're like me, you are now strapped.
(02:48):
You are stuck
between a rock and a hard place.
And there's a reason for that.
I am not a spring chicken.
I'm an older Gen Xer. I'm the.
I'm Gen-X,
close to being a boomer,
but I'm a Gen Xer, all right,
so that means I'm in my 60s.
I'm 60. Actually.
I can't believe I said that to people,
but I admitted it. I am 60.
That does not make me appealing
(03:08):
to the design industry
in any way, shape or form.
No day, no day.
I am like Kryptonite to them
because to them I am old.
I'm out of touch.
I don't understand how things operate.
I don't understand
how to speak to the kids, so to speak.
All they see me as is old white guy.
(03:33):
I mean, that's what I am.
I'm an old white guy.
They don't understand the value
that I bring to it.
Now, the other side of
that is
they also see us
as potentially being difficult.
All right.
I admit it.
I can be very difficult at times.
I can give you a list of names of people
(03:54):
who will back that up.
I'm a I'm a punk.
I grew up in the 80s, you know, like
the 80s was my time.
I'm always ready
to, like, question
authority and question things
and push back as much as I need to,
until I feel comfortable with something.
I do tend to do
a lot of assumption
reversal on people that they don't know.
(04:17):
So there will be times
where I would be in a meeting
and they'd say, let's do this.
And I'd be like,
but what about if this happens?
And then I'd be branded difficult?
But.
That's
the problem is they see us as
you've been running
your own business,
you've been doing your own thing,
(04:38):
you haven't been answering to a boss.
Clients are a boss.
And not only have I been answering
to one client at most times,
I'm juggling 5 or 6 projects at one time.
All right? 5 or 6 projects at one time.
That means that that's
at least 5 or 6 bosses.
I have to answer to all of them
(05:00):
thinking
that they are
the only client that I have. All right.
So if and if I was in that position
of hiring people,
I'd look at them and say, well,
look,
this person is really good
at time management.
They're really good.
Yeah, yeah.
But that's not how industry sees it.
All right.
They also see us
as wanting to be expensive.
(05:20):
And let's be honest,
we are all right
I'm I'm an expensive bitch.
All right.
I come with a price tag.
I freely admit it.
Because I've put in the time
I've put in the effort.
I know how to.
As I put on my resume,
I put it on a resume.
A couple of months ago,
I was looking for a quick side
gig and somebody wanted a resume.
(05:41):
It's hard to throw one together,
and it was like
my tagline was I get shit done.
Like, that's that's what I do.
But they don't see it that way,
all right? They don't see it that way.
They see us as very old, very expensive,
that we're going to want insurance.
We're only going to work from 9 to 5.
We want one to work.
We yeah. I don't I don't do any of that.
(06:03):
Did I mention I'm fucking 60?
I don't want that.
But what I bring to
the table is so much more.
Now, the other side of it
is that they don't really
want to pay you. Like,
it is really disgusting
that I see design jobs that, but
five, ten years ago,
(06:24):
would have been paying $35 to $45
minimum, an hour
minimum are now like $17.
We'll pay you $17.
And the laundry list of shit
they want from these
employees is just, like, staggering.
Like,
you scroll through it and you're like,
Holy shit, no one has all of this.
No one's going to willing to do that.
(06:45):
Sadly there is.
Someone will do it.
So those are our problems
as being older consumers.
So we are older business owners.
We can't really jump out of our business.
We are kind of stuck where we are.
All right.
I mean, sure, we can
we can close it all down
(07:05):
and go work at McDonald's,
but that's not going to pay the bills.
And you're going to work harder
and you're going to be more miserable
than you would now.
So what?
What are our options?
Honestly, there ain't a lot.
One of the things that helps me now,
I know that it's
not necessarily
(07:25):
like money in your pocket,
but join my tribe, be part of the group,
get in touch.
Because we're just doing,
like, group
chat sessions,
discussion groups and things.
I do feel better when I talk to people
in the same boat.
I mean, it doesn't get me a new client.
It doesn't bring in.
But what it does do, what it does do is,
(07:47):
I feel energized afterwards.
I feel less
weight upon me,
and therefore I have more,
you know, when I say aggression,
I am a bit more motivated.
Let's let's go and motivate that.
That's a better that's a better word.
I'm more motivated to then say, okay,
(08:09):
I can tackle this, I can do this.
I can figure out ways to get around it.
Now, the other problem with
this is one of the other things
that I used to do
heavily back in the day.
It's a little harder
with where my business is now
as far as education and learning.
But I
used to network like like fucking crazy.
(08:30):
That is a very expensive endeavor,
all right?
It's a very expensive endeavor.
There is.
I don't know what it is to join,
but when I, the last time I joined
a group was before the pandemic.
So like 2018, 2017, something like that.
All right.
Maybe it's now 19.
Yeah, somewhere around there.
And it was like $700 to
(08:54):
just to join the branch group.
And then every month
I think the chapter was like,
like $200, 100 and something.
And granted,
you got a breakfast with it,
but it was a lot of money. All right.
And to come up with that every month,
which is
side note,
which is why networking doesn't work
for a lot of people,
but that's a whole separate video.
(09:18):
That's a lot to come up with every month
if money isn't coming in.
All right.
So
I kind of wanted to develop alternatives
to networking,
traditional networking,
because I do believe
word of mouth marketing can work.
I've even done courses on it.
I've done basics on it.
I got many caught.
You name it, I believe it can work,
(09:40):
just not the way it is now.
Which is one of the reasons
that I'm trying to get these, like
less formal networking groups started
so that we can kind of develop
personalities, personality,
they just kind of
really get to know each other.
So make sure you follow me
because join the tribe.
Go on.
My website, join our.com,
and we can start getting these going.
Because as I said,
it feels somewhat better
(10:00):
once I've talked to people.
All right.
I feel like I'm not in the same boat,
I am in the same boat.
And that,
you know,
together as a group, we can
we feel more empowered. All right.
Now, as far as getting more clients, I'm
you know, it depends on your business.
You know,
if you're relying on foot traffic
(10:21):
and there's no foot traffic,
there's not a lot you can do.
Even if you go on social media,
you're going to get
some people to come in, maybe,
you know, a handful,
but that's not
that's not what you need
as much as you did before.
Like you need
you need massive numbers
to make this happen, to make this work.
(10:41):
And so that's not going
to balance things out.
But social media is you got
you got to be on there.
You got to start talking to people.
You got to start working with people.
You got to get them to,
engage with you, make content.
You know,
there are things that we can do.
There are ways we can help each other.
(11:02):
That can really, really,
really move the needle for us
and help us feel like
we're not stuck in where we're at.
All right.
Kind of get
a little long in the tooth here,
and I feel like I'm rambling,
so I'm going to shut it off here.
But this is a constant conversation,
and I think we need to always have.
I think we need to jump back into it
every so often.
(11:23):
But like I said,
I feel like there is, safety in numbers,
so to speak.
So let's let's start
getting together with like
and especially if you're local,
if you're local, Orange
County, California, get in touch with me.
Let's start getting together.
Let's have a coffee somewhere.
Let's,
you know, have dinner together
and talk business.
(11:43):
One of the things I wanted to do
before the pandemic, it's
I'm going to try and get it,
and I'm gonna try
and get this in quickly,
with these sort of supper clubs
where we could get together, have dinner
just to get to know each other,
maybe talk a little bit of business.
But I feel like getting
to know each other
and getting to know the person
that is the business
will lead to more business.
(12:03):
But I'll talk about that
in another video, I guess. All right.
I'll have jump on over to join.howard.com
while you're there.
There's all kinds of great stuff.
There's some free content,
there's all kinds of worksheets
and many courses, very affordable,
many courses, to help
you get where you need to go.
You name it, it's there.
All of my old content
(12:23):
is there on the YouTube page,
so definitely check that out.
Make sure you like and follow me.
I'm Howard everywhere.
Do not forget to join the tribe
at joining our.com
so we can start, interfacing.
All right?
I think that's everything.
I think I'm pretty sure
I covered more than enough. So.
All right,
I will see you in the next video.
Have a good day.
(12:44):
And, you're not alone. Bye.
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