Do You Have Time to Feel Like 💩?

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I just really liked the question.
Do you have time?
to feel like shit, which is to say, change it.
You can change how you feel about it.
You can change the situation that is making you feel that way.
There's lots of different ways to go about that.

(00:58):
Morning,
Good morning, Dan.
How are you this fine Friday?
I'm all right, I'm coming off the back of a conference and getting ready to fly to thePhilippines in a week.
So it's a transitory time.
Exciting times, exciting times.
What was the conference in relation to?
I know you mentioned you had been attending one, but I wasn't exactly sure what the themewas.

(01:22):
Marketing.
Okay.
there was a bunch of people there that were, you know, they're basically professionalmarketers, right?
You could hire their agency and, you know, they would do their meta, your meta ads for youand stuff like that.
And then, you know, a bunch of people like me who are business owners who do that in-houseand wanting to learn more.

(01:43):
That's like the main gist, but it's a really cool conference.
and.
Unlike a lot of the online, a lot of conferences probably, but a lot of online conferencesI've been to, this was 50 % female, 50 % male, which was awesome.
That completely changes the vibe perspective and some of the, I don't know, questionsaround a direction that people want to take topics in.

(02:07):
And it's led by two people.
One's Ezra Firestone, the other is Molly Pittman.
And both of them are really,
I don't know how you want to put it, like connected human beings.
And I don't mean that from like a networking standpoint.
They're like, you know, they first and foremost concerned themselves with how are you,before just jumping into the professional parts of a conference.

(02:29):
so the, opening keynotes and the very beginning of the conference was really around, beinga better person, checking in with oneself and stuff like that.
And I thought it was a nice, really, a really nice stage for the next two days.
Well, that's very nice.
Where was the conference?
Right here in Denver, so it made it really easy for me to sign up for.
wonderful.
Yeah.
Excellent.
You didn't have to go anywhere.

(02:50):
That's, that's, that's excellent.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Way cheaper.
Just the, just the entrance fee.
so at a conference like that, what are you going and trying to take away?
What, is it that you, when you sign up for one of these that you hope to get out of it?
or do you know, or are you just kind of going in?
Not really sure what you want to get, but hoping to get something.

(03:15):
I'm curious what the,
Motivation is.
I would say my main motivation is always to find something that I didn't expect.
In part because I feel like that tells me the conference was good.
But it's a marketing conference.
I was there, what I really wanted to know was how to...
So much of marketing is math, but there is an art to it as well.

(03:38):
And I don't feel like the art side of me is developed as a marketer.
So I wanted to go spend time with people who have perhaps figured it out or had somesuccess and see what other kind of programming was going to be provided that might help
me.
So coming out of it, there any, I'm sure there were a number of people there that had,mean, probably presenters and people that may have written online or books or anything of

(04:04):
that nature, any content you are looking forward to consuming coming out of it that youwere introduced to?
Well, yeah, I mean, it's put on by Ezra and Molly who, sort of lead this business calledsmart marketer and they have a bunch of free educational material, free and paid education
material.
that is basically like their top of funnel to get people to sign up for their agencymodel.

(04:29):
And so I'm not going to hire their agency.
I'm too, I don't know if I'm too small necessarily, but like, just, I'm not there.
I want to practice the things first.
Mm-hmm.
I'm looking forward to consuming more of their material.
I kind of came in to this conference, tangentially, like I read a tweet by, I'm gonnabutcher his name, Moiz Ali, who is the founder of native deodorant.

(04:53):
And he was like, this conference changed my life back 10 years ago or whatever.
maybe you think about going.
And I'm like, maybe I should think about going.
And so I signed up since it was local.
and.
I lost my train of thought.
Let me just mark the episode here for you.
No, if there was any content you wanted to get coming out of it, you mentioned thefounders, content and then Moiz Ali

(05:18):
Right, so in terms of other content, like I wanna spend time with the smart marketereducation stuff.
The other thing that I've been thinking about is like, I've got members on my team who Ithink are hungry to know more.
And I don't have like a pinpointed place of like, this is the program you should take orthis is the course you should take.

(05:39):
And now meeting a bunch of these people who are, you know.
in front of the cameras and also behind the scenes of SmartMarketer as an educationalbusiness.
I'm looking forward to going through the catalog and perhaps signing up for or buying someprograms for my team.
Okay.
Interesting.
I mean, good, good, good on you for thinking about furthering your team's skills.

(06:02):
hopefully that pays dividends, for you.
yeah.
I mean, certainly keeps them, I would, in my experience, when you're able to offertraining for employees, helps keep them motivated.
If nothing else, just learning.
A lot of people, not everybody, but a lot of people really do thrive in, in
to be in an environment with rich learning experiences.

(06:25):
Yeah, and also like I'm just one person.
if I'm going to be directing everything all of the time, then it's just going to be myideas.
And, you know, I've got a good team with a completely different perspective from mine.
so leveraging their outlook and their own knowledge and trying to level them up.
so, you know, you just went to a marketing conference, anything you're immediatelythinking about implementing coming out of it, in terms of, your own businesses or any,

(06:50):
any, any little juicy tidbits that you would pass along to our listeners if they're everin a place where they're trying to do some digital marketing.
I think one of the areas where one of my businesses needs a lot of help is
It is possible to buy a very, small, small physically small, but also a small dollaramount item.
And that'd be the only thing that you buy.

(07:12):
You'll have to pay for shipping.
but then all of sudden you've got a whole, order value of $7.
And I think I lose a dollar.
So though it's, but it's hard to say like, we don't do that.
you know, at that point where I feel like I'm not providing the value that I ought to beproviding to a customer base, right?

(07:32):
Who's to say that the person who bought the $7 thing didn't at some point previously buy a$42 thing.
I don't know.
So, but to to plug that hole of just trying to not lose dollars on orders, one of theideas, and I knew this stuff existed at what I wasn't blind to it, but being able to talk

(07:53):
to a bunch of people, peers who have,
gone down this route before, there are sort of, and I'm sure you've experienced itchecking out of certain Shopify stores, of you add the shirt to cart, go to checkout, and
they're like, you might like this shirt too, do you wanna add it?
Mm-hmm.
that sort of catch.

(08:14):
We don't have any sort of processes like that in our cart.
And I think, you know, we've got a store with a whole bunch of data.
And if I, you know, install the right app, there should be some correlations betweenparticular products and other products.
So we ought to be able to have a couple of upsells in the process that, you know, listen,if it only works 5 % of the time, that's still a nice.

(08:37):
plug on some of that money losing stuff.
Yeah, absolutely.
So on, on like the small dollar order, I'm curious about the unit economics here.
what is it about the small dollar order that makes it difficult to, actually have profiton it's just the shipping.
I charge for the shipping, but that's not the whole entire cost.

(08:59):
And shipping a, you know, a two ounce thing and a three by three by three box orsomething, you'd be surprisingly expensive.
Mm-hmm.
No, I'm positive.
Does it have to be in a box?
mean, I'm just, I'm just now I'm now I'm like, now I'm like, now you got my engineeringbrain, now you got my engineering brain turning in other ways.
It's a very valid question.
It would it would require some change of operations and I feel like I.

(09:22):
There's only so many changes you can make at a given time, but yeah.
Totally.
that wouldn't, you know, that would instead of maybe losing a dollar, maybe losing 25cents.
I don't know.
type of thing.
no, 100%.
Yeah.
And we try to, you know, try our best to take advantage of like flat rate shippingwherever we can.
And some of those USPS envelopes are like that.

(09:45):
So what about the system makes it difficult to actually charge full value for shipping?
mean, to me, it seems as though, you know, if I'm a customer and it's $7 or $8, I'm...
I don't know.
why am I, why is, why, you, why, why?
understand you wouldn't provide the full value for the customers.

(10:06):
And that's, that's awesome.
I think that's a very important, you know, very important customer service value,proposition, right?
That you're going to be able to take care of and then provide the parts for yourcustomers.
If they need a replacement or an extra little add on that they forgot to order the firsttime.
Absolutely.
You want to be able to provide that.
I'm just curious why the ecosystem.

(10:27):
is set up in such a way that you can't actually, mean, I don't know.
know the shipping charge ahead of time.
We use an app to guess it.
Okay.
and therein lies a problem and you know, there are all kinds of ways to play with thatmath.
Like, you know, you could add a dollar to every single thing if you wanted to on the backedge.

(10:52):
Right.
so yes, there are ways to fix this, but also your shipping cost is a big part ofconversion.
If someone's coming in and buying a $3 25 cent item, and then it's
Yeah.
not gonna convert.
I'm frankly surprised how many $7 orders we get.
But, you know, if you can't find it in your hardware store or you really live in theboonies and you can wait seven days for your thing, then I guess I get some of that.

(11:21):
Anyway, that is to say that there's no perfect software solution here.
Or maybe there is, but it's not in my stack.
So we get really close.
most order, know, most there's a line item on the P and L usually called shipping incomeand You know, it'll vary from time to time, but it's not much right That's like excess
shipping charges We've charged to the customer that then needs to be recorded as incomeand taxes on all that kind of stuff But we try to run that as you know

(11:50):
Yeah, you want to run that at zero,
Near zero.
Yeah, because I'm really trying to only charge the customers for what they bought in termsof shipping.
It's not a place I'm trying to make a bunch of money.
Exactly.
You wouldn't, you want to charge the customer for the value add that you're adding, notfor the
then everyone wants free shipping, but frankly, like look at the stores that offer freeshipping and either they are enormously huge businesses.

(12:14):
and they're, don't know, margin structures, completely different, or they are Amazon andthey're doing logistics themselves, or, the prices on things are much higher.
Like that sweater is $150 instead of, I mean, it could have been sold for 75, but theymake way more money and they can give you free shipping.

(12:34):
Mm-hmm.
our products don't have that kind of margin.
Yeah, yeah.
The vertical integration machine of Amazon was, and even the incorporation of all theirconsignment work, for lack of a better word, I'm sure there's a proper word, like pass
through sales, you know, that they're using their network of delivery systems to helpdeliver some of these things for people that sell stuff on their storefront, right?

(13:01):
In some of those situations,
Like you sell a lot of things through the Amazon marketplace.
When you get those orders, are you shipping directly out of your warehouse or are you likegoing and putting them into?
you can go either way.
One's called FBA, one's called FBM.
So that's fulfilled by Amazon or fulfilled by merchant.
Merchant, not merchant.

(13:23):
But yeah, and so anyway, we do almost all FBA.
Your conversion rate's much higher because you can get the, know, in some cases, the,we'll deliver the same day, depending on where you are.
And to like two day shipping, yeah.
That makes p-
by merchant, that's all going to come out of North Carolina.
So if you're ordering from, you know, Eastern Oregon, it's going to take the full sevendays to get that.

(13:47):
Yeah.
Or it'll cost $120.
Yeah.
Or it'll cost $120 to the next day UPS.
Yeah.
Yeah, I wonder what the intrinsic value is of Amazon's logistics to their market cap.
I mean, or their overall intrinsic value.

(14:10):
I think it was the intrinsic.
I was going say, I think it's been a huge, huge cost and huge cost center, but then theywouldn't be able to make the money that they do on PPC without it.
Right.
The marketplace wouldn't have the same power.
I like, while it's a cost, think it actually all the money they've sunk into it has, youknow, gives them a lot of enterprise value.
That's.

(14:30):
That it creates a moat in a way.
it creates, you know, new customers coming in because they say, I can get this thing herethat I can't do anywhere else of basically free delivery on things within a day or two of
things I ordered from here.
I don't know.
Yeah, we use it a lot now currently.

(14:51):
I saw some news this week.
However, speaking of Amazon, some people are a little mad at, at their, their formerfounder or their founder, for some decisions he made on, the Washington post, right?
And, solid number of people.
you didn't hear about this.
So Bezos, basically,

(15:11):
I've been talking to people like 14 hours a day most, every day.
I haven't really looked at my phone.
Yeah.
I think it's a pretty perfect time to not be online right now.
It's going to the Philippines.
am.
I wish.
Yeah, I wish I could just disappear for about a week right now.

(15:32):
So for the listeners to give you a stamp of time, we are currently sitting Friday,November 1 recording this.
So there's something coming up here in a couple of days.
It's just being all consuming with the media and stuff being talked about online that it'sI'm getting tired of it.
But anyway, that no,
related to Jeff Bezos decided to not let the editorial board of the Washington Post give aendorsement.

(16:02):
Yes, an endorsement to either candidate.
I don't know about the LA Times because all I've been talking about online is Jeff Bezosand canceling Washington Post memberships and Amazon Prime memberships.
So since it's happened, they've lost about 250,000 post memberships.
I'm curious, I don't think anybody knows the numbers on Prime.
I'm curious.

(16:24):
All the Prime members are gonna be back.
Yeah.
Well, I saw, saw, don't know if it was a joke tweet or an actual tweet, but somebody liketrying to push people over to Walmart plus, as a, know, Hey, if you don't like the
censorship of Jeff Bezos, then go on over to Walmart plus, because I don't know why that'sany better.
It's not, I don't know.

(16:44):
No, I don't think so.
He actually wrote a, he wrote an op ed, you know, following up on it.
And I thought he had some valid points.
Basically saying he wanted the, you know, once the editorial team there to be, focused on,well, yeah.
And focused and to be able to take it as being nonbiased.
if they're, if they're, know, if the mission of the paper is to report facts and toreport, the news of the day in a, nonbiased way as possible, if you come out at the end of

(17:13):
the year, every four years, and we say, we endorsed this, that does put a shade of biasover any reporting you have them.
Right.
I mean, there, there's.
I think some people are arguing for good reasons of why it's important that people beallowed to express their free speech.
It's an editorial board, it's an opinion section.

(17:36):
of the individual writers not allowed to say what they think?
This is like the organization within Washington Post saying we want to endorse and Jeff islike, no, you can't do that as an organization.
You can do it individually though.
Yeah, precisely.
So, yeah, I'm not terribly offended by it.

(17:56):
Yeah, I kind of lean that way myself.
I'm with you.
I think it's, and honestly, it's his paper.
Well, one, it's his paper.
Two, like, what if you were the one dissenting voice?
No, no, then you get grouped in with this vote that you didn't agree with.
And I mean, the workplace isn't a democracy.
So.
That's true.

(18:17):
That is true.
Unless it's in the government and then it is kind of a democracy, not really.
No, it's getting complicated now.
And so wait, what's the is the editorial?
How are these things structured?
Like, if there are eight editorialists are all eight on the board?

(18:37):
How does how does that work?
Get a paper?
Do we know?
I don't, and it might vary paper to paper actually.
true because some local paper might have like two writers and then it's also the board.
But then I figured the Washington Post probably has like a litany of them and like guestswho aren't employed.
have a business editor, a sports editor, a politics editor, you'd have an editor of allthese.

(19:01):
so this isn't just opinions, this is the editors of each section.
And that's the board?
I'm not, you know, because two of them resigned since.
Let me see if I can pull up what I can pull up and find here real quick.
Yeah.
I had heard there was a bunch of rabble rousing at LA Times too over something similar,but it's another place I don't know any of the details.

(19:22):
The board consists of the opinion editor, the deputy opinion editor,
as well as a handful of writers.
So it's two opinion editors and a handful of writers, essentially, that make up the board.
Interesting.
I misspoke on my, or I miss-assumed there, I should say, on.
is like, where some of the anger comes from is like,

(19:44):
Like there should be some, this is, I'm gonna say a statement, but I kind of mean it moreas a question.
There should be a firewall between like the business and the reporting in a paper.
Hmm
And now this is the business coming down heavy-handed upon the reporting.
Even though it's not reporting, it's editorializing by the nature of giving anendorsement.

(20:09):
The other wrinkle to this that I've just recalled is Bezos had a meeting with Trump liketwo days before about blue origin and people are saying that it was, him trying to, yeah.
yeah.
So, which I think that might be a more, interesting argument against this particular move,but.

(20:33):
I, I don't know.
I don't, we, I wasn't there.
I don't know anything.
And in general, just generally speaking on a high surface level, I am all for saying nothaving them actually provide an endorsement.
Cause you're right.
If you work at the paper who says you have to be for one candidate or the other, but thento have your workplace say, well, we're behind this person that would feel kind of shitty.
Right.

(20:53):
I mean, it'd be like, I don't belong here.
if I did.
Yeah, exactly.
I don't belong here.
And now you've, as a workplace are optimizing for attracting one kind of person and nodissenting voices.
away half of the half of the writers or journalists that might be good at thinking aboutways from half of America, the way half of America think they I'm sure that they, you

(21:16):
know, attack stories from slightly different angles and approach the way they questionthings from slightly different angles.
I think you would want diversity.
And if you're saying, you know, as an organization, we think this way, you're going todecrease your diversity of thought.
That's what mean, not diversity of thought, not diversity of
DEI type stuff specifically.
I'm only diversity of thought.

(21:37):
That can, that could be a diverse group of people.
Not necessarily.
but yeah.
I 100 % agree with you on that.
Yeah.
So anyway, that was the interesting news about the news, meta news, I guess, in a way.
That would be meta meta news.

(21:59):
It's deep end on this Friday.
man.
Speaking of the off the deep end, they just opened up in my neighborhood, a Meow Wolf.
For those who don't know what Meow Wolf is, there are several of them now across theUnited States in different cities.
are, yeah, started in Santa Fe,

(22:20):
they're putting these in several cities across United States, Santa Fe, Denver, Las Vegas,Houston.
think Dallas has one.
anyway, if you have one in your area, I recommend seeking it out.
or if you're ever traveling near one, I recommend taking sitting aside a few hours to govisit.
it is a very unique experience that is hard to describe.

(22:42):
the premise is that you are a visitor from an alternate universe into this, you know, youknow, different universe.
they've, they've created this alternate reality and they're actors kind of walking around,doing their daily life things.
And, and so you're, just an observer in these slightly altered reality and everything isextremely interactive.

(23:06):
You're encouraged to touch the doors and open up the fridge and.
go poking around and trying to, there's supposed to be an underlying mystery I've heard.
it was, it was opening day.
So it was pretty crowded.
We didn't get to get into all the details of everything.
I got a season pass.
So I'm definitely going back.
yeah, it's like a five minute bike ride.

(23:28):
Yeah.
so, and it's right across the street from St.
Aronold's brewery here.
So also, you know, just really a perfect location.
so you're, you're, encouraged to go in.
play with everything in the environment and it's the closest I've been to being in a videogame, feel, is what it felt like.
So it absolutely surreal experience and it's like traveling to another dimension.
I recommend checking it out if you have the opportunity.

(23:50):
yeah, anyway, random aside about that and plug for Meow Wolf Houstonians go check it out.
Let's make this thing a success.
Yeah, you want to keep it around,
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Houston would be a reasonably good tourist town if like our weather wasn't so just brutalfor six months of the year.
Like there's, there's a lot of cool stuff to do and see, but a lot of it happens also insummer when you don't want to, don't know.

(24:15):
Yeah.
So I don't know.
no, that's true.
It's inside and there's, yeah, there's going to be like a concert hall attached to it.
There they were, they're still kind of building it.
yeah, we got three new concert halls.
It feels like in the area, but I don't know.
I look at what's going on on the acts and I'm just, I just realized that I'm almost 40Dan.

(24:35):
I just don't know.
anything about new music and, it feels like just kind of sad.
I, yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
I'm eight, nine weeks from 40.
So,
Nice.
What are you, are you planning anything?
We are going to go over to New Orleans for a few days, get a hotel in the French Quarterand be a little debauchress and walk around the city.

(25:02):
I don't know, New Orleans is a, for us, it's a super convenient place to visit.
It's somewhere between a three and eight hour drive and a one hour flight.
That's a pretty wide.
Yeah, that's what we usually fly.
the interstate I 10 from Houston to New Orleans.
There's a couple of spots where you're on these long bayous and these bridges that, arejust, you know, four lanes.

(25:25):
And if there's a car that breaks down or an accident happens, it just backs up and it's,yeah, it takes a long time.
It's probably extreme.
It's between three and five hours if something gets messed up, but yeah.
in one of those, yeah.
if you're coming home from New Orleans and you've, you've enjoyed yourself, driving isnever fun.
it's.

(25:45):
Yeah.
Cheap, cheap one hour flight.
If you can make it, if you're, if you're, you know, that's also a luxury.
I do realize that that's yeah.
But, yeah, from a birthday, we're good.
That's what we're going to do.
I don't know.
What'd you do for your 40th?
Anything special?
yeah, I shot myself up with antibiotics.
I was still sick at that time.

(26:06):
and, I was in Hawaii though.
So we,
Yeah, you know, we did what we do every night when we're there, we just make a big dinnerand have a good time and people toasted me that night rather than, you know, toast good
fortune.
So it was nice.
It was nice and quiet.
Is there any food you've found in Hawaii that you really like?
There's a bunch of Hawaiian barbecue places open up around here recently.

(26:28):
is just great.
It's like pulled pork.
Who knows what they do to it.
I've never really looked it up, but Kaluapork is great.
Manapua is like a Hawaiian donut.
It's really good.
It's little treat.
I mean, the Asian influence is extremely strong, right?
So like, I don't know, you want sushi or you want noodles, all that kind of stuff.

(26:50):
There's some really, which is none of that really feels to me like.
traditional Hawaiian, but when you go to Hawaii, it's extremely abundant.
Traditional Hawaiian would be a little bit more like, no asterisk here.
I'm out over my skis.
Hawaiian culture, Hawaiian culture is great and it is steeped in history and I am not astudent of it.

(27:10):
but, taro is really popular and there's a whole bunch of other dishes that are made oftaro, not at my alley.
So I can't really speak to all that stuff, but yeah.
No, I was just curious, just to highlight some things that you, lots of tubers, lots oftubers.
mean, there was a valley.
I'm not going to name a valley cause I'll probably get it wrong.

(27:33):
but there was a valley that was an extremely productive valley, and this is way beforeEuropean settlement.
And there was like said to have a population of 1 million people, which if you think likeback in this timeframe in the tropics with tropical disease and yes, it is a map.
like, yeah.
there was a massive, like just the wine, there were, you know, I'm sure it changed fromIsland to Island and even, you know, tribes across different within an Island or whatever,

(28:04):
but like there, there were some extremely, extreme ingenuity with like water managementand agriculture on the islands and the history of, of the Hawaiian people.
And that's about as far as I can go with my knowledge.
I'll stop there.
No, I was just curious because I've noticed it seems, you know, between poke and Hawaiianbarbecue, it feels like I've seen a lot of Hawaiian food popping up in Houston.

(28:29):
The last.
has really had a moment over the past five years.
Yeah.
Well, I think that's because we were all primed to sushi and it's just really are-imagining of sushi in many ways.
Right.
and I, absolutely.
Like I, I grab it, I don't know, two, three times a month, probably.
That's, that's pretty regular in my, in my, in my routine.

(28:52):
store in Hawaii called KTA.
And if you go to their like meat butcher thing in the back, they'll just have whole traysfull of, of poke and it'll be, you know, Hawaiian sriracha and it'll be a shoyu, which is
their word for soy sauce.
know, so many different flavors and you can just scoop it up, get two pounds of thatstuff, just straight up tuna and.

(29:18):
So good.
I eat myself silly when I'm there, that's sure.
glad I ate before this, because otherwise I'd be starving right now.
Yeah
So you work on that thought.
I'm going to take this little sentence that I thought was, I don't know why I find it soilluminating because it's like kind of obvious once you think about it.

(29:44):
But at this conference, we had a keynote given by a lady named Gabby Bernstein.
I had never heard of her previously.
but she's written like nine New York Times bestsellers and has been interviewed andcelebrated.
by Oprah and like, so she's famous, but just not in my circle, I guess.
And she gave this talk and I swear by the end of the talk, I'm sitting there in the backgoing like, preach Gabby, preach, you know, she was a really empowering speaker and it was

(30:11):
great.
And she also just, what I want to say, like no holds barred kind of lady.
Like if you,
you know, she was broadcasting to the whole conference for some time, but then I wasthrough sheer luck at a round table with her afterwards.
And I sat right next to her for an hour and a half and I got to see her interact withindividuals at the table.

(30:36):
Right.
And she is just super empowering.
We'll question you in ways that make you like not feel ashamed, but like, like, why am Idoing that?
Right.
Like I haven't asked myself why I'm doing that.
Even though sitting here talking to all of you, I realize it makes no sense or I amempowered to change it or something along those lines, right?

(31:02):
So anyway, one line that came out of Gabby's mouth while we were there was, do you havetime to feel like shit?
Cause I think the whole room is entrepreneurs basically.
And, you know, we take on a lot of baggage from everyone around us.
It's part of the job.
It was like, you know, the buck stops there, right?
But, it's really easy to take all that on board and eventually start moping around orhaving moments where you're moping around.

(31:29):
I feeling like shit.
And I just really liked the question.
Do you have time?
to feel like shit, which is to say, change it.
You can change how you feel about it.
You can change the situation that is making you feel that way.
There's lots of different ways to go about that.
Yeah, sometimes you can change it with some reframing and, and I've found that morerecently.

(31:51):
that when I'm kind of, I don't know, annoyed, agitated, upset, bummed out by something.
And I think, why am I feeling that way?
And I kind of reframe like what it is about the situation is getting me down.
It might not be, this thing might have gone wrong, but it's not really that, you know,that's it's like, I'm feeling more that, this is a symptom or a, thing of this ongoing.

(32:17):
Series of events in life that, and when you reframe it, that, I don't know, step back andnot think about just today, but think about, okay, what, what has the last year been?
You know, how many of these situations really have to be, okay, it's happened four times,but you know, it's a year, whatever.
and I don't know.
Just my, just my thoughts that yeah, just my thoughts that popped in my head as you weretalking about what a Ms.

(32:41):
Bernstein had to say.
yeah, it looks like she has quite a few books, six or seven of them, at least,
So it might be worth checking out if you found her to be inspiring.
did she would, had you, had you, you had not heard of her previously, did she speak aboutanything in particular on, you know, things she has written any, any sense of.

(33:03):
I mean, I feel like all her books are centered around the same thing.
It's sort of like a spirituality, self-improvement vibe, meditation and stuff like that.
I think she's extremely popular with females.
It seemed like every female in the room knew of her and many of us males were like, comeagain.

(33:24):
And I mean, I have no idea what the books are like, but if her speaking career caninvolve, you know, reach more men, I think that would.
be fine.
Her message was really empowering.
was one another line that she had was just because I'm good at it doesn't mean I should bedoing it.
Yeah.
You shared that with me and that that, that hit home for me too, especially as a manager,because there are things when like, I'm like, I need to, this needs to be done.

(33:52):
Do I assign this to somebody or do I just knock this out?
Because I'm good at this.
And sometimes I do too much of the, I'll just knock this out because I'm good at this whenit should be, shouldn't be my job.
that was a good, yeah.
yeah.
Yeah, asking for help is just men are not good at it or I don't know.

(34:13):
agree.
Or at least I'm not.
There was one guy that stood up and asked a question.
And I'm not gonna be able to like go into the whole question and response thing, but Ireally loved his opener, which was like, you know, him saying his name.
Thanks for taking the time.
I'm a recovering people pleaser.
Hehehehehe
Which isn't to say that you do the exact opposite and like, you know, hurt everyone aroundyou, but it's also don't hurt yourself by trying to please others around you 100 % of the

(34:41):
time, which is really hard to do.
feeling like you're around a bunch of emotional vampires and end up draining yourself.
Yeah.
I don't know.
that's also, introspective lenses feeling that way too in many situations.
Like, like.

(35:02):
Sometimes when you're out there trying to please everybody, you don't also see them, butpeople are trying to do for you.
And so you, you, you become blind to it and like, you like, feel like I've been doingthese for the same, this, for this person, this, for this person, this, and then, but you
missed it.
Like, but there's that person other there doing that for me.
and yeah.
So again, your lens and where it's pointed is often very important in these situations.

(35:27):
No, interesting.
I've, I need to go to a conference like that.
That sounds like fun.
Like I need to one that would be in right alley for me and.
Yeah, I think there are defined like I almost never look forward to conferences.
They're just like not my thing.
but I've been lucky to go to a handful of very small targeted ones.

(35:48):
And, to me, that's where the value is.
Like there's just more human connection.
I met some really nice guys at this one.
you know, it's like more friends scattered across the country.
no one close, but,
It's just nice.
And also, I don't know, going back to the sort of the entrepreneur journey thing is like,you spend a lot of time being alone, especially an online entrepreneur.

(36:12):
And it's good to go connect with people who like, absolutely to their bones, understandyour core issues.
the things that you're fighting against every single day of the demons that like, will notleave you.
and then to have Gabby come in and you know,
do this whole thing where you like everyone closes their eyes and gets tries to find whichdemon is speaking to them the most today and then befriending that demon bringing it in

(36:43):
and then trying to like peacefully say goodbye to it or something something along I'mgonna butcher it but like it's this whole process and It's just interesting and you can
say that's all woo or whatever but like take you don't have to do that practice
this sounds a little woo-woo.
No.
but you don't, but you don't have to take that practice word for word, but it, thinkfunctionally, all those things are true.

(37:05):
Like invite your demons in, get them close.
Like, then, show them the door.
No, you have to know the demon.
think you have to know it because we don't want to, we don't want to interact with them orthink about them because they drive us insane, but you can't get rid of them until you
know them.
I mean, I feel like we just realized that it's a metaphor for, know, every horror filmever made, but, or every horror film that ever made is a metaphor for something of that

(37:36):
nature.
You have to know the demon to, to extricate it.
in a way.
Well, I mean, there's a bunch of cliches that you can pull in here and it's like, I thinkwe all get uncomfortable with like cliches and stereotypes, but there are, you know,
there's a reason why they exist.
They oftentimes not every time, but there's a reason they exist.
And one of them is like, keep your friends close to your enemies closer.

(37:58):
And that can sound so very like Sun Tzu art of war or something like that, but, but applyit to your mental health.
Right.
And, I think you can get some interesting results there.
Yeah.
sometimes, and sometimes the, the phrases become a thing of themselves and not theindividual words.

(38:21):
And then when you, I just have an example of this as we can, I'm not gonna be able tothink of it now.
I need to start writing these ones down.
where this happens to me where I hear the phrase and like, it's, it's, it's a thing ofitself.
And I'm like, okay, that's fine.
It doesn't really mean all that much.
But then I think about the individual words and putting them together and I'm like, duh.
Like I, if I just paid like, what is the, I need to come up with a good example.

(38:44):
I'll, I'll look.
Okay.
Objects in mirror closer than they appear.
No.
I remember reading that as a kid thinking like.
What are they trying to say?
And then and then it clicked one day I was like, there's just a bunch of words missinghere, but yeah, now I understand it, but it's those sort of like coded messages or.
Yeah.

(39:06):
yes, something, something along that, along that line where, where the phrase itself hasbecome kind of meaningless.
But then if you think about the individual components of it, and like, as a, like,disintegrate it and then reintegrate it, it, kind of becomes a new thing in your head.
I'll, I'll make a note of the next time it happens to be once a month, I feel like lately.
I'm like, yeah, that phrase, I really didn't think about that enough.

(39:29):
anyway.
You had made a comment about how Gabrielle Bernstein was very popular, with the women inthe crowd at the conference, but most of the guys are kind of looking around, I wonder
what the equivalent would be from the men's side of like who's somebody that if they hadhad...
question coming off our previous episode.
Right?

(39:50):
Yeah.
Like it is like, don't know who's that.
Yeah.
Is that, I mean, God, I hope it's not Tony Robbins, but like, no, I don't know, buteverybody knows that.
Is there an equivalent?
Yeah.
And also different.
mean, well, maybe not.
enough with this stuff.
I know a lot of people really love it, but...

(40:11):
Yeah, that's true.
I mean, popularity is...
Who would be, it's more atomized, right?
Like I feel like I could give some answers.
They'd be off the cuff.
So I don't know how true they are.
Well, way off the cuff, what would you say?
Like, let's think about this and maybe we come back to this at a future date.
I'm curious what off the cuff you'd say.

(40:32):
I hesitate only because like each of these people, me with maybe the exception of one isvery much a this is how I always describe it.
And I don't know if it's the best way to describe it.
Someone that I would leave cutting, you know, their material I would leave, I would taketo the cutting room and leave some on the floor.
I don't take everything they say.
I can't I don't agree with everything they say.

(40:54):
But the broader message or
or some of the core values, maybe not all of them, but some of the core values are like,think important enough that I'm like, I would try to elevate that person and put them in
front of a bigger audience or whatever.
I recommend a give and take by Adam Grant.
I'll put Adam Grant up there, even though don't think he's the kind of person that wouldlike.

(41:18):
transform men's lives necessarily, right?
He's a researcher and academic.
But for me, I don't know.
Also, again, I'm going off the cuff here.
I'd pick on someone like Scott Galloway, who I think is attempting through some cringybehavior, connecting with more men and men's issues.

(41:39):
Who else?
I guess like if I'm trying to compare to Gabby directly, who is, you know, got her startedthrough books, but then kind of changed into this, not changed, but like added speaking
and engaging to the repertoire.
What would that be?
Jordan Peterson for some reason is the name that's in my head, but I don't know why and I

(41:59):
but it wouldn't be my answer.
think that guy's kind of gone outside of his core competency.
I've never read his stuff.
So let me say this upfront.
I've never read any of his particular things, but I've heard him talked about by a lot ofother people that I do have some respect for.
And so I know he has some interesting and good ideas, around.
was better than where he's gone.

(42:21):
I don't know.
He's not someone to follow closely, so I'm not able to add a ton.
But you're right.
He had a moment.
a name that popped into my head.
I'm trying to think who else.
I mean, in a lot of ways, feel like you could, this again, not my answer.
I'm trying to construct an answer.
I think there's a lot of people that look up to people like Joe Rogan, who's just outthere trying to do his thing.

(42:43):
that was in my head as well.
But I don't think you could say Joe Rogan in front of a group of women and she go, go,huh?
I think they'd be like, Joe Rogan, yeah.
Especially the last couple of weeks here before the election.
think he's pretty much in the zeitgeist everywhere.

(43:04):
So I don't think that that's why he wouldn't qualify.
But a few years ago, maybe.
Like a few years ago, absolutely.
the Spotify deal.
Yeah, yeah, that I think that would be fair.
Cause I mean, unless you were a fan of news radio or UFC or his standup, you wouldn't haveheard of him.
now it's he's, he's become bigger.

(43:25):
Hmm.
Yeah.
Okay.
I, yeah, I don't have any good examples myself.
It was just, you said that and I, I was, I was just trying to think of there was aninteresting analog from the men's side of somebody that maybe should be elevated more.
Yeah, well I think Richard Reeve should be elevated more.
I think Mormon should be familiar with his material.
that's fair.
need to, and I did see, have any, I know he's got a bunch of stuff on, on his site.

(43:49):
the Institute.
Yeah.
Yes.
Have you read that?
it.
I have not, no.
I've just sort of circled around some of his podcast episodes to hear it straight from hismouth.
Hmm.
I'm sure the book is good.
You know, you can be a little bit more, you're citing data probably more in the book thanjust, having a conversation.

(44:09):
yeah, he seems very data forward.
I might check out that book.
Okay, well, Dan, we've hit on some spread of topics this week.
yes.
Anything else?
Anything else we want to chat about here?
So you're getting ready to go to the Philippines next week.
I'm so mad I'm not going with you.

(44:30):
Yeah, I fly Friday and I arrive almost Sunday.
It's 60 hours of travel.
So I'll be gone for seven days and I get four working days while I'm there.
The rest of it's just like transit.
Well, then I guess we'll, we'll have to circle back and figure out when we're going totouch base again next time.
But, until then, let's say goodbye to our listeners.

(44:54):
And thank you everybody for tuning into another episode of unqualified advice.
We appreciate everybody that's been, downloading our episodes and hopefully, hopefullygiving a listen lately.
if you want to get at us, please, find us on Twitter @SlowVSM for myself or @DanielHatke

(45:14):
Or you can always leave a comment on wherever you downloaded this episode if you wouldlike as well.
Thanks for your time and like and subscribe.
Thanks everyone.
See you later.

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