Brady Ryan!

Kev & Nate sit with Brady Ryan, owner of San Juan Island Sea Salt (https://sanjuanislandseasalt.com/), father, and crossfit workhorse!

This ep we delve into the man behind the myth & get to know Brady & his philosophies.
A great convo, tune in & share! 

Brady has his own pod Happy When Curious available with some lovely local guests Here

Follow @sanjuanislandseasalt on Insta. 

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-dad-pod--6488693/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yo Dad Pod episode five or.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Six six, probably special guest, first guest Brady Ryan sitting
here with us at Waterworks Gallery.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Yeah, I had to get him on, had to get.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
This dude on met I personally met this guy probably
about a year ago at the gym and then a
friendship just kind of started with walking Finlessen with logs
and kettlebells in the pitch in the dark man five
am Thursdays and then Saturdays, I think it was every
other Saturday. We'd get there a little bit later, probably

(00:37):
at like six or six thirty. And Yeah, I just
had to get you on man, you know, as a
as a transplant from the island to the island, as
a father, as a member of this community.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
I mean, you're just one.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Of the guys that like, I've just been drawn to
because you I mean, you're from here man, and you're
just like a you're a good beacon of.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Light for or for the community.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
And yeah, I just wanted to get you on and
with get Nate on here with you to take on
a talk about business and fatherhood and what it's like
to be from here, from this island and what what
it entails to to manage that successfully, right, Like there's
like a big there's people that stay here then leave

(01:24):
and don't ever come back, or they come back forgrudgingly
and for you, it's just it really seems that you
you're like the goal man, Like you're the goal when
it comes to a father, in a relationship with your
family and your wife and your kids, and as a
business owner. And I just wanted to hear hear your story,

(01:45):
hear how you how you got to be who who
you are?

Speaker 3 (01:53):
O beautiful.

Speaker 4 (01:54):
Well, I'm honored to be here. Thank you, gentlemen, both
for inviting me. I see intention conversation as one of
the favorite parts of my life. And so anytime I
get invited to have an intentional conversation a little more
like focused, not with you know, half on our phones,
half on looking at somebody else, but fully focused, I
see that as a gift, and so thank you for
that gift. Yeah, so would you like me to kind

(02:16):
of run through my story a little bit with that?

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Would that be ask? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yeah, yeah, I'm happy to do that.

Speaker 5 (02:19):
I think we have like maybe a couple questions specifically,
but yeah, it'd be great to get your give us
your you know, your your blurb, your breath.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
That's it. Brady intro.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:29):
So I was lucky enough to be I hit the
genetic lottery, not genetic lottery, but a you know, the
baby lottery.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
That's that's right.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Genetic is not the right word.

Speaker 4 (02:38):
The right word is I got the genetic the lottery
of where you're born on Earth into a stable family, uh,
into a upper middle class family on one of the
most beautiful places on planet Earth. What's the same one,
islands in the I was one of these people that
recognized that from pretty early on. Some people, you know,
the island felt small to them growing up, the island
felt constricting, it felt backwards or whatever. And I just like,

(03:02):
I fucking love this place. And I felt that from
very early. That did not take That was not like
something I learned at thirty, like, oh I really now,
I'm realizing I love the place I grew up in.
That came on me early, and there was I was
not the only one there a couple of my friends
who felt that.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Like we are in love with this magical place.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
Was anything?

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Was it?

Speaker 3 (03:19):
The wildness?

Speaker 5 (03:20):
And then like that clear power of nature that you
kind of have to exist in, like in the city.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
You're a little separate.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
You guys grew.

Speaker 5 (03:29):
Up deep in the the exact heart of like the
thrall of wild nature.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
Yeah, I think that played a huge part in it.

Speaker 4 (03:37):
Certainly, you know, swimming in the ocean, at playing at
the beaches, crawling around in the woods huge part of
our life. But for me personally, what sa Je Island
is is the perfect balance between the wild and the human. Like,
I got no interest in going to living in Alaska
in the woods, and I've learned that about myself a
long time ago. True nature, true solitude is amazing, and
I have no interest in that for as a sustainable

(03:59):
way living. But Salwan Island represents this rural community that
is surrounded by insane nature in every direction. You know,
ten minutes same direction. Use a beach that's like a
world class beach and there'll be no one there. In
addition to a community, and I think it's that very
unique combination of really high human connection ability a very

(04:19):
tight knit community with that nature.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
That is what I was picking up on.

Speaker 4 (04:22):
I probably don't have the words for that then and
my youth to be able to explicitly say that, but
it is that synthesis of the human and the nature.
Whereas you know, I go to Ice, went to New
York City. It was amazing, loved it. It's all fucking human.
It's one hundred percent human nature. There For me was
like I'd look up and there'd be like trash fucking
spiraling in the air.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
That was the storms, Yeah, exactly. Oh it's a beautiful tornado,
you know.

Speaker 4 (04:46):
And again Alaska being maybe the other end of that
spectrum or whatever nature natural place you can imagine. And
I think for me, for my soul, what was perfect
here is that that nice balance between the two. And
you know, again so much as comes down to my family.
You know, my family was a low stressed family. We
live out a beautiful property near the beach, and so
it's just like playing in the yard all day, every day,

(05:09):
going to the beach every day. And yeah, so that
was my upbringing. Is I knew that I loved this
place early on. And I've always my philosophy of life.
I've always been an odd duck and I've always been
proud of my weirdness ever since, you know, maybe middle school,
where I was explicitly like, oh I want to be different.
I I'm proud to be different, you know, and that

(05:30):
can come with flaws too, But so I like just
doing weird things and what does that what does that
look like?

Speaker 3 (05:36):
Yeah? Or what did that look like as a kid, Yeah,
what did that look like? I remember?

Speaker 4 (05:43):
But the weirdest thing I met, mean, one of the
weirdest things I ever did in school was there was
a class that ended. It was maybe middle early high school,
late middle school, probably early high school. Class ended, and
my soul just said, don't get up, and so I
just literally just sat there in that room. Everyone else led.
I didn't see a fucking word. Everyone else left, went
to go to lunch. Hour later, you know, middle of lunch,
I was still in there with the lights off, and.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
You know, he can't.

Speaker 4 (06:06):
Explain what your soul wants, you know, And it's just
in that moment, I'm like, no, don't move, don't move.
And some of that is like, Okay, it's fun to
be different or whatever. But I always felt a high
tolerance for embarrassment, always felt a high tolerance for people
thinking I'm different, and I think.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
That has served me greatly in my life.

Speaker 4 (06:24):
I did weird shit in my house where I took
the door off my room growing up I was like,
I don't like this constriction. I want flow, energy, flow.
I took the bed out, I took all the furniture
out of my bedroom. I got my clothes laid out
and neat little piles. Very spartan, you know. I think
I was naturally drawn towards a somewhat spartan thing. I
was sleep in a different place in my house every night.
My parents they drew me growing crazy. I mean, they're like,

(06:44):
what the fuck is this kid doing?

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Did they support you in that?

Speaker 5 (06:48):
Like, did you get that ownership of your weirdness from
them in part?

Speaker 3 (06:51):
Or does that a sing? They did not.

Speaker 4 (06:53):
They did not try to stamp it out, but there
were times. I think it's important they I think there
were times they thought I was mentally off and they
said to me, but I was always I was not.
I was just very intentionally doing different ship. I mean,
I put band aids on all the clocks in our house.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
Uh yeah, so I've always felt drawn to was that?

Speaker 4 (07:11):
What do you mean you put like on the literally
band aids covering up clocks.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
Yeah, exactly. I'm like, time doesn't seem real.

Speaker 4 (07:17):
It doesn't seem like someone should be paid attention to
so I've always been drawn to kind of like mom.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
And dad, I gotta get to work at a certain time.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah, No.

Speaker 4 (07:29):
I think it can be challenging trying to raise somebody
who so clearly wants to be different. But thankfully, my
difference was not in acting out and alcohol or drugs
or any of that.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Ship. It was all pretty safe acting out, you know it.

Speaker 5 (07:42):
It sounds like it was more like personality experiments of
like what is socially acceptable versus what rings true for you?
And were that line of like, you know, what is you?
Probably you probably score much differently on those like psychology
sociology like if everyone in the elevator turns around and
stairs at the wall, Like, would you feel confident enough

(08:03):
to like maintain your position because there was no reason
for them doing that?

Speaker 1 (08:06):
You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (08:07):
You probably be fine on those. Yes.

Speaker 4 (08:09):
I just when I was in New York, I'm just
I'm just very unaware or I don't care how people
think about me.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
So I was having this intense political conversation my buddy.

Speaker 4 (08:16):
We step into an elevator packed with people, and I'm
just still still loudly continue the conversation.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
It was like, I don't what are they?

Speaker 1 (08:22):
Like, what are these people here?

Speaker 4 (08:23):
I'm not like screaming f bombs, so like having an
intense political conversation and he's like shut up, like everybody's
being quiet, and he were like, no, I don't want
give a shit about that.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
Anyway, I don't know why. I explained that.

Speaker 4 (08:32):
It's just a little backstory for my personality. And I think,
you know how kind of attracts people like that, who
who feel different and you know, like to play in
that difference, like that playground of personality expression. Like you said,
I think that is exactly what was happening. Yeah, So anyway,
fast forward a bit, uh and what did what did
doms and pops do?

Speaker 3 (08:52):
What'd they do in response to all this?

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
Mom was a school teacher. My my dad was the vat.
He was the small animal that on the island. So
everybody knew my dad. He was the man dogs and cats.
You know, everybody's got him and everybody they always get
sick or whatever, and so my dad was a man
on that level. So yeah, I think a little bit.
I certainly was maybe opened a little bit to the
entrepreneurial sense.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
For my dad.

Speaker 4 (09:14):
He didn't talk about it much though, which she was
a shame because he had his own business. I mean,
he was his own own boss and he had done that.
He had been his own boss for many years, from
painting to all sorts of different business, small businesses he had.
And there's that clinic you started from scratch, and.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
Yeah you absorbed it.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
You watched him.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
Yeah, I guess O wasmnically, But we didn't talk about
that much.

Speaker 4 (09:35):
It was only much later that I realized I had
an interest in business that was not never something I
had grown up. Was when I was in college and
I was much more you know, a greeny. It's like hippie,
like business is a bad word. It's a bad like
I would honestly would have thought that business was a
bad word, has a lot of negative connotations, like around it.

Speaker 5 (09:53):
Does that mean you went to Evergreen?

Speaker 4 (09:55):
Now Hardluck would have liked that. It was you dub
and similar on this want to be different thing.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Everybody's going to college.

Speaker 4 (10:01):
Everybody was so sure they wanted to go to college,
and I was like, I'm not sure at all I
want to go to college. So I took a year
off after after high school. It was like I love learning.
Learning is a huge part of my body. So now,
in retrospect, why wouldn't you want to go to college.
I didn't realize that at the time. I thought I
was like, everybody's doing this. I'm not assuming this is
right for me. After my year off, my mom like

(10:21):
literally forced me. She's like, you're fucking going to college.
And thank god I did. Is she did because I
loved it. It's all it is is learning. It's like
and for somebody who's like me, is just curiosity and
learning is like so core to my being. Being in
a place where insanely smart people are discussing every topic
in the world, different buildings, like every building you go.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
Into and you get to choose.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
Yeah, it's fucking amazing. Amazing.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
Is that where you did you know in college that
you wanted to be your own boss?

Speaker 1 (10:49):
No, start your own business or company?

Speaker 4 (10:51):
Fuck no, no, Like I said, still in that point
in my life, business was a bad word. It was
because I was hanging out with really environmentally minded people,
kind of some of them a good chunk of anarchist
minded people. We were dumpster divers. Yeah, my money was
not part of our life, let alone running your own business.
Ye brat, Yeah exactly. I mean in my house, we
did not pay for food and yeah, so, but I

(11:17):
was always been an outdoors person. That was literally the
only way I made money grown up was doing yard
work for people because I'm physical.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
I love hard work. I love that on a sports level.

Speaker 4 (11:26):
I love that on a work level, Like, give me
the hardest physical thing on a job site, I'll do that.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
I don't need the skilled work.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
In the gym.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
Yeah, the mule man, that's right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
Did you grow up doing sports?

Speaker 1 (11:37):
What was your sports? Oh?

Speaker 4 (11:38):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, sportsman through and through three seats, three
to four seasons a year, all year round. So it
was baseball, soccer, basketball, and then baseball again in the summer.
And that was my life. Yep, And yeah, I cannot.
I think that's one of the things I really enjoyed
about CrossFit. It's getting a little sense of that. That
competition and camaraderie. Those are the big things in my life.
Is having those two one without the other is not

(12:01):
that great, but together they are fucking amazing.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
Accomplishing the camaraderie that that CrossFit open.

Speaker 5 (12:06):
You know, the last sporting event I was involved in,
I was trying to think I was like, yead, it
must be college. Like, yeah, last time I was on
a team doing anything for real, it was so long ago,
and yeah it felt great.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
And then you have like just being a little bit older.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
So like even the idea of competition is different, like
the outcome is different where it's less about wanting to
win and more about like, man, I'm just gonna I'm
a fucking throttle down. I'm gonna see what I can
get to. I'm gonna try to keep up. I try
to pay, you know, try to pace. But then like

(12:41):
also know that like yo, if this person you know
beats me with a more reps or a higher score
or whatever it is, it's like, yu, man, I'm still
I'm still out here doing it, you know. And that's
I think one of the parts that that I love watching,
you know what I mean as a as a coach,
you know, it is like watching the athletes and then
different athletes and then seeing how you kind of see

(13:06):
that mentality in the gym, how it can benefit outside
of the gym of like doing this hard thing. It's
not going to be easy, but I have to figure
out a plan. I have to figure out how I'm
going to do this and it's been uh yeah, that's
so much fun.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
It is super sweet. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (13:27):
So college you were you were any activism involved in
your environmental.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
Yeah, it's funny.

Speaker 4 (13:33):
I was certainly my that was my philosophy by nature
was very liberal, very environmentally you know, default kind of
because that's how it grew up. You know, it's a
very liberal place and so you know, mainly people default
to their parents' political positions or their peers.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
But activism itself, I did some.

Speaker 4 (13:48):
I remember we did a few sit ins in the
chancellor's office or whatever, and I was always appropiate of that.
It never felt it never felt natural to me. It
always felt put on. Not that not that people were
doing it, We felt put on. I think it was
very authentic to there being, But for me, activism never
felt authentic to me.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
I think maybe that group thinking it was like.

Speaker 4 (14:06):
That part of a herd versus like I always kind
of felt like I'm doing my own thing.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
Sure, so that's part of that.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
And how old are you, Brady?

Speaker 3 (14:12):
I am thirty nine years old. Okay, yeah, so you
were in college?

Speaker 5 (14:16):
Oh five six.

Speaker 3 (14:17):
Yeah, that's right, that's right exactly.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
Yeah, what was I going to say, just before we
moved on from that.

Speaker 5 (14:24):
Well you were you were in love with the learning
aspect of college, yes, and then I.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
Think you were gonna tell us what do you think
a quick one on that.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Do you think and I've always wanted to ask you this.
Do you think that your curiosity and you're wanting to learn?
Do you think some of that stems from being growing
up and being born and raised on a on an
island like just the I want to say.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
The lack of.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
The lack of of the outside world, right, Like, do
you think you like being from an island that you
were just drawn to like take in more?

Speaker 1 (15:08):
Like, man, I have to see more, I have to
do more. I want to know more.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
And if that exploration pulls, yeah, well, because like I
mean I could totally see that. I mean I see
that with you just as a as an observer, right of,
like I can totally see like, man, I that dude
can be you know, he wants to to not know everything,
but it's just like genuinely curious about how everything around

(15:33):
him is working, like people, machines, business like.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Everything, Like man, how and why?

Speaker 2 (15:40):
And I'm just curious Like if if that do you
think or if you've ever thought about that comes from
from being from a from an island, you know.

Speaker 4 (15:50):
He's a great question. I mean, I would immediately compare
myself to my friends. I always was way off the
charts and curiosity, not I wouldn't say intelligence, but off
the charts and curiosity. And so now was relative my
peers who also grew up here. Could I make a
causative case that my curiosity is at least somewhat correlated,
you know, related to my island upbringing.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 4 (16:11):
I've never I've never conceptualized it that way. My guess,
my best guess for my level of curiosity is that
some combination of genetic thing, you know, We're personality is
somewhat genetically determined, and some people have just somewhat more
open personality, where like novelty is like really exciting and
for me, I get off on learning like it's like
I swear, I feel alive is when I'm learning.

Speaker 5 (16:34):
You would say that you're happy when curious.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
That's right, that's very well said.

Speaker 4 (16:39):
Yeah, And what I realized, what I've known for a
long time is people thought it was really smart, Like
I was thought of as like a genius. People will
call me a genius in high school, and that was
not true. I would take that in as like a
common that's the nice flattery. But it took me a
while to realize what they're actually picking up on was curiosity.

Speaker 3 (16:53):
It was I was actually curious.

Speaker 4 (16:55):
To know, and so my hand would be shooting up
in class, whereas most people are half brain dead and
just that energy and activity as people picked up on
that as intelligence, But it's actually different than intelligence.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
And I learned this when I.

Speaker 4 (17:06):
I was always a math guy, and so math was
like came easy to me, and I was curious about
it and I loved it.

Speaker 3 (17:10):
So I just would dive all the way fucking down math.

Speaker 4 (17:13):
And I went to a math camp in high school
for gifted math students, and.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
I always thought I was good at math too, And
then you realize, oh no.

Speaker 4 (17:20):
It's just that there's level Oh shit, yes, But even
in that context, my curiosity was still higher then these
people who are objectively much better at math than me,
which is interesting to see. So I was like, Okay,
I realized my superpower is not like raw horsepower intelligence,
It is my desire to know and ask hopefully interesting
questions that would stop a teacher in their tracks, and

(17:43):
that would be like, oh, that's a great day I
stopped a teacher.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
In their tracks.

Speaker 3 (17:45):
They're like, oh shit, I don't know how to answer.

Speaker 4 (17:47):
That, And that always felt like like acing a test
would be great, but much more satisfying is stumping a teacher.

Speaker 5 (17:54):
Yes, you also clearly have like the retention part, you
know what I mean, Like you, it's one thing to
be curious and taking information, but not everyone can retain
it and then synthesize it out to other people.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
That's a different, no doubt skill set too, no.

Speaker 4 (18:09):
Doubt, and we all are endowed with our own collection
of unique abilities and drawbacks and all this personality and intellect,
all that. Yes, and math, it wasn't just curiosity that
made math come easier to me. You know, I don't
know something about the way my mind works super analytical
and like step by step, So there's other elements to it,
for sure, But the spirit giving portion of my learning
was never in the test taking or the retention or

(18:31):
the barfing it back out. It was always in the
the oh, I got a good question to ask about
this shit, And that's when I would feel alive, And
so it was never the answers that that made me
feel alive.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
It was the questions.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
Yeah, and were the questions? Were the questions of for
this more of a way for you to understand it?
Or did you did you have an understanding of it
and you just wanted to to know more? Or was
it the question of, like, man, how do I how
do I figure this out so I can and get it?

Speaker 1 (19:01):
You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (19:02):
Like, yeah, it's a good question.

Speaker 4 (19:06):
I think the first thing you got to say is
that questions can be a way to show off to
and I didn't this is subtle. Most people show off
with answers like I know the answer that question, and
like we're talking about classroom context, that's the way we
normally conceive of showing off. Like there's a kid who's
like show off know it all, literally to know it all?
And that was not me, like I'm talking about. But
you can also get a lot of pride and arrogance

(19:27):
in terms of like I'm asking the best questions, and
so there is an ego component to this that can't
be understated that like you want to be like, look
like the cool question asking guy.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
It's like an identity thing.

Speaker 4 (19:37):
But what it feels like in the moment, it feels
like fucking visceral, Like somebody's talking about something I can picture.
I can picture. I think it was marine biology, something
like that. I picture the teacher talking and like there's
something happening in my body, like there's something she's saying.
I'm wondering, what about the things she's not saying? What
about this things she's not mentioning. It's a little slight
angle coming off this what is that implying? And I
can't I can't help with my arms it's like popping
out him its socket.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
It's going up. So it's very visceral to me.

Speaker 4 (20:02):
It feels like I can't explain it more than that,
like my butt might like my hand's going up.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
I don't know. So how do.

Speaker 6 (20:09):
You with with you being how you are and curious
in the way that you are as as a leader,
as a business owner and a leader of a family.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
How do you who do you? Who do you ask
questions to?

Speaker 2 (20:27):
When everyone is asking you questions or they're asking you
what do I do?

Speaker 1 (20:33):
What?

Speaker 2 (20:33):
What you know? It's you know, I mean, it's everyone
wants you to make the decision for them.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
So how do you who do you ask questions to?

Speaker 2 (20:44):
When when you have questions about business or in a
personal relationships or your your marriage, you know, or fatherhood.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
Like, how do you who do you to? Who do
you seek?

Speaker 2 (20:56):
And it doesn't have to be like a specific person,
but just like you know who who who fills that
cup or you?

Speaker 3 (21:02):
Yeah, it's a great question.

Speaker 4 (21:03):
Really, it's a very astute question actually, and it's I
think one of the biggest deficits in my life post
college has been being around people in which there's a
huge knowledge gradient. And this is no knock on the
island people, but you know, it's a pretty small community here,
and you know, if you go into the big city,
if you're in the right circles, you can be surrounded
by people who are just way smarter in you, way

(21:24):
more athletic than you, way more driven in business when
you way more experienced in business than you, and you
can just like like suck like just like soak all
that shit up. Again, you have to do the work
of putting yourself in those contexts. But here it's non
trivial and I don't actually like that feeling of being
at the helm being assumed to know the most in business.
That doesn't feel good for me, and it's something that's

(21:46):
I think is kind of plagued my soul in a
small degree and kind of hampered my business setting some like. Shit,
if I can find a way to like hire somebody
who has like twice has experienced me, pay that much
money and then I'll just learning out of them, it
would be amazing. I've heard a lot of business leaders
talk about you should hire people that are smarter than you,
and only people that are smarter in you, at least
in some dimension. And all my employees are smarter me

(22:08):
in some dimension, no doubt, but none of us, none
of my employees came in with business experience, for instance. Yeah,
So honestly, it feels like a big lack in my life.
I do have some mentors in business, some small ones.
I do have tons of great friendships with peer to
peer connections, but overall, there's not nearly enough of that
mentorship dimension in my life, you know, in terms of

(22:30):
me looking upwards at people that I really feel like, oh,
you got this locked and loaded in this one dimension
at least. Yeah, And I think that's helped me back spiritually.
It's helped me back business wise. It's helped me back
in the number of dimensions is not spend enough time
around people that really like knock my fucking socks off.
Yeah yeah, yeah, So where we only go from here?

Speaker 3 (22:50):
Do you want to kind of get into how I
got into business or what do we think?

Speaker 1 (22:54):
What is your business?

Speaker 3 (22:55):
Yeah? My business?

Speaker 4 (22:56):
It took me a while to realize actually what I'm doing,
What is the thing that I'm doing, And the way
I can sumpstize it right now is our job is
to make people's food taste better, you know.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
But on paper, what I do is I farm sea sawce.

Speaker 4 (23:09):
I'm a sea salt farmer, and then we kind of
use the sea salt to make all sorts of fun
packaged food byproducts, seasonings and salted caramels and whatnot. And
for a long time I thought that was what my
job is, is to be a sea salt farmer. But that
doesn't solve a problem for a customer. And so I've
got learned after many years that you your job is
not like whatever you do. Your job is to solve

(23:30):
a problem in your customer's life. And now I've realized, yes,
our job is to make people's food taste better. And
if we don't make people's food taste better, then we're
not doing our job. People are not gonna buy our
shit and we're not. It's a subtle distinction. We're not
trying to make food. I'm not selling steaks, I'm not
selling burgers. I'm selling things that's gonna make the bland
shit you're eating taste better.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
Yeah, and so that's the way I articulate it.

Speaker 4 (23:53):
But you know, on a larger sense, even one step
removed from that, I'd say my job is to use
this business as a vehicle for personal growth, personal evolution,
and if I really get good at it, it could be
a vehicle for personal growth and evolution from my employees.
But you know, that's a whole other level to get
to that point. And so far it's just now starting

(24:14):
to become more of a vehicle for my own personal evolution,
let alone my employees.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
But I want to get there. Yeah, well it already is. Man.

Speaker 5 (24:21):
I'm good friends with a scene and you know, over
the years, all she says is like I'm so stoked
to like get more responsibility and do this work more
and like settle into this job and figure out how
I can grow and evolve through this position that you know,
that I'm being trusted with and that I'm learning how
to do, and like, that's been great for me to

(24:42):
just see her, you know, like attack that and take
that on and feel that sense of.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
Pride and that sense of ownership, and yeah, so it's happening.

Speaker 4 (24:50):
It is happening, you know. It seems a great example.
I heard this gut when she was seventeen. She's been
working for me now for eight nine years, something like that.
This is basically your only job is working for me,
and that's kind of like me. I never really had
a real job either. But she's been amazing to watch
because she came in with so many powers, just a
powerful woman in her own regards just coming in, but

(25:12):
then just learning more communication skills, organizational skills, strategic skills,
just thinking skills, logical thinking, dealing with customers who are unruly.
She's our customer service person, a lot of grumpy customers, and.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yeah, to watch her grow has been really cool.

Speaker 4 (25:28):
Especially I think it's been inflecting lately where she's growing
more and we're trying to take on as our leadership
team in my business. Me and my wife and a
scene and my brother just like a little bit more
directness because my default in life is non confrontational. Kindness
is the best answer always, and that gets you a
long way. That's a great that's probably a better default
than be an asshole, probably, but you miss a lot

(25:51):
and a lot of conversations that should be had aren't had.
A lot of things are said with kind of veiled
language when they should be said directly, like don't show
up late. If you keep showing up late, you're not
gonna have a job, like you know, some of those
you know, that kind of conversation. And what I've learned
is this again this interplay between the personal life and
the business life, is if you build that muscle in business,
you will have that muscle to use the personal because
in personal life people are doing things, they're saying they're

(26:12):
gonna do things, and then they don't follow up or they're.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
You know, are crossing your boundaries in these different ways.

Speaker 4 (26:17):
And if we can build that muscle there, it can
help us in business and some and vice versa. And
so to me, it's just perfectly it's this perfect synthesis
between growth in our business skills and growth on our
human skills and both can play back.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
And forth with each other.

Speaker 4 (26:30):
I should make more money and become a better human.
And I don't want to do either of those by themselves.
I want to do both of them together. And a
Scene is absolutely doing that. She is getting more direct,
more explicit, better organized.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
Like all this I'm seeing that happen in her too,
which is very exciting. Yeah, yeah, shout out Scene. That's right, dope.

Speaker 5 (26:48):
And did you, like, I know you said that your
pops didn't really dig into like the personal business or
what he was doing, and maybe you learned it by
watching was he did he have any mentorship around finances
or business? I had a meeting with my financial advisor
right before we came here, and like part of his

(27:10):
questionnaire is like, what's your relationship with money? How did
you grow up thinking about money? What did your parents
say about it? And like I was like, man, they
didn't really say anything about it, you know, Like I
saw my dad working super hard. I noticed that he
was gone a lot, because he works a lot. I
noticed that, Like I had things like ski lessons and
you know what I mean, Like I went to this

(27:31):
school and this stuff, and like so it was It
was there contextually, but there was not any like financial
literacy or talk about like here's what you you know,
here's how to save, here's how to portion blah blah
blah budgets. Did your pops give you any of that
growing up?

Speaker 4 (27:48):
No, very very implicit, just like yours. So it was
very few explicit lessons. Yeah, I think that was not
That was not part of his I mean, he's not
like a big talker. He's like of their generation talking
you know, kind of verbality generally speaking is not like
that's not what they were known for us, a strong
silent type, and my dad's not really to that all

(28:10):
the way down into the spectrum. He's very genial and
friendly and just paused ave person, but like a bunch
of talking and teaching more verbally, that's not his way.
It was much more, you know, by example. But of
course I wish i'd asked my quite, I asked more
questions of him, but I wasn't. I didn't have that
sense of curiosity towards business then, and so I could
have asked them, it wouldn't have felt authentic. I had

(28:31):
no authentic curiosity towards business, whereas now I've shitloads of
authentic curiosity.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
Was a business.

Speaker 4 (28:35):
I see somebody running a business. I'm like, I'm gonna
ask you every question, like you're doing something.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
I want to learn from you.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
Your pop's alive still.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
Oh yeah, yeah, Yes, we're very close, very friendly.

Speaker 4 (28:45):
I think he's been an insane When I look at
my personality, it's such a reflection on him, which is
one of his favorite quotes is don't sweat the small stuff,
and it's all small stuff, and so just not taking
things too seriously. Of Course he had his moments when
he got stressed for money or all these different reasons
like we all do. But by and large, he is
a chill motherfucker and that definitely I think passed down

(29:08):
to me, which I'm so thankful for. Not too highly strong,
not a natural worrier, kind of just like everything's gonna
work out for the best. And of course that alone
is not good enough to do anything. But again, as
a default, it's not a bad space to be.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
It's not a bad default.

Speaker 5 (29:21):
It's when the balance is off when I we probably
talked about this, and I talk about this in my
life or with my wife a lot.

Speaker 3 (29:29):
Like my default is like lay back.

Speaker 5 (29:33):
In the inner tube and float down the river, you know,
and let the river do the work. And my wife
is like a man you need to be like up
looking for hazards and like paddling and making sure you
get to the checkpoints, and.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
Like it's got to be a balance of both of those. Yes,
for sure.

Speaker 4 (29:47):
Yeah, And I think some nonzer a portion of that
is how I grew up relatively comfortable lifestyle, not much hardship.
I mean, we weren't rich by any means, but hardship
was not a part of my life. You know, we
got to travel, we got to do fun things, and
that ease that just I don't know, goodness is out
there in the world and it kind of comes into
my life. I don't really understand how, but you just

(30:09):
develop that trust that the universe is.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
A good place. It's a safe place.

Speaker 4 (30:13):
Not that it's looking out for me specifically, but it's
like it's gonna be okay. And when you see that
happen enough for like eighteen years, yeah it's gonna be okay.
And that's pretty wound deep inside me, that like it's
gonna be okay. The universe is a good, safe, healthy place.
Whereas if you grow up in a different environment where
like shit's chaotic and there's violence and there's lack that

(30:33):
that message is not being drummed in.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
It's also a messages the world is this, you know,
it's conspiring against you? Why me? Why does this have
to happen to us?

Speaker 2 (30:44):
And that's yeah, back to I mean, that's a great
default way to be in this world. It's just no,
like man, and then you just own it. Yeah, you know,
you just take ownership of it, like, oh, well, fucking
do it.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
Yeah, it's on me.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah, if it's up to me, then that's a pretty
simple direction I need to go. Oh and I think
it has. I think you nailed it with when you
grow up with that as your default, when you grow
up with parents and a family and a you know,
a nuclear family, that's like, man, this is just what
it is. You know, like we're gonna work hard, we're

(31:17):
gonna have these things, and we're gonna be with each other,
and like it really.

Speaker 1 (31:20):
Does it set you up for success?

Speaker 3 (31:23):
It does?

Speaker 2 (31:23):
And how does that? How does that translate when running
a business? How's its challenges?

Speaker 1 (31:34):
Right?

Speaker 2 (31:35):
How how is it running a business a family business
with your wife, with your kids?

Speaker 1 (31:41):
Man?

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Because like those are my favorite ones that I see
on social media when the kids are just fucking around
out the farm or they're in the shop, you know,
helping out. You know, Like does it I don't want
to say, does it ever get challenging because it is right,
but like, what do you think are the best What
are some things that you and Lea do to to

(32:06):
keep the ship afloat and keep it going in the
right direction, because like you said, navigating business and personnel
and customers and inventory and.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
All of that.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
Like what do you guys do as a family unit
to like check in, like regroup and focus? Like, man,
that was that was a long weekend or that was
you know what I mean, like or after the season
where like as soon as you open the door, it's
hundreds or you know, hundreds of people every day.

Speaker 3 (32:37):
Like, yeah, it's a good question.

Speaker 4 (32:39):
I think we don't have a ton of intentional practices
around it, and I think we need more.

Speaker 1 (32:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
One thing that we did was pretty early on we
had our.

Speaker 4 (32:49):
Own kind of zones within the business for bookkeeping reasons
we had we had it was all under one technical business,
but my wife had a thriving wedding flower business and
still does, and that was unrely to me. I would
help her out, but that was her own thing, her customers,
everything she bought, everything was hers, whereas as salt thing
was mine. So it was her business. Blooms haid want
and then the salt business. And we're just doing our

(33:10):
own things, and we at that moment of time, we
think that was the right move. I think we were
both thankful, like, oh, it's probably good. We don't work
too directly together, it'd be you know, it was butt
heads more. But as we've matured in our relationship, now
we work more closely together, more focused on the salt
and our shop and whatnot, and and I think we've
just learned how to dance around each other. Yeah, there's

(33:34):
not much intentional practice. I think the biggest key it's
not it's not, it's like structural, is that we don't
let work absorb all our time, like because there's always
shit to do in a small business, like there's no
there's a literally never ending list of things you could
be doing, and probably you'd make more money with all
those things if you could do those, and some of
you just have to do, but you just keep putting
them off or whatever and so you got to decide

(33:56):
when to call it quits. And if what we've happened
upon I don't know, through some combination of intentionality and luck,
is that we don't let the business have too much
of our time. Like most days I'm home by three thirty,
most weekends, wedding flowers a side and you know, small
little stints in the shop aside we're not working. And

(34:16):
I think it's that structural thing has done the most
in terms of keeping us the functional good is like
that balance between the business and the life is more
structurally maintained.

Speaker 3 (34:24):
We don't have like weekly check ins.

Speaker 4 (34:26):
Or anything like that yet we probably would benefit from that,
But just structurally not letting the business have all your
fucking time, I think has been our best.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
Do you when you're home by When you're home by
three thirty, does that mean no more emails, no more
phone calls, no more no more text messages like you know,
the business we're done for the day.

Speaker 4 (34:44):
No, no, no, it does not mean that. Yeah, so
I'm still responding to employee messages. And then you know,
a big part of being a small business owner is
that there's a lot of background shit that has to
happen from payroll to bookkeeping, ordering, you know, report spreadsheets,
all this shit, and I love spreadsheets. That's not that's
a happy place for me. And so all that can

(35:05):
happen on the couch at night. Some people would rather
just have a clean break like they do all that.
Maybe they'd rather stay till five and be super focused.
And just like I don't do a single touch of
work outside the office. That's not been our tactic. I
will do this kind of light touch work after the
kids go to bed on my computer with a show on,
because it's pretty relaxed for me. Yeah, that doesn't bother

(35:26):
me too much. It doesn't feel dominating. There have been
times in our business periods when that has felt dominant
where I'm like working late and.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
I'm completely zoncoded.

Speaker 4 (35:35):
Twenty twenty was my worst year when like we laid
people off because we thought recession was coming.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
Of course recession didn't come.

Speaker 4 (35:41):
Everything went up instead, and then so we're short staffed
dealing with COVID conditions and e commerce is that was
our biggest single year for e commerce. It's gone down
every year since then. For a website that is, and
so just up way too late, and it broke me.
I'm like, my I got huge anxiety. I've never had
anxiety my whole life. So this has not been We've
not been perfect the whole time by any means. We've

(36:03):
had times when it's like, oh, this shit is not broken,
the balance is off. But for the most part, these
kind of structures of time have worked very well for us.
And I know that because for me, gratitude is like
the most important attitude by far, and me and my
wife are like most days we're really fucking grateful for
our life. And that tells me that we're striking the
right balance, Like we're grateful for the opportunity we get

(36:26):
to work at the place we get to live, being
with our kids. And yeah, I mean, I'm going to
look back, and I know in like fifty years, I'm
not going to look back and be like I wish
I had to spend that four more hours working on
business and be like, spend it every fucking waking minute
if you can with.

Speaker 3 (36:40):
Your kids the house so quick, Yeah, I know that,
and court, but of course you have.

Speaker 4 (36:44):
To make money too, and so just trying to keep
that eighty year old self in mind with also keeping
the cash flow right and that balance between those two
things is where we're aiming at kind of implicitly here.

Speaker 5 (36:54):
Yeah, yeah, shout out small businesses ownership, Yes, real ownership.
We're like maybe halfway in here, but I would love
to pivot to the to kind of play off a
lot of the things you said, like what are the
challenge it?

Speaker 1 (37:12):
Like?

Speaker 5 (37:12):
Well, the question that I had come up with before
was what is your what is your biggest weakness identified
as a dad and how does that and does it
correlate to your relationship with your dad as far as
what you try to not repeat or what you notice
yourself constantly having to reassess and re.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
Work.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
Yeah, biggest week.

Speaker 4 (37:36):
So this is the question, is biggest weakness as a
dad in this context? Yeah, it's probably lack of verbality,
so that I think that there is something to there
with my dad.

Speaker 3 (37:50):
You know, I'm a lot more who my dad was.

Speaker 4 (37:53):
Like, I love my dad, but he didn't say I
love you maybe once my whole life, Like that's just
not his style. He shows it, you know, he loves you,
but he doesn't. So I've become much more of a
I mean I tell my kids I love them. I
don't know seventy times a day, So that that part
is you know, to me that that is generational improvement.
But when I get frustrated, I go internal. I'm not
good at confrontation, like I said at the beginning, that's

(38:15):
not my natural state of being. And so when I
I respond to frustration by going quiet, getting like passive aggressive,
and so that is that can be. It's more of
my wife, but it plays out in the kids because
any dynamic I'm playing with my wife is also the
kids are right there playing with that. They're part of
the same soup. We're all, you know, part of that
same family soup. So that's that's up there, I think.

(38:39):
I mean, right now, I'm distracted by my phone a
lot because like people, people be pinging me all day
about work, and even without that, phones are fucking distracting.
That's a non zero part of my I think my
failure as a dad in this moment is full presence,
which is a big ask. I mean, even before phones,
nobody was present with their kids. Like that's not but
against fear. Actually, that's something I'd like, is because there

(39:01):
are magical beings. You know, they're also frustrating as fuck.
But like my daughter's just learning to whistle, and she
got no her two front teeth. She learned to whistle,
and she's just so proud of herself and you see
her smile. I'm like, that's about as good as life, yets.
I mean, you can give me ten million fucking dollars.
I can't replicate that feeling of watching my daughter whistle
for the first time. And so I was like, fuck,

(39:22):
if I can be more present, yeah, I would guess
it's there's nothing unique to me.

Speaker 3 (39:26):
I just want to be more present.

Speaker 4 (39:27):
I just want to be more present with their magic,
and to be president of Magic, it means they got
to be present with all their craziness too. But yeah,
like my life cycle is in the morning, I'm amazing.
I'm the Sunlight Superman. That's my alter ego. I came
up with that, as with my life coach, a Sunrise Superman.
I'm like ready to work out. I'm like on the
top of the world all my philosophy ideas, and then

(39:48):
by like eight pm, I'm around eight.

Speaker 3 (39:52):
Bro, I'm pissed off. At three pm, I've been I've.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
Been hitting that that afternoon nap. There you go. Oh man,
oh man. I had one yesterday, bro shout out so Chi,
man I had a daughter.

Speaker 5 (40:07):
Yeah here congrabs, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
Man, I had a daughter last Thursday, and man I
had yesterday. You know, I'm because people like, man, how
much time are you going to take off work?

Speaker 1 (40:18):
And it's like, what are you talking about? Like what,
like my life is paternity leave? You know I can
go home. I work three minutes from my house. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
Like I went home yesterday at noon and just baby
was there. I was like, yeah, you know for an hour, man,
and just like I can't Yeah, I can't.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
Make it eight o'clock. Man, that ship's great, that ship. Yeah,
it's crazy. Man. You know I can if I get
a nap. And I guess that's why I brought it up.

Speaker 4 (40:49):
It's like, no, it's easy to judge yourself. Yeah, it's
easy to jude. That's a high standard to hold yourselves too.
Is that we're gonna be our best selves all day?
Oh that's not gonna happen. I have had that experience
once or twice maybe since being a dad, where like
I through the day as a present kind of like compassionate,
being direct, energy is good.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
That's not many days.

Speaker 4 (41:06):
And so it's like how to mitigate your worst aspects
of your personality from coming out and really owning the
show at a like six to nine pm time.

Speaker 3 (41:15):
That's all I want. I don't want to end the
day on a sour note.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
When that said, do you have you found there's things
that you can do personally as a father that sets
you and your family up to have those better days
one percent.

Speaker 4 (41:33):
My wife, she says this every time when I'm a
morning guy, and my my favorite routine would be awake
up at five am, go to the CrossFit gym, do
an insane workout, come back, shower, drink a bunch of water.
So I'm like, I feel on top of the fucking world.
And ideally I'm up dressed, everything colognees on by the
time my kids peep.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
That's the ideal.

Speaker 4 (41:53):
And if I can hit that, I am an amazing dad.
And then my wife always says, like on those mornings,
if I sleep in my workout.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
In later or for whatever reason.

Speaker 4 (42:03):
It's night and day, Like it's a night and day difference,
I'm groggy, I'm grumpy.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
And so it's interesting because it is.

Speaker 4 (42:10):
It doesn't asking my wife because like if I leave
and the kids stirt and it's on her. We got
a puppy now, and if that puppy stirs, is on her.
So it is in a sense it's a selfish thing
to ge do is go work out at five am.
But that selfish act makes me a hell of a
lot less selfish the rest of the day. And so that, yeah,
that is by far the most important for me personally,
is getting getting up early, getting my workout in, you know,

(42:33):
having a battle with you know, physical battle with something early.

Speaker 3 (42:36):
That's my tone. That's the tone right for the rest
of the dad hours.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
Man, five am, five am training is the dad hours.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
It is.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
I mean it really it sets the tone for and
really it's the time, like as a father, where like
if you want to train, that's when you got to
do it, because once the kids wake up, your it's on. Man,
it's the first time you as soon as you check
the email for the first time in the day.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
I mean, you're you belong to the world. That's right.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
You want to the world.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
If you come in and you you get your shit
on and you work out all the noise and you
set that intention.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
And I wish, my.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
Hope is that we can get more fathers to understand
that exact thing. And I wasn't trying to like allude
to like training early in the morning. And I'm just
really curious on what men and fathers do to give
their family the best opportunity to be successful. And successful
is like I want to be around you guys, like

(43:35):
I can tolerate the fiftieth time you've asked me to
look at this and not you know, and not be
like cool man. You know, yes, you know, and like
it seems like there is a direct connection to physical
exertion and the the calm that you need to have

(43:56):
to be a present father, right because we all no
matter what you do, what your job is, like if
you have children and you're you're actively a participant in
that role of a father, Like there's always things to do,
and I'm just interested in, like on what it takes
for people to to do that, you know, at a

(44:17):
because I just want to I want to learn more
other besides the training, Like is there is there other
Is there anything else like that you that you know,
like met if I do this, if I I don't know,
drink you know, thirty ounces of water a day, I
feel better just like any anything other than the training

(44:39):
that you do that, it's like, okay, things, things are happening.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
Oh yeah, this makes this makes things a little easier,
I think.

Speaker 4 (44:45):
I think there's literally no more important question for dad's
business owner parents than that question you just ask right there,
how do you set yourself up for being your best
self for as big a portion of the day as
you can, because that is, you know, being a leader
of your family, being present with your family, being it,
being patient, all that shit. And for me, I basically
I know it, like I know the rules for my life.

(45:06):
If I was gonna do that, I have it all down.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
I literally have like.

Speaker 4 (45:09):
A twenty five point daily program. Now on any given day,
I might follow fifty to sixty percent of that, but
I know that the higher I go up on percentage
on that program, which I've written down like minute, like
hour by hour, how I'm gonna approach things, the better
I will be for the rest of the day. It's
like you get to a point in your life where
you understand what's going to fuck you up. Yeah, I
mean some of the stuff. Thankfully I don't have any

(45:30):
problem with. Like alcohol, to me, is the single biggest
way to ruin the next fucking day, and I do
it very sparingly, so that's not a part of my life.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
So that's good.

Speaker 4 (45:39):
Lack of sleep is the next one is like you
gotta go to you gotta go fucking bed. Yeah, and
there's always something to watch or something you know, and
so that's that's not it's no trivial test sometimes, but
yet I have a I have the whole program because
I've just come to understand these are lessons I've learned
the hard way over many years of you start pattern matching,
like wait, what what makes for great days? What makes
for shitty days? What makes for moderate days? And you

(45:59):
let's oh, just doing more of these little practices. If
I do this, yes, this happens hundred percent, one hundred percent,
And that's it's very actually liberating to know that if
I were to follow my program, which is on a
spreadsheet every day, I would be my best self like
seventy to eighty percent of the day.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
Then chaos is gonna come in. Shit's gonna happen.

Speaker 4 (46:16):
There's gonna be injuries, car crashes, you know, like employee issues.
All that shit's gonna happen. Chaos will always come, But
you were just gonna be a lot better prepared to
accept it. I remember when I played rugby in college
for a little while, and that's just like just gladiator shit, right.
And what I would notice is after really intense work,
like practices the night before I go out, or maybe

(46:38):
like early morning practice, I go out and everything, the
volume would just be the volume is literally down on
the world. And I think that's how people. If you
take care of your shit, the volume of the world
goes down. If you don't take care of your shit,
the volume of the world goes up. Every little fucking
thing bugs you more and more. And so I think
it's for me, it's all about how what practices do
we have to have to turn the volume of the

(46:59):
world down so we're more in control of our emotions,
more operating on the plane of existence we all want
to operate on. Yeah, so I encourage if you if
anyone that doesn't, you've got to know your list. Again,
Acting out the list is a different question. Operationalizing is different.
But I fucking know I know the ship I have
to do to be my best self.

Speaker 5 (47:17):
Can you give us some examples, like happily or just
email the whole list?

Speaker 1 (47:21):
You know, as he's getting out of his phone. He's like,
fucking right on the hundred percent. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (47:26):
So this is what I call my daily program for
CPPJ Curiosity, Presence, profundity and joy.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
I don't know if I like that.

Speaker 1 (47:34):
Damn.

Speaker 3 (47:34):
I named it a few years ago.

Speaker 4 (47:36):
Out of bed by five oh five am, sixty minute
workout do my physical therapy stretches of AUS.

Speaker 3 (47:41):
I got some lingering, you know, injuries.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
Not from CrossFit, not from CrossFit, definitely not from CrossFit.

Speaker 4 (47:47):
I read over this list because you got to acquaint
yourself to the best practices again and again. I do
gratitude practice meta practice, where I send love out to somebody,
affirmations like literally saying inside my mind, I'm I'm a
good dad, I'm a good business owner, I'm a healthy guy.

Speaker 3 (48:03):
I'm worthy of love like.

Speaker 4 (48:05):
Corn It sounds corny as fuck, but when I do that,
my day is better aspirations being like I'm gonna I'm
gonna meet somebody new today, I'm gonna push my podcast
for today, and then five reminders like death's coming. You
are not the sender of the universe. Everyone's consciousness is
just as important as yours.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
Like that kind of shit.

Speaker 4 (48:24):
To five minute meditation, lie on the earth, like literally
get in contact with earth. I put in your head
to the soil, and it cannot be that that's a
good one. And then it's just a lot of shit,
like making sure you shower. Yeah, a lot of peoples
don't shower. They just don't.

Speaker 3 (48:40):
They don't have that that thing where you're like washing
away the day.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
And I don't know. I think for me personally, for me.

Speaker 4 (48:45):
To be myself, I gotta fucking shower. I gotta get
put some nice clean clothes on. Don't if I wear
the same clothes as yesterday, that's just not right for me. Yeah,
And then it's just going out. It's like it's a
lot of not eating too much. I drink a shit
little of water. Bedtime, I'm stretching.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
Do you instill these in your kids? No? No, no?
Do you do you talk to.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Them about why you do these things, the importance of it,
or do you just is it just mean? If I'm
this way, the hope is my children will will see
that this is how I this is how I operate
in the world. Like, oh man, Dad's kind of chill.
You know, he doesn't flash on me because you know,
like our kids are.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
All getting old enough to like go over.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
To friends' houses. And a big one is when our
kids see like, oh man, not not every house is chill, right,
Like not every mom and dad like each other, you know,
And then having those conversations with your kids of like

(49:56):
I don't know about them, I don't know about you know,
their relationship, but here we do this and try to
make sure that we do you know, X, Y and
Z of like tell tell mom we love her, Tell
mom she's beautiful, Tell mom you know what I mean,
Tell mom that we appreciate that all that she does,
and et cetera, et cetera. And not with the kids

(50:20):
yet or the kids I don't know, because I mean
it's like, at what point do you do we as
dads bring our kids into that conversation of like, hey,
you start to practice now, like wake up every day
and tell yourself that you love life, wake up today
and tell yourself that you were strong, capable and intelligent.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
You know, like when does that or I mean, I
don't even know if that's like I think.

Speaker 5 (50:47):
You probably for me, I am that voice for them
because I assume that when they pull farther away, that
they will know that script and be you know what
I mean.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
So I'm like, you are.

Speaker 5 (51:03):
Capable, you're compassionate, you're a leader, you're beautiful, you're wonderful,
you're smart. Like you know, I'm just telling that to
them as often as I'm possible without, you know, like
the other times I'm like, you're fucking pissing me off. Yeah, yeah,
you gotta get you gotta go, man, like being setting
them up that script, and then I also do let
them know like these are the conscious choices that dad

(51:26):
is trying to make, Like I'm I've never been a dad,
you know, Like you guys are getting my first go
round at this, Like I'm learning with you. There are
some things that I'm not good at, you know, and
there's some things that we're learning together as a family.
How to deal with our big feelings in a productive way,
how to not yell, how to not you know, do

(51:46):
the things that make that spiky tension feeling normal, you know,
Like we don't want that, you know, but we're doing
it in real time.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
And then having to navigate that those are real, Like
that's that's inevitable. Like no matter who you are and
how I mean, you could be Marcus Arelius. I mean,
you could be the stoic philosopher king and you still
want to slap the motherfucker in his face, you know
what I mean. Like, it's it, it's human, Like, it's
part of what makes us human is that we have

(52:18):
these emotions that like we can either control or attempt
to control.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
Or we can just let them go wild.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
And and then we know we know where that leads,
you know, and we see a world full of it,
of people that just have no control of any of
anything in their life other than like I go to work. Yep,
I go to work and I come home, you know,
and that's a fucking mow the lawn or some shit,
and like and then next thing, you know, you wake
up and it's like your kids are your kids are grown, yeah,

(52:47):
you know, and like.

Speaker 5 (52:50):
You've lost that influence window.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
Yeah, well small what is it like ten or something
like that.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
They you know, see it on the internet that like
you're you're a superhero to your kids, and you're the
most important person in the world to your kids until
you're till they're ten and then and then they belong
to the world. Yeah, you know, like they it's our
job to put them out there in the world, you know,
which is hard because like there are babies, yep, you know.

Speaker 4 (53:19):
Well, I think the question you asked before that last question,
which was how do you what practices do you have
to be a great dad, be your best self for
your family? And I think that's an amazing question. And
then this next level one is how do you then
pass on your philosophy that you've learned about yourself or
we all have a unique sense of what makes for
a good life. And I'm still on kind of step
one here, but I do want to be that explicit voice,

(53:41):
because you know, there's just you know, if you just
let the world talk to them. The world doesn't talk
a lot about gratitude. It doesn't talk about a lot
about presence. There are people that do that, but by
and large those are not really emphasize, Like you have
to kind of hunt those things out, those voices out.
And I feel like I have a kind of like
a like a pretty strong point of view on the world,

(54:02):
and I'd like to share that more, not to the
point I'm religious where I'm like, Okay, here's our doctrine,
Like it's not that level for me. It's just like
a these intuitions that have played out well for me
in my life, and so I do want to be
more verbal than my dad. I want to express these philosophies.
It's non trivial to get your kids actually hear you.
And I think at this point in time, my best

(54:22):
at BET is like, do that list as well as
I can, and then I'm gonna be super fucking present
for them.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
And that's going to.

Speaker 4 (54:28):
Present more opportunities for me to actually have some like
more direct teaching because some of them not present. It
doesn't matter like non'body gonna listen, Like we're all just
all on different planes, like all the ships out of balance.
It doesn't It doesn't like I'm yelling or they're grumpy, like,
But if I can stay calm and the volumes down,
then then I can see those opportunities when they arise
for more explicit teaching. Yeah, but it's a I mean,

(54:51):
it's been a lifelong journey for me just to kind
of come upon these principles myself. It was my dad
had taught me these. It's like discovering what makes you
feel like shit? When do you feel like shit? And why?

Speaker 1 (55:01):
Yeah, what did I do?

Speaker 4 (55:02):
What did I do something? I did in the last
twenty four hours is making me feel way out of whack. Yeah, yeah,
but I want to get there because we all, I
do believe that we all have a philosophy that we're
living out.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
We can't necessarily articulate it.

Speaker 4 (55:15):
I do feel like I've gotten the point where I can,
I can almost articulate my philosophy of the universe.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
I'm coming close.

Speaker 4 (55:20):
But then teaching that to somebody else and sharing that
is a whole different level too. So yeah, I appreciate
I really appreciate those last two questions. I think they're
going to leave me with a lot of food for
thought too, because I don't want my kids going out
having had no sense for what the explosit philosophy of
their dad is.

Speaker 3 (55:36):
Yeah, yeah, I want I want that for them.

Speaker 5 (55:38):
That's something I have been thinking about a lot, is
like because we're not we don't have like a religious structure,
and like, only till very recently have I had to
like think about, like, yeah, what is my philosophy on
the world When my kid asked me questions that allude
to something greater? Or like what are these things I'm

(55:59):
trying to teach that have to be broken? Down to
the incremental bits before they form like a worldview, and
it's yeah, it's tricky, man, it's.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
Doing that deep.

Speaker 5 (56:11):
Dive and analyzing of myself. Because then you get to that,
you're like, okay, well here are the pieces I know
I don't want to proliferate, you know, so we got
to get rid of those, or we got to monitor
those and spend X amount of bandwidth like monitoring those
throughout every day and hopefully just shrink them.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
You know.

Speaker 5 (56:29):
And then what do I want to repeat or drill
or you know, what do I want the loops in
my kid's head to be? And like it's dope to
see it in real time when like your kids will
repeat something or they'll spontaneously they'll come up with their
own version of things that you've been trying to do, and.

Speaker 1 (56:48):
You're like, oh shit, like that's that's actually working.

Speaker 5 (56:54):
Then you know, we get to feel good for a
split second, and then you know, the next second is
back to like, yeah, sorry, boys, I lost my temper there.

Speaker 1 (57:01):
I yelled at you.

Speaker 5 (57:03):
You know, you know, but then you know, and I've
said this before too, like that that closing of the loop,
that processing of like Dad lost my temper I urchin
out on you guys. That's not that's not appropriate. That's
something that I'm working on every day and like some
days I'm better at it than others. And like today

(57:23):
I didn't do great, you know, and like I didn't
hear that from my pops.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
No, it was like what's going to be interesting is
like I think about it a lot, is with this
shift and culture for men to be able to admit
fault and admit that like, yo, man, we're not perfect,
Like I'm not I don't know what I'm doing, you know,
like where we grew up with our fathers like yeah,

(57:49):
not saying shit, you know, and if you ask him
a question. And for me anyway, it was just like shit, man,
I guess I guess you didn't hear me. H, guess
I guess I'll just like go ask my friends, you.

Speaker 1 (58:01):
Know, And like what are what the next generation of
men are going to be?

Speaker 2 (58:10):
Right, Like we know that as older as as older
men that like we know that it's important too.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
To say these things to our kids, but like what
are they going to be? Like?

Speaker 2 (58:23):
You know, because there's and then there's that flip side
to the coin of like where do you raise children
that are just like all about their emotions and all
about being apologetic for like oh, I'm sorry, I didn't
mean to do that, you know, blah blah blah, when
it's like, yeah, man, the fucking world's hard, you know
what I mean? Like I I don't care about how

(58:44):
you're feeling right now.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
The world doesn't care.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
That doesn't mean that I don't love you, but like
you at some point have to figure out how you're
going to to address people that are shitty, you.

Speaker 1 (58:56):
Know, And I have that. I have that conversation.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
I don't know if I should, but I have it
with my three and fire were all the time, like dude,
no one knows you shit. The people in this house
and in this car are the only people that you
know are going to tell you the truth and that
are going to love you and support you no matter what.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
Other than that, no one is entitled.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
To give you anything that you want to show you
any type of love, like is it's not?

Speaker 1 (59:24):
You know?

Speaker 2 (59:25):
And then then it's like telling them about like safe people,
you know, like how do you identify a safe person?
Like how do you know when you don't trust someone?

Speaker 1 (59:38):
You know?

Speaker 2 (59:38):
Like all these little things that Like for me, it's
like the funnest part about being a dad, you know.
It's like answering these questions from from kids, from from
a mind that has no prior like.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
Like concept of like what it should be, you.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
Know, and it's like they just say like cool shit,
you know, and just trying to just like own in
on that and and explain to them like yeah, not
not everybody wants to hear it, you know, like it's
good for us to you know, be able to to

(01:00:16):
speak about our feelings and have this conversation. But then again,
it's like to what end, you know, like to see
what it's going to look like, you know, And I
don't know, it's just fun to yeah, you know, but
I have boys. I you know, I do that with boys.
I don't know anything about, you know, the girls. And
how you start navigating all of that element of being

(01:00:39):
a father of a daughter of like, hey, you're a kingmaker.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
It's what you do. Now, how do you raise a
daughter in a world that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
Doesn't necessarily appreciate the power of a woman, you know,
like or it's like it's this weird like I don't know,
I don't want to say sexualized thing. For women, but
like it's that's where women get their their their status
or their rank by beauty and there, I don't know,
just that whole navigational new set of rules that I'm

(01:01:20):
interested on hearing about and talking to people that have them, you.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
Know, like yeah, yeah, no bad boys here.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
Yeah, oh boy, Yeah, you gotta when's your when's when's
the third July?

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
Yeah, and it's a boy.

Speaker 5 (01:01:38):
Yeah, yeah, baby, Felix drops early July.

Speaker 4 (01:01:43):
Nice, congratulations.

Speaker 5 (01:01:45):
Oh it's terrifying, like because now we're both doing the
most that we've ever done as far as work and
business and the other two kids, and like thinking of
going back to that sleep deficit, and like, luckily we're
you know, luckily we're able to make our schedules what

(01:02:06):
they need to be because we're both we both work
for ourselves. But like, yeah, it's daunting. You know, I'm
probably not gonna be in the six thirty class anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
I'm probably gonna don't.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
Put that class, don't still put that out there.

Speaker 5 (01:02:19):
I mean, I'll be in the gym. But you know,
if i'm if I'm not if i'm getting if I'm
not getting.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
Sleep, I'm not I'm not waking up yeah, you know.

Speaker 5 (01:02:27):
But it'll be it'll be is there a ten a
nine nine nine, or the mom's class at nine am.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
That's the moms class, man, or the Mike Long class.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
Mike Long when he's when he's on the island, man,
he holds it down at the nine of the moms.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
He brings in. Man.

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
The other day he came in and he brought he
brought the baby and his daughter in. Like's there's I
think she's five? Yeah, man, they were like he came
in deep man, the baby in the car in the
in the car seat and oh.

Speaker 5 (01:02:58):
Man, we were in birth class to other as parents
first new parents over in and a chordus yeah, shout
out Mike and Courtney.

Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
Yeah man.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
And he came in and did the open, which, man,
if we looked right now, we could find we could
pull it up.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
We're gonna pull up we open.

Speaker 5 (01:03:16):
I will say a couple of words on that, first
being uh, and I've said that to you before. I
really appreciated your your coaching and your judging style. That
really helped me a lot. And it always helps to
watch you because you're a worker. And then to have
my kids that well, my parents and my kids were there.
My parents happened to choose to come up. And my

(01:03:39):
dad has been like a wild athlete his whole life
and like physically like a top tier individual. And and
now he's old, you know, he's like he's got fucked
up knees, like he's finding his mortality closer than it
has ever been. And like, you know, it was cool
to watch him watch all the athletes and then have

(01:04:02):
him watch me and like and then to have my
kids there, Like my six year old was real at
least he turned seven the day that so she was born.
But he was like he was crying outside the window
because he was like Dad's suffering right now, you know.
And and I was like, bro, this is Dad's choosing

(01:04:23):
this Like Dad's.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
That's voluntary, discomfortable, this is.

Speaker 5 (01:04:26):
This is discipline, you know, this is what we talked
to you about in action, And like I don't want
to wake up every morning and feel this way, but
I like how I feel after and it sets me
up for all these things. And my four my five
year old, is much more. Like I brought him into
the other day to do a workout and he was like.

Speaker 1 (01:04:45):
We don't give up, like even when we're tired.

Speaker 3 (01:04:47):
We don't quit any.

Speaker 5 (01:04:48):
Know, And now that he has that in the context
of the gym, then I can give it to him
in his day where he's like he lost his temper
about something the other day and I was like, bro,
like this is the same as the gym. Like it's
training where your your brain is telling you to quit.
Your brain is trying to trick you. It's telling you, like,
don't do the steps that we know, like use your words,
ask for help, move your body, like your brain wants

(01:05:10):
you to skip straight to you know, punch someone, and.

Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
Like don't let them trick you. You guys ready for this? Yeah? Man?
What we got?

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
Time cap twenty minutes, five wallwalks, fifty calorie row, five wallwalks,
twenty five deadlifts, five wallwalks, twenty five cleans, five wallwalks,
twenty five snatches, five wallwalks, fifty calorie, fifty calorie row.

Speaker 5 (01:05:37):
Wait, good god, cleaning the same amount as deadlifting.

Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
Yeah, so it it changes ninety five one thirty five two,
twenty five deadlift, two twenty five deadlift, one thirty five clean,
and the snatch has gotta be ninety five. Oh yeah,
twenty minute time cap. Yeah, so tomorrow night Beefy. Tomorrow
night will be Friday.

Speaker 3 (01:06:01):
Night Lights Round three, Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:06:03):
Our last one, and man, I think that's a good
place to wrap right.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:06:08):
Well, a quick shout out to Happy One Curious Brady's
Pot on Spotify. Yeah, my co founder of our poetry nonprofit,
Danny Schirard, was a guest a couple episodes back, and
Danny is having a launch of his poetry book in
the gallery March twenty second. A scene will be opening

(01:06:28):
with a couple other of us. I will be doing
a piece that references a lot of the subjects we
just talked about, as far as being a man and
a dad and a partner. So come through March twenty second.
I think five pm is Doris. Yeah, celebrate, Celebrate Island poets.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
Anything Brady to shut it down.

Speaker 3 (01:06:51):
I just appreciate you all.

Speaker 4 (01:06:52):
Like I said at the beginning, a chance to have
a conversation about real shit is a gift, and so
you gave me that gift today and I'm appreciative. And yeah,
it's just to look forward to growing as men and
dads right alongside y'all because we got you know, we're
all trying to do similar shit. Be present with our kids,
be who we can be, explore our potential and not

(01:07:13):
hurt too many people in the process.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
And it's like we're all on the same path.

Speaker 3 (01:07:16):
So I look forward.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
We'll check in again for sure, Yeah, for sure, all right,
we'll until next up. Be the light.