The Common Scents Podcast.

The Common Scents Podcast.
  • 5.0 (3)
  • HEALTH & FITNESS

presented by TAMAR.

  1. 08/16/2021

    Experiencing transformation and overcoming anxiety: A chat with Jill Whalen

    Once suffering from anxiety, Jill Whalen, an extraordinarily successful marketer, tackled her demons and overcome, and then lived to share the tale and teach others how they, too, could overcome. In this podcast, Jill and Tamar talk about anxiety, getting healthy, how different each and every single one of us are, and then deviate into our reality and past lives. TAMAR: Hey, everybody, I am delighted, excited, ecstatic to bring my old friend from, I don’t even know, like over a decade, we’ve known each other for a really long time. Jill Whalen. And she is she’s like this expert in her craft, but kind of walked away from it. So I guess I’m going to talk about that and has been making, been migrating lately, so, yeah, I mean, I guess I’ll give too much information out, but thank you so much for coming. Jill Whalen: Thanks for having me Tamar, yeah, I think it’s been more, much more than a decade, probably 20 years since we first knew each other. TAMAR: Oh, wow. Yeah, that’s that ages me. Yeah. No, it hasn’t, it hasn’t been. I got into it in about 2006, 2007, so it’s gotta be, it is over a decade. But it’s not that long. I kind of wish it was, you know, what benefits you would have had, I would have had if I started earlier. Jill Whalen: Oh, yeah, true. TAMAR: Yeah. So Jill and I know each other from the search engine marketing world, and Jill was this rock star of a SEO High Rankings, if you will, official. And it’s, no pun intended because she ran her, she ran a site called HighRankings.com and then walked away from it because life came and got in the way and no regrets. So that’s always the dream. So talk about your history a little bit on that. Jill Whalen: Sure, yeah, so I was doing a SEO thing for I think it had been about I was about 17 years at that point and this was 2013 and, you know, I loved it. It was my life and it was my passion. I lived and breathed SEO, basically was a pioneer in the industry, pretty well known, and went to all the conferences, spoke at conferences, and then I at some point in 2013 I was, I mean long before this I was gaining weight and drinking too much, never having really eaten very healthy most of my life and getting older. I was about 50 at this point. I was just getting very unhealthy and I knew I needed to do something about it or, you know, something bad or something really bad would happen. And so I finally, after years of thinking about it, I always wished that if you just thought about things that would happen, which actually kind of does now I know, but after years of thinking about it, I was like, OK, I got to lose some weight and I wanted to lose about twenty five pounds. I’d always been fairly thin most of my life, so I had never done diets and I always thought, you know, diets were weird or whatever. But I wanted to make it be like a lifestyle change. I felt like that would be sustainable, but I did have to lose the initial weight, so I just you know, Fitbits were fairly newer back then. I got a Fitbit and the MyFitnessPal app. And so as a techie, you know, it was kind of, it actually was kind of fun doing like, I just was counting the calories, using the apps and but always at the time still making leaving space, leaving calorie space for my two, at least two drinks a night cuz my husband and I were always going to bars at this point. My kids were grown up and the thought of like giving up those drinks was like, no, I don’t want it. I don’t want to do that. So with my limited like 1200 calories I think it was, I made sure I could have enough for my drinks and fit it in and I started I had been doing yoga already for a couple years, a little bit, a couple of times a week. And I think actually that kind of there’s something about yoga that’s magical that kind of changes your mindset a little. And I do think that spurred me on for the weight loss, so my goal was kind of in six months to lose the twenty five pounds. And basically I did it, but I, and I as through that six months, you know, I started I went from someone who used to think I was aller—I didn’t think I did, but I kidded that I was allergic to vegetables and exercise and, you know, to suddenly really liking, love those things. I was making all kinds of veggie creations for my lunch, and I was walking in the woods, you know, three, three, four miles a day and getting those 10,000 steps in on the Fitbit. And just like it was, I just I lost the weight and then it just started. I started really thinking about sort of identity, like how could this be? Everyone was saying, “you know, what did you do with Jill? ” Because I was such a different person. That’s my blog, actually, whatdidyoudowithjill.com, because that’s what everyone was asking me, my family and things like that, because I just became such a different person. And I found that really fascinating. But so, so what happened was I, you know, really kind of just suddenly, I had to write my SEO newsletter, which I had been doing for practically all of that 17 years, every other week. And I just didn’t want to do it. And just like, you know, I just don’t want to do it. I just rather go out in the woods and take a walk or do some yoga or eat some vegetables. And I just didn’t want to. And then I saw. I remember. I emailed my proofreader, who was always on board on Wednesdays to get that newsletter out, and I said, you know what, I just can’t do the newsletter. And this was like for me, like “what?” You know, that was the one thing I did every other week that was on my schedule that that was a non-negotiable. And she’s like, “um OK,” I said, “I don’t know, maybe I’ll do it next week or the week after, but I just can’t do it. I have nothing left to write about.” Right, soon after that, like a couple of days later, I just was like, you know, I just don’t want to do SEO anymore. And it was so weird because like I said, it wasn’t something I thought about. I had been loving it up to that point. But it just hit me. And when I kind of made that decision, I felt like it was just my inner guide or something, just like, you know, but you’re, you’re done. You’ve done it all. And at the time in the industry, you know, things were I had always been advocating for doing SEO, what I call the right way, you know, with just making a great website and that’s what search engines will want. You have good content on it and they’ll they’ll show your site eventually because it’s good. And at the time it seemed that that was actually finally starting to work. More like the search engines kind of came around finally to my what I had been saying all along and so it seemed like a really good time to to leave. I felt like my it was like my work here is done. And so that’s what happened with that. And that was in the very near the end. That was October 2013, I believe. And right away I’m there instead of writing my, I just like switched over from my SEO newsletter to just writing about my journey with losing weight and getting healthy and writing, putting in recipes of healthy things and and I just I just switched over to the blog like within a week and just any insights I would get, I’d start writing about. And so it was kind of cool because I just, I just sort of just transitioned right into doing that. TAMAR: That’s awesome. Good for you. Good for you. You know, it’s really helpful because if you think about it and I’m actually thinking of a startup concept based on this, is that if you think about it, you become more accountable when you have to basically put it out there. And I think people struggle with that, like I struggle with that. I used to say, if I’m going to put myself out there, what if I fail? Everybody is going to see me as a failure. But I also think that if you’re so committed, then that never becomes an issue. So, like, my whole startup idea is like creating this whole accountability type of like social network where people are going to be putting themselves out there in a way that, you know, they have community members egging them on and making sure that they continue to pursue their whatever goals that they have, whether it’s fitness, weight loss, a combination of the two or who knows, I mean, hopefully it can extend to things like smoking cessation and whatever else you might have that you want to basically get out of it. Jill Whalen: Yeah. I agree, I remember hearing I remember reading some book back and about losing weight and it suggested “mae sure you tell somebody.” At least tell someone because I normally like to just do stuff on my own. But there is something about that, when someone else knows that you’re at least held somewhat accountable and it makes, it does make a little difference. TAMAR: Yeah. Yeah. The biggest challenge, though, is that where do you tell somebody? So I think that if you’re posting to, for example, Facebook or Twitter, you have followers that are following you specifically for other reasons. So they’re not necessarily, you know, your advocates when it comes to this type of thing. So that’s actually why I’m trying to create a network that’s exclusive to that type of behavior change, because I think people would be the only type of people who would be interested are the people who like, you know, it’s like, you know, we got we don’t Facebook groups because we’re only interested in certain type of things, and we don’t necessarily care about, like the diverse personalities of friends. And unfortunately, you know, some people are polarizing in their politics. You don’t necessarily want to follow that kind of thing. So it’s like having the exclusive focus on these behaviors. So I’ve been toying around with this idea for a while and maybe see if we can materialize it because people will do it. But I think it’s so important. Jill Whalen: Yeah, definitely, I think from me t

    46 min

  2. 08/03/2021

    Stories of the entrepreneurial journey with Brandon Snower

    Brandon Snower left a cushy job on Wall Street and decided to reinvent men’s fashion. In this podcast, we discuss his early journey, and watch as Brandon just gets started. TAMAR: Hey, everybody, I am super excited. I have Brandon Snow here. He is a jet setter. Came, flew in just for this podcast. Right? Thanks so much for joining. Brandon Snower: Only for you. Only for you. TAMAR: Yeah. So you’re in New York City, right? Brandon Snower: I am. TAMAR: OK, so we’re we’re local, but we’re not really local. But he did take a red eye to kind of get here on time and was on time in a different time zone. So. Yeah, yeah. So so tell me a little bit; first of all, where in the city are you? Brandon Snower: I live in Chelsea. I have been out here for two years. TAMAR: Nice. Nice. Brandon Snower: What about you? TAMAR: I’m actually in Westchester County. I was in Morningside Heights and the Upper West Side for a while and then I made my way slowly up as I moved. I guess it’s it actually coincides with the different milestones in life, the marriage and then the having kids. And it was Riverdale first and then it was Westchester. So. Brandon Snower: Awesome. TAMAR: Yeah. Cool. So Brandon’s here and he has an entrepreneurial journey that I definitely wanted to share because he did I guess the unlikely and he did something especially like that is extremely gutsy and pretty fab. So I, I don’t even know how to introduce it. I’m going to let you do that all. Go ahead. Tell me a little bit about your story. Brandon Snower: Yeah, well, thanks for having me on. It’s always great to speak with other entrepreneurs and just discuss kind of the facets, the obstacles and kind of the journey, you know, just to help others. And so essentially, starting out, I’m twenty four right now. I graduated from Northwestern University a few years ago in twenty nineteen. And like every person in college, you know, you don’t really know what you want to do. Brandon Snower: You know, very rarely, like people are like set as, like if you’re an engineer, you’re a doctor. You know, you’re those are kind of like set courses that you take, then you know where you want to be. But like most I didn’t know, I studied learning and learning and organizational change, which, you know, it’s very like a broad not very niche kind of path in terms of you can go to X if you study organizational change. Right. It’s like understanding human behavior. And I didn’t want to be a psychologist, but I liked understanding people and leading and seeing what what works and what doesn’t in terms of like the human psyche within organizations and just interactions with people. And but with that I’ve always had this like business mind and kind of business acumen. My dad always had small businesses here and there. He’d start one, quit, and then started back up again and and then just move all over the place. But from there, I, I knew I wanted to either build something at some point or I knew I had a business savviness from just watching him work hard and get up at 5:00 and do all these things that you don’t really get to see growing up that much. And from there that kind of just took me to the spot where, OK, what’s the what is it going to lead me to a path that will give me a lot of opportunity down the road. And I thought, well, you know, finance, banking, they make a lot of money. It is a challenging environment. They’re smart people and they work super hard. But that’s the trajectory I want to go to. So I went for it. And I didn’t have any finance background. I didn’t know what an income statement was. Yeah, I was really underqualified. But that kind of shaped me to, like, really grind and really learn about, OK, I have to learn all of this, all this information in order to get a career that I want. And so ultimately, I ended up with a job. Someone took a shot at shot on me on working on Wall Street, a pretty large bank. And from there, I started working as an investment banking analyst. You know, I was the happiest person in the world. And I had my career that I wanted. But there is a massive learning curve, right, like I started learning organizational change and and everyone else was studying finance, math, accounting, but that just meant that I had to wake up at 5:00 a.m., go to the office, study, you know, learn as much as possible, be a sponge and literally be the last one and turn the lights off. And I did that every single day because I knew I wanted to progress. I wanted to learn and take on this challenge. And so, you know, six months and seven months and I’m still happy. I’m still absorbing and learning. And then it kind of just hits me kind of randomly that I know that this isn’t the path for me. You know, I wanted something that embraced everything about business, not just one aspect of it. You know, I like the creativity. I like the design. I like thinking in different creative ways that might not necessarily be the case and an investment banking or corporate world. So. I left and that was March of 2020, and that’s when covid was creeping up in the US, but it wasn’t as significant around the world. There was Italy and and China and Asia. And obviously it was— TAMAR: You weren’t in Westchester. You had no idea. Brandon Snower: I had no idea. Yeah, no one really did, you know, like we would hear on the news and I’d remember like making reports to our clients, about the impact of covid to the markets. And, you know, like everyone was saying, oh, it’s not going to be that bad. And then this was early, early March, maybe late February. TAMAR: And we just you know, I’m connected to the patient, our index case here. I was part of an outbreak where I started having symptoms the beginning of March also. Wow. Yeah. So we were in the quarantine as of March 3rd. Brandon Snower: Oh, yeah, I mean, my dad had covid, I think, without knowing that he had it, you know, [TAMAR: it’s crazy] in February but yeah and I didn’t really think anything of it. I just knew that I didn’t like where I was. Where I was and what I was doing and what that was going to lead me towards, so I quit, didn’t give two weeks notice, quit that day. People were not happy, but they were supportive. They were very supportive, actually. TAMAR: They should have seen the writing on the wall. It wasn’t even about you. It was just the nature of the the world. And, you know, if that is the biggest disruption they had, if they got lucky, I don’t know. Brandon Snower: Yeah. And I never I’m not the person to show that I don’t like something like I’m going to work as hard as I did the first day to my last day. And people were shocked that I quit. It took me two hours to quit. Yeah, everyone wanted to talk to me. Yeah. Yeah. There was something wrong. TAMAR: You had a plan in place or you just decided you were going to quit and you were going to figure it out later? Brandon Snower: I had a plan, I wanted to move into marketing, and I was interviewing at different places and technically I thought I was going to start at a new marketing agency in April, but it was like more of my optimism that I was going to get it rather than it was going to happen. And and so. You know, when I quit, I was under the assumption I had it and hen everyone was taken back about covid, all the offers were rescinded, everything was going away, and especially digital marketing was severely impacted, and so they took away the potential offer that I had. So I didn’t have a job and I was 23, had a pretty good degree at Northwestern. You know, if you told me I wasn’t going to have a job a year out of college, I would have laughed because that’s just I just never expected it. Brandon Snower: And but at that point, I kind of, I don’t really know what hit me, but I always wanted to start and be an entrepreneur, and at that moment I just felt like it was the best opportunity to do it. Like, I didn’t have a job and I just kind of went for it and I had no idea what to do, like what to build and what to start. And I just kind of thought about it. I’m the type of person I know a ton of people are they just write ideas in their, you know, iPad or your iPhone, like in your notes. And I just had a list. And I just went through the list and then just one day, you know, I saw, like I remembered having this contrives collar shirt from, like high school. It was like a very casual, very elegant, like untopped Oxford buttoned down. And it was blue with a white collar. And I was like, OK, like, I, I lost this shirt. Let me let me try to find it online and it didn’t exist. I spent a week looking for it and. And just genuinely didn’t exist, and this was my favorite shirt, favorite style of all time. And so as I was looking at all these online menswear brands, Instagrams like trying to find a shirt for a week. It was like a light bulb hit me where indirectly I was seeing how all these menswear brands were targeting 40 year olds and up, like they were very traditional, very outdated in their marketing, their branding and as a 23 year old, I looked at every single one. I was like, “they’re not talking to me, you know, like they’re not resonating with me at all.” I’m a 23 year old. I like to, you know, look at things and enjoy and connect with the brand that is more than just selling a product. [TAMAR: right.] And and then I looked at like the competitors and the most popular DTC apparel brands and they were so cool, like they were so fun, they spoke to this millennial, young, fun, creative, personal audience in their own respective niches and I was like, why can’t this happen in classic menswear? Why can’t there be a really young, fun, cool, sophisticated style and brand that connects with all of these guys from 20 to like 35 and not even that, but it will resonate with people that are older than that

    1h 7m

  3. 06/09/2021

    On scents, COVID-19, and being across the globe

    In this week’s Common Scents podcast, TAMAR connects with Dan Prasad, who is based in Australia and works in the home fragrance industry. In this candid conversation, we tackle the crazy time difference (14 hours), our scented histories, covid and scent, and more. TAMAR: Hey everybody, I’m so excited. I met Dan Prasad on LinkedIn of all places. I think we did, right? Dan Prasad: Yeah, that’s right. On LinkedIn. TAMAR: Yeah, yeah. And he’s actually, we are doing this at weird hours for me, and normal hours for him, but I would consider it a weird hour for me too at 6:20 in the morning Australian time. [Dan Prasad: Yes.] So kudos to you for showing up and doing this. You’re in your car on the side of the road, podcasting. So that’s, that’s really some serious, serious discipline, I will say. Dan Prasad: Dedicated to the cause. When there’s something cool to talk about sometimes you gotta stop and have a chat about it. TAMAR: Yeah. So let’s talk about that. So I will say that Dan and I met, like I said, on LinkedIn, under the fact that we both are fragrance aficionados. It is not my standard podcast’s type of “rise above adversity.” But, you know, this is the Common Scents podcast. And since being scent, the actual smell scent, s-c-e-n-t, everybody’s like, “what does that mean?” And I have to explain that. Every so often there happens to be times that I have conversations with fragrance people, so then is here and Dan is going to share that. I guess I’ll have you introduce yourself. First of all, I know I mentioned that you’re in Australia. Talk a little bit about where you are physically, what it looks like, what it looks like outside for you, maybe even. Dan Prasad: Okay. I’m in the state of Queensland, which is on the northeastern side of Australia on the coastline, and Brisbane is not exactly on the beach. It’s like an hour from the beach, but yeah, southeast Queensland. Queensland is like a massive state. You can fly out for two and a half, three hours and still be the same same state. That’s how big Queensland is. It’s a beautiful crisp morning. Again, for us, “crisp” is like, you know, 10 degrees Celsius as you walk around in t-shirts in New York probably when it’s 10 degrees Celsius. TAMAR: Now I have to Google that. What is that, 10 degrees Celsius is how many degrees Fahrenheit? Dan Prasad: I’m not sure. I’m not good at those conversions. TAMAR: Yeah, yeah. I’m going to do it right now. There’s some cool way that I read on Reddit a few weeks ago, but it didn’t sit with me, so I don’t remember it. So I, I’m going to C to F. It is fifty degrees Fahrenheit. So that’s actually about what it is right now, fifty three. [Dan Prasad: Oh, okay.] It’s about fifty three right now. It’s pouring rain. It’s been a fun day. Dan Prasad: Yeah. There you go. It’s been raining a little bit here as well so it’s interesting. So this time of year is a similar kind of thing as everyone else. So that’s good. TAMAR: Yeah, interesting. What season is it there? I don’t even know. Dan Prasad: We’re, last season of autumn, which you guys call fall. [TAMAR: Right.] Yeah, winter starts next month. TAMAR: That’s crazy. So how cold does it get for you in winter? Dan Prasad: Oh, nothing. In the nights, the coldest it’ll get is maybe three or four degrees in this part of Australia. Other parts of Australia gets really, really much colder in the evenings, 3 or 4 degrees Celsius in the daytime. The coldest it is going to be like maybe 16, 17 degrees Celsius, that’s as cold as it is gets. TAMAR: Oh wow. We’ve gotten zero degrees. Global warming affects things. I don’t think we’ve had that for a while. [Dan Prasad: Okay.] I grew up in Florida. Now, I have to do more conversions. It’s hot. 10 degrees Celsius is probably the coldest it gets and you’re wearing sweat pants and all this crazy stuff and just that’s just the nature of the beast. Dan Prasad: Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. Because when they’re in the environment, and then go onto another environment. Initially, it’s super hard to adjust. But then the body regulates itself and there you go. TAMAR: Yeah. It’s funny because now I go back to Florida and I get sick because it’s not my natural habitat anymore. I was born in New York, so going from New York to Florida, living in Florida for 17 years and then going back to New York and then traveling to Florida. It’s like a jolt to my my physical, whatever, my nervous system. I don’t know what it is. It’s a jolt to something because I always get sick. Dan Prasad: Hmm, interesting. [TAMAR: Yeah, yeah.] So, fragrance, eh? Because we’re gonna be on a weather podcast. TAMAR: We could. I’m getting there. We talked about how we knew each other and how we met in the context of fragrance. Explain I guess your background on that. Dan Prasad: I’ve been in the home fragrance industry for like, I started in the late 1990s, in the wholesale, retail, because I had my own retail store and also worked for importers in home fragrance. When I say home fragrance, I talk about incense mainly, then there are candles, oil burn, fragrant oils, melts, all that sort of things. Basically people’s love for. It’s such a huge industry that it sort of a little bit overlooked sometimes, but it’s a multibillion dollar industry, the home fragrance industry and people just want their environments to smell nice. Obviously in the last few years with what’s happening in the world, so many people at home are locked down, all sorts of things, this industry has actually been thriving TAMAR: Yeah, it’s really amazing. And it’s funny because you say that and I’m looking at the five candles that I have, which I never light at the same time because they’re all different. But I’m just staring at my five candles, which I basically unboxed within the last six weeks. [Dan Prasad: Oh yeah.] I have four children and I’ve been a little nervous to light candles around them. And in a way, I’ve been also sort of traumatized by the college fires that have happened, that have been spurred since people, burning incense. So I’ve been particularly cognizant of that. And I’ve kind of avoided it, even though I love that. And I prefer that the candles and the incense to the aromatherapy, everybody says, aromatherapy, for example, is the big thing. And when we first talked and you were telling me about home fragrance, I’m like, I like to believe that you have it on your person versus having it in your bedroom, because I think about it in the aromatherapy context and it’s my misspeaking. There are candles and there are essential oils that are kind of there and you don’t even know that they’re there and you might smell something, it’s not powerful anyway. And then there’s like incense and the candle and they’re like, holy crap. That actually smells amazing. Dan Prasad: So, yeah, so so many varying degrees of A. quality and B. presentation, all sorts of things that all come along with it. And it’s interesting what you say you feel about it’s stronger when wearing it on your person like a fine fragrance or perfume, and but especially with the whole incense history and culture. When people burn incense, either in traditional form of granules or resins or the snare or stick form, or the incense current form or whatever, that fragrant smoke is something that becomes on your person because a lot of people, in some cultures, women, when they’re doing their hair, they let the fragrance smoke go all through their hair and almost invariably have fragrance themselves so when they’re out and about, you can smell that on them. TAMAR: But do they remember that it’s there? So my philosophy is very different than the way people see it. And it’s really it’s also very hard to sell this philosophy because people don’t think about it. The idea is: you put on perfume in the morning, cologne in the morning, whatever it is, you put it on and then you forget that it’s there. People might smell you throughout the day like the incense being in your hair. But what do you get out of it after the fact? It’s like you’re doing it for other people. But my philosophy is that you put it on in the morning, you actually have an intention, you revisit that intention throughout the day by sniffing your wrists. If you don’t sniff your wrists every two seconds, you’re going to get anosmic, you’re not going to be able to smell. Anosmic for those who are listening is meaning losing that sense of smell. You’ll become numb to it for a while, but then you can come back to it in a few, ten, fifteen minutes and it’s back there again. So if you do that enough times, not too much, but enough times that, you know, with that aligned intention because of scent and memory being so well, well, intertwines like that would potentially change your life. You could do that. And the thing is you don’t have to limit yourself to, to perfume. I like the idea of carrying it with you throughout the day. But like, let’s say in the morning, you can’t leave your candle unattended. So I don’t know if it’s the candle’s the right thing, but when you put on some sort of, I don’t know, wax melt or something and you put on in the morning, you do the same thing, and then you come home from work and you feel the same way. It’s just a matter of revisiting the scent with the right vibes, really at the end of the day. Dan Prasad: Yes, yes, yeah. Most definitely. TAMAR: Yeah. It’s hard, though. It’s really hard because people don’t see the perfume. I’ve been mentioning this to people. “I’ve never thought of putting perfume and mental health together.” Well, I mean, there’s the aromatherapy industry. It’s huge. Dan Prasad: It totally makes sense. It is exactly like what you say. From the retail side of thin

    38 min

  4. 05/25/2021

    “No one really knows what they CAN do until they’re in a position where they HAVE to.”

    Nigel Asinugo was once 435 lbs, ready to end his life because he felt like he needed to end it. But his support system came through, brought him out of his dark place, and now he’s in the Navy and crushing it. “Yesterday doesn’t exist. Tomorrow doesn’t exist. All that f*****g matters is what you do right now.” ~Nigel Asinugo … “No one really knows what they CAN do until they’re in a position where they HAVE to.”Read More »

    46 min

  5. 05/19/2021

    This former introvert now rocks his habits and happiness

    You may never know looking at all that David Henzel, a serial entrepreneur focused on conscious capitalism, has accomplished, but he was once an extraordinarily fearful introvert. Today, he’s let his shy past fall by the wayside, and keeps himself sane through living a life filled with good habits. [00:00:16.470] – TAMAR: Hey everybody, so excited. I have one of my old online, but I don’t know how to describe it, industry entrepreneurial type friend dudes here. David Henzel. I don’t know the best descriptor, but I’m really excited that you’re here. And thank you so much for joining us. [00:00:38.190] – David Henzel: Thank you for having me, Tamar. It’s good to catch up. [00:00:39.300] – TAMAR: Yeah. So, yeah, it really is. We have been doing that a lot lately, so I’m excited. I hope we can keep that cadence going. [00:00:46.680] – David Henzel: I hope that we will meet at conferences again on a regular basis as we did 10 plus years ago. [00:00:51.630] – TAMAR: Yeah. Well 10 plus years ago, because it’s funny, because once I had started having kids, I stopped traveling and then covid kind of kept you from traveling. So now we’re really looking forward to having that face to face. So I’m looking forward to that, too. In some way, we’ll have to figure out way that’ll happen. Hopefully there will be a South by Southwest next year. That’s something that that’s always exciting. Yeah. So where are you in the world? So let’s talk about our distance because we do have some. [00:01:15.390] – David Henzel: Yeah, I’m from Germany. I lived in Los Angeles for 8 years and now I live in Bodrum, Turkey. [00:01:21.900] – TAMAR: What, Turkey? I don’t even know, I didn’t even know you were in Turkey now. [00:01:25.690] – David Henzel: Yeah, after we sold MaxCDN, my wife wanted to go back to Germany so we’re closer to family and our daughter grows up with family. But I couldn’t go back to German weather conditions after eight years of L.A. and so we decided to move to somewhere that’s close to Germany but warm. My initial thought was Spain. But my wife has Turkish parents, so she preferred Turkey. Even though my my Spanish is much better than my Turkish, we decided, “happy wife, happy life,” [so] we decided to go here and we’re very happy here. [00:01:59.580] – TAMAR: Very nice. So what’s the city in Turkey? I never heard of it. [00:02:03.390] – David Henzel: Bodrum B-O-D-R-U-M. Um, it’s it’s a vacation destination where the wealthy Turks have their vacation homes. It’s as far south as far west as you can be in Turkey, close to the Greek Islands. We’re like twenty minutes from Kos. [00:02:17.700] – TAMAR: So how many languages do you know? Because you talked about Spanish and Turkish and English, German, I assume. [00:02:23.910] – David Henzel: I mean, English and German, then some Spanish and some Turkish. [00:02:30.570] – TAMAR: Wow. That’s pretty impressive. And you picked up Turkish? [00:02:36.010] – David Henzel: Yeah, I mean, my Turkish is very basic. I like go to restaurants and stores and say, “hey, how are you doing? blah blah blah,” like small talk stuff. No deep conversations. Initially, I was very ambitious when we moved to got like a a private tutor one hour a day to learn Turkish, but since all business is happening in English and abroad, I just lost interest. [00:02:58.330] – TAMAR: Oh, well, yeah, I’m starting to learn Spanish with the help of Duolingo and I feel it’s actually cool because I feel like maybe my level of Spanish is your level of Turkish, because I could like I could read things on signs. It says like viernes [Friday]. They talk about specific days of the week and when things are open and closed. The one time I had to understand and I didn’t understand, it [said] you have to wear a face mask, and that’s like it’s a weird word, but I’m getting there. Yeah. That’s not something that they teach you in like level one of Duolingo, the face mask part. But yeah, that’s cool. That’s cool. I guess if you if you ever wanted to get a little more fluent, you can either obviously, you can talk to the natives, but I don’t know if you have any reason to at this point, but Duolingo seems to supplement that pretty well, except you do have to execute. You have to actually talk. [00:03:49.650] – David Henzel: Yes, I like the app, I used it for a while as well. That’s cool. [00:03:53.530] – TAMAR: Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Well, I know we met, but I couldn’t give you the right introduction. I’m sorry. I know that some podcasts they have this lengthy introduction. I like to wing this. I want to make it casual. [00:04:07.770] – David Henzel: That’s totally fine. [00:04:07.770] – TAMAR: Yeah. Yeah, but but I can’t really give you the right introduction because you’re like this dude who does all the things. So talk about that because you have, when I talk about career trajectories on the podcast, some people are like, oh, a lawyer now a baker, and then I have, you. I don’t know what to do there because you’re everywhere, you do all awesome things. Tell me, how do you want to describe that? [00:04:33.150] – David Henzel: So I describe it by: let me tell you how we got here. Initially, I co-founded MaxCDN, the content delivery network, this is also how we met. I think back then you were at Mashable and we were the CDN providers for Mashable. I think this is how we got together, or via the WordPress community. We sold MaxCDN and I moved to to Bodrum, Turkey. And then I read this book called Conscious Capitalism, which talks about that the old way of doing business is that a business has to increase shareholder value, it has to make the owners of the business rich, and the new way, the conscious way of doing business is you take care of all stakeholders, meaning suppliers, employees, customers, community, the planet’s environment, all these things. And if you do this, then the business is the best vehicle to have a positive impact in the world. I thought that’s pretty awesome. I decided to go back into business and start an outsourcing company called LTD plus, we provide live chat agents and support agents for ecomm and SaaS companies. [00:05:38.500] – David Henzel: Then I bought TaskDrive, which my business partner Samir, who is also business partner at MaxCDN started because it’s also a people business. It’s lead research if you do outbound sales. Then I invested into shortlist.io to become a co-founder there, which is a agency for SEO and backlinks, and somehow ended up with a few more businesses that I invested and that I started. So I have this portfolio of businesses. Then I started to coach the leadership teams of my businesses to make sure they’re on their A game, and I couldn’t find the software that was doing what I wanted to do, and so I took the CTO of one of our businesses and to build me something which ended up being this coaching platform called Upcoach.com. And I showed it to a buddy of mine who is a very well-known coach. His name is Todd Herman. He wrote the book The Alter Ego Effect and I showed it to him, I’m not a coach by trade, but a business coaching software. What do you think about this? And he’s like, “that’s amazing. I want to invest and make this big” and I do want to end up with another business. And I’m really passionate about Upcoach, I think I’m most passionate about this one, because this allows me to have a positive impact in lots of people’s lives, because I can empower coaches to help more people better. And that’s why I’m super stoked about about this one. [00:07:10.160] – TAMAR: That’s awesome. Yeah, I didn’t realize that it was the impetus of that was reading this book about this conscious capitalism thing. But I think it’s so important and I mean, especially when we see the distribution of wealth right now and some of these variety of companies and how especially in the context of covid, the rich getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. I never like to make it too political, but I think it’s true. It’s true. I like the way that you’re philosophically aligned in a way that builds, that’s focused on the whole company versus the people at the helm. So I love that. I love it. I had no idea. [00:07:47.720] – David Henzel: Yeah, I do like being a net positive in the world, you know, even if you would take good care of your employees, etc.. If you sell cigarettes, then I think it’s it’s also not a good thing. You also I should do something that actually doesn’t harm the people or the environment and provide, I want to provide lots of jobs to lots of people. That’s why I picked an outsourcing business. My goal is to get to ten thousand employees. We’re only at three hundred right now, but steadily growing. So at some point in our 10 year goal is to to get to at least ten thousand and to provide a cool job, remote job with a good culture and put food on lots of people tables. This is like something that just gets me excited. [00:08:32.870] – TAMAR: Well, if there are hiring links, you want to bring yourself from three hundred to ten thousand, let me know. I’ll put in the show notes. [00:08:40.610] – David Henzel: Thank you. I appreciate it. Actually, we’re bringing everything together. I don’t know when this airs. Right now, I have all these different businesses and I’m bringing it all together under one umbrella, which is howwesolve.com, which is currently just a podcast. But I’ll have different resources, like my portfolio companies that help people scale their businesses, then content, blog, podcasts, webinars, etc., and then also masterminds around several topics to help people scale. [00:09:11.390] – TAMAR: I love it. [00:09:12.350] – David Henzel: It will be on howwesolve.com. [00:09:14.480] – TAMAR: You need

    40 min

  6. 05/12/2021

    Candid conversations with Chris who defied the odds

    Where does one start with Chris Owens? Once 302 pounds, he put a renewed focus on his health, traveled across the country to take care of his ailing grandparents, got engaged, and now is working to get in the Army. TAMAR: I am so excited. I’m bringing you Chris Owens, another one of my David Goggins groupies. He and I met, but he is like the sweetest, coolest guy here. We’ll share his story, like his background, it’s really fascinating. I definitely it’s funny because Chris and I were supposed to podcast like six times, maybe more like two. But he’s had a lot of stuff going on in his life. So he’s going to share all of that. I hope I’m putting you on the spot here, but thank you so much for joining us. Chris Owens: I like it. I like I like getting thrown right into the lion’s den. It’s the only way to do it. TAMAR: That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. So where are you physically in the world. Chris Owens: Physically in the world? So, depending upon where you want to start at, basically I’m just recovering from about 16 months ago now and November 4th, 2019, I had an almost fatal vehicular accident. Apparently what I was told was I had a seizure, but I don’t actually remember being told that, unfortunately. Nevertheless, I hit a semi truck on the highway fully loaded, and I’ve got pictures on Facebook and things like that, just a reminder and so forth. Chris Owens: But I at one point in time, like Goggins, I was 302 about six years ago, three hundred and two pounds. I had a micro lumbar discectomy. I was out of shape and just I started listening to David, a lot of the different motivational things like Admiral Craven, some different stuff, and just started trying to change my life and the impact of that semi, I’ll never forget it. TAMAR: Wow. Wow. So, so OK. So going back, where are you? You’re in the U.S., but where you’re like somewhere. I don’t know what time zone. What state? Chris Owens: Yes, ma’am, no, absolutely. I’m in Oregon. I’m in the Portland area more specifically, so Pacific. TAMAR: Cool. Cool. Awesome. Awesome. OK, so I don’t even, yeah, like I said, I have no idea where to start. Chris Owens: For sure. I can certainly go with it and take over with with whatever we need to do. So as far as my life goes, yeah. I had a real rough childhood growing up. I won’t go too much into it. But I was I was molested by my father. I was physically, emotionally abused by my stepfather, which is it’s made me a better man overall. Chris Owens: This made me a better father. If they were around, I would I would say thank you for doing a service and making me a better man. So that’s kind of part of my past. Where I’m at now though, is I’m in a much, much better place. I’ve I’ve forgiven the past and let go of so many issues that I held onto for so long and that stuff tears you down. You can’t do that. It’s poisonous. TAMAR: It is 100 percent. So you’re like a caretaker for your grandparents. Talk about that for a minute, because I think it is fascinating. That’s awesome. Chris Owens: Oh, thank you, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. If you go back to with me a little bit on about 30 May 2020, I left North Carolina, about the Fort Bragg area, and came out to see them, and long story short, found out how bad it was with them both having cancer and wanting to help out they needed it. So I just went ahead and said, OK, you know, you guys are OK with me coming and staying here, then more permanently, let’s do this. Thankfully, we went through a lot of chemotherapy, radiation therapy with my grandmother. She had a seven inch mass near her liver and her spine. She ended up becoming completely cancer free. So we had a lot of success in that area. TAMAR: So awesome. Awesome. And then you got engaged. Chris Owens: So I did. I did. Thanks so much for bringing that up. So kind. My girlfriend at the time proposed to me. She’s an amazing, amazing woman, the best woman I’ve ever met in my life and could ever imagine to meet. And then of course after that, after going, I’m “man, I can’t let this stand.” So I got her a ring and then I proposed to her so and she thankfully and happily said yes. TAMAR: So awesome. Awesome, so did you meet her in Portland or where did—did she follow you? Yeah. Chris Owens: It’s kind of another story too, actually. We went to high school in Oregon City, Oregon. She was a year behind me. And oddly enough, we don’t recall each other really at all. But we had the same and similar friends. I actually reached out to her on Facebook. I saw something about her and saw that she was from Oregon City High School and something just kind of sparked there when we started talking and one thing led to another. It was just a really, really amazing connection. Just, she’s absolutely my best friend. So it’s very cool. TAMAR: Yeah. Yeah. So were you in touch with her from when you were in North Carolina or was that more recently? Chris Owens: No, ma’am. That was actually while I was just being caretaking from my grandparents in my downtime. It’s very cathartic for me to write and to express myself in different ways. And one of my outlets happens to be, like I said in writing, and long story short, we just started kind of talking and one thing led to another and went from there and today, just feeling like the absolute luckiest guy on earth. TAMAR: Yeah. Wow. Congratulations. That’s awesome. That’s very cool. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So you said you were in Fort Bragg. [Chris Owens: Near there, yes ma’am.] I guess my question for you there… you weren’t in the military per se. Chris Owens: I have a military background but no ma’am, I was I never technically, I can neither confirm nor deny any involvement. What happened, though, the gist of it was I was set up to, I went through a junior ROTC, was set up to go through all ROTC army and actually had a daughter and have a beautiful twenty one year old daughter that just, just turned twenty one is going to college and I’m very proud of that. TAMAR: I thought you were 21. I’m very confused. Chris Owens: No, no ma’am. I am about to be 39 here in May. TAMAR: I would never know that. You carry yourself as, as this very mature twenty one year old. Chris Owens: Thank you so much. Hopefully that’s a very good thing. TAMAR: No that’s a compliment. Trust me, it’s a compliment. Chris Owens: Terrific. I like to have the energy of a twenty one year old for sure. But yes. So I apologize, getting back to it. Yeah I had, I went through a long, tough battle custody battle. My daughter’s mother was not fit to parent at all at the time. She attempted suicide in multiple ways, one of which was a particular manner with my daughter in the car. Chris Owens: And so I stopped all things. I was very successful in managing some stores and retail stores and doing different things like that. And I had to kind of really put everything on hold because I felt the need to as a single father, there aren’t enough out there and then not following the same path that my fatherly roles did for me. So it was very, very important to me to make sure that I got 100% custody of her, so unfortunately, that halted a lot of those plans. However, I made a lot of incredible people. I’ve served with a lot of phenomenal, phenomenal people, and I’m very proud of that. TAMAR: Awesome, awesome, wow, good for you and I guess you have a good relationship with her. Where is she physically? Chris Owens: My daughter physically actually is in Vancouver, Washington. She currently lives with her half sister and is doing super well. I’m so proud of her. She’s just working her tail. She’s grinding all the time and I’ll text her up and say, “hey, you know, I love you, I miss you.” And she’ll be like, “Dad, I’m busy” and I’m just like, “well you just keep grinding, keep doing your thing. I’m proud of you. So I just try and stay in touch with her as much as I can. She’s twenty one. She’s got to do her thing. She’s she’ll live her life too. I have to respect that. TAMAR: Yeah. Yeah. I mean yes. She’s technically an adult now. Yeah. Chris Owens: Yeah. That makes me feel a little more grey. TAMAR: Oh wow, my oldest is eleven and I’m a year older than you so I’m just thinking in my mind. Just that gap, it’s like you could be like the same age. [Chris Owens: Absolutely.] As you come on 40 and in your late 30s, you start to realize that there’s like very little gap between the 30 somethings and the 50s and a 60 somethings because mentally you’re all in the same place. And when it comes to the younger, when it comes to your children, and especially when I start to think twenties, it’s like the gap is narrowing mentally. It’s weird to explain. Absolutely, it narrows and it expands at the same time. And it’s it’s a very complex and odd thing to witness, especially in different people. And if you really watch it, some people mature and everybody matures vastly different. It’s so crazy to see how people will blossom when they all blossom, because kind of like in the movie Moneyball is quoted something along the lines of I’m not going to get the right, but it’s one day we’re all told that we’re going to play this game, we’re going to end the children’s game, play the game as adult, whether or not that’s eighteen or that’s forty. But one day we’re all told that it’s kind of a cool quote. And to think along the lines of that, my daughter, I have ADHD and PTSD so I get a little off track, but with my daughter, it is pretty cool to know when and scary at the same time. As an adult and you reach that point of maturity or at least you think mental maturity, that your parents and you understand your parents are humans too, and that they that they f**k up. Pardon my language. TAMAR: Now, don’t pardon your l

    55 min

  7. 04/27/2021

    She withstood years of intense abuse but has an incredible disposition

    I’ve known Anna Bourland for over 1/4 of her life, and yet, it wasn’t until this episode that I learned that she had endured extreme abuse as a young child. With an incredible sense of resilience and an amazing attitude, Anna has truly embodied what it means to overcome extreme adversity. [0:00:16.590] – TAMAR: Hey, everybody, I am super excited. I don’t know what number we’re at, 59, 60 of the podcast. I have a friend this time around. It’s not somebody I randomly met on a Facebook group or a Reddit chat these days. It’s my friend Anna and I’ve known Anna for over a decade now. I guess you can talk about how we met, but she was sharing a story on Facebook. I’m sorry not sorry that Facebook seems to give me rise for a lot of podcast ideas and guests, I guess with covid, and the fact that my, my my local community is is relatively boring. To be fair, I get to get to reach out beyond my geography. And Anna is on the other side of the country, so she’ll tell her she’ll talk about herself. But yeah, I thought she had something to share and I felt that this was the right avenue on the podcast to talk about her story. So, Anna Bourland, thank you so much for joining us. [0:01:17.700] – Anna Bourland: Oh, yeah. Thank you for having me, Tamar. [0:01:19.710] – TAMAR: Yeah. So where are you in the world? I know I mentioned a little bit, but you can give me a little more. [0:01:26.040] – Anna Bourland: Yeah, I am. I’m born and raised in Southern California and I’ve been in this area pretty much most of my life. And I live in Corona, California, in Riverside County. So it’s been interesting, even simply just having the name Corona. Everything I post on social media has a warning because they think I’m talking about covid. (just because I’m checking in because I’m at a restaurant). So it’s been kind of hilarious being from here these days. [0:01:55.170] – TAMAR: Yeah, their algorithm hasn’t figured that out, but it’s funny. It’s funny. I’m glad you mentioned that because I was going to say you’re from Corona, right? And that’s I never knew that [it warns you]. You should post that. You should post a screenshot of what you deal with every single day. [0:02:06.510] – Anna Bourland: Yeah, well, it’s funny because I moved to Corona about six, six or seven years ago and I’m actually from Anaheim. So I went from being Anna from Anaheim to being from Corona. Yeah. [0:02:18.480] – TAMAR: Anna from Anaheim, I like that, I like that. That’s awesome. Cool. So yeah. What do you—I know I met you through I guess I would say more of the industry than anything else so you could talk about that. Feel free to share where, how we met and what you do and where you come from. Like trajectory career wise if you have a little bit of a story in that regard. Absolutely great. [0:02:44.940] – Anna Bourland: Yeah. Tamar, we met in such a funny way, I guess, because we were both early adopters when it came to social media. So I know that we’ve been members of, I don’t know, failed social media platforms is really the right word. Just, you know, the candle didn’t keep burning, so we ran across each other and it turned out we were in the similar industries, women and tech specifically. You know, we’re SEO and marketing and all kinds and social media and all kinds of different things that were emerging. [0:03:20.100] – Anna Bourland: And we kept talking. And then I remember when you were getting ready to be a mom for the first time, I sent things, clothes and play things and all that stuff for for your first little one. And we bonded over that. And then next thing you know, we were up at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. Gosh. And that was my time. So you’re a night owl and working on bouncing ideas off each other for your book. [0:03:49.860] – Anna Bourland: So that was it was really neat to get to know you in that way. And then, of course, as each of our stories has evolved, we’ve made sure we’re there for those significant milestones cheering each other on. Of course, as far as my career goes, I honestly I ran into a guy I went to high school with outside an Outback Steakhouse. We were waiting for a table and he said, what do you do? And I said, well, I’m kind of dabbling with building websites. [0:04:21.450] – Anna Bourland: And that was back with Yahoo! Geocities and everything. And he goes, that’s funny. I work at a website company. I’m the accountant and I know they need people. And I think within a week I was working there. [0:04:33.360] – TAMAR: That’s awesome. [0:04:33.740] – Anna Bourland: And I started as a customer service representative, which also meant we were hand coding the HTML from the websites that we were building at a real estate Web site company. And because that was back in the old days, that was the everything was the Wild,Wild West. [0:04:49.710] – Anna Bourland: This was before Google was on the scene. You were getting into the Yahoo directory was free and then it was $2.99. And then all that stuff was evolving through all of that at a start up, and so I got to kind of where every hack at the company, which and I was there for 11 years, all the way from four to eight thousand square foot office space, all the way up to getting bought out by a giant company on the East Coast and working with them for a while with some pretty big name brands and doing marketing for them and search engine optimization and being the voice and the face of the company with all when forums were really big and doing all of that, and it just led to more conversations with you Tamar and with people like you. And yeah, it led me to this place. Then I dealt with some pretty significant health issues that they couldn’t figure out because eventually, spoiler alert, it turned out to be an autoimmune condition and those are really hard to diagnose. So I went through years of struggle and at that point I decided I was the director of two departments for search engine optimization and content. [0:06:09.300] – Anna Bourland: I was working for a company that was making mandatory overtime. And all I could offer my employees was like free pizza when they came in on a Saturday or Sunday. It was just, I thought there has to be a better way than the churn and burn agency life. So at the time I was married and I went home and I talked to my then husband and I said “there has to be a better way, I can’t do this anymore. My health is ridiculous. And I keep feeling like I’m going to pass out at work. And I don’t even believe in what I’m doing. I feel like we’re not serving the customers well.” And he said, “well, then just start your own business.” And I was like, yeah. And the next day I gave notice that my job and I sent an email to about 20 different people and I said that I was going to start working on my own, and this is what I want to do for people’s businessesm, and I said, “who’s in?” Within about 30 minutes, I had a full roster of clients and people who just emailed me back. I mean, when do we start? And that’s kind of how I got to where I am and the job I have now, I love it so much. And it was born from that business. They just started contracting all my hours about five years ago. [0:07:30.570] – Anna Bourland: And so now it’s like they have all my hours, all my heart and I have health benefits. So I absolutely love what I do. So that’s kind of my career journey and how we met and weaved in and out with each other throughout the whole thing. [0:07:45.620] – TAMAR: Yeah, yeah. It’s been interesting. I didn’t realize that your story started with the Geocities trajectory, but it doesn’t surprise me. And I mean, I’ve seen you sort of since you worked for a firm. You had your own firm. Yeah, I love that. Back in the day, I wasn’t on Geocities because AOL had its own website and not their, it wasn’t a website builder, but AOL allowed members.aol.com and I had a site there, and that was that was a fun experience, I will tell you that. But you know that you understand because everyone’s on Geocities. And I was like, oh, I have many website and I still do, you know, on the Internet Wayback Machine, you can still pull it off, which is kind of fun because it was like our teenage years. It’s how we grew into the internet. [0:08:29.940] – Anna Bourland: And it’s like our teenage years, all the trends are coming back. I remember when I was Geocities, it was like, look, when you opened my page, it’s playing a midi of Every Little Thing She Does is Magic. And there’s blue butterfly GIFs [hard g] flying everywhere. Right? It’s like, look, I coded that. And then it was like GIFs [hard g] there, ugh, that’s so old. That’s like Geocities, that’s old. And then all of a sudden we speak to each other in GIFs now. [0:08:58.920] – TAMAR: GIFs!!! [soft g] You’re killing me. GIFs, GIFs, GIFs. [0:09:03.270] – Anna Bourland: I can’t have the debate. It’s not. It’s not. [0:09:08.610] – TAMAR: It’s GIFs [soft g] it’s totally GIFs [soft g]. Sorry. Sorry. You can’t do that. [0:09:13.110] – Anna Bourland: Well I will challenge you a GIF to a girrafic designer. It’s a graphic designer. [0:09:23.970] – TAMAR: I will challenge you for a giraffe. I don’t know where I’m going with this. [0:09:32.040] – Anna Bourland: You are so funny. Yeah, but if you say you’re a graphic designer and a gif is a graphics, well, I just think it’s a GIF [hard g]. And I know the guy who created it says GIF [soft g] so props to him. I think Wil Wheaton and Chris Hardwick have this debate and they’re best friends, so it’s OK. [0:09:51.530] – TAMAR: No, I don’t know. I’m not OK with this. It’s not, for my mind, it doesn’t work so well. I can’t mentally process this. [0:09:58.640] – Anna Bourland: Yeah, but we agree that the blue butterfly,

    56 min

  8. 04/13/2021

    He commutes 10 miles (on foot) to work

    John Ryan has done the superhuman, deciding to say goodbye to his vehicle so that he could commute by bike or on foot to his job 10 miles away. [00:00:16.895] – TAMAR: Hey, everybody, I am so excited. I have John Ryan here. He is another guy that I met through the David Goggins Facebook group on which if you know and you’ve listened to the podcast before, David Goggins has, he’s not human and we’re all trying to be not human, just like him. I guess John will share his story. So, John, thank you so much for coming. [00:00:41.535] – John Ryan: It’s not a problem. [00:00:42.765] – TAMAR: Yeah, yeah, where are you physically in the world? Tell me about what you do. [00:00:50.285] – John Ryan: I’m Johnson County, Kansas, the United States. [00:00:54.305] – TAMAR: Nice. [00:00:56.085] – John Ryan: Yeah, and I’m currently off work, but four days a week, I work as a restaurant shift manager and lately I’ve been biking the 20 mile round trip down, four days a week to get to work. [00:01:16.235] – TAMAR: Yeah, was that inspired by David Goggins? [00:01:18.595] – John Ryan: Yeah, it’s it’s been a big part of my current routine, [which] has been inspired by David Goggins. I’ve pushed myself further than I would have otherwise. [00:01:33.575] – TAMAR: Yeah, that’s amazing. So for those who don’t know, he talks about in his book also and everybody has to read this book, it’s a crazy book, Can’t Hurt Me. And he talks about how he commuted, I forget. He commuted—he ran to work a couple, like a hundred miles or something like that, or he biked to work. He did all those things and it’s insanity. So kudos to you. I can’t say I have that option because my work is downstairs. I don’t have too much of a commute. Yeah. So that’s pretty cool. So did you did you take off the day because of the podcast? [00:02:12.125] – John Ryan: No. [00:02:12.755] – TAMAR: Oh, you’re just planning. It just worked out. Well, this is meant to be. So just out of curiosity, because these conversations are intended to flow naturally. I know we’ve talked about with the podcast is about. But how have you been faring in covid times? How’s how’s everything been going over there? [00:02:32.895] – John Ryan: Oh, we haven’t been affected a whole lot here in the Midwest. So it’s basically business as usual. [00:02:41.405] – TAMAR: So you haven’t had any specific issues with, the restaurants didn’t close or anything like that? [00:02:47.465] – John Ryan: No, my restaurant did not close, fortunately. [00:02:51.165] – TAMAR: Oh wow, good for you. Yeah. I’m right outside New York City and just going to the restaurants. It’s a sad view of everything. I mean there’s more staff than patrons. And when I say there’s more staff, there’s like two people in the restaurant. It’s really it’s devastating actually. I say that like, it’s it’s really, really depressing. And there’s lots of parking in the city, too. So it’s a good time to move to New York City if you’ve ever thought about it. That’s what I would say. But it is sad. Yeah. Well, good for you. You’re lucky. Very lucky. [00:03:28.355] – John Ryan: Yeah, I realize that. Yeah. [00:03:30.415] – TAMAR: Yeah. So I recruited people to be on the podcast really based on their story and how they’ve been able to overcome a lot. And you kind of touched upon that in your podcast journey just now in the beginning. And you wanted to join the podcast. So tell me a little bit about where you came from and where you are now. And I guess because of, the Goggins story and how that all ties in. Feel free to touch upon the book as well and touch upon him, his life based on what you know, it doesn’t have to only be me. [00:04:10.215] – John Ryan: OK, well, so I grew up playing sports, but never—I didn’t play in high school for a team, but I still always enjoyed playing sports. But as I got older, I got more into the work routine and everything, so it took me away from being athletic. But then once I got older, I ended up being in a position where my car was failing me so for several years I was paying for a car that had been new a few years before. But this whole time for a five year period, I had been paying thousands for this car, and it was failing, so it led me to want to be independent, not to rely upon that, to actually get me to and from work or anywhere. So that’s when I got a bike and I haven’t driven since I got that bike. I let my car be picked up, like the bank got it back and I was happy for it because I didn’t owe anything and I was just going with it. So it was a financial thing that led me to my current lifestyle. But then discovering David Goggins on Joe Rogan’s podcast, I watched both podcasts that he was on. I watched those so many times that I have them memorized, especially the first podcast, with Joe Rogan. It made a really big impact on me, to say the least. That was the most impactful experience so far in my life to hear his story and understand what his perspective is and it totally changed the way that I look at life in general and it’s weakness is the biggest threat to my life, I know that, and I figure it’s the same for everyone. It’s just a matter of being willing to accept the fact that we’re all capable of more than we may have been led to believe. So that’s that’s good for now to summarize your question, my basic answer to that question you gave me. [00:06:56.555] – TAMAR: Yeah, did you do you actually read the book or you just heard about it on the podcast? Because I’m sure he’s presenting his content in many different ways in the spoken word and written word. I’m just curious if you’ve actually read the book. [00:07:06.575] – John Ryan: Unfortunately, I have not read the book. That’s not something I chose, to ignore the book. It’s just, you know, I dug hard for very long, actually. Separate story right there. But yeah. So anyway. [00:07:25.955] – TAMAR: Yeah, You could share that. You can. Go ahead. [00:07:30.305] – John Ryan: Oh, well no, I was just saying. Yeah I don’t have, it’s not a good story. I just didn’t know how to get a debit card until a couple weeks ago and it’s just another facet of my financial woes as a lot of us have had, especially if you’re still young, a young adult. We’re all making our way in this world. So anyway, I haven’t gotten around yet getting the book, unfortunately, and that’s something I’m really looking forward to. [00:07:55.055] – TAMAR: Yeah, I will tell you, I don’t own the book. I got from the library. I’ve been taking advantage of the library. You forget that that’s there. [00:08:02.615] – John Ryan: I know. Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. [00:08:05.015] – TAMAR: Yeah, yeah. So I will say that there’s a, I think in like chapter two and I don’t want to say it, I’ve talked about it before, but there’s this part where it’s really early in the book, maybe chapter three, and he talks about his his upbringing and his father abusing him, but he talks about this child on the school bus. I’m not going to go any further, but at like age six or something, he witnessed a trauma that you and I will never come close to witnessing, and it’s just like I read that and I’m like, holy crap. And it has nothing to do with his future, what he’s doing as an adult, where he really defies all odds and he does all these things that, like I say, are not human. You talk about the weakness. I’m trying really hard. It’s really difficult to do what he does. But I think what what happened to him as a child really shaped him into, of course, because that’s the early parts of the book and it’s terrifying. It’s really terrifying. But I mean, this guy is, he runs ultramarathons on broken legs. I don’t think any of us—I don’t know if that’s a weakness. I don’t know. I mean, he was died many, many times. It’s crazy. Yeah. But it’s it’s great that he provides that inspiration. [00:09:23.125] – John Ryan: Yeah, for him, it’s different because if you’re on that level of being a Navy SEAL and all the different stuff that he accomplished before he ever got on the 24 hour one mile track, the first time he ever did a significant race or trial, before that he was already a different kind of person. It was just it took the cardio to get him to a new level to where he was actually able to inspire other people, because other people, most people can’t relate to his time before that. [00:10:10.495] – TAMAR: Yeah, you can’t relate to most of his life. You can’t relate to what he’s doing. I mean, I’m sitting here and I’m like, now I have kids now, and my life is a little different than what it was when I might have been a little more [athletic]. I was definitely sports minded, but then I became sedentary when the computer kind of became a big thing and I shirked my responsibilities to my health and now I’m trying to get back into it, and I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been sitting on my ass for like 20 years (it makes me feel very, very old. I’m not that old), but, you know, I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been sitting on my ass for so long that I am at this point where I can’t do the things that other people are doing. But like I was saying in a previous podcast that I don’t know if I’ll ever get a sub 10-minute mile at this point. When I was younger, I was getting seven to eight minutes. But that was when I was a kid. And I don’t know, even if I push myself like the Goggins way, I love that he shows that humans can get to that point. But can all humans get to that point? And that’s the hard part. I hope the takeaway for most people is that they shouldn’t push themselves to do what he does because, again, he’s superhuman, but like to persevere and not to give up because we do

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