# Episode 27 - The Millennials - Guller

- Podcast: GenX Adulting Podcast
- Published: 2025-03-31T01:00:00.000Z
- Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2398379/episodes/16885785-episode-27-the-millennials-guller.mp3
- Page: https://genxadultingpodcast.com/transcripts/podcasts/genx-adulting-podcast/episodes/episode-27
- Source: https://genxadultingpodcast.com/episodes/genxadultingpodcastepisode27.html
- People: Brian Barker (host), Nicole Barker (host), Guller (guest)
- Topics: The Millennials

## Summary

In Episode 27 of GenX Adulting, Guller, the youngest millennial, shares his experiences growing up as a Zillennial and his journey into music. The conversation explores the impact of technology on childhood, the evolution of social media, and Guller’s musical influences and experiences, including his time in various bands and the significance of live music culture.

## Key takeaways

- Guller identifies as a Zillennial, bridging the gap between millennials and Gen Z.
- He experienced a childhood with limited technology, which shaped his social interactions.
- Guller began playing music at a young age, influenced by Guitar Hero and later took piano lessons.
- He emphasizes the importance of being prepared and practicing for performances.
- Guller has played in several bands, including the Ruminators and a praise band.
- He discusses the significance of live music and the improvisational nature of jam bands.
- Guller believes in the power of community and support from friends and family in pursuing passions.

## FAQ

### What is a Zillennial?

A Zillennial is a micro-generation that includes younger millennials and older Gen Z individuals, characterized by experiencing a childhood before the dominance of modern technology.

### How did Guller get into music?

Guller was inspired to play music after receiving Guitar Hero as a child, which led him to take piano lessons and later explore various musical styles and bands.

### What are some of Guller’s musical influences?

Guller cites influences from Billy Joel, Elton John, and the Grateful Dead, among others, which shaped his musical style and interests.

### What is the significance of live music for Guller?

For Guller, live music is a vital part of the community and culture, providing an experience that connects people and allows for improvisation and creativity.

### How does Guller view the impact of technology on childhood?

Guller believes that growing up with limited technology allowed for more authentic social interactions and less reliance on social media for validation.


## Referenced links

- [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDe-5vxix-k)
- [Listen on Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-27-the-millennials-guller/id1764838823?i=1000701500560)
- [Listen on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1fEwvWHWaYk8zUSArHA5zv)
- [Listen on Buzzsprout](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2398379/episodes/16885785-episode-27-the-millennials-guller)

## Transcript

[MUSIC]
Welcome to GenX Adulting.
Today we have Gullar with
us. Welcome to the studio.
Thank you guys so much.
We're so happy that you're here.
The first question
that we ask everyone is,
what year were you born?
I was born January 1st, 1996.
1996. You are the youngest millennial.
This is news to me.
[LAUGHTER]
He's the expert here on this.
Yeah. You're also part of
the micro generation called Zillennials.
Have you ever heard of that?
I did. I saw some of the other episodes.
I know Nate was like,
"I think I'm a Zillennial."
Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
You guys are Zillennials. It's like the
few younger millennials
and the older Gen Z's because you are
that unique group that were able to have
an old-fashioned childhood before
technology stepped in.
Even though when you guys had phones,
I don't think they were
anything like the phones now, right?
No, definitely not. You weren't as
connected as you are now,
which was a blessing.
You don't have to respond every text
immediately because it takes
like three minutes to
even respond to a text.
[LAUGHTER] Because you had to hit
one number three times,
I think, just to get to a
letter that you wanted, right?
Yeah. You don't get the
emails, you don't get the slacks,
you don't get the Instagram likes.
Yeah.
It was a different experience for sure.
Yeah.
Much quieter.
Yeah. You didn't rely on validation from
Instagram likes or
from social media likes,
especially during those formative years,
which I think is awesome for you guys,
that you were able to get through your
years without that part of social media,
the FOMO and all that stepping in.
But you guys did have Facebook, right?
You use that as your technology?
I remember I was in, I don't know,
maybe seventh grade and I was like, "Hey,
Dad, I think I could
make a Facebook account."
He's like, "All right, go for it."
Sure. My posts were so stupid.
I was looking back at it just the other
day and just nonsense.
But make little side groups with three,
four friends and just jokes,
it wouldn't make any sense to anyone that
was outside of them.
The fact that I even had the audacity to
put that out there for the people to see,
it's like scratch your head.
Yeah. I think the word is cringe,
most people say that they look back and
they say how cringe it all is.
Now, I think just boomers and older Gen X
are pretty much maybe
some older millennials.
I don't know, maybe
sharing pictures of their kids.
It's definitely explained
towards folks our age and above.
It is. It is.
But I think your age
definitely still uses Instagram.
Yeah, I was off for a while, but I got
back on start of the year.
It's one of those things where it's like
you realize it's not good for you.
So you take a break and then you're like,
"Shit, I should probably get back on."
Yeah. You want to meet people.
I want to show some of
the cool things I'm doing.
Yeah. Especially for the music stuff.
I always like to post and
promote and things like that.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm back now.
Now, do you Snapchat or
are you done with that?
I did for a while. And
no, I don't Snapchat.
Actually, I kind of get annoyed when I
get a Snapchat notification.
I should probably just
delete this from my phone.
Does anyone your age really use it?
There's some people.
My sister, she's two years
younger than me and she uses it.
Okay. Okay.
And then what about TikTok?
I never got on TikTok.
I know a lot of people
my age are on TikTok.
I've already got enough to just scroll
and get distracted by it.
I didn't need one other thing.
No, that's smart.
It's very smart
because it's the consumption.
It's just the constant conception.
And also, as you just alluded to, the
24-7 access people have.
You between texting email.
So just to have that break, you don't
need to throw in
another vehicle into that.
So were you born in one place or did you
move around a lot in your childhood?
I was born in Charlotte, North Carolina.
And I moved down my mom, my dad, my
sister and I when I was four years old.
OK. And we moved to Delray.
We moved in one house.
You know, we were there for probably two,
three years and moved to a house
about a minute and a half away.
OK, so you've grown up in South Florida.
I've been in Delray ever since 2000.
OK, so you're a South Florida boy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. For the most part.
All intents and purposes.
Now, how does your parents meet?
So it's it's funny.
So my dad, his name is Ufuk.
He is originally from Turkey.
OK, OK. And so he moved over.
His dad was a doctor and he had studied
medicine in the states briefly.
They go back to Turkey.
And then he says, you
know what? I want to go back.
I want to keep learning,
become a better doctor.
So they moved the family there in West
Virginia for a little bit.
And then they moved to a small rural town
in North Carolina called Taylor'sville.
And my mom is also from rural North
Carolina, like Salisbury, like Rockwell.
Yeah, rent a core area.
And then they met actually on a blind
date at University of Chapel Hill.
Oh, no way. Oh, wow.
They didn't like each other first.
And then it turns out that
like the following semester,
they got partnered up in a biology class.
Oh, wow.
The flame kind of got rekindled.
Yeah, yeah. And now here I am.
So it's destiny, destiny.
It was definitely destiny.
Mom says my dad really
had to work for her, though.
That's good. That's good.
That's how it should be.
So when your dad came over
here, so he was born in Turkey.
Yeah. And he moved and he was too.
So he's pretty much Americanized then.
Yeah. That's all he knows.
Yeah. Yeah.
And we've been back to
Turkey a handful of times.
We have some family there still.
He speaks.
Beginner, intermediate level Turkish.
OK, I speak no Turkish.
OK, so it means very little.
What is it?
Beer does beer does.
I'm probably botching it.
Well, I just did it even worse, I'm sure.
So now your grandparents, your grandpa
moved the family over here
and then they just stayed here.
Did they ever move back?
The plan was to go back.
But once they got here, they were like,
yeah, we're just going to stay.
And, you know, after
they were empty nesters,
they would go spend a year in Turkey, a
year here, a year in Turkey, a year here.
Nice. Yeah.
So do you have a lot
of family still there?
I have family there.
It's distant for me at this point.
I am planning to go to Greece later this
year for a friend's wedding.
If you're from over there,
might as well stop by Turkey.
Yeah. And just kind of I haven't been
back since my grandparents passed,
unfortunately. So, yeah, it's been like
they were the bridge kind of between
me and my sister and Turkey.
So it'll be a different
experience for sure, going back.
But I have family members.
They speak English. Yeah.
You know, they do well.
So it'll be it'll be good.
It'll be cool for you
because were you more in your team?
How old were you when
your grandparents passed?
Uh, I was in my early
20s when my grandma passed
and a little bit younger
when my grandpa passed.
OK, so then now that you're in your late
20s, probably a whole new perspective.
Oh, definitely. You know, if you were to
go over there and have now that
the frontal lobe has
closed and all that good stuff.
OK, so and you have a sister.
I do. Sydney.
And she younger? Two years younger.
And are you guys close? Yes, very close.
She's amazing. She's so supportive.
I'm really fortunate that I
can talk to her about anything.
We have a great time together, too.
She's here. She's here in Boca.
That's cool. And were you always close?
She tells it differently than I do.
She's like, you know, there was a really
rough state where you were mean.
And I don't seem to
remember it that way if you ask me.
But I guess we're closer now
than we have been in the past.
Yeah, yeah. I think that
happened with our two older kids.
As there was a period where like Nathan
couldn't stand Kaya.
And I don't think she
remembers that, but he does.
And then all of a sudden, they were back
in and bonded and everything.
And now they're like best friends.
It's just a younger sister,
older brother dynamic, probably.
Yeah. And as you get older, too, you
realize, like, you know,
if we had differences,
like you are my only sibling.
So, you know, I love you and I'm really
happy that we're here.
That's one of the things that's a big
blessing for me is that
my family is all within
10 minutes of each other.
Yeah, that's cool. It's huge. It's huge.
So your name is that Turkish?
So it's it's kind of a hybrid, actually.
So the G U L it means smile,
ghoul in Turkish and my mom being from
rural North Carolina
was kind of like, you know,
let's slap an ER on the end.
So it's kind of like a smiler.
But the Turks don't know what it is.
Americans have trouble pronouncing it.
But have you I think you're the only only
guler in the world, right?
I think that's what you
have on your Instagram.
Yeah, the only guler you'll ever meet.
Yeah, there is some
people have it as a last name.
OK, but as far as first names
go, I think I've got it one.
Yeah, I love that.
I absolutely love that because it
completely represents
both of your parents
backgrounds perfectly.
And I love that she
Americanized it so much.
I don't even know where
the other L came from.
Yeah, that's awesome.
She probably was like, oh, that looks
better with another L.
Let's do two.
Otherwise it could be like
Guler and that's a little.
I don't know. It's too much. Yeah.
It's like color with a G.
That's a really good way to say it.
No, I love that.
To go back to West Virginia, do you know
what town they landed in?
No, I don't.
I wonder if it was Morgantown because if
he was in medical field,
University of West Virginia, West
Virginia University is there.
Yeah, the good medical program.
Brian Hetman family from Morgantown.
So that's we always ask
whenever someone says West Virginia.
I'm like, do you know what part?
It's a big state, too.
So it's not like, you know, almost seven.
Yeah, almost.
Yes, 100 percent.
So your elementary school years, was
there anything in particular
through elementary school or middle
school that you focus on athletics
or art or music?
Yeah, I always played
football growing up.
And, you know, my family
and I were big dolphins fans.
My dad, even growing up in North
Carolina, I think, I
guess it was Dan Reno,
but he was always a big dolphins fan.
So we've been raised that way.
They've seen tickets.
So I always played myself.
And, you know, as far as music goes, this
is something I wanted to ask you.
But I don't know if like when did you
have music classes
when you were in school,
when you guys were growing up?
Yes.
Did you recall like having
to learn to play the recorder?
Oh, yes.
Yes.
It's timeless.
It's yeah.
And and to me, it felt pointless because
I'm not a music person.
Sure.
So for a lot of kids, you sit in there
and you're like, why am I learning three
blind mice on this recorder?
But it's for those kids.
Yes.
But also there are those kids in there
like you who are musically inclined.
And that's where I
think a lot of that works.
You know, so it weeds out like these kids
aren't into music, but you get those few
that are.
So you probably enjoyed that, right?
Well, I didn't really know I was into
music at that point.
OK.
You know, you guys asked me to do a
little questionnaire,
you know, before I came in.
One of the things I put on was getting
Guitar Hero 2 when I was.
I saw that.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So it was Christmas and it must have been
when I was seven getting ready to turn
and I got I got open the Xbox.
I heard two I set up in the living room
and I start playing, playing, playing.
And I got I got pretty good,
not like top, you know, too.
But but I was playing on expert.
I got 100 percent on a couple of songs.
And my mom, she's like, man, you really
picked up this game.
You know, you should get
some some music lessons.
And I said, all right, guitar.
Yeah, I want to be a rock star.
Let's do it.
And she goes, OK, no problem.
We'll find you guitar teacher.
Again, major shout out to my parents for
just, you know, seeing that it was
something that I was interested in and
saying, hey, you know, I really want to
enable you to do this.
But for whatever reason, they had a hard
time finding a teacher.
So my sister, she's like, all right,
well, we're going to start you on piano
while we look for a
guitar teacher for Gulliver.
And in the recorder
class, we had a teacher.
So I went to book a Christian and we had
a teacher, Miss Blankenship,
and she would kind of
play the notes on the piano.
She was showing us like basic sheet music
while we were playing along.
I came home from school one day and we
had this old kind of upright piano
that my Turkish grandma had given us
because nobody was using it.
So maybe the kids will want to play.
And I sat down and I'm like looking at it
and Mary had a little lamb as one
that everyone's like, you
know, don't don't don't.
My mom runs and she's like, Sydney,
that's the best you've ever played.
And then she looks at you and goes,
Gulliver, what the hell?
She's like, that's it.
No guitar lessons for you.
You're getting piano lessons. Yeah.
So yeah, that was when I was eight.
And so I've always had a focus on that.
I played I was in the
band. I played trumpet. OK.
So that's like eight.
That's what? Third grade?
For that's still
pretty young. No, no, not.
Yeah, that is maybe a
little too early for that.
I didn't start trumpet
until the fifth grade.
OK, but the guitar hero thing that would
have been like third grade.
And that's still pretty early to discover
that passion, which is fortunate,
which is great. And you did have music
classes, right? Sure.
In your school. Yeah. Yeah.
I don't know if they
still do have music classes.
I don't know. They must.
I don't. I mean, I think
Christian or Catholic schools. Yeah.
Religious schools probably. Yeah.
I just want because Dylan, when he was at
he was in Catholic school,
he played the recorder, but I don't know
if public school does.
I have no idea. I don't
know if they've cut that out.
I think it's so important.
Like Boca Middle has like their band.
But if maybe you have to
elect to be in band. Yeah.
Yeah. I don't know if it for a book.
A Christian was one of those things where
everyone goes into the library
on the last hour of the day and they're
like pick an instrument.
Yes. That's cool.
I want to play
saxophone. I want to play trumpet.
So that's awesome. That is cool.
What if that's a big
facilitator, actually?
Yeah. Then you can discover what you
might be interested in. Sure.
A lot of kids are just like, well, let me
just bang on the drums.
Yeah. Yeah. No, that's cool.
So then you did band
what through middle school?
I did it all the way up and through my
first year of high school.
And I was actually I was decent and there
were kind of two things
that led me to stop playing the trumpet
and focus more on piano.
And one was I had this teacher,
the band teacher, and to move up from
like the first level,
which was the concert
band to the symphonic band.
You had to also be in the marching band
and I was playing football.
So I was like, all right.
Well, there's that. So I don't know.
Kids that did both and like during the
games, they would run
and they would change
and they would put the hat on and, you
know, and then they go back.
So that was one thing that I was like,
that seems like a lot.
And then I had a teacher who was he's a
fantastic trumpet player.
I mean, guy was really next level.
And he's like, you've got potential.
You know, teachers
always hype up their students.
He's like, all you have to do, wake up
every morning, six a.m.
and do mouthpiece
exercises for like two hours.
And then when you get home from school,
you've got to play for another two hours.
And I was like, man, I think I'm just
going to play the piano.
Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot of commitment.
It was. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,
that's what it takes, I guess,
if you're going to really make it your
likelihood and your
passion, but 100 percent.
Yeah. But in some ways, if
you didn't do it on your own,
maybe it wasn't the passion.
You had an interest, but it wasn't like,
oh, I have to have
this trumpet all the time.
No, I wasn't.
There was I mean, among the
other things I was doing, too.
And also like I was a pretty good
student, I'd say, through
the middle school years,
high school, I was a good student, but I
was more extracurricular oriented
and less like, you know, let me do every
homework assignment. Yeah.
And then, you know, that kind of shifted
some of my priorities and my time, too.
I was going to ask you, how
did how did you balance sports
and music? Because both, especially at
that age, did you play
travel sports at all?
Oh, no, just just with the school. OK.
I played like Boca Christian, which
honestly surprised me even had this,
but we had a tackle football team.
Well, the middle is like
small Christian middle schools.
Like they just do flag
football. Yeah. Yeah.
And we're out there like I mean, you can
imagine a bunch of, you know,
however old we are, like, you know, small
white guys going out to the Everglades.
Yeah. But I'm playing
Pahokee and right. Right.
It was Glade Central.
I'll never forget one day.
So I'll tell a quick story.
I had a dude on our team
that was our biggest player.
And he was like our nose tackle.
And sometimes he would play
center to and his name is Grant.
And they said, all right, Grant, this
team is way bigger than us.
So we're going to just put you at full
back because we think that's
the only opportunity that we have to even
move the ball. Yeah.
And on the very first play of the game,
when they hand it to him,
he runs up the middle and got hit by one
of their linebackers so hard
that he actually got
carried off in a neck brace.
No way. Oh, my God.
Now he's fine now.
But the rest of us are
sitting there with a scratch.
We're like, we're fucked.
Like, yeah, did you what did you do?
We lost. We lost in dramatic fashion.
Yeah, I'm sure.
Did everybody just kind of
dive and try to say, like,
I would have been so
scared to go back out there.
We had another coach and he was like, all
right, here's the game plan.
Every play on the offensive line just
dive at their knees.
We're like, coach, I don't think that's
allowed in football.
And he's like, it's our only chance.
That's funny.
South Florida is a an
extremely good football region.
So you're a little Christian school going
up against some of these powerhouses
just isn't it's so true.
They taught me a couple of things about
resilience, I guess.
Yeah, for sure.
So then playing for the school probably
did allow you to have some.
You could balance music and sports.
You can have the best of both worlds.
We had our practices after school and
then we had games once a week.
So so you stayed.
So you stopped the band after freshman
year, you said of high school.
Yeah, of high school.
And so then you were just doing football,
just doing football.
And so did you continue to play piano in
your outside of school?
Yeah. So once we did
find a piano teacher for me
and his name is Dave Kirk, he's amazing
if he's around here, he's around here.
So, you know, definitely go
look for him, get some lessons.
But he he taught me so much about like
the technique and the
technical component.
And then I got to a certain point.
Actually, here's another story.
So when I was at Boca Christian, they
also had a praise band
that would play on Fridays.
And it was like, as you'd imagine, like
praise and worship, like very, you know,
it's like poppy Christian music. Yeah.
And I was I was pretty good.
And I was like, all right, you know, I'm
going to go audition
for the prison worship band.
I walk in and I know how to read music.
He's been kind of training
me on some classical stuff.
Also, my parents, they go
on Billy Joel Elton John.
So I'm learning that kind of music.
I was going to ask you about that.
Yeah. Some of the influences.
So those two come to mind for sure. Sure.
And my actually my first
concert was Billy Joel.
I know parents took me. That's awesome.
Yeah. Yeah. I remember.
I remember this is the quick aside.
We're up in the nosebleeds.
It was where the heat used to play.
And I keep asking my mom,
like after every song, like,
when's he going to play piano, man?
Yeah. And she's like, last.
And I just I was young.
I couldn't understand
the concept of encore.
And I said, please piano, man.
Please. That's so cute.
But we were saying about
playing piano with your teacher.
Right. So Mr. Kirk, right.
Yes, Mr. Kirk. And so I go to
audition for the prison band
and I sit down and they
hand me like like a lead sheet.
It's like, OK, here are the chords, A, F
minor E and F sharp minor.
And I'm like, I have no
idea how to how to play these
because I'd only learned
how to read sheet music.
And so then I had to go back to him and,
you know, he's he's a he's a great
jazz player, some of his influences or
some of the great Oscar Peterson,
Bill Evans, exactly.
And so I'm like, oh, David, Mr. Kirk,
he wanted me to call him
Dave, but I never would.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's really called Mr.
Yes. Yes.
And I was like, I got it.
I got to learn how to read this stuff.
I don't know how to do it.
And I'm sure he wanted me to keep
learning jazz and classical,
but he stopped everything and he tailored
his approach to helping me understand
how to read chords, how to
improvise and things like that.
So I owe him a huge, huge thanks for
helping me progress that component,
because when it gets to playing with a
band, playing with other musicians,
you have to be able to speak that
language and you have to be able to,
you know, listen and look and say, OK,
this gives me some freedom to do other
things and just stay within the box of
what's previously written sheet music.
So so I'm not completely grasping.
You could read sheet music, which I
thought was what you just said, like a
like the letters. But how how when you
walked in to audition,
what were they presenting to you?
How would you explain it's
different than sheet music?
Yeah, totally. So like
sheet music is like, I mean,
everyone knows kind of what like sheet
music was like with the line.
Yeah. The sheet music is the individual
notes that you're supposed to play
in the timing of it.
All right. You got it.
And then the chords are more.
There's probably greater variance.
Maybe you could explain that better.
I don't know the chord part of it.
But yeah, no problem.
So like you would look at basically it's
a page of lyrics and then on the page
of lyrics above the word where the chord
changes, it would say
like play an A chord.
It just has a letter A versus opposed
like all the little dots in the lines.
OK, OK.
So the first time I didn't know, I was
like, are you playing A?
So I just put one finger
on the piano and like A, D.
And they're like, OK, you
need to go practice. OK.
So when you do that, actually, so when
you were playing chords,
you have to play the whole A chord.
Yeah. Type of thing. OK.
Which is multiple notes.
Yeah, typically at least two. Yeah.
But it could be. Now I understand.
OK, thank you for explaining that.
Yeah, because I was picturing it in my
head and I've seen sheet music.
But then when you start talking about
what they were presenting to you,
I wasn't completely understanding that
must have opened up your world, though,
because from what I understand about
chords, everyone says learn the chords.
Yeah, because then you
can just jump in and play.
And if you say within a chord, you your
sound is is within the right range.
Yeah, I've opened up the
whole now you're like fluid.
You could probably jam.
You could sit in and write.
That was the start of that. Yeah.
So getting getting that foundation. Yeah.
Even just to play basic praise and
worship music on Fridays.
Yeah. That really is like you said, open
my idol, open my world to OK.
Wow, this is what it's like
to play with other people.
Yeah. You have to listen so much more.
And there's a lot of merit
and nuance to solo performance.
But yeah, I personally have way more fun
playing with other people than than just
playing solo. Yeah.
Did you ever get into the
praise and worship band?
I did. Yeah, I did. And I
had a the lady who led it.
There was another girl
that was a Allstate singer.
She was an incredible
singer, had a beautiful voice.
And she had just started learning piano.
She was very tight with
the lady who led the band.
So I think she gave her like, you know,
like the test answers ahead of time.
Like, you know, like this.
And so I came in and I
had never played the chords.
But as I mentioned, you guys, you know, I
learned Dave helped me
and I was able to make it and play.
But what this lady did, the lady who led
the band, she
actually says, OK, we'll go.
Here's what we're going to do.
This girl is going to play the piano and
you're going to sing.
And I'm like, you got to be kidding me.
She's all state singer.
I never sang in my life.
I'm terrified to see. Yeah.
And in retrospect, and this is the first
time I've really looked at it back
from this lens, but now I have a lot of
confidence in my singing.
But that first time that I sang up and it
was just a practice.
But I was. Oh, of course.
Shaking. I had to have been terrified.
Oh, my gosh. Well, you know,
Kaya, she sang in a in a what was like a
kids rock band type.
Yeah, she did. And she would sing.
If she was excellent,
phenomenal singer, really.
She would get nervous sometimes and be
like almost ready to throw up
before she would go on.
Yeah, I think before every time.
But to just be randomly asked to sing
like, I guess it was almost seems unfair.
But it's good. She just
like threw you on the spot
because you had no time to be nervous.
So it was just in that moment.
And you had to just go for it.
I was pissed, but I was pissed that I
wasn't playing piano
because that's really
what I wanted to do.
But so did you sing
more than that one time?
Like, were you singing and singing and
then in front of the front of the crew,
not the crew, I guess,
to be the other kids.
So she's sitting there playing piano,
which is what you want to do.
Yeah. But you're having to sing like just
in front of a mic solo.
Yeah. I think you would.
I would have thought she
would have wanted to also sing
because she was this
like celebrated singer.
So she was so good. Yeah.
She was way better than I was.
But did you ever get a chance to play
piano? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. We would swap off on song.
So but she still got
probably 60 percent of it.
Yeah. Yeah. So you did that all the way
through till you graduated?
At least at least through middle school.
Yeah. Middle school.
Yeah. I thought this was
high school. No, no, no.
This was middle school.
This through middle school.
So and then in high school,
you basically after ninth grade
stopped in school.
But then outside of school, did you
continue to do anything?
So I met a friend playing football.
His name is Bobby.
And Bobby is still to this
day one of my best friends.
But he had an older he had a cousin that
was on American Idol.
And so we struck up our conversation
initially from football
after, you know, knowing
him for a couple of months.
He tells me this and like, dude, you know
what that means. Right.
You can sing. He's like, no.
I was like, absolutely. You
have to sing. I play the piano.
It's perfect. We'll
we'll be a band. Yeah.
And so if we used to to get together
and I would play and I coached him on,
you know, I think this sounds good.
You should do it this way.
And his cousin was a big influence on
both of us, actually.
Cousin, you find him
Apple Music, Spotify.
It's John K.
John K. John K.
And he was on American Idol. Yeah.
OK. And now he's on
Spotify with his own music.
Yeah. He's a professional musician. He
does it. That's awesome.
That's what he does. But
he was a huge influence.
OK. Yeah. OK. Check him out. Yeah.
It's cool. It's it's popular stuff than
what I normally listen to now.
But his or his first album back when it
was just Johnny Keyser, his name.
He that album had a huge influence on us.
And then like my buddy
Bobby, he loved Gavin to grow.
So like that was like that was our shit.
And we would always I would
sit there and I play the piano.
And I'd be like, oh, Bobby, sing like
this, sing like this,
because I was still getting
confidence in my own voice.
And Bobby did have a great voice.
So we continued to play all the way
through high school,
but now sometimes we still
play. Do you really? Yeah. Yeah.
So would you guys like get together after
school or on the weekends?
After school. Yeah. After
school weekends all the time.
We were playing music.
He's always playing music.
Is this Bobby that played baseball? No.
Big fisherman. No, no, no.
OK. Different guy.
Different Bobby. Yeah. OK.
So many of them out
there. OK. Yeah. True.
So that was really your first band that.
Yeah. If you don't count the
many praise and worship band.
Yeah. It was just me and
him. It was a little duo.
Would you ever perform?
We would occasionally.
So as we got later in
high school, sometimes,
you know, we'd be at restaurants or
whatever and our parents together.
And my dad would be like, you got to let
my kid on the piano.
You know, so he was they.
And again, to my parents,
always huge supporters of music
from the very beginning.
And Bobby's parents, too, they had a
piano at their place
and we'd go and his mom. So funny.
We played all kinds of stuff, but this
was back when that song
Thrift Shop was popular. Yeah. And that's
Malcolm or Macklemore. Yeah.
This is we talk about the cringe moments
like thinking about now.
You get a big fur coat. I didn't.
But we we came up with like our own
piano, like vocal rendition.
We'd like swap off the vocals like, but
shit, it was 99 cents.
So and his mom, she'd be
like, play thrift shop.
Play thrift shop. Play thrift shop.
So she was blue in the face.
We're like, no, no.
And then that's awesome.
I love that. I love that. Oh, my gosh.
Well, now, if you guys were out there,
you'd be TikTok stars
because people would film you out and
about at restaurants
and probably be all over social media.
So now real quick, going back to your
parents, support of your music.
Are either one of them musically inclined
or have it in their background?
No, but in the background, yes.
So my my grandpa on my mom's side
is one of four and the children, they
grew up in rural North Carolina
and the grandpa is one of 13 and they all
played a lot of music.
And the grandpa in particular said, all
right, I'm going to take my boys
and we're going to have
a family bluegrass band.
Oh, sweet. So none of them
ever really got formal lessons.
You know, to my knowledge, but
my grandpa played the mandolin
in a bluegrass band. Amazing.
And my uncle Steve.
Yeah, I see that when I
saw that when I walked in.
Yeah, Steve is actually a
really good banjo player.
Plays with a couple of different bands.
They've got some some music online, too.
That's also the name of
your uncle Steve's fan.
If he hears this to be like, how do you
not know my band color?
But you tell her tell
us later we'll slide it.
We'll put it in the description. OK.
Yeah. And the and the connection.
Now, what about your grandfather?
Did is did he have any
music out there that? No.
So yeah. So yes.
Not officially, though, like they would
play like these barn weddings and things.
Like I saw a clip from like the 90s where
they got there were the Dun Mountain
Boys was the name of the
bluegrass band that they had.
Yeah. And they went
around to North Carolina.
They played different like bluegrass
festivals and things like that.
But the only videos that I've seen are
like home, like shaky VHS.
Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Those of them. What we
would have been doing.
Are you are you into bluegrass at all?
I do like bluegrass. Yeah.
I wouldn't say that that's like, you
know, top of my list.
But it's in your blend.
The improvisational component.
I love anything improvisational.
And I love the harmonies, too.
So I think those things really were
actually going to see Billy
Strings up in St. Augustine. Sure.
Weeks. I was going to ask it when you
brought up bluegrass.
I was going to say, you
know, I know you like jam music.
I can see your whole all
of your tapes of the dead.
I've gotten super into Billy Strings.
So into not just Billy
himself, but the violinist.
Oh, sure. Right.
The banjo, the
standup bass, the mandolin.
There's so tight. Yeah. Yeah.
He he loves. So that's why I knew you
would perk up when he was talking
about the bluegrass.
So that's really cool.
And that's St. Augustine
theater is amazing, too.
I went up there in end of October.
I was somewhere in this goose shirt.
Oh, you saw goose. Yeah.
I've seen him a handful of times,
probably six, seven times.
But so we saw him in Miami.
They played like a Wednesday.
And then Friday, Saturday,
they played up at that St.
Augustine theater.
That was my first time going up there.
But it is awesome.
They've really got it down.
We haven't been there yet.
We're looking forward to it.
You guys are going to
love it. We're so excited.
We I think we're in the last row because
the tickets sold out.
But I hopefully there's
not a bad seat up there.
That's pretty kind of jam heavy.
People love it. Yeah.
Tickets to that
amphitheater sell out so fast.
It's not huge. Yeah.
Part of what makes it so nice.
Yeah. We're looking forward to it.
We're trying to buy tickets and you had
to buy a three day pass.
Yeah. So we're going out for three days.
Twist our arm. Yeah. Yeah.
I know we're not to.
Now, what did your mom do?
Was she a stay at home mom or?
Yeah, my mom.
So she raised me and she raised Sydney
and then she worked
alongside my dad for a while.
She would help him with
various things for the business.
And what does your dad do?
My dad's an entrepreneur.
So he's had a number of different
ventures, but all travel oriented.
And so until recently, he's got one
that's kind of in a different field now.
But he sold cruises on
the Internet, actually.
OK, cool. His company was one of the
first to sell cruises on the Internet.
And he's actually in the
Cruise Line Hall of Fame.
No way. No way.
That is so cool. That is so cool.
That's cool. OK, so to
go back to high school.
So you're playing football.
You're in your first
unofficial band with your friend, Bobby.
And then you graduate.
Did you go to college from there or did
you decide just to
delve right into music?
No, I went to FSU. OK.
Yeah. So I went to FSU and went up to
Tallahassee summer of 2014.
Was that somewhere? Was
that your first choice?
No. And actually, so this is some maybe
important context that I'll slide into.
So I mentioned I was never
the best like book student.
You know, my I had one biology teacher
who used to get mad at me.
She said I just learned by osmosis
because I would go and
I would just sit there
and I'd crack jokes and sometimes I'd
even not off in class
like, you know, whatever.
I just I was sharp and I would just soak
it all in. Yeah. And
but I was really
prominent in the extracurriculars.
So I was in a club called Decca.
Yeah, actually, I was one of the
presidents with me and my friend Bobby.
We were so tight, him and I that instead
of one of us running for president
and one of us running for VP were like,
let's run as co-presidents.
Oh, I love that. That's awesome.
And then senior year,
I was Mr. Boca High.
Oh, really? Yeah. Wait. OK.
So wait. Now we switch.
We switch schools. You went to Boca High.
Just Boca Christian for
middle school and then you went.
And then I went to Boca High.
OK, so you went from a private school
into a public school for ninth grade.
Then. Yeah. And it was one of the best
things that could happen.
So was there
how was that, though, in ninth grade?
How was that transition?
Was it hard for you to acclimate in with
the public school kids?
Or was it challenging all
coming from a smaller school?
I don't think so.
Not for me, because I had a good group of
friends from Boca Christian.
So some of my best
friends, Zach, Austin and Pedro,
all made that same switch.
Our parents were like
kind of united on that front.
Like, yeah, there was.
There was a stigma
about leaving Boca Christian
because they had the high school, too.
And like you would kind of get like a
small blacklisted or
like, you know, people.
They they thought about it.
Oh, well, you're not going to go to the
high school and you
can't do this or that.
So my parents were like, all right, we're
going to all do it together
with all of our kids. Yeah.
So we made that transition together and
already having kind of like a prebuilt
in group of friends to make the move
with. That's that's smart.
It was a small spot you could go in with.
Yeah, that's smart.
You could hang out at
lunch or whatever. Right.
And then I meet my friend Bobby.
That was during the summer,
like two days for football.
Like it's a freshman year
hadn't even started yet. Yeah.
And I'm already meeting people that that
I'm becoming really good friends with.
So so you're glad that you
went to such a large high school.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think I'm a social person
and like there's benefits.
You go into a small
school like don't get me wrong.
Oh, you want to be in the
band? Oh, you want to do this?
So you want to like you have
a shot to do everything. Yeah.
But having to compete to do the things
that I wanted to do,
especially like be the
president of the club or be Mr.
Boca high, like I had to run against
other people to interviews with everyone,
including the principal, like, you know,
there's a lot of stuff that
I did that helped prepare me,
I think for later in life and
give me a lot of confidence.
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
I and I think Boca, especially
academically, what you can get from it.
Yeah. At the time, you know, number 22
public school in the nation.
Yeah. Yeah. With all the ACE
and the AP and it still has.
It still offers that. So, OK,
so then you graduate Boca high.
And but you were saying you were learning
through osmosis. Yeah.
So my first pick was to go
to University of Florida.
And my other FSU people like guys are
going to hate hearing that.
I'm sure maybe some of you
guys know that maybe not.
I had a lot of like my
other friends that I mentioned,
they had older siblings that went there
and I just, you know,
I went up to visit and I had other people
that I was friends with that were older
that I went and
visited and I saw the games.
I saw Jamis Winston absolutely scorched
them one time for UF FSU games through.
I remember it was awesome. A huge huge
bomb to Kelvin Benjamin.
I never forget being there and being
like, ah, shit, we're getting smoked.
But this Jamis guy is
awesome. Yeah. But then, yeah.
So I ended up I didn't get in FSU was
next school on my list.
And so I applied to UNC, but, you know, I
didn't get in there.
I didn't really want to go to Miami. So
FSU was now when you did you tour
the schools before? Yeah, both of them.
Now, when you walked onto each campus,
did you feel you belong
to one over the other?
They're very different campuses.
I didn't feel like a different sense of
belonging, though. Okay.
So you would have been
fine with either one.
I definitely knew more people at UF and
that's why I wanted to go there.
And, you know, I can say subjectively,
maybe it would have been better or worse
in the outcome of my life,
but here I am. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So I think, um,
you know, it's tough to be like, oh, it
could have gone this way.
It could have gone this way.
But I'm happy with the
fact that I went to FSU.
It opened up in a weird roundabout way.
A lot of other opportunities for me to
learn and grow and develop myself.
Yeah. That I'm grateful of.
And I'm sure that I
wouldn't have gotten at UF.
It's probably more of a challenge.
It was a huge challenge.
Socially, at least. Right.
Because you're having to meet make new
friends and all of that.
Whereas you would have more of
a comfort group, maybe at UF.
Yeah, definitely. It put me
it put me in position like so.
I think going to college in general and
like my parents again,
I've mentioned how supportive they are
and how amazing they are.
But with that comes like a
degree of like shelteredness
and structure that
isn't entirely your own.
And then so my for some
people, I guess, are ready for that.
And I was not at all.
So when I got to FSU and I'm like, well,
you know, they're not the best.
Academic school.
But what are they really good at?
They're really good at partying and
winning football games.
So I lacked for sure
that like self governance.
And I dove into like, you know, maybe
things that in retrospect,
I shouldn't have been spending all my
time doing. Right. Right.
But like I said,
get that out of your system
early and it poses challenges.
I didn't know what I wanted to study.
And I got some advice if I could give to
any younger people out there
listening is like, doesn't matter what
school you're going to,
but like set your
intention before you go.
My intention was non existent.
I was like, all right, I'm going now.
Like, let's see what happens. Yeah.
And I think if I had had a plan, if I had
and I get it so hard for kids to be like,
what do you want to do with your life?
I mean, shit, I'm still figuring it out.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. That's why we're doing a podcast.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So I think everyone
can relate to that. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Um, but but yeah, set an
intention and I didn't have one
and I studied general business
and then I studied marketing.
And then I studied music for a semester,
like music production
and commercial music.
And then actually at one point I even got
academically dismissed because I wasn't.
Oh, wow. Yeah. No, it
was a tough situation.
Was that like in the
early freshman or senior year?
So you were really
enjoying yourself. Yeah. Yeah.
Did you join a front? But I think I
wasn't a fraternity. Yeah.
But I think what you're describing to is
part of the college experience
because you came out on the
other side, you're doing well.
And part of college is that right?
Not everybody says the same. For sure.
They're not on the same path, right?
Some kids go into school and they're out
in two years with a degree.
Others go in and it's
just a different path.
It's just out. And that's that's, you
know, when I said FSU
in the end gave me different experiences
that I would have never got from the
University of Florida.
Yeah. Like so I get
academically dismissed.
I go to TCC for a semester.
I reapply to FSU.
They have a program like TCC to FSU.
Yeah. I don't get reaccepted.
I'm freaking out. I'm like, all right.
Shit, what do I do?
Oh, my gosh, this is
happening senior year.
Yeah, this is actually I'm a
little even after that now.
And so now I move back home.
OK. And I'm like, all right.
Well, let me apply to FAU.
I'd have FAU. I don't get in.
I'm like, I'm going to go to PBS.
I'm freaking out. Yeah.
And then actually I was
scrolling through LinkedIn.
Why? I don't know, like talking about all
these different social media platforms
and never do this.
And I see this article
about this lady from FSU Jill,
and she's pioneering an innovative new
program where she's basically cold
calling students who got 80 percent of
their way to the degree
and coming up with ways that they can
still graduate from FSU.
That's amazing. Wow.
And I'm like, holy
shit. Yeah, this is me.
So I send her an email.
Hey, this is my story.
She was let's get on a call.
And she. Talk about people that I have.
I owe huge thing.
I don't even know if she
remembers me, but I owe Jill
so much thanks because she went and she
she talked to the degree posting.
What do they call it?
But anyways, from TCC and
they found out that my degree,
just posted incorrectly.
And that's why FSU rejected me.
And that's why FA you rejected me.
And she got it fixed.
She got me readmitted,
hooked me up with an adviser,
got me on a fully remote online program.
And I really helped put all
the pieces together for me.
My buddy Bobby, his dad
had had I was working for him
actually at this time.
So, you know, thank you to to their
family also for giving me
a job while I navigated all
this. That's amazing. Yeah.
That's amazing. Was
that during COVID as well?
Yeah, I've ended up my graduation date
was December of 2021.
OK. OK.
And you got to you got
to walk and everything up.
But I had the opportunity
to walk, but I didn't. Yeah.
But that's amazing that that happened.
I mean, that just blows my mind because I
can't imagine the stress
you were going through
senior year having that happen.
I that's insane alone.
And then to reapply and to be denied, not
just from FSU, but then from FAU.
Yeah, that wouldn't I'm
glad that you stayed on that.
And you said it was just you randomly
were scrolling LinkedIn.
But the fact that you still were like,
I'm going to email her.
I'm going to see what comes of this, you
know, and because to get that far
and then to not be able to finish it
would have just, you know,
something you would
have regretted in general.
So, oh, and, you know, that
that was one of the big things
that was weighing on me. I
see all my other friends.
They have their degrees. Yeah.
One of my friends is working for
Microsoft and killing it.
And I'm like, yeah, holy
shit, I'm so far behind him.
My dad in particular,
who's very strong willed,
he's business minded,
successful at everything he does.
I know how much it was eating at him.
So part of me is like, I
have to do this for myself,
but also I have to do this for him.
Yeah, I have to close the chapter.
And he always told me,
he's like, look, a degree,
that's what it's for at the end of the
day to prove that you
can see something through.
And, you know, I definitely
had my share of of obstacles
and hurdles to overcome in that process.
But man, did it feel
good when I finally got it.
I bet. What was your degree in?
It was interdisciplinary social sciences
with the concentration
in economics and geography.
Nice. I love it. I love it.
You sure you weren't
on the football team.
Yeah. So that 2021 was a big year for you
because you were finishing that degree.
You graduated December 2021.
Yeah. So was there anything else going on
that year that any big changes?
Yeah. So 2021, just in general.
So at the at the time when I moved back,
I was working for my buddy,
Bobby's dad's company, and I was living
in a house with two of my buddies,
Zach and then Bobby. And so
it was during the covid era.
So we're all working together from home.
It kind of you guys have
seen that show Workaholics.
No. OK. It's basically a bunch
of friends who work together.
That's an office setting. But it was like
it was that in our house.
What were you doing?
I was working for Bobby's dad's company,
which was an investment bank. OK.
And I was I was not family, but I was
like basically an eptism hire.
Yeah. And so this is the
best kind. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
So no, it was it was cool.
It was a good opportunity.
Like I said, I'm grateful for them.
I don't think it was a good
fit for me at the end of the day.
And like my direct boss, I wasn't getting
a lot of like mentorship
or support or guidance from.
But it was it was a job.
And yeah, it paid.
They paid me probably better than I
should have been paid.
And it allowed me to
finish up everything.
But yeah, I went so as I'm
going through this time, this
volatile transition period leaving FSU
trying to figure out how
I'm going to finish my degree.
You know, I didn't
have a lot of confidence.
I had put on a bunch of
weight in the process.
And I was kind of really
just like in a in a rut.
And I know kind of from some of the other
podcasts I listen to,
I know you're more of
a philosophical guy.
So one one that I personally subscribe to
is peaks and valleys.
And in the way that it works is this,
it's like life is going to be
a series of ups and
downs. Yeah, for sure.
But what does that mean?
It means when you're in a valley, you can
always keep your head up
because you know there's a peak coming.
But when you are on a peak, when you feel
like things are going well,
don't be afraid to stop for a second and
actually just appreciate
how great it really is.
And so true. That is so true. So true.
And then yeah, thanks.
In that moment, I was
definitely in a valley.
And I even had this
thought on my head, though.
So, you know, I knew it
was going to be all right.
But another one of my my best friends, a
couple of my best friends,
they all rallied around me to basically
support me and help me out.
Sal is he does amazing things with
meditation and breath work.
And he's actually in Peru
right now teaching class.
He taught a class on meditation to like
250 people down there on the beach.
Like, wow, he's made his own company.
What's the name of his company?
Liberti. Yeah, Liberti.
L I B E R T I.
He comes back to Boca every
now and then he does classes.
He does this thing called holotrophic
breath work, which if you've never done,
you should try. But anyways, he helped.
He was really like the voice that I could
talk to about all of this.
How did you get connected with him?
Playing football at Boca High.
OK. And he moved into
Boca High junior year.
And we played together
and we had class together.
And, you know, my core group of friends
really brought him in to
and my buddy Zach dated his sister.
OK. Well, his sister was
friends with my sister.
So it's all kind of like, yes, yes, yes.
It's all it's all kind
of all work and active.
And then my other friend Austin,
another smart guy entrepreneur, had a
fitness company that he
started called Boca Body.
And so, you know, I'm talking to Sal,
getting the mental piece,
you know, figured out talking to Austin
and like, yo, Austin, man,
I really need some help with this.
So he comes up with I think I was like
their second client, maybe.
But he puts together a whole
plan, 90 day transformation.
And then there's another
dude he worked with named Sean,
who is just a fantastic trainer.
And they work with me
and, you know, got me.
I was at like, you know, almost 220
pounds and I cut down, cut 45 pounds off.
Wow. Wow.
Got got my confidence
back, got my degree.
That's amazing.
Everything really kind of
started to fall into place.
Yeah. Sorry to get up on a peak.
You ended on a peak.
I started to. Yeah. Yeah.
So Boca Body, is it is it like CrossFit,
the concept like that?
No, it was more just like he had me
lifting weights and not so much cardio.
But the whole idea was that
it's kind of holistic rates.
It's not just the workout component.
They also, you know, got me
on a diet, on a meal plan.
I would have weekly check
ins with him or with Sean.
And then I was
working out with Sean, too.
And they have this app
that they still have an app
and it's got all these workouts on it.
So, I mean, I owe him a
good body. Yes. Very similar.
Actually, I think they probably work on
that with like a rebrand,
like white label it to
make it their own. Yeah. Yeah.
That's amazing. That's life changing.
It sure was. Because have you continued
to take the things you transformed
during 2021 with you up to this day?
Peaks and valleys.
I still I still make I still make the
Boca Body smoothie recipe
a couple of times. There
you go. So there you go.
Now, there I think
just that shift and because that's how I
was back when I was in high school.
You know, I was playing football.
I was I wasn't like ever.
I wasn't like in great shape, but I
wasn't in bad shape.
And I was clear minded and I was
confident and I was
social and I was going.
And I just felt like a
piece of me had been robbed
by kind of the struggles and the
adversity I went through
going to finishing my college experience.
But to see all of that kind of come
through and pull through with help
from Jill that I randomly found on
LinkedIn and help from some of my best
friends and support
from my parents and my mom.
I haven't talked about my
mom at all yet, but she was.
I can't say enough about her.
She's just the most
amazing person in the world.
So I'm sure she's she's supported you
through every step of everything.
I think and actually I was going to ask
you because it feels so apparent
based on what you've said
so far about your parents.
You're in this valley.
They had to have been there
for you the whole time, right?
My dad was pissed.
We're supposed to be. That's our job.
Rightfully so.
But my mom was was a cheerleader for me
throughout the whole thing.
And I'm sure she got some
flack from my dad even at times.
Like, how can you
support him through this?
Like he's fucking around so much.
But, you know, it is what it is.
And, you know, my dad and
I were on great terms now.
We've never been better. Yeah.
My mom, same thing.
You know, I try and take her out and
treat her and do things just to
to let her know how much I
care and how appreciative I am.
But if it wasn't for them and if it
wasn't for my friends
and it wasn't for this
amazing support network that I had.
I mean, who knows how
things could have turned out.
I mean, I'm strong willed.
I'm confident. I'm determined.
But, you know, to anyone that might be
struggling with something.
I know there's kids out there that are in
the same position that I was in.
Struggled in college.
Don't know what they're going to do.
Get help and just get
it from your friends
or from the people that
care the most about. Yes.
Did you ask for help or
did they just kind of know it
and kind of like a symbiotic thing?
I was never like, guys, I need help.
But, you know, with best friends, you
talk to them and you tell them
the things you're going through, the
things you're struggling with.
Yeah. And so, yeah, they help me.
They help me resolve that and
see through to the other side.
So it's amazing.
And as far as moms, I mean,
we typically, no matter what,
have our kids backs, even, you know, even
if the dad is like, come on.
Like that, that's our job.
You know, that's
that's 100 percent our job.
And it's just wonderful that your
parents, even because they were always
so supportive of you, but even when it
got really maybe dark or a little,
they were still 100 percent.
Even if your dad was
frustrated, he was so there for you.
You know, and I'm sure your sister in
addition to your friends.
So so you have this pivotal moment and
what then you take on.
You head into 2022.
Do you continue to work for
Bobby's dad during that time?
Yeah. So I did until March of 2022.
So the nature of the
business was kind of like, you know,
we'd work on big deals for a couple of
months and commission
checks come through.
So kind of like it was like
we're working on a big deal.
So I worked with it to
see through the end of it.
And then after that.
Yeah, that's all right.
And then after that, I I decided, OK, I
want to make a change.
You know, I'm not super inspired, you
know, working in this role.
I'm not being challenged
the way that I'd like to be.
And I know that something something has
to go a little different in order for us
for me to keep developing myself and
growing because I'm on this path
of growth and development,
so I need that to continue.
So I actually took
about a three month break
just from working, kind of like a lot of
people do like a gap year
or something after they graduate.
Well, I never really
had a chance to do that.
So I I did a couple of things.
I was dating a girl at the time and her
family was from up
north in Massachusetts.
So I went up and I visited them, you
know, went out to Martha's Vineyard
and had a family reunion
with them. Yeah, which was cool.
We went on a cruise.
I played a we played a lot of music.
I think that May of twenty two, we played
something like six shows,
which was a lot for us.
Everyone in the band is is working.
So wait, we skipped ahead.
So where did the band?
So the band and when is the band formed?
The band. So I didn't form the band.
I would have met them in
the end of twenty, twenty one.
And this is a funny story.
So the way that I met them was that I was
at a company Christmas party
December of twenty one.
And, you know, I work with
some other guys my age, Bobby,
and other friends and
we were it was it was like on somewhere
on the beach in Delray.
We had like a nice Christmas party.
We're all wearing suits and
we decide afterwards to go.
Let's go out to the avenue. Let's go out.
And we bopped around to a
couple of different places
and ultimately ended up at a bar called
Third and Third, which I don't know
if you guys are were familiar.
Yeah, I think we saw you there.
Yes, we did. That's right.
We did. Because I remember you were in
the back when we played Shakedown Street.
Yeah, you're bobbing your head.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
But so I had a similar experience there.
I know I'm in the back and I'm, you know,
we're drinking and all of a sudden
I'm looking up there
and I see these guys.
And it was my musical.
Like I have like three
stories that I could tell.
There's like there's the
musical development story.
There's the personal
story which we've been on.
And then there's like
the career trajectory one.
We've kind of left some
of the music stuff out.
But just to give a quick kind of catch up
to speed at this point,
I'm playing with a group of like 55,
six year old dudes based out of Coral
Springs called the Ruminators.
That is like I've heard of them.
I yeah, I have.
No, I have. I've heard of them.
Why would I?
I feel like one of my one of my friends.
I feel like I've heard of them.
And I looked them up.
Dead music. Yes.
Yeah. Yeah.
One of my friends,
husbands plays in that band.
You know, yeah, I have to say, Jeff Rich.
Oh, we're not like
we're not close, close.
It'll come to me as we're talking.
But I looked them up
because of your, you know, what?
Yeah. And I saw these old guys.
Some like I don't have the right band.
Yeah, no, you know,
you have the right band.
Yeah, no, no, I know who that.
So you played with them.
So we there's a website
out there called Bandmix.
And Bandmix is basically
like match.com for musicians.
I'm like I'm a keyboard
player seeking the band.
It's like jam music.
These are my influences.
And then Scott is over
there on the other side.
And he's like, I am a band that plays
most of the Grateful Dead,
looking for a keyboard player.
And so he called me.
We had a big chat.
He's actually a big fan of Goose, too.
So I remember having the conversation
with them that day on the phone.
And I was like, all
right, yeah, screw it.
I'll I'll take my gear and I'll go out
there and they practice in Jeff's garage,
which he's got like you
guys, a really nice studio here.
He's got his he's got it figured out.
He's got a really nice nice garage.
But so I'm playing dead
music with these guys.
I'm a big head already at this point,
which we can get back to.
Yeah. Yeah.
And what year with this?
So is this this was like
like late 2020, earlier 2021.
So when you move back, I
move back, I move back in 2018.
So I've been back.
Remember, he didn't he didn't go up for
the graduation walk.
He was remote at that point.
I did it on.
OK, so you were here.
Correct. This is did
you do any music in FSU?
Uh, yes, yes.
I so I saw I had a band up there called
the Stone Keys Band,
which is I put that on the list, too.
Yeah, that was basically a band that
combined people from
different fraternities
and sorority, we had a girl, too.
She was in one of the sororities.
And thank God we had her because she got
us booked at sorority events
and she would all her friends
out, which is which was great.
And actually, one of the
guys in the band, a drummer,
that his name is Angelo, he's out in
Nashville doing music now.
Wow. My other buddy, Sean,
he was one of our guitar players.
Now he's out and he
wasn't awesome for a while.
I think he's in Seattle
now and they have a band.
Wow. I'll look that up if we could plug.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anybody in balcony bridge, balcony bridge
based out of Seattle.
They're awesome, too.
And then another friend, Josh, one of the
best guitar players I played
was just the touch the guy has in the ear
for music is spectacular.
Anyways, so yeah, I played with them.
Was that your next band after you and
Bobby had your little and Bobby Bobby
was our singer. Yeah, so it went from you
and Bobby in like those years.
Yeah. And then we got up to FSU and we're
like, all right, time
to start a real band.
So that was your first,
quote unquote, real band.
Yes. Was the Stone Keys. Yes. OK.
And then I have to also mention Mitchell,
who is one of my best friends,
who is co-worker, fraternity brother,
roommate, now bandmates
and the current co-worker.
We were still very and he's a current
band that we plan to.
But he was the bass player to first stent
in the Stone Keys band.
So we had we had a nice.
And that was from different fraternities
and then the sorority.
And so that was great because we could
get people, people from all over.
It wasn't like we're only playing for
ourselves. That is so cool.
So you did that. And then when you left,
Hallie did was at the end of that.
So he's for you.
This band did the Stone Keys band because
everyone kind of went
their different ways.
Yeah. OK. But I still got a logo.
I have the logo. I have the website.
So it's cool. Very cool.
Maybe it'll make a
resurgence at some point.
And then what's your
next band, The Ruminators?
No, I threw band mix.
I got connected with a group.
They were calling
themselves The Anonymous.
And they were basically
they related to church.
They were praising worship band for a
church that was creating a secular band
to go play bars.
OK, wow. And that was like my first like,
oh, I'm back here in South Florida.
And actually, so.
There's two other
moments that I'd like to share.
One is actually I put it on the list of
piano recital when I was.
Yeah. When I was younger and I don't
know, I must have been.
I was in middle school,
early middle school and.
Dave Kirk had had me practicing and
preparing Pachelbel's Canon.
You know, don't know.
So there's a piano recital, whatever for
a book of Christian.
And, you know, I've been
practicing, but I was like.
Not really practicing like I should.
And long story short, the recital day
comes and I get up there and, you know,
it's probably 300 people, whatever.
It's a lot of people.
There's like the yes, it is.
The auditorium.
It's a lot of people. Yeah.
There's a lot of people, I guess.
And so I'm playing and
about halfway through,
I completely lose my place in the music,
completely lose my place.
But I didn't stop.
I just I was like, I just can't stop
because that's going
to be the worst thing
I could do. Yeah.
So I finally get my get my
way back and I finished a song.
And it's like one of those like.
Like slow, slow, awkward, like, oh, man,
should we clap for him kind of thing?
So and I walk off and as I'm getting off
stage, just one dad,
not my dad, a dad that was there runs up.
He's like way to finish, son.
And I'm like, what a dick.
Oh, my gosh, was he doing it to be me?
No, no, I think he was
trying to be supportive.
He was really trying to encourage me.
But I was like, I was like, that's not
that's not what I want to hear.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And the worst thing about it was Dave
Kirk had come that night.
He was there and I sat down
and you know, so you did great.
But I know that I didn't do great.
So my dad, he is saying perfect practice
prevents piss poor performance.
I like that was a perfect practice.
Seven P's, how many P's are on?
Yeah, I like that.
So after that, that really
struck me like, all right,
I'm not going into anything unprepared.
And even like my Bobby,
just two weekends ago,
we celebrated his birthday is on the 15th
and we do a big brunch.
We've been doing a brunch for like, you
know, the past couple of years.
And now I like I give a speech every year
and I'll come with like, you know,
charts and like exhibits
and like I write my notes out
my friends are like, oh, go with the
pageantry always with the pageantry.
But I think I got that from that.
Like, even if it's something small, like
a work presentation,
if it doesn't matter what it is, I'm
going to be prepared.
I'm going to be
rehearsed. Right. Right. Right.
There's one piece.
And then that was a pivotal moment that
you took and then applied
your what your dad had taught you.
You kind of learned that lesson early.
I had to learn it. You know, though.
Yes. And you were in line.
No, I was a little older.
I was probably like, I
don't know, whatever.
Six or six. Great. Okay.
So was like eleven, eleven, twelve.
And you know, would have taken a moment
like that for you to truly
understand your dad's motto.
Yeah. To be able to apply it.
And then it then it's
it's some came from me.
And then so so now I'm back, like so fast
forward a little bit.
I get back from
Tallahassee. I'm still here.
I'm figuring all my shit out.
And I'm like, man, you
know, what's missing?
Like, you know, for my
life right now is music.
You know, I haven't I
haven't really played with anyone.
Actually, first jam concert
I ever went to aside from.
And we'll get back to some shore when I
saw a dead in company,
which was really my introduction to jam
music, was Humphries
McGee at the Fillmore
in Miami. I didn't
even know who they were.
Yeah, they're good. They're good.
Yeah, they're sweet.
But during a separate I'm walking around
the Fillmore and there's a
there was an upright piano
and I'm just like, oh, you know,
let me fuck around on it a little.
And this guy comes up
to me. He's like, yo,
I have a band and we really need a
keyboard player or a
keyboard player just left.
Like, would you want to audition?
And I'm like, all right, yeah, why not?
So they're based out of
Boca, too. It worked out great.
So but it was like Scott Rege.
I never played anything like that.
That was kind of
outside of my wheelhouse.
But I was like, all
right, yeah, whatever.
Screw it. I'll go and I'll see. Wow.
And I show up to this
rehearsal and I absolutely bombed.
Just horrible. And like everyone, they
were they were good.
It wasn't really my style of music, but
they had horns, horn section.
Like they were like a lot going on.
Yeah, they were. They
were they were rocking and.
Afterwards, the guy, he's
kind of like, oh, right.
Well, like, you know, if they want you to
come back, I'll call you.
And I was like, I knew I was
like, I tank that shit. Yeah.
So then that was the other moment where I
was like, you know what?
I'm better than that. I need to.
Step up my game.
So I went and I bought
myself a new keyboard.
I started really practicing, really
rehearsing, learning a ton of dead tunes,
which you call these chords, which you
should be a better musician.
Yeah. I'm focusing on improvising.
Then I started playing with
these guys, the anonymous.
OK, and I found them
through band mix, too.
And they were good.
They were really, really good.
They were very much just starting out.
And some of the guys were kind of there
were some guys who were very talented
in the band. There were some guys that
were much more like
entry level musicians.
Right. They had kind of
like gotten their anyways.
We go to the rehearsals and
I'd be like ready to play.
And the guys like, oh, wait, like, you
know, let me let me
look up the chords again.
And I was just I felt
like it wasn't organized.
So that's why I started
playing with the ruminators.
OK. And I started
playing with the ruminators.
Now now we're back up to
speed. Now I'm at third and third.
OK. And I love the music.
But and these guys, you know, they're up
there in age a little bit.
So they're not like jumping around and,
you know, yes, they would play out
like, you know, once a
quarter, once every six months.
And I see these young guys
my age wearing dead shirts,
playing Shakedown Street.
And I'm over there in
the back and I'm like,
I got to play with these guys. They don't
have a keyboard player.
They need a keyboard player.
And I'll never forget to that they played
comfortably numb that the guitar players
doing that whole crazy solo at the end.
And I'm like, these guys are shit.
So I go up there and I go to the bar.
I'm like, I need I had a few.
And I'm like, I need like
receipt paper and a pen.
Yeah. I write down my name, my number.
You know, I slip it in the tip jar with
some money and I'm like, call me.
I'm like, I'll fill the space.
Like they joke now.
Like you said you were going to fill the
space like 30 times.
And and that's funny.
Long story short, they
ended up giving me a call.
They gave me a call and I went out,
auditioned with them.
And we knew right away like, yo, this is
going to be a good thing.
Yeah, because that was a lot of it
because of your commitment
from what you and you
said, I need to restructure.
I need to commit again.
And you put the work in.
And then that then when you went to try
audition for that band,
it was like fit right in.
Yeah, it was. Yeah.
Perfect.
So your hard work.
You can't have a dead
band without a keyboardist.
No, no, no.
And we're not we're not totally dead
band, but we do play some dead songs.
Yeah. Help on the way.
Franklin's Tower. Yeah.
Shake down.
If it was up to me, we'd play more.
Yeah. Yeah.
There's this not
contention, but I love that.
Maybe too much. Well, no, I mean, there's
so many songs you could pick.
Dead songs that they could just it could
be a whole show of just dead.
Absolutely. You do multiple
nights of just 100 percent.
100 percent. Yeah.
When did you first hear the dead?
So it was through Channel 23.
Serious XM. The Grateful Dead channel.
Yeah. So so I always knew it was there
because it was right below 24,
25, 26 was like classic vinyl classic.
Yeah. And I never really gave it its due.
And at this point, I was already you
know, I like Zeppelin.
I like Pink Floyd.
I like the Allman Brothers,
a big Allman Brothers fan.
Yeah. And I felt like I'd
heard a lot of this stuff.
And I was like, all right, you know what?
Everyone is always hyping up the Grateful
Dead, the Grateful Dead.
This could tell I'm like, all
right, let me just put on 23.
And so I'm listening to it.
I'm like, all right.
You know, some of these recordings are
kind of like they're old.
Like, I don't know if
the quality is the best.
And I'm like, you know, I
give it a shot a little bit.
OK, go back to the regular stuff.
And a couple of weeks later,
all right, let me put it back.
Let me see how it is.
And I was like, you know what?
Actually, I started to come around to it.
Man, I wish I could go see these guys.
And then all of a sudden they play one
dead and company comes on instead.
And I'm like, well, this is different.
And I'm like, I started looking it up.
I'm like, holy shit.
These guys are touring now.
Yeah, I could actually
go see this band. Yeah.
So I text my buddy Zach,
who's again, he's not a head either.
He's not gotten into jam music.
We just both like music.
And I'm like, yo, dude,
this show is going to be in Boulder like
over Fourth of July weekend 2019.
I'm like, would you
be interested in going?
And he goes, dude, I have
an uncle to live in Boulder.
We could just go stay with them.
It's going to be perfect.
So we fly out there.
We have no idea what's even going on.
O'Teal was on the plane with us.
No way. Well, he lives in Boca.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We didn't even know.
Oh, my goodness.
And we're sitting there in a baggage
claim and we're like asking other people.
They're like, yo, are
you going to the Dead Show?
And they're like, everyone on this plane
is going to the Dead Show.
Like look around. Everyone's in tie dye.
Yeah. Oh, that doesn't make sense.
He's like, actually,
that's a bass player over there.
We're like, yeah. No way.
These guys kid on his shoulders like, you
know, it's just cool.
You know, so was it
at was it at Red Rocks?
No, it was at Folsom Field. OK.
And so we go.
I didn't even know when
we bought the tickets,
but it was the final show of the tour.
And we just got an
absolute scorcher set list.
And of which the only song I knew ahead
of time was Scarlett Bagonia's.
Yeah. And it's one of the best songs.
It is one of the best songs.
And then ever since, you know, I got back
and I was like, dude,
I can't stop thinking about it.
Loser Eyes of the World, Not Fade Away,
like all these just songs
that are some of my
favorite songs now. Yeah.
And and me and Zach, we dove like, you
know, head in into the music
and we couldn't stop listening to it.
And then that's ultimately how I got
introduced to Goose also,
because Goose played at this playing in
the sand in 2021 or two.
As like the pool party band. Yeah. Yeah.
Which was but so, yeah, ever since now,
I've seen Dead in Company
probably six or seven times.
I saw once in my dad, I really feel my
dad's not ahead at all.
Yeah, that's cool. I saw
them at the sphere last year.
How was that? Because I when I see it
like on social media or whatever, it
looks like I feel like I would get dizzy.
I did for one second. Yeah. Yeah.
And it's I don't know if they've changed
the visuals like for this year,
but when they started out, it was like
that high street like house.
And then it like backs up and then like
zooms you out from the earth
until you like get to space.
And that's when they start doing all the
cool visuals and stuff.
Yeah. But like in that first moment, I'm
like standing up trying to dance
and like I'm getting
like zoomed out backwards.
And I was like, well, what the hell?
You lose your freedom
of reference. Yeah. Yeah.
And so I was like, I don't have to sit
down, but I grabbed the chair.
And I was like, yeah, this is strange.
And then, you know, then the whole rest
of it, like it was fine.
Oh, yeah, maybe a little bit disorienting
at times, but not like that.
Right. And at the end,
they zoomed you back in.
And but the zooming in was fine.
It was zooming out.
That was. Yeah. Yeah. OK.
That's that's an interesting perspective.
So when you first went to
the Dead and Company show,
did you know anything about the culture?
Did you know about the Shakedown Street
parking lot scene? No.
The only thing I knew was I was reading
like, oh, going to my first dead show,
like, what should I expect?
And like I read some
some cynic on the Internet.
I don't even know how I
found this dude's article.
And he's like, I don't know why anyone
would want to go see the dead.
Sounds like someone tuning
a guitar for three hours.
Then I was like, well,
yeah, I was like, all right.
Well, whatever. So yeah,
then I'm like, all right.
Yeah, forget it. We'll just
go and we'll have a good time.
Yeah. And we sat in the way back.
Like probably the
furthest seats you could have.
I was blocked by a field goal post.
Oh, my God. I remember just listening to
the music and just being like,
oh, my God, this is crazy.
Yeah. And actually, you know,
I wanted to ask you guys, you know, how
did you get I mean, you have
what is this, 150 to 100 tapes here?
Yeah, it probably about 100 to 200.
Wow. Yeah. So how did you get introduced?
For me, you go first.
Funny thing is, actually, I was when I
first heard the dead, I didn't like them.
I was like, turn this
off. I don't like this.
And then slowly got into it.
It was in high school.
I saw my first dead show
in 1986 at Giant Stadium.
And, you know, you go to your first show
and if you're into it,
you're into it in your hook.
So I rolled into Giant
Stadium as a 15 year old kid.
And we pull into the parking lot and
there's like big boats.
People towed their boats and they're
partying in their boats.
People are pushing people around in
dumpsters and partying and just
the shakedown scene. And then
it was with dead in the Dylan.
So Bob Dylan played with Grateful Dead.
Dylan in the summer.
Yeah, Dylan in the dead.
And then, you know, it
just kind of happens.
Sure. You know, it just kind of because,
you know, when I was in high school,
I was I played sports, I was
in the three sports and then.
But then you discover the
Grateful Dead and it's this.
It just it's life changing.
How many shows would you
say that you've been to?
We've been over 100, I would say.
Yeah, about well, you
know, just the dead in Garcia,
probably around 75 to 80.
And you start tagging on like like we've
I took Nathan to see further.
Sure. Down in what's the
little place by Bayfront?
He was a young kid, actually.
So they've seen Bayfront.
We've seen like Bobby Bobby's.
We're the wall grows.
Yeah. And Bobby on his own.
And then we've been the rat dog.
That's where Jeff, the keyboard player.
Yeah, you know, I was
going to ask you about him.
Are you? I'm a huge
fan. I think he's amazing.
Yeah, yeah.
Like the way that he plays, because like
I think a lot of musicians, they
they get accustomed to the
way that they like to play.
And sometimes your ear starts to think
like, oh, he's going to go here next
because that's like how my ears been
trained based off my own
style, my own influences.
His playing in particular never ceases to
break that routine for me
because the creativity and the way he
approaches it, you just
oh, he's going to go here.
But he goes there instead.
I would have never seen it coming.
So I think my first impression of him was
like, oh, this guy is good.
But like, you know, whatever, there's
better keyboard players out there.
But as I listen and especially over the
last, I mean, that was
2019 and now we're in 2025.
So it's like six years of
them continuing to play together.
And this guy's chops
are just off the rails.
And that's on the piano.
Not even to mention
once he gets on the B3.
Yeah, that's crazy.
I think the first time I
saw him was with rat dog.
And it might have been
here in Meisner Park.
And I was like, this guy's pretty good.
And then we saw him with further.
And then then you see him with dead in
company and then just watching him on
YouTube and other things.
Honestly, I don't know of anyone.
I don't know if there's a better
keyboardist right now that I
can think of from an improv
perspective of kind of like you're
saying, I think he
could play with anybody.
I'm sure he could play with anyone.
Yeah. Yeah.
He's there's another guy in the scene,
too, that I think has also
been a really big influence.
And that's Marco Benavento from J.
Rad. A hundred percent.
He's phenomenal, too.
Yeah. J.
Rad's awesome.
He's incredible.
And some of the things that he does on
the keys makes me feel like
he's got four arms or something.
I don't know.
Have you listened to?
Well, my first show was at
the Otsun Stadium in Oregon.
Oh, great.
From Oregon.
Yeah.
So my experience at the same time frame
and everything, my
experience with it was life change.
I think with the dead, when everyone
first hears it, it's more like white.
And it's that reaction of
I don't understand this.
And then it helps to go see them live.
And then obviously once Jerry died, that
became almost impossible.
But then, you know, with further and with
debt and company, it offers that
experience for younger generations.
So I am so grateful for that because you
can listen to it and
listen to it and listen to it.
But until you have a live experience,
that's what really solidifies
understanding all of
it, the culture of it.
Because there's a culture, too.
And it's a culture that once you're a
deadhead, it becomes a part of your life.
And it's it never leaves you.
It's like in your blood.
And it's hard to explain.
And there's a saying for deadheads.
We are everywhere and we
are everywhere of all ages.
And I know Brian and I, when we go to
different because we'll
go see cover bands, too.
And I love seeing people your age there.
I love it.
Like it's it's it gives me such hope.
I love it.
It doesn't work as well for me, though.
I love that debt and
company is going for you guys.
But for me, they're just a cover band
because we got to see Jerry live.
How you guys feel about it?
I don't want to sound like a dick, right?
Because that kind of
can come across as Dickie.
But it's like the Allman
Brothers without Greg Allman.
Sure. They're no
longer the Allman Brothers.
The Grateful Dead without
Jerry's no longer the dead.
So it's it's hard.
But I like debt and company.
I enjoy it because it
was it was pretty so many.
I don't know. It's so many.
It's so many members. Yeah. Yeah.
But it's it's so many members still with
Billy and Mickey and Bobby there.
You still have so
many members of the dead.
It isn't I don't view
them as a cover band at all.
I know Brian does.
We differ in that.
So I still think it still is going
strong, though, the whole culture of it.
But, you know, we've
passed on the dead to our kids.
Nathan is a big dead head.
That's how I knew. Yeah.
So Nate and I have even gone to see a
couple of like unlimited devotion.
Yeah. Yeah.
Uncle Mike's one time and we went.
But what you were saying about them being
a cover band, you know, for me,
I think the perception is a little
different just because I was never.
Of course. I never would
have had the opportunity.
So I'm grateful that the music is out
there being played at such a high level
by such talented musicians and just the
nature of that style of music.
Being so improvisational.
I mean, there's they played what, 250
nights a year for 50
years or something like that.
Yeah. And no.
There's a T-shirt that
tells you all about it.
Yeah. No two recordings are the same.
So even though, yes, it's it's different
nowadays, it would have
been different anyways.
Yes. So you're right.
Just that's how I view it.
And so then if it's J-Rad, if it's dead
in company, if it's Crazy Fingers,
Depot or the Biscuit or
Unlimited Devote, like,
I'm just happy to be able to be like you
said, a part of the scene and hear
and hear this music that
takes you on such a journey.
It's the magic.
Yeah. It's the music never stopping.
Yes.
And that's what I love about it is the
music is not stopping.
And that to me is more
important than who's playing it.
Because when we're all there together,
dancing, the energy is the same.
I'm one of those that are dancing.
And the energy is the same
for me as when I was at a show.
So I can tell you that when I am at one
of those, whatever it was,
dead in company or anything.
And when, when I'm hearing the music,
it's the same energy.
It's the same vibe.
It's the same magic.
So you are
experiencing what we experience.
It's just that we were fortunate to
experience with Jerry.
Yes.
So, but you're still
having that same experience.
I can tell you that because I, I have the
same experience and I've seen you,
you're dancing too.
Yeah.
I think the difference of thing I'm
pondering it because I think what I,
it's an interesting thing.
If, if I think of maybe three bands, I
really, really like would be the dead,
the almond brothers and Billy strings.
Sure.
And obviously can't have the dead or the
almond brothers anymore.
What I really like about Billy
strings is I'm sitting there.
I'm like, okay, when they end the song,
I'm like, all right, what's next?
And it's more like, what's next?
Yeah.
I want to see where this goes.
That's, I don't have that same vibe when
like dead in company,
you do to a point, but I don't know.
It's just different.
And I don't mean to shit on them.
It's an amazing thing.
They're still going.
I think people shit on mirror
unnecessarily, unfairly.
Yeah.
Phenomenal guitarist.
Yeah.
Phenomenal vocalist.
Yes.
He can go, you know, but
the, but Bobby's older.
Mickey and Billy are older.
So it's, it's just different.
But for you guys, it's Nathan loves it.
You know, I think that's one of the
things that makes it great
to have the options though,
because like they get
critiqued all the time for the tempo.
Yes.
I think.
Yes.
Totally.
There's merit to it.
You know, they don't, they still get
there and they have these
amazing jams, but if you want
more beat, you can see Jared.
Yes.
Yes.
They're pushing the tent the whole time.
And actually to what you said, like when
Denko wraps up songs,
you're not like, what's next?
But I do get that when I see J-rad and
they'll do these ambient
transitions, you know, much like
the dead used to do.
Yeah.
And you're, I'm like, Oh, they're going
to start terrapin or maybe they don't,
maybe they go somewhere
else completely different.
Yeah.
And, and I love having that.
Yeah.
That's one of the things
that keeps it so interesting.
And that's why the shows never get old
because they keep you on your toes.
It's my favorite part, but I'm like that
even at Crazy Fingers.
Same.
I'm like, and I listen.
They're awesome though.
They are awesome.
But I'm one of those even when I first
started where I listen at
the end of the song to hear
what they're going into.
Because they do tell you.
And so I can usually
name it even before he does.
And I'm always telling Nathan when I'm
with them for Crazy
Fingers and he'll be like,
how did you know that?
But I focus so much on that.
I think that's one of the best parts is
what are they going into next?
I love that.
I think you just touched on a good point.
So they're playing with the
tempo and I think it's cool.
And I think Bob Weir reserves the
ultimate right to revisit
this music because it's his
piece of pivotal piece of it all.
But I'm not into that tempo play.
And that's it.
It just is what it is.
That's something I don't
mean to sound like a dick.
I'm not shitting on them.
I think it's awesome that Weir is still
alive, still doing this.
He's playing with the music.
He's revisiting it.
I'd rather listen to Billy Strings.
Yeah, there's an authenticity to about
that music to Billy
because it's being created now
and it is new.
That feeling that you got
watching Jerry do his thing.
He just, yep, you're nailing it.
That nostalgic kind of feeling.
You're tapping into that by watching
Billy do it for the first time.
Yes, you just nailed it.
I think that Billy gives him the feeling
he used to have going to see the dead.
The original dead.
Massive compliment to Billy and his
musicianship and what he's doing.
He's I find him completely amazing.
I get goosebumps thinking about it
because it's just so good.
It's so agreeable, right?
It just fits.
I haven't seen him
yet, but he's on my list.
He'll be in St. Augustine.
What is it?
April 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, 3rd, 4th, and
5th, but then he's back.
He's going to Tampa April 9th.
We're still on the fence
to make a road trip over.
Maybe I have a good buddy who's a fellow
musician also that lives out
there in Tampa.
So funny story.
We went up to we flew up to Penn State
University last summer to
see Billy for August 2nd and
August 3rd, and we're hanging out on the
PSU campus at the Starbucks.
It's raining, so we hopped
in to get and there's Billy.
No way.
Yeah.
So I see Billy and I
start yelling to her.
I go full blown fucking fanboy mode.
I have no cool about me, right?
And I'm like, call her.
She's like, I'm like, just hurry.
And then we see him and he's the nicest,
kindest, so humble, so
such good energy guy.
You know, you just meet someone that's
just like this guy's
energy is on this right.
Definitely.
But I'm in full blown fanboy mode.
I'm still embarrassed by it.
Oh, you were fine.
You were fine, but no, he's what you
would have hoped he would be.
No, that's what he's into here.
So the word live Billy strings, the way
he is is how he was at that show.
So I do see the difference.
Yeah.
As are you, but I'm a little kid again.
You are, but we've never seen J-rad.
Oh, if they come around.
Oh, we're going.
Yeah.
I really want to see them, but they did
come down to Meisner
years ago, but I don't think
they've been here since like when you
guys were in high school.
I think they were Meisner.
You know what I do actually.
I don't know.
You've heard of nodes.net, right?
Yeah, of course.
Okay.
So I have a nugs.net subscription.
Yes.
So I, I, okay.
So I watch all these guys.
I've seen goose watch Billy J-rad.
There's some really good
bands actually out there.
Yeah, definitely.
Even so there's some local bands that we
kind of run in
similar scene as like they,
so there's one band
local called Guavatron.
It's really cool.
I don't know if you
guys ever seen Guavatron.
For a while we were doing this thing.
It's like a, like a local like jam night
at a warehouse called
the arts warehouse in West
Palm beach.
And so, you know, some of our guys went
up and I was fortunate
to sit in and play with
the kids and then there's another band
that's from South Florida called Tand and
Tand had, there's
another band that was there.
They're not, they kind of evolved into 10
kind of called the heavy pets.
I don't know.
They're another like
local to South Florida.
Yeah, the heavy pets in
particular had a keyword player.
His name is Jim worst.
He still plays around here and he is a
monster in the keys.
Really one of the most tasteful kind of
lead lines that you can hear around town.
I see them in a
couple of different places.
But yeah, those are some bands that kind
of grew out of down
here and I've really spread
their wings and done well from.
And they're jam bands.
They're jam bands and you can find Tand,
you can find Guavatron on nugs.
Okay.
Okay.
Now we'll have to check those out.
Check them out for sure.
Real quick as a keyboardist, have you
listened to the different
eras of the dead with the
different keyboardists?
So when you said 86 was your first show,
I was thinking, okay,
these are Brent years.
Brent.
Yeah, definitely.
So you have opinion.
Have you listened to Pig Pen Jears and
Donna and I like the Donna stuff.
I know she divides opinion, but
especially the beat it on
down the line with Donna.
Yeah.
Harmonies are just like that's if I'm
driving around and I just like I love it.
Yeah.
And Keith, you know,
we'll have to do some nights.
So what we've done is I can plug my
cassette player into this.
Sure.
And we will sit in here.
We'll have some drinks and just chill and
listen to some bootleg.
Oh, it'd be amazing.
And then they talk about the show.
Yeah, I would love to do that.
Yeah, for sure.
Get some good conversation on that.
Yeah, I could do a whole episode on that.
But what's your opinion on have you
listened to Keith and Pig Pen and Brent?
Sure.
I like I like the key stuff because it's
simple and he doesn't like.
Brent is another lead player.
Yeah, he can be which I really like that
sometimes I'm in the mood for it though.
Sometimes I'm not.
I think the Keith
stuff is digestible always.
And I really like the Hornsby stuff when
he would say because
he was just incredible.
Yeah, incredible.
Of course.
I had a special show
actually shortly after Brent died.
They you know, people are like, are they
going to or is it over?
And it's like, it's not over.
And so their first show after that summer
was in Philadelphia.
It's at the Philly spectrum.
I got tickets and went down.
And it was Bruce with Vince Wellness.
Oh, really?
Wow.
Unbelievable to have both of
them playing at the same time.
I don't know if it was
the first show or not.
I think it was, but they hear both of
them and they open the
second set with a scarlet fire.
And the whole place was moving.
It was almost like, oh, shit.
It was we're going to handle this.
Yeah, I saw them both right after Brent
died, but I can't remember what venue I
it was on the West Coast.
I don't know if it was odds in or if it
was Cal Expo or Shoreline or Oakland,
but I also saw both of them together
because they had big shoes to fill.
So they brought two of them in to kind of
help with the transition.
So a loud personality for the musical.
I'm sure he was, you
know, as an individual, too.
But from a musical perspective, he
definitely has a big footprint.
It was a huge loss for
us heads during that time.
That was our keyboardist and
it was like a huge transition.
So it was terrible.
It was.
But each of them and
then Pigpen has his own pig.
Yeah, I've heard the pig stuff.
Okay.
Yeah.
I really love when he does like his
really good vocalist, too.
Yes.
You know, as good as he is as a keyboard
player and an organist,
maybe he doesn't get the credit.
Maybe he does.
You guys are more, you
know, you were there, not there.
Yeah.
Yeah. More of the part of the
community at the time.
Right.
And I love when he
does like on Good Loving.
He's like, turn on your love light.
That kind of stuff.
Yeah.
And like, you just don't get that.
And I heard Bobby like try and do it.
Yeah.
No.
And it's like, you're
not going to get now.
They call them pig rants.
Pig rants.
I've never heard that.
So one of the best pig
rants is from Princeton,
Dylan Jim, Princeton,
New Jersey, like 1971.
Oh, sure.
And it's like a half an hour rant.
It's a Good Loving.
It's crazy.
It's because he was, you know, he's
sharing his tortured soul.
And if Bobby can't replicate that, that's
coming from like his demons.
Yeah.
I'd like to hear that.
I'd like to hear that one for sure.
You'll have to send that to him.
All right.
So bringing us back.
That was our discussion.
I do have more questions.
I'm sorry.
About the Den?
No, no, no.
One question.
I'll throw it out there.
You don't have to answer now, but I am
curious because I
think I love the keyboard.
I love Brent.
I love Keith.
I love Greg Allman, Elton John, right?
Billy Joel and Cimente.
I think that's how you say it.
Cimente.
Cimente.
So my question is, how do you make the
leap from playing
recitals in sixth grade on a
classical piano to getting into rock,
being a rock musician,
playing keyboards and organs
and stuff like that?
I've always, I would ask
these guys the same question.
Yeah, I know.
Sure.
The truth of the matter is that I never
wanted to play classical.
Really?
It was just like kind of the necessary
evil to kind of, you
know, cut your teeth and,
and get the technique down.
And so I remember Billy Joel song scenes
from an Italian restaurant, you know,
long, beautiful song.
Piano solo.
And my parents, again, bless them.
When I was trying to learn that part, I
mean, two weeks straight,
every day I come home from
school, I take my phone
out, I put it next to me.
I hit record.
Oh, fuck.
Stop.
Restart rerecord.
And just for hours every
day to get that, that lick.
And it was like I knew that I wanted to
play more along that style of music.
And then to your question about like,
okay, then how do you get
because that's not it's rock,
but it's not the same type of rock that I
just, you know, I liked Pink Floyd.
I like the Allman Brothers, you know, and
it I never paid that much
attention even to the keys
in rock music, which
maybe sounds kind of crazy.
I was always because part of me still had
that guitar hero kid inside of me.
And I was just dialed into the guitar,
even though I was, you
know, playing my own.
And I was playing more like, you know,
popular stuff,
whatever, like in for the band,
like the Stone Keys band, you know, we
play a variety of stuff,
played mayor tunes or whatnot,
you know, like things that sorority girls
and people in college wanted to hear.
So yeah, we weren't like, even though we
could jam, we weren't
like a jam band by any means.
Um, I think that exposure to the dead and
then like then more
to the Allman Brothers
too, starting to listen like, all right,
and Little Feet, my, my
buddy's dad, Bobby's dad
turned me on to Little Feet. He's like,
he used to tell me, you
gotta play a Dixie Chicken.
You can't wait. I love that song. I saw
them open for the
dead. Really? Yes. Yeah.
I bet that was an incredible show.
Remember when that was, it was 80.
It was, it was either 87 or 88. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So I, I saw Little Feet play
at this little theater
in Fort Lauderdale, the Parker, and it
must've been like, you
know, two years ago. And I was
stunned. I, in these guys are older now,
they get up on stage and
I'm looking at them like,
you know, how's it going to be? And I sat
there, I was fortunate
because I was in the back right
next to the soundboard and everyone else
was sitting, but I was
in the very last row.
So I stood the whole time and I'm telling
you, it's been a long time
since I've seen a show where
I literally was like the whole time.
Yeah. I couldn't believe
it. And they're amazing.
They're a player. I know I made the joke
about Marco earlier having
forearms. This guy probably
had eight arms. Yeah. The things that he
was doing. Yeah. So
they're awesome. They're awesome.
But that type of exposure thing, thing
like, all right, well, you
know, I want to play music
that and, you know, I always kind of like
to improvise, but it was that exposure to
the extended jams that you get from the
dad, the dad in particular
too. And just hearing that and
being like, I want to try and do that.
And then the ruminators,
when I played with them,
we, I mean, we were for all intents and
purposes, a garage band that
would play out periodically.
I think I probably played like two, maybe
three gigs with them.
One of them was a wedding,
one story, but we would play and they
were so good and so
intentional about saying like,
all right, we're in this song. It's solo
time and each person in the
band, they pass it around.
Here you go. But it wasn't like, all
right, take a little
solo and go. It was like,
however much time you need to build and
execute your idea. Here's
cool. Here's the floor. That is
awesome. Because we weren't playing for
other people, you know,
we were just playing for
ourselves mostly. And like I said, they
had a good setup. We could record
everything. And then I
would go back and I would listen and I
was like, Oh, wow, that was
a cool idea that I did. Or I
would have not done that this time. And
then now at this point, I
had, I got myself a Yamaha,
it's called a CP 88 keyboard. It's nice.
Weighted keys feels like a
real grand piano. And it had
other sounds on it too, like the electric
keyboard stuff that like
Stevie Wonder would play.
And then it's got the claves and then it
had an organ tone. And so
I'd start to experiment. I'm
like, all right, well, my organ tone is
not right. Well, I need to get an
expression pedal so I can
toggle the Hammond on and off or the
Leslie on and off. So I'm, I'm
experimenting with these
different sounds. And thank God, you
know, I'd say they had the
patience to let me do that,
but it's not even about patience because
that's just the style of
music. And that's where they
came from. So they would have been doing
that even if I was there
or not. Yeah. And I think
that they really liked having me as like
the young gun. So for sure.
Yeah. Yeah. There's a question.
I really loved playing with them. They
have a new guy that's playing keys with
them now because it's
just too much for me to keep up with the
multiple bands. But I mean,
I love those guys and they're
all super, super talented. Rich is like
70 and he's out there still
ripping it. Yeah. So, you know,
I think that that, but that to answer
your question, them
giving me the floor to do that.
And now I go play with 59 shop and it's
much more, they don't give
you that much of a window.
We don't give each other quite that much
of a window. Yeah. So I
have to be a little bit
more concise and sometimes louder because
we also play a little
more upbeat and like
the other dynamically, your meetings are
way down. Yeah. And
then build up to our all in
together. So it's different. Yeah. The
amount of time that we have, but that,
that was where I got
the inspiration for it. Quick side note.
Check out, I think it's
1990 or 91 Buffalo show.
Jerry and Brent go back and forth. Oh,
I'd love to see. It's really
cool. It's on YouTube. Look
up like Grateful Dead Buffalo. And I
think it's 90, 1990 or something. Okay.
My favorite is watching
them look at each other. I need the pig
pen 71. Yeah. How do you
know when you're doing that?
Individual each member. And I've always
wondered this even with the
dead. So if everyone's doing
their thing, how does the band know when
that person is done and
it's time to move on to the
next transition? I, because it's always
so seamless and I'm like, how did they
all know? Yeah. I think
most of the time it's like a series of
orchestrated, like, okay. Okay. So with,
with the ruminators,
I was telling you guys, we played this
wedding and the bride really
wanted in memory of Elizabeth
Reed. That was what she wanted. And then,
you know, hold the mic a
little bit closer. Yeah.
Do you ever play it before? No. So we, we
put some time in on that one
to, to make sure that we got,
we got it dialed in. And then another one
that they wanted was, um,
Judy blue eyes, like, yeah,
yeah. Like the, yeah. Yes. That one took
a lot of time to dial in.
And actually I didn't do
as much on that one. They had some extra
practices dialing the
harmonies for that one. I don't really
sing for that. Um, but, but anyways, in
Elizabeth Reed, there's like the, and
like, there's a series
of like cues musically that tell you
like, Oh, this solo is over
where it's about to start.
And then that'll help us, you know,
they're like, there's, there's one part
distinctly where the
guitar solo, like I'm like, Oh, that was
his closing lick. I'm up
now. Okay. So sometimes
that's baked in. Um, and then even with
59 shop, like we, we
rehearsed these things. So
you like, we'll tell each other in
advance, like this is going to, like,
we're going to make this
transition, be ready for it. And then,
you know, we're all kind of looking
around, listening. And
sometimes you get, you know, three out of
five people that are on
it. But as long as you've got
bass drums and like one other rhythm
instrument, normally like
everyone else would be like, Oh,
shit. Yeah. That was the cue. Like we're
there. I mean, we're
pretty tight. Like we definitely
put the practice in to rehearse, but
yeah, especially with jam
bands, a lot of it seems,
um, just kind of like it's being done on
a whim or on the fly, but
the hours that these people put
in and they just know, yeah. And the
chemistry and the chemistry, or they do
the signal, like I'm
done, you know, and on this, on the stage
of like, uh, like goose,
for example, these guys have
talkback mics. So they'll have their
vocal mic. They'll have
another mic over here and they come
over and they're like, we're going to the
B part and we can't hear
that, but they can all hear that
in their own ears. So there's all of them
have that. I like, I know
Billy strings has that. He has
a mic behind them. That's a talkback mic.
I think that when we saw
bass sector, like last month,
he was talking to his crew in one of
those. He kept picking up a
mic and I'm like, how come we
can't hear him? It's very high
technology. Yeah. So yeah, that was okay.
So you're, you're, we're,
you're playing with the ruminators and
you're still working for
Bobby's dad. Yeah. And then
how long did you continue on those paths?
Um, so the ruminators, I,
even, even while I was still
playing with 59 shop, I kept playing with
them for some time. Um,
and then just a co like a
combination of, of life. And you know, I
did. So I took this time
off and I was, uh, you know,
my little gap year. Oh, that's right.
You're taking the time
off. That's right. Right. So,
so I had done that and I was playing
music. I traveled,
actually did a couple of weeks in
Europe with some of my buddies from
college. Um, and then when I got back, I
had it all set. So I
got back from Europe on July 29th or
30th. And I started at my new
job, which was in tech sales.
I really wanted to get into tech with a
company called Citrix, their global
company where they're
based on for a lot of your and it, aren't
you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No
Citrix. Okay. Yeah. So I
started with them August 1st. So I like
had it all planned out.
Yeah. And then August 12th,
you know, I met a girl and you know, we,
we really hit it off, ended
up dating for like two and a
half years almost. Wow. But all of these
things I'm moving. I was
with my parents when I first got
back from Europe and like all these
things were going on at the same time.
Yeah. So I was like,
all right, something's gotta gotta give.
Um, and unfortunately it was the
ruminators at that point.
And then I, even still after that, I got
together and I played
with the wedding for them,
which was not until like December of 22.
So like the timelines, um,
they just all, a lot of things
kind of converged at once. And that's why
I stopped playing with
them and focused more,
which is 59 shop. So 59 shop was your
next band after the
ruminators. That was the one that I met
at third and third where they call me.
Okay. And I had the audition and those
are the guys that I've
been playing with sense. And then they're
all, they're all so
talented. Um, and I, I got a
special shout out. Steve, our drummer,
Steve is an amazing drummer. He's an
incredible bass player.
He's a great songwriter. Um, and he plays
bass in more bands than
he plays drums in actually.
59 shop is the only band that he plays
drums in. Um, and so
there's, we have like another
band offshoot that is a wedding band. We
just played our first wedding. Um,
it was at the start of, of a March, March
1st. And, uh, we're
learning like earth, wind and fire.
Yeah. Yeah.
Journey. Yes. Like, so have you guys
known it was getting married? Okay.
It's a wedding band. What's the name of
the wedding band? Yeah.
That band is called the
pleasures. The pleasures call for a good
time. I love it. That's
great. And so is that the same
song? No, so it's, it's Steve, our
drummer is playing the bass
and then it's a couple. So
Steve teaches at school of rock. Oh yeah.
Okay. He teaches
every instrument. So like,
if anyone's listening to this, it is a
kid that needs lessons. Go
see Steve at school of rock.
Okay. Um, I wish sometimes that I could
be like 12 lessons from
Steve. Yes. He just loves it.
He's one of those guys. He's just, yeah,
he, he bleeds it through and through. Um,
but so yeah, so the wedding band and then
there's another band that
Steve and I play in it's,
this is really Steve and his other friend
or our mutual friend
Garrett's brainchild.
And it's called Ras W R a S S E, which is
the type of fish like a
fish. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Okay. And that is a tropical punk band,
which is very
interesting. Very interesting. Okay.
You should check them out too. That's
called Rasband Steve and
Garrett just released a
song called nowhere to go, which is
actually about, um, like
the government and how they're
trying to get rid of Florida's like
natural wildlife and
things like that. So it's, it's
kind of like a punk rebel song, but also
very well written and
orchestrated. And these guys are just
they're wizards. So yeah, all their stuff
up on like Apple music,
Spotify. Yeah. So check that out.
Okay. And we'll link everything in the
description. Yeah. We'll link
everything. Yeah, for sure. So
that's so cool. So wait, you're in three
bands right now. Some of
them, I just show up and play,
uh, which is, is good, but 59 shop is the
main one. That's the baby. And you know,
we were talking before we got started,
you know, maybe it seems
like we took a little bit of
hiatus from playing, playing gigs. Um,
and we did actually played New
Year's Eve and then we didn't
play until, uh, start of March for
actually Bobby, a different Bobby, which
I gotta talk about him.
And I will get to him in a minute because
he's another amazing, uh,
beautiful human too, uh,
and great musician, but it was his
birthday. So we played a banana boat up
here in Boynton. And then
we've got another show coming up on the
19th of April at Guanabanas
and Jupiter, uh, which is pretty
cool venue if you guys haven't been. Um,
but we've been focusing more
on writing original music and
this is of the bands. Well, I guess rass
is originals, but I'm
not involved in the writing
process. That's Garrett does most of the
work. Um, but with 59
shop, that's where we've been
really collaborating and trying to come
up with something because
the one thing that makes the
band special and unique is that every
person comes from a very
different musical background,
except like maybe me and Bobby, Bobby's
ahead also. So him and I
kind of have to see the
guitarist with the dead shirt on in some
of those videos. Yeah. Okay.
That would be him. And then
you see our other guitar player. Yeah.
His name is, uh, well, we call
him slick Rick. I think we'll
call him, we'll go by slick Rick and he's
just one of the best
guitar players I've ever had
the pleasure of playing with, but he
comes from more of a hat,
like a heavier or like a metal
background. Okay. And sometimes you can
hear that come through in the
playing. But then you've got
Steve who's kind of this jack of all
trades, Swiss army knife
musically. And then my friend
Mitchell, who's one of my best friends
and he's a really good bass
player, but he really is a base
head. So yeah, him and I used to go to
electronic shows and stuff
together too. So we have that in
common as well. And that's another thing
Nate and I share. Okay. Do
you want to go? I was going to
say, do you all participate in
songwriting? So the
songwriting process, it is dynamic,
I think is probably the best way to say
it. Um, you will at times
have all five of us just kind
of stumble on a groove and be like, whoa,
that has to be something.
And then, you know, maybe we'll
do it on lyrics or something like that.
But what we found is it works
best with like two or three,
or even one person. When you have all
five, it's like too many cooks in the
kitchen type situation.
So when we came back at the start of the
year, like everyone makes
resolutions in their own lives,
made resolutions as a band. All right.
Like what is our goal? Let's really
commit to getting back
to songwriting. And one of the ways that
we did that was we said, if
one person has an idea for
a song, they're allowed to come in and
rather than it be like this whole super
collaborative thing,
be like, Hey, this is my idea. You do
this, you do that, you do
this. Obviously each musician
is talented. And like, I mean, if I tell
Steve, like, Hey, I can't
tell him, I want you to do
exactly what I want on the drums. I'd be
like, Hey, I want a disco
beat and he'll take his liberty
with that. Right. Yeah. Um, so, but
really more like one person
or two people are kind of like
the musical director on the song. And I
think most of it is coming
from Bobby. Um, and then a
portion of it comes from me. And then
Steve is a big influence too.
And then Rick being the lead
guitar player, you know, he, he has his
own influence on the
music as well. And he comes up
with cool different like lines and things
like that that we wouldn't
have thought of otherwise.
And then sometimes we'll tell him, we're
like, Rick, this part go.
Yeah. And that's how we're.
Okay. That makes sense. Sorry. Go ahead.
You were gonna ask. Well,
no, what's interesting is when
Kaya was in a band, I used to go there
and film and record for them.
And it was very much the same
type of process you're describing where
they had a guy, his name's
Jamie. Jamie's a phenomenal
local musician down here as well. And he
was their musical
director. And he'd be like, Nick,
that guitar riff, you do that Adam on the
drums. You do this. I think
it was Emily, you, your rhythm,
you do this. And, and they kind of
collaborated like that. It
was cool. What you're describing
kind of delegating a little bit. Yeah.
Like offers a little bit of control,
maybe in the chaos of songwriting. Yeah.
You know, it can be
chaotic. Yeah. Where I struggle
the most is writing lyrics too. So
sometimes I'll be like, Hey, you'll
Bobby, I need words for this.
Yeah. Like this one is just not like, I
don't know. A
songwriting has always been, or the
lyric writing has always been hard for
me, but more and more music
minded. Maybe that comes from
the jam side of things. Jam bands with
the exception of the
dead, I'd say, are pretty
notorious for having like shitty lyrics,
I think. Well, not everybody had Robert
Hunter. Yeah. Robert
Hunter and, and, um, not just Hunter.
Yeah. John Perry Barlow. So that, that
makes a huge difference.
And they, and they also covered a lot of
Bob Dylan. Yeah. One of
the best lyricists ever.
Why are youngest sons named after him? By
the way, my question,
um, was 15, 59 shop.
I was checking out your videos. Looks
like you guys have a cool
place to play. Oh, the shop,
um, and I was going to ask if you, what's
your, what you're
doing in terms of lyrics,
but is that where you guys hang out and
yeah, man. So the shop is
like, I love the guys. I love
the band. I would be lying if I didn't
say that the shop itself
wasn't like one of the coolest.
Really cool. Yeah. Yeah. I want to go.
Where's the located? It's
important by the train tracks
off. And basically they got it before I
even, you know, was a part
of the band. So they had it
and, um, for all intents and purposes,
it's like a big, like, you know, air
conditioned storage unit,
but this complex at the end, like some
people run like small little
businesses, like auto detailing
things out of them. So they're nice. It's
not like you're in like a
little, you know, small,
like right storage container or anything
like that. But we've
got couches, you know,
we've got the whole thing laid out. We
got a really nice, we
recently upgraded all of our
gear so that it's more like this. We can
record everything that we
play like the ruminators had.
So we listened to it back. Some of our
recordings that you'll see online are
from that in the back.
There's like a little patio, you know,
it's, it's, it's a really, really cool
spot. And aside from
being where we'll go and we'll practice,
uh, sometimes more
constructively than others,
like last night, you know, being a group
of musicians, we all
have other musical friends.
So I want to say there's probably like
10, 12 people over there
just drinking beers and
just like, you know, I'm a big communal
jam. Like, you know, people
swap around on instruments
and like, you know, keys, keys are my
main thing, but I can play
a little bit of guitar and I
wouldn't play it at a show. Um, but, and
I could place enough bass
to, to get by too. So we'll
swap around and we just, it's, it's how
often are you going there
and doing that? What'd you say?
Practice it like practice or write every
Wednesday. That's been like
our day for probably, you know,
performing. It sounds like you'll
perform, but then you
guys take breaks too.
For a while we weren't really taking
breaks. It's just been a
little slower now. I mean,
everyone in the band has their job too.
So it's like very much,
this is the musical outlet
that, you know, we all, we all need. Yes.
It's excellent that you
have that 100%. Like for us,
I think when we go see live music for us,
that's our outlet, but you
have such a passion for music.
It's, it's, I was just going to ask you,
like, how do you balance
that passion for music and then working
your tech job, which I
assume you enjoy that as well.
I love it. So yeah, no, you know, I feel
in general, just very
blessed and so grateful for,
for all the opportunities that I've had
and for the struggles too.
But for now that I have the
chance to have a group of musical friends
and a band that we all
care about each other, we all
respect each other, you know, and, and
we're all, we're all just
kind. We really love each other.
We're friends too. It's not like, that's
like with other bands
where it's like, all right,
we're in, we're out, you know, and
that's, you want to have
fun. Of course. We're all,
we're all entertainers, we're performers.
Yeah. And then on the flip
side, in my professional life,
I'm working at, it's a, it's a tech
startup and they know they're doing,
we're, we collectively
are doing super well, but the company has
raised over $300 million
now. Wow. We're partnering with
the heat with the Panthers, with Chicago
Bulls. And I was in sales
for a while for about a year
and a half. And then I got promoted to
being manager. So I have a
team now and nice. I love,
I love that because every day it's not
about me anymore. Like it
was when I was a rep, I'm just
working to get other people on the team
better and help them, you
know, achieve their goals. And
what do you guys do? What is the idea? So
the idea is like a
one-stop shop, all in one platform
small business needs for the back office.
So main product is we
have automated bookkeeping
and accounting. And then we also have our
corporate card, which is,
I'll plug finally real quick.
Yeah. It's software as a service. Yes.
We're a SaaS company. But
so like the finally card.
Oh, you actually have a card. Yeah. But
yeah, it's so we lend
money to small businesses to
help them grow. And then there's some
nifty software on the
back. Yeah, cool. Yeah. Yeah.
So software in the back that helps to
like help the manager
expenses, pay less in taxes to save a
lot of time. So that's where we're
partnering with the heat with Panthers.
And then there's other
products coming down the pipeline to
payroll, global hiring. So it's like
really one-stop shop.
It's not like we're relying on one
product. So the company's
called finally. Yeah. Finally,
one place. Okay. I like that. Are you
allowed to say where you're
hosted? Are you an AWS Azure
or GCP? Well, we do the work through
QuickBooks. The work is
actually done through QuickBooks.
So it's just an API integration because
into our platform where
they're actually hosting our data.
I don't know. Yeah. Actually, I do know
it's on Amazon service.
Yeah. So AWS. Okay. Yeah.
Because I had a prospect one time. I'm
not going to work with you
guys unless my data is being held
domestically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So
finally, I like that. Yeah.
That's the name of finally.
Okay. That is a great name. So how long
have you been with finally?
I've been with finally since
June of 2023. Okay. So almost two years.
Yeah. I guess going on two years now.
So did you go from Citrix to finally? So
the Citrix story is kind of an
interesting one too.
So I started there August 1st, 2022.
September 30th, they announced
that they were being delisted
from the public market and had been
acquired by a private equity
firm. And I was just started as
CR in sales development, booking meetings
for the closers. And I
knew that I didn't want to do
that very long. So I want to actually
sell. I don't want to get
a point, but that was the,
that was what you had to do to get in. It
was like the entry level.
Yeah. And so everyone was
kind of freaking out like, Oh my God, we
got acquired. Where are
we all going to get laid
off? Nobody knows. There's so much
uncertainty. So some people started
leaving that were territory
managers. And actually at one point we
had like, you know, team
meeting where they were like, all
right, all the SDRs, like you guys go
like polish your resumes because like
it's not looking good.
And people were freaking out freaking
out. And I, me being driven,
like, you know, when I think,
okay, this is something I want to do. I
came up with a little plan I called
operation stay on the
ship. And I was like, all right, this is
how I'm going to figure out
a way to not get laid off.
And I networked my ass off. I found, I
sought out mentors from
people that probably had no
business even talking to me. Like one of
the VPs, I was like, Hey,
like, Lindsay, can you help me?
And, and a guy named Lee too. And another
one of my bosses there, he
saw that I was working hard and
they put me into a closing role. And I
had no experience. I didn't
even know what a net scaler
was. And, and I worked and I was the
first person in the office
and the last one leave. And
I ended up not getting laid off.
Everyone, 34 other people on the team,
including the director
got all laid off. They did move me to a
different product though, which was,
So did you move from like
Citrix to Netskiller then?
No, to Sharefile. Sharefile. Sharefile is
like DocuSign meets Dropbox. It's like,
File collaboration and sharing an
electronic signature, mostly for like CPA
firms and attorneys.
But I mean, I think that shows your hard
work and determination. And
in some ways that positive
intention, delusion, whatever talking to
people you think, who
might even talk to this person,
but you went to them as a mentor, just
like, why not? I think
it shows that it pays off.
I had nothing to lose.
You had nothing to lose.
Yeah.
And I had one mentor named Mike and Mike
spent a lot of time with
me. And here's a funny story
about Mike on every sales call that we're
on. It didn't matter who
the prospect was. He would
always talk about barbecue and it'd take
10 minutes at the start of the call
talking about barbecue.
Wait, what are you doing this weekend?
They're like, I don't know.
Well, I'm going to cook up
a whole mess of barbecue and I'd be like
slacking him. I'm like,
yo, Mike, can we get to the
pitch, man? And afterwards, one time he
goes, Hey, I'm like, why do you always
talk about barbecue?
And he says, because everyone loves
barbecue. Yeah. He's
teaching me, slow it down, you know,
make the connection. Anyways. So, okay,
wait, have you, do you watch the office?
Yes.
So do you know what you just referenced?
Is that Chili's episode?
Everyone loves Chili's.
Where Michael talks to the guy from
Lackawanna school district about
everything other than why
they're there. And then it works it in at
the end and he gets the deal.
And Jan is going crazy. Like what are you
doing? And they're just
talking about ribs and singing
baby back ribs. And that's, that's it.
And I also love Chili's too, by the way.
I wish there was one in focus still.
The reality is no one at work wants to
talk about work,
especially with a salesperson.
So I teach you too. Yeah. Yeah.
Because that's who we were selling to.
The last thing I want to
talk about is it. Yeah.
You know, I'll talk music, barbecue. I
don't know about Chili's.
No, no, but they were in and Chili's and
they were doing, he was
doing everything except
selling. Yes. And it worked.
You know, the interesting thing about
Citrix, I and you, we know various
casualties from that whole.
Yeah. I believe it.
Citrix transit.
It's still going on.
It still is going on.
They're very defunct right now.
Yes. Yeah. And so anyways, I get moved
over to this other
product, ShareFile. And I was
fighting my ass off. All right. I want to
be in a closing role,
closing role. And I finally get
there. Okay. Well, you're moving to
ShareFile. Okay, great. What is my
territory going to be?
Like, ah, well, you're going to be a
renewals sales rep. And I was like,
renewals, I was crushed.
I was like, oh, revenue retention. Like,
God, that's the worst.
But the benefit was it was a
brand new team that
never existed at ShareFile.
No numbers.
No, no numbers. And I got it. I got to be
a part of basically
founding this team, almost like a
startup because ShareFile was a startup
within the broader cloud
software group. And then so I was
within a startup team within a startup
org within a very old,
mature company. So it was really a
unique opportunity to kind of cut my
teeth and help build some of those
systems and processes. And
now I actually applied for a role as a
closing role, which they
told me, basically, you're
qualified. You think you would do great.
We'd love to have you. You'd be an
amazing culture fit. But
you just got here five months ago. So get
in line. Yeah. And like, one thing I
learned about myself
is and then, you know, even through, you
know, some of the struggles
I mentioned before is that
the thing that gives me anxiety is not
feeling like I am in control of my
situation, that feeling
of being in limbo. And that whole
situation was just drenched in that
feeling. And so I was all
right. Well, you know, at the meantime, I
was applying to other
places like, all right, you know,
let me see what's going on. Yeah. And
that was where I encountered
finally, the CEO messaged me
on LinkedIn and I set up a call while I
was driving home from
Citrix that day. And at the time,
they had just moved to in Boker just
right here. There's that new
El Camino they put in. Yeah.
That big black building right there is
with offices. Oh, okay.
And when I first got there,
you know, I met the CEO, he's working on
a card table. There were
monitors all over the ground.
And he's like, you know, do you want to
be a part of building
something? And I said,
absolutely, I do. And then I met one of
the other co-founders, his
name is Edwin. He's a great guy,
mentor to me, boss, but and a friend as
well, couldn't ask for a
better person to work for.
And I met him, I said, Did you write the
script? He goes, I wrote
the script. And I said,
Okay, I'll see you guys. And since then,
just the opportunity to work directly
with the co-founders
using some of the things that I learned
from the share file
experience, building out teams,
helping coach other people train them. I
mean, even before I got moved into a
management position,
I was already, you know, helping mentor
and coach and teach and like,
and there's another gentleman, Albert,
too, who is one of the, he was the
original salesperson.
He's been selling for 28 years. He
reminds me that, you know, from time to
time, he's also just
an amazing dude, so humble, does
everything to help other
people, but learning from them,
and then taking the opportunity that
they've given me just to
help others. And oh, and
what I was going to say about Mike before
I got derailed on the
barbecue thing was what he always
told me was, I was like, Mike, what you
know, what should I do to
pay you back? And he goes,
just pay it forward. Just pay it forward.
And so, you know, as I'm
helping these, these younger reps
who are getting hired, like, well, thank
you so much. Pay it
for it. Pay it for it.
It's such an excellent way for the older
generations, they
pass down to you. And now
you're passing down to Gen Z, the younger
generation. And it's
so encouraging because
so many times I hear from Gen Z's and
younger millennials, how
disgruntled they are with
boomers or with older Gen X and that
boomers especially come
across as selfish and self-centered
disconnected from what the younger
generations, their outlook
on life. So to hear that,
at least in your company, there's this
beautiful connection
across the generations.
It's amazing. That's awesome. And it's
fortunate too that we're,
you know, we've had the success
that we've had so far. Of course, it's a
startup, like, something
could go wrong tomorrow. Yeah.
Like, so, you know, that's the other
thing. Like, I'm always, I
never take it for granted. And
every day is a blessing that I have. But
we're always, we're
hiring right now where a lot of
places are not. So especially like entry
level sales, like we need
people and the leadership
and the management, they invest so much
in giving us opportunity to
grow and learn. Our, our CRO
is kind of like a LinkedIn famous guy.
And he's got, you know, over
a hundred thousand followers.
Really? Yeah. His name is KD. KD.
He's a heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy.
He goes by KD. And, um,
how, why is he such a big personality?
Because, well, he's scaled a
couple, it's like four or five
businesses to over a hundred million in
revenue now in a year from
where they weren't doing that
before. He has a track record. Yeah. But
he's, he, he has this
personality too. He always wears
this black hat and it's like that, like
it's just, that's him. And he's, he's
kind of like a sales
teaching leadership, like guru. And we
were fortunate, very
fortunate to get him. And
he's invested in our leadership team. And
he took, he took us through
like a six week AI course and
he's got me in another one now. And you
know, that's great that
I'm learning are things that
I would have never got. And I'm
reflecting on my previous companies never
even had a chance to.
Yeah. So what are you
learning in, in AI at a sales role?
Yeah. So there were a lot of different
applications. Most of it
was like, how do you use AI
as a seller, like researching prospects
and things like that. But
because we had, you know,
10 or 11 people in this probably, you
know, 40 person class, all
of us were in leadership.
So we were asking more questions like,
all right, well, like, how
could this be used for leadership
applications? And one of the things that,
you know, I got an idea
from for this was let's create
an AI call scoring. Basically one of the
hardest things for any
sales manager to do, you know,
I've got five guys on my team right now.
Each call is anywhere from,
you know, 20 minutes to an hour,
sometimes even longer. And I'm supposed
to listen to these calls and prepare
feedback. And how do I
know where to coach? How do I know where
to train? How do I do these
things? So I basically you copy
and paste the call transcripts. AI goes
through and there's a lot
of stuff on the back end that
you had to write out and define. Okay,
this is like what a good
bucket question looks like.
This is what it looks like to get
agreement to actually, you're kind of
writing the prompt or
the script to drive the AI engine to help
score. Exactly. All the
call went exactly. It's cool.
Yeah. So very cool. It started with just
our team and then it
got rolled out to other
organizations, the card team within the
company and actually,
yeah, it's so cool. Yeah.
She was, we can't say the company name. I
don't even remember the
name, but she was doing prompt
writing. What mind bending stuff it was
that she was doing. It was really cool.
I'm still connected with the company. I
just haven't had time to
do it, but writing for AI,
it's been, it was, it was very
interesting. I will say that.
Like scoring the AI model
thing. Was that the right question?
Yeah. And then creating prompts and all
that stuff. So with
this company, do they,
how do they view work life balance? I'm
assuming it must be pretty good because
you have time to put towards your music.
We definitely work hard,
I will say. We work hard.
And, but you know, one of the principles
of KD is, you know, work
and life are so intertwined.
They both need to be going well. If you'd
really be happy. Like if
you're not doing well outside
of work, that'll affect your performance
at work. And if conversely,
if you're not doing well in
work, that's going to affect your life
outside. So they definitely
care about us. They, again,
they're constantly teaching us. They take
us to, there's a guy
named Patrick Bette David,
who did an event, a big conference up in
West Palm called the vault in September.
They took our entire company to go. It
took us all off the
phones for a couple of days.
And you know, they want us to grow. They
want us to develop. And
I think that professional
foundation and the confidence that, you
know, you get from being
successful in a role will help
everything else in life. No, that's great
that they, that they
recognize that because,
and I don't know if that's typical of
startups. I feel like I've heard it is
startups in general.
I've worked for startups and
you work your ass off. Yeah.
We definitely work hard, but it's worth
it. And to, it's fun to feel
like you're being a part of
building something that is, that is, you
know, bigger than you could do
individually. And yeah,
like my dad is an entrepreneur. So I have
entrepreneurship
aspirations. And I'm sure
I, you know, I will, you know, I've had
these sparks lately that I
used to not get just from
some of the things that I've been
learning. Right. And so I
know my day is coming, you know,
when exactly, I don't know, but just the
foundation and what they do
to help us get there and build
confidence to say, all right. And also
we're selling to small
business owners. So I'm on the
phone with them. I'd learn what they do
well, what they do wrong.
And, you know, sometimes you're
talking to small business owner and
you're like, man, I could definitely do
what you're doing right
now. Yeah. You know, so well, what's,
what's interesting about
your product, because I did
look it up and it's, it is hosted right.
Software as a service. If
you have the right idea, you're
learning enough that if you have the
right idea, you could find the right
people to develop it.
Sure. Find the other people to run it and
you go sell it. And it's
really that simple. And that's
how the world is today. It's pretty, it's
pretty wild at school.
That's why I'm fortunate to have
background in sales and that I very much
can thank my dad for,
um, sales guru himself. And
one of the best speakers that I've ever
had a pleasure, uh, you
know, even here's your talk and
learn from to the preparation. I told you
that's serious. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, it sounds like
you have such a great balance between
your music and your work
going right now. I do have to ask
you, because you are a younger
millennial, um, what is the dating scene
like for your age, like
with dating apps or being out there? What
is, how do you view
it? Do you view it, um,
as challenging because there's dating
apps and social media or
he's a musician. So he might,
might get a different aspect of like,
what is your view at your
age of being out there? Um,
so I, I had been in a relationship for
like two and a half years. So
I was like not actively in it
before that relationship. I was on the
dating apps and I only
ended up going out with people
that I met in person. So I matched with
people on dating apps. I would have
conversations and they
never seem to go anywhere. Um, since, you
know, I've been single
again, I've gone out on a couple
dates from some of the apps. I pretty
much only use hinge. Um, but like, I
dunno, I've heard good
and bad things about some of the other
ones, but I dunno, I have a
feeling that when I meet the
person that is ultimately going to be the
person for the rest of my
life, like I'll have met them
in an actual, like a normal organic way.
Not to say anything, like
one of my best friends, Zach
and his wife, they have a baby, they have
another one on the way
they met on hinge, they met on
Tender. And then, I know, like, I know
there's a lot of success
stories out there, so I'm not
going to knock it. And honestly, like who
knows, who knows maybe
that I end up with, it will be
met on a dating app. I don't know. Yeah.
But, um, do you feel
when you're out there, um,
that women are approach approachable or
do you feel that technology
has kind of stunted some of the
communication between, um, between men
and women your age? Um,
you know, I'm like a pretty outgoing
person, so I feel like I
don't often like meet a stranger.
You know, it's just like have the
confidence to go and actually approach
someone. Yeah. And I think
people appreciate the old school approach
anyways. Um, and there's so many
different ways, and I like
I'd be on Instagram, we can continue the
conversation there. So if
we like each other, like,
yeah, you know, it doesn't have to be so
like, Hey, you know, the
scholar, like, what are you
doing next Thursday? Right. Right. I
don't know. I'm still figuring out my
own, my own approach and
my own style and being a musician, it
doesn't hurt. Definitely. It gives you a
good way to meet people.
Of the guys in the band, at least two of
them have met their
girlfriends through music. Yeah. So,
would you say advice to younger guys is
to just go for it with
the old school way and that
they might be pleasantly surprised that
girls like to just be
approached more traditionally
as opposed to, you know, just through a
DM? I've had success and I've also
experienced failure.
So I don't know that there's one right
way to do it, but, um, I'd
say you're limiting yourself
if you're only going to stick to one
method. So utilize
everything that's out there.
If you see someone and you think you'd
like to go talk to them, you
should do it. Yeah. And what
would be some advice to younger people
that are just getting out
of college as far as career,
as far as, um, trying to figure out what
the twenties aren't easy.
I always say that twenties
have lots of peaks and valleys and, um,
it can be very discouraging
and you can feel like you're
out in the world and is this it is this
life. And I don't know if I
even want to do this. What would
be some advice you would give? So going
back to the philosophical
side of things, another thing
that I always would say is just be a
sponge and make that your
mentality. It doesn't matter what
you're doing. Good companies, bad
companies, products you
love products. You can't stand.
There's something there that you can use
and then you'll learn from
that's going to help you later
in your career. Um, even, even
opportunities when I was working for
companies where I knew I didn't
have a future there, there were still
things that I was learning. Um, and so
that would be my mindset.
I mean, first we have to do something
like, but you don't have to
love what you're doing out of
the gate. I mean, I jumped, I jumped
around and I think everyone should. I
think that is one thing
that's different about the job market
nowadays is that you're most
people don't work for the same
company on ecology. We're for them for 30
years, 40 years. Yeah.
That's it. Like don't be afraid
to take a leap. Don't be afraid to, to,
you know, make a change. Not
everything is so permanent.
Um, it should even in relationships too.
Like if, if it's not, if
you don't have that feeling,
like, all right, I wake up every morning
and I just want to run
through a brick wall for this
company or for that person. Like, I mean,
you guys have been together. How long
have you been together?
31 years, well together 33 years, married
almost 31 years. 31
or 33 wonderful years.
Yes. And so you guys must feel that, you
know, every day. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I
would say, you know,
on the career front in terms of that, you
have to reinvent yourself.
Like, you know, I'm 53 years
old or 54, right? 53. The world's changed
a lot. Yeah. And you've
got to continue to reinvent
yourself. I agree with you. You're spot
on via sponge. Pay
attention. Keep your eye on the ball.
Work hard, play hard, and you don't have
to like what you're doing
all the time. Right. Now,
if you can get there, then that's great.
But if you can't, then
things like music or hobbies
can kind of help you get through when
it's, when you're in the,
when you're in the peak. Yeah.
I think it comes down to storytelling
too. You know, every person
has their own experiences and
they're always going to be good. Like,
you know, even earlier,
what I talked about with what
happened, you know, through, through
college, you know, I didn't
know how to tell that story.
In my career, you know, I had struggles.
I worked for a company and
knew it wasn't going to be great.
I worked for a company. I watched all my
friends get laid off. I
got, I applied for a promotion
and I didn't get it. All these things
though, like it's not what
bad happened or what could have
happened or should have happened. It's
what are the lessons I
learned? Yeah. What are the things
that I did that helped me get through
that experience? And as
long as you can articulate
that, maybe this is just a salesman in
me, but that would be my advice. Every
job is, every person
meet, every experience you have is
another, another chapter in that story.
And then you just have to
be able to put it together. And if you
can, you'll be marketable to anyone.
Yeah, I totally agree
with you. It's a great point. It's good.
You're learning that at
such a young age too, because
in the corporate world, we call that your
talking points, right? What
are the talking points for
a good situation or a bad situation? But
if you can explain the
how and the why and the what
from each step along the way, it's a
great, that's great advice. Yeah,
definitely. And I think that,
understanding that you can reinvent
yourself, even like you said, if you've
worked somewhere for a
year, it's okay to go to another job.
Cause you are right. From our
generation, people looked more
at longevity. How long have you been at?
So you felt like you had
to stay there to prove your
resume. But I think it's the opposite for
your generations. It's
been a while though. Like when
I, I got into my professional world
around the dot right before the dot com,
live through the bus
and I changed jobs three, four, five
times each time a double my
salary. Yeah. So you got to just
keep doing it. And, and, and your age is
when you should do it. It needs to be
strategic. I think it
needs to be fairly calculated. You don't
want to be just like, Oh,
this sucks. I'm moving now.
This sucks. Three months later, I'm
moving. I want to try to be able to tell
the story. Why did it
suck? Or you almost never want to say it
sucked. It's more of, this is just a
better fit. Sure. And
this was a better fit and a better
opportunity, more
responsibilities, that kind of thing.
You should try and move to when you have
some type of positive
momentum. Yeah. Also like I had a
mentor when I was a share file, even
though that was a relatively
short stint, I don't know, maybe
five, six months. Um, but when I was,
when I told him, Hey, yo,
I'm going to go work at this
startup called finally, he gave me this
analogy of like, whenever you're at a
company, you're like
pulling the drawstring on a, on a bow
back. And the second you
decide to make a move, if especially
if you move to another company, you're
releasing all that energy.
You've got to start from the
beginning. If you're applying within, say
you're at a big company that has
different organizations
and you launch that, well, you might not,
it might not go all the way
back because your name is still
known. Your brand is still known and you
still have further to pull back. So
there's just another
thing to consider too. It's like, don't
be afraid to make the jump,
but make sure you do it when
you've got it pulled back already in some
capacity because otherwise
you're not going to be able to
go as far. It's a great analogy. And is a
great analogy. One thing I
would say too is, and you've
learned it early on is I would avoid the
VC, the venture
capitalists, because they're all about
buying a company like a Citrix,
completely liquidating it,
layering it with debt, and then
they're going to sell it to someone else
at some point. And all along
the way, there's a bunch of
casualties. Well, and you know, one of
the things that we thought was going to
be the case was that
they were going to cut too far and then
maybe rehire. But with the
Citrix, it was like they cut
and then they cut, cut too far and don't
rehire. And they cut and like, they
still, and, you know,
share file just got acquired by another.
Yeah. And it was already
being built out to sell.
And like a lot of my friends that did end
up making the move to share file too,
some of them, a handful of them are still
there, but most of them got
laid off also. So it's just
kind of just tough. I mean, yeah, it's
tough situation out there.
So look for companies too
that really believe in their people. Look
for, for if you're
looking at a CEO or a founder,
look for one who's not talking about exit
strategy from the beginning. You know,
look for somebody who's interested in
building and growing and actually has
more of a long-term view
that requires good people. Yeah, that
makes sense. Now, do you have any other
questions before I ask?
Just one, maybe. It's going back to the
music. What we're, what we're
saying some of your strongest
as you got into, like, you know, we've
talked Billy Joel or yeah.
All my brothers. Yeah. But then it
definitely started with
them, Billy Joel and Elton John.
And then I also went through like a huge
Beatles kick when I was in middle school.
And one of the things about the Beatles
in particular that I
find good for anyone who's
is that their songwriting is very
particular and they have a lot of
interesting chord progressions.
It's not like a country tune or a pop
tune that you might hear on the radio.
That's like, you know,
everyone sees those things on Instagram.
We're on these four chords
and you can play it. Yeah,
it is not that. That's not that the
Beatles. It's complex, right? It's
complex. And, and the
progressions, if you, you'd have to be
really adept to just sit
down and listen and try and
pick it out. Like a lot of times you'll
go and you'll look up at
the, oh, these are the chords.
And then oddly enough, another place that
you find that is
Christmas music. I used to always
get excited for the holidays because I'm
like, all right, new, new
shit I get to learn. And those
songs aren't easy either. Like they take
in that Christmas music is really,
especially the older
stuff is very jazz oriented. And so just
find things that kind
of challenge you. My dad
and my mom both love Journey. I saw
Journey three times while with Filipino
guy, Arnelle Panita,
which was again, back to the like, Oh,
well, you know, you
didn't see it with Steve Perry.
It wasn't, it wasn't Jerry for me. It was
the experience. Yeah. I'm
blessed. I'm blessed that
I'm there and I'm able to relate to it.
And absolutely. That's
good. That's good piano music
too. Yes. Faithfully. Yes. Well, they
have a wonderful pianist. He's amazing.
Yeah. His name is escape. John Carr.
John, something car, something car, but
no, I'll never forget
as a Gen Xer. I don't remember what album
it's on, but when open arms
first played on the radio,
that's when we would have heard it. Sure.
It, it, it was paralyzed.
You just were like, what did I
just listen to? It was that and we were
young and we were still, I was just like
taken away. And when
those first notes, you're, you're just
like, you stop what you're doing. It's a
beautiful song. And,
and slick in the band, uh, slick. Rick
has put together a
beautiful guitar arrangement of open
arms. Oh, really? Yeah. No, he's done the
same with Vienna also,
which is a tune that I'll play
gigs from time to time. But oh my gosh, I
forgot about Vienna. Yeah.
He's, he's so, he's so talented.
To listen to some journey. That's the
Billy Joel. Uh, oh, Vienna. Oh, Vienna
is. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
But, but all of these, it's like, they
all contribute. Yeah.
And, you know, as a musician,
when you're drawing upon your influences,
you want to have a little
bit of this and a little bit of
that. And it's like a chef, you know, I
want to grab some of these little, these
little, these little
time, right? Like you, you go to
different places and certain songs and
certain moods call for
different things. Now I have like the
knot, let's say it was only a
piano. All right. Well, I know
I want a little bit of this, a little bit
of that, but now I have,
you know, I got two keyboards.
I just bought a scent. I can draw from my
organ and I can make the
organ sound one way or another
way. I can go to the clap and I get that
funky kind of, you know,
superstition, like type five,
Billy Preston, then I can go to my keys.
I can go to my electric
piano. I can do scent pads.
I can do strings. That's cool. And so
it's like, not only do I
have the musical ideas,
like fundamentally just looking at the
notes, but now there's so much
you can do with tone. I mean,
like, look at guitar players. They've got
pedal boards that it's
essentially the same thing,
just with totally in with a wedding band.
We do the earth, wind and
fire stuff. We play like,
yo, do a little dance. I forget who that
one is. Not earth, wind and
fire, but I'm playing horns.
Is that cool in the game? Yeah. Cool in
the game. Yeah. I'm playing
horns. I'm doing horn section.
That's cool. On my, my one on the other
one, I'm doing other
stuff. So you're like a true
conductor with all your different, I'm
trying. Yeah. Steve was,
Steve was the musical director
band though. He put in more work than
anyone else. He just told me what songs
to play and where to
show up. That's cool. That's very cool.
Yeah. Well, the last thing I'll say,
who's the band we just saw
at the black hat, the Jerry Garcia
experience. So I think that's what they
were. Garcia experience.
The Garcia experience. Melvin Seals
playing with them now. No, that would be
cool. Melvin has played
with them now that you say that, but not
here. We saw them here.
It was phenomenal. Really?
Black box. No, I've heard about it
though. It's a great venue. I
was, I was getting a routine,
you know, 20, just turned 29, like health
checkup. Yeah. And this guy
came in, uh, in the waiting
room was wearing a dead hat and I struck
up a conversation with them
and he was telling me that
he saw them there and that I needed to
go. Yeah. We went to both nights and
they're amazing and they
come around, they spend their winter down
here. So they, they're
always here in the winter, but,
I didn't feel like that was a cover band
experience. They were, he
was impressed. I was super
impressed. He was impressed. So he even
stayed after and talked to them
afterwards. Yeah. Yeah.
Talk to the guitars. That one's a good
one. Yeah, definitely.
Any, anything that's coming
up on the radar, I'm gonna go. So here's
some shows that I'm going
to go see. There's a jam
band called dogs in a pile. Yep. I
haven't, I haven't really
dug into their stuff yet,
but they're coming to revolution live in
April and then Daniel
Donato. Oh, he's amazing. I've
seen some of his stuff. He's coming to
the, he's doing two nights
at the funky biscuit name. Oh
shit. Yeah. So I'm going to go last week
in April. All right.
We're going. I won't get, I
would go to that. Yeah. Yeah. I like to,
well, Nathan gets seats
at the bar now because he's
such a regular. So really? Yeah. He,
that's his little secret. He goes every
Tuesday and gets it.
Oh sure. He's been asking me to go and I
haven't made it. It's funny. He, the
bartender saves him.
However many seats he wants. I used to go
Thursdays to a fish
Depot when they did it.
They sold it. Yeah. Like Bonanza. Yeah.
No, I may cut out the, uh,
the part about Daniel Donato.
I don't want to get in sold out. We buy
our tickets and then
we'll buy tickets first.
So before I ask my last question, was
there anything? Cause we
can cut this part out when
I'm saying, was there anything on your
sheet that we want to make
sure we covered everything.
Let's see music and the grateful dad
shout out to my mom origin of the name.
Oh, the golf tournament.
Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. You could want to
like lead with a question
or. Yeah. So, um, how long have
you been doing that? And that's not my
question, but I'm curious.
Five years now, this would be
the sixth year and you started it. Yeah.
Okay. So let's be able
to, so it started when I was
working at that first company, my buddy
Bobby's dad's company. So
maybe we could rip off that or
I'll just start like, so like, yeah,
just, just, yeah. So just
start. Yeah. And, and actually,
cool thing that had come out of the time
when I was working at
Bobby's dad's company was I work
with a bunch of like mutual friends too.
They had a bunch of us
that they hired all kind of in
similar situation. And we're all at that
time, we're all, I'm still an amateur
golfer, but I was like
even more amateur. And I also like to
drink more than I do now. But
we, we came up with this idea.
Um, that is evolved substantially over
the year. But the idea
was basically let's get
a bunch of our guys together. There's
like 12 of us for the first
year and get a bunch of four
sums back to back and we'll pair up. And
for every beer that you
and your partner drank,
you got one stroke off of your final
Mulligan. Exactly. Yeah. A
stroke off your final score.
And so the first year we played a Delray
country club, you know, just
Atlantic. It's nice, but, uh, we showed
up and we all Ubered there
and we get out of the car
holding 24 packs. And one of the guys is
like, what the hell is this?
A bachelor party. And we were
like, yeah. And, uh, and we, so, so the
first year went pretty well,
um, save for small incident with
golf cart, but it was fun. Um, and then,
you know, next year I was like, all
right, you know what?
This was fun. Like, you know, I should do
it again. I try and do it
every October. So, uh, you know,
I grew it the following year. I think we
had 24 people and 36. Oh,
and then the biggest it's
ever been was 56. And as it evolved, I
also, I didn't want people
driving. Like I knew that was
going to be a nightmare. So we brought in
a bus or a shuttle component
where people would meet up.
We shuttle everyone to the course. We
would do our, our, our round of golf,
have an award ceremony
and then shuttle everyone back to a bar.
Nice. So we've done it five
times in six years. The only
year we took off was, uh, 22, which as I
was saying, it was like
that year where I was making
the change with, and it was around when I
stopped playing with the
room nators too. Um, but yeah,
we did the fifth annual last year. We had
48 people went off
without a hitch. We always give
out awards and prizes. Awesome. What's it
officially called? Oh, it's, uh, called
the beers and birdies.
The beers and birdies. Yeah. Fall classic
fog. It says it open to
anyone that wants to do it. Or is
it kind of like you and your friends?
Can't be a dick. You're going to love
this, Brian. We have
a whole list of rules and there's all,
there's all these rules and
there's one section about like,
how do you get relief if your balls
behind a tree or whatever? And that's
rule six. And then rule
six a is the main rule is don't be a
dick. Yeah. Perfect. It's
highlighted. I like that.
It's highlighted in the entire, I like
that. So, so it's open.
People can go on. You have a, a
site like, no, no site. It's word of
mouth, but I'll probably start
organizing it again here soon.
It's usually some time in October. I try
and do it around, uh, when
daylight savings happens and
before the rates get on now, before
daylight savings and before
the rates get jacked up for
the season. So if somebody was listening
and wanted to
participate, how would they find it?
Yeah. Oh, that's a good question. Uh, you
could just reach out to me
directly. Okay. So maybe we
put in, we'll put in your, maybe some
contact info. Maybe I'll make an email
like beers and birdies.
Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. We
can put it in there. But
yeah, it's been word of mouth.
Mostly. Yeah. That's cool. I love that.
You have 48 people now.
I have 48 last year. That's a lot. I
would assume you know everybody too
though. Right. It's.
So here, here's a success story of the
golf tournament. Um, you
know, I try and bring people
in from, I have a mission statement. It's
basically like, do you bring
people from different social
and professional circles and for day of
fun and golf and just, you
know, it's like, it's not
working, but it's not all centered
around, you know, a little bit of
debauchery, but like a healthy
amount. Yeah. Um, and so one of my
buddies that I went to college with, he
comes into play, uh,
one year and he comes from Tampa, my
friend that I was in, I might
go try and see Billy strings
with. And then my other, a friend of a
friend also comes in up
from Miami. They hit it off.
And this was probably three years ago.
And for this most recent
one, they're them and like,
you know, a handful of their friends, one
of the guys, brother, all
get an Airbnb. They all come in
from out of town and they met through the
tournament. And now
they're doing it just because
they love it. No, that's really awesome.
That's, and it's, is it
all different ages? Uh, yeah.
Or is it mainly year round year age? So
last year was the first
year I had my dad play in it.
So he played with some of his friends
too. So it's a mixed bag. A couple of
years we've had a couple
girls play it too. So it's not just, not
just guys, not just guys.
Okay. Um, but yeah, I'm going to
aim to do it around October again this
year. So now does any of the
money, do you raise any money
for something? So traditionally no, but
last year was the first year
that we did and we donated a
portion. It wasn't much. It was like 200,
300 bucks went to first
tee, which is an organization
to help kids get acquainted with golf.
Oh, that's wonderful.
Yeah, that's great. Okay.
And I'll look to continue that this year
too. I think you need a
digital flyer for social media
and all that. I put it together later. I
wasn't prepared to bring it
up for this. And I was like,
this morning, I was like, Oh, I'm going
to podcast. Let me
plug beers and birdies.
Actually it's something that as we get
closer, we can always add
it into your description
as you know, like towards the fall, you
know, somebody's interested. Yeah, sure.
Was there anything else on your sheet?
Did we cover it? I think if
I could just maybe wrap up
a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. I just want to
make sure we covered
everything on your notes before
I asked my last question. Oh yeah. I have
a question for you guys.
Oh, that's not allowed.
I've been asking all the time. Yeah. So
one thing that I was wondering,
are you guys been doing this? You think
you said since like last summer, right?
Last summer, I think we started last May
was our first episode where
we bought everything in March
started figuring out the technical
details, you know, cause
there's camera work here. There's
lighting, there's audio and all this
stuff. So we started, I
think playing with it in March,
did our first episode in May, but I don't
think we released it until,
um, I feel like it was Mayish,
maybe not. I don't know. No, maybe May or
June we released. So
yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No,
first of all, this is super impressive
setup. So again, thanks
for having me. I'm curious,
you know, you've got three kids varying
ages, been married for 33
years. You guys are in your
early fifties. So you've been adults for
some time, but now
after interviewing boomers,
Gen Xers, Gen Zers, how was your
millennials and millennials? You have
myself, how was your
on adulthood or how's your perspective,
how these things changed
based on some of the experiences
you've heard from people here? That's
such a great question. Um,
I think that I've discovered
there's more similarities across the
generations than I thought.
Um, I think that the younger
generations, the Gen Zs and the
millennials have brought such, um, an
interesting fabric into
adulthood as far as you guys are much
more open to talking about your thoughts
and your feelings in
a positive way and reflecting on things
and not just pushing things
aside. Um, you, I feel like
you honor yourselves more. If you're
going through something, you will take
the time to, um, look at
it, see it and try to resolve it or
overcome it. Uh, I think
that I'm just so I'm have become
incredibly impressed with the millennials
and the Gen Zs and how they
tackle life. And I know that
anxiety seems to be a common theme in
those generations, but I
think your self-awareness
with, um, with anxiety, with stress, with
depression, with, um, the hard things
that come in adulthood,
it has aided you guys so much. And I
think overall you don't bury things like
Gen X and Boomers do.
I think Gen X is just now in our midlife,
starting to delve into
those things in our self.
Like you, like you shouldn't talk about
it. Don't acknowledge it.
There was no discussion of mental health.
It was looked down on. Um,
it was judged. And so it's
just now where we are stopping and giving
ourselves space and
permission to express some
of those things because no one ever
allowed us to, but the younger
generations have given us space.
You guys have given us space and given us
permission. So I'm grateful to Gen Z and
the millennials for giving that to us
because Gen X especially is
the first to say, you know,
fuck it. I don't give a shit, but really
we were grinding with
some carrying so much pain.
So my experience just doing this podcast,
I feel I've just been
so honored to get to know
millennials and Gen Z's. And, um, I'm so
grateful to what they have brought into
society. And I think
the younger generations will only
continue to benefit from it. I've also
learned that Boomers
absolutely don't talk about their
feelings or thoughts. And I don't, I
think it's such a foreign
to them that I don't, I think very few of
them will delve past
anything. I think Gen X there's still
hope, but, um, but I do think we all have
faced similar issues in
our lives, but the way the
younger generations are handling them,
I'm just incredibly
impressed with you guys. So I don't
know if that answers your question. It
totally does. I mean, I
think we were wrapping up saying
we, we didn't feel that it was okay to
talk about it, but as it's become more
prevalent in the younger
generations, it's not so crazy anymore.
It's not like let's address
it. Let's have a conversation
about it. Let's use that information to
live better, happier, healthier lives.
Yeah. And not every Gen X
are well, like a lot of Gen Xers will
judge not every millennial
will not every Gen Z. True. It's
true, but there's definitely a culture in
Gen X of, especially among
the Gen X men of, um, because
we've, we've talked about that in
episodes, but they bury their
feelings and what do we need
feelings for? And we just go forward and,
but it comes out in other
ways that are unhealthy if you
don't. So, um, there's not, there's
nothing to be Gen Xers that
don't, but I do think because of
millennials, I think millennials brought
the work life balance onto the
scene. Um, I think millennial
men and women, when they get married or
have a relationship work
really well together, sharing
and, um, outside of the home, Gen X never
even discussed any of that.
Um, and then I think Gen Z
is whatever millennials have created. Gen
Z is just running with it.
You know, they're fearless
and the Gen Z women, their girlhood is
strong. Like they support
each other like crazy. Whereas
Gen X women were taught to compete with
each other and we were more caddy. So
those changes, I've just
been so honored to be able to hear all
these stories. And, um,
I think it's positively
affecting our generation. Would you
agree? Yeah. Yeah. I don't have nearly
as, as a, an eloquent
answer as she does. I would say for
myself and just doing this
podcast is meeting people like
yourself and others and how humbling and
honor, how much of an honor it is for
someone like yourself
to come in and share so much with us and
share your life story. And
it might be easier for you
because of the generational perspective,
but we've had some folks
our age come on and share some
really just fascinating stuff. And it's
like, it's just an honor
to have to be in the seat
and to have these conversations with
people. And, and then, you
know, to your point, you'd be a
sponge. I'm a sponge. I'm a, I'm always
learning and sponging. So I
hear some of these things.
I'm sponging.
I'm sponging.
It's going to be a new saying.
I'm hearing these experiences and, and
conversations and, and especially from
women. And it's like,
wow, that's really wild. And it's really
cool. It's, it's been
cool. So you, you learn you,
it's cool. We continue to evolve, right?
You don't, you'd think, you
know, I think when we were
younger, we'd look up to people older
than us and they were sort of
waiting to die in a sense. It
kind of feels like that we're still
living hard. Like, you know,
I would say Gen X is pioneering old age.
Yeah. Like I, we're not
going to go down quietly.
We're going to continue going until
probably the day we die. I think as a
generation, you know,
we are, and hopefully that allows you
guys to still have to do
the same and to know that life
ends when it ends, it doesn't end when
you're 50 or 60 or 70 or
80. I used to think like 70
was decrepit. And now I'm like 16 years
away from that, which is
crazy. Well, plus our, our
dame, right? Gen X adulting. It's like,
we're fucking adulting
here. Yeah. We're not, you know
what I mean? It's like, we had to grow up
at some point. One thing is
that the way you feel right
now, you're going to age, but you're
going to still feel like this in your
brain. Like you're not,
the essence of you is always the same.
You just happen to be
aging. Does that make sense?
One question I thought maybe I might get
asked a variation of was like,
you know, do you feel like an adult?
That's a great question.
Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes more than
others, you know, like the fact that I
have people that rely on me and
especially like the,
the opportunity I've had professionally,
makes me feel more like an
adult. But like I'm a kid at
heart. And it's funny you brought up the
office because like,
even, even in my professional
situation, like I always thought Michael
Scott was the funniest.
And like, I know we have fun.
Our team is the cash cows, like get the
moolah. Like, yeah, yeah,
yeah. Like one of the, one of
the other guys bought me a cowbell that I
rang one time for the
meeting. And like, you know,
I don't know. I, you can't take
everything so seriously. Yes.
And you got to try new things
and you got to mix it up. And you know,
just, I'm so appreciative of the
opportunity to do this.
Um, you know, you talk about how much
people are willing to
share. When you first asked,
when I first got invited, I was like, I'm
not going to say anything.
It would have made for really boring.
And, and you know, even now, like, as
we're wrapping it up,
I'm like, you know, maybe we should cut
some things and post,
but I don't know, you know,
you can reflect on it and then let us
know. I will, because like,
I just, even the format and
having the opportunity to come and do
this and like the exercise of, and I
mentioned this to you
before we started of, of like, it's all
about telling stories. So
how do we look back at our
lives so far and like, uh, put it, put a
storytelling lens on it. I think so often
we just look at the experiences that we
go through and we don't get a chance to
spend them or, or make,
uh, just look at them and how they can be
used to shape us and mold us
more. We just take them for
what they are. Um, and so, yeah, I think
I'm, I'm happy with, with
how this went and you guys have
been great hosts. Oh, thank you so much.
Well, I think that everyone
has a story, whether you're,
you're age 29, uh, we've had 24, 25 year
olds. We had a 61 year old here
yesterday. It's where you're
like, where your story is now and it's
going to keep evolving.
You know? And so, and I think
it helps people to reflect on where they
come from. Cause then they
realize how far they've come
because sometimes you don't realize all
the things you've done and all
the things you've accomplished
and learned until you really sit down and
say it. And then you're
like, wow, I do a lot, you know,
and I, I should be proud of myself. You
know, it gives you that moment. We say
everyone has a story
and they almost gloss over it, but
everybody has a story that's unique to
them. That's really cool.
And it's really special. No matter what
it is, it's really cool and
special and it's different.
And it's unique. And for us to sit in
here and participate and
talk, it's awesome. But as far
as being an adult, um, we just happen to
be people that have aged, but we
literally, like, I remember,
I used to think, Oh, the adults will know
what to do. And then you
were like, Oh, I'm the adult,
but you don't. And that's one thing I'll
tell people. Don't wait
until you think you know
what to do. Like you're the person, just
no one knows what they're
doing. People put on a good
front, but everyone's just kind of doing
it, doing it. And, and you have the
people are just pretending
there. It's like delusion. So you just
need to go for it because like we could
have not started this
podcast because other people are doing
it. But no one's better than
anyone else. So you have to live
I'm big on living an authentic life. You
have to live your authentic
life. You only get one life
and just go for it. Don't compare
yourself to anyone else
because it's your life. And that's
adulting in my mind. And I finally have
learned that. I think on
that front too, and especially
for someone your age, just be a leader,
lead your own path. And when
others need leading lead them,
you know, you're now in management. So
you're, you're by default a leader. Yeah.
People. Yeah. So, but there's no, there's
no secret. It's
everyone, it's very subjective.
Everyone has their own experience. So,
um, just to continue to live an authentic
life, but, you know,
that's the best answer to the previous
question of what have, what, how's your
perspective changed?
You know, you said it all comes back and
through doing this, you
know, you're able to kind of draw
that conclusion. So yeah, yeah, no, it's
true. We learned just as much as when
people come here and
they leave and we've had so many people
say, gosh, I didn't even
realize that about myself or I,
this is the first time I've ever said
that, but we also are
learning every time we do this about
ourselves. It's almost like a therapy
session. We've had people
say that. Yeah. And that's why
we also always say when you get home, if
you need something taken
out, that's fine. Well,
but that's probably the honor in it for
us is that you feel
like that you're feel like
you got something out there and you
didn't. So if it's a therapy session,
that implies maybe you
feel pretty good. I do feel good. No,
positive. I was a little nervous. I'll
never been on a podcast
before. I don't know. I don't know how
much I'm going to say what
we're going to talk about. You
know, I saw some of the other episodes. I
knew we had the music vein in common.
Yeah. Yeah. I figured
we go down that one and I thought I'd put
some thought into it
beforehand. Like, all right, how
do I want to structure this house? That's
going to go. Yeah. But you
guys, you guys are great.
Honestly, I think you killed it. Oh,
absolutely. I think you killed it. You've
great job. No question.
And that leads me to my last question is
where do you see yourself in five years?
I anticipated this one. You know, I think
for now I'm really, really
happy with what I'm doing with
finally. So I'm going to keep riding that
wave and get back to
sponging. I'm going to do that.
Sponging. I'm going to do that as long as
I can with this current
opportunity. But even from
leadership above me, a lot of them have
other things that are
going on and they have other
and their entrepreneurs in their own
right. And they've pushed
me to do that. And then,
of course, with my dad being a huge
entrepreneurial influence in me, I'd like
to get something up and
running off on the side, working with AI,
potentially scoring
calls or doing something else
as and, you know, I think what you guys
just said, we could have
not started a podcast because
there's other people out there that are
doing it already. I'm like, wow, you
know, I could not do
what I'm what I want to do, which is
start my own company
because I don't know. There's
so other people in the market already.
It's all still so early,
like just, you know, have the
confidence, take a risk, take a shot and
figure it out. It's like
trial by fire. It's either going
to sink or it's going to swim, especially
with a business like that.
It's not like there's a huge
upfront capital expenses or just time.
And if I go into it with that mentality
to let me just learn,
let me just learn, let me just learn. So
I'd like to get that up off
the ground running. I already,
you know, have business registered and
things like that, but it's
still super early or early
stages. And then I'd like to spend some
time abroad in another
country. I'd like to get that
going so that I could work with US
clients and maybe go to
Spain or maybe to Latin America.
I've been working on my Spanish. It's not
good. I'm not going to
do it on the podcast.
But I think that's another thing that's
important to me too, is to be, you know,
multidimensional variety is the spice of
life. That's another one of my sayings.
Yeah, that's so true. That is so true.
Yeah, no, I think that's where I see
myself in a couple of
years, maybe five years. And,
you know, who knows, maybe, you know, the
finally wave takes me seven years, 10
years. I'm not sure.
Because again, I just feel so blessed to
be with the people
that I'm working with now.
Or it could all go down tomorrow. Yeah.
And I could be trying to
figure it out. So I, you know,
I'm just going to take my day, day by
day. And as long as I prioritize
increasing my knowledge and,
you know, keeping a humble and an open
minded approach, I think
everything's going to work.
All right. I think those are great goals.
And I think just the fact that you
take lessons from all of your life
experiences, your way ahead of the game
to do that. It's such
a great skill. And it is a skill. And it
has to be practiced. And I
think that you are excelling in
that area. And even if it all blows up
tomorrow, I think you're going to be
fine. And you know that
because you've been there. And so and I
always view those those as
opportunities. Okay, then
this means there needs to be a change and
it's going to be
uncomfortable, but something better
is coming along. So but either way, I
think you're going to do
great and be just fine.
But one thing I would add is so when we
started the podcast, we
didn't know what the hell we were
doing. We just had an idea, right? And
you're kind of talking about that in an
entrepreneurial front,
just start and what you'll learn in the
first week and the third
and the fourth and the sixth
month. It's just very different. We know
so much more than what than
day one. But if we never took
day one, we wouldn't know shit. You know,
so it's an interesting.
Just start. It's an interesting
concept. You know, again, like life's too
short. Like we talked
about when you first got here,
we hit midlife and we realized if we're
going to do it, we got to do it. We're
not we're not knocking
the top anytime soon, right? It's not
even an objective or a
goal. Right. But yeah, it's
wherever it goes, it goes and we're
having fun. And well, that's
the that's the authenticity is
you have to know what your motivation is
and it's coming from a good
place. And then no matter what
you do, it's going to be fine because
it's going to be sad. I do
still want Elon Musk as a guy.
I really do just because I find him to be
fascinated. Have you
written to him? No, no,
but that's a good place to start. Yeah,
there you go. Start. Just
start. So but thank you so much
for your story. Thank you. And we will
put all the links to all the things I
know we will. And so
that if anyone's interested and wants to
know where to find Golar and
his band and all that stuff,
it'll be in his descriptions. I have
listened to the band. I
was checking them out today.
Definitely recommend to me. I do like it.
You guys are. You guys jam.
I love it. It was awesome.
Thank you so much. Yes, definitely check
them out. And again,
thank you so much. Hopefully
we'll have you back maybe in like five
years and see where you
are. See what's going on.
That would be amazing. Yeah, for sure.
And thank you to our listeners. If
please leave us any comments or
questions, we love to read them and we
will see you next time. Bye.