Why Having A "Work Life Balance" Is Important! | B2B Vault Podcast | Episode 177

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Steve Largent of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And he'll be providing you educational information about fintech, payment processing, small business, and the technology they're using in the world today. And in this podcast, we thought we'd, uh, shake the box, man, rattle the cage. No, I don't know, uh, we're gonna be talking about something, you know, that we don't normally talk about, and it's because I'm going on vacation, I feel like. And, uh, yeah, man, it's called the work-life balance, um, something that is talked about a lot more recently, um, and we'll get into that. But yeah, work-life balance. Anyway, how are you doing, sir?

I'm doing well. Busy week, and, uh, I'll miss you while you're gone. Have a good time on vacation. Oh, going back to Milwaukee.

Yeah, Cream City, baby. Going back to Milwaukee, the Cream City. Okay, Kilwaukee.

So what's some of the famous types of food like that you miss that you would go there to eat. Now, I know you're vegetarian, so.

Yeah.

What are like famous Milwaukee foods?

Well, Eusinger brats. If you, if you've tailgated any time in your life and you've had a Eusinger bratwurst, right, then it was manufactured in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Okay.

And if you chugged a Miller beer along with that bratwurst at said tailgate.

Yeah.

You also had something that was at one point handcrafted in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And if you rode your Harley-Davidson on the way to said tailgate and tailgated with your friends amongst other bikers in the Harley-Davidson, that also came from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Um, yeah, there's a bunch of other stuff. Milwaukee Tools. Um, so if you—

I'm talking about like food, like if you went there.

Oh yeah, no, so you singer, so like a bratwurst, that's one that, you know, they got the—

like, is there—

yeah, they got the— you can go into the market there and you can buy a bratwurst from there. But I mean, you go into any establishment in Wisconsin, like a bar, anywhere, everybody has their famous, like, brat sandwich. There's gonna be— or I don't know if it's sandwich, but yeah, you can go get your brat from— uh, you know what, man, let me step back, because you're not gonna go into a bar and get a brat, most likely. You're gonna go into a bar— you're actually gonna go into a bar and get some really good food, you know.

Yeah, there's got to be like famous, like Philadelphia is famous for the cheesesteak. There's lots of cheesesteak restaurants.

Milwaukee is famous.

Chicago is famous for the Chicago.

Milwaukee is famous for stealing Kia cars. So, uh, I don't know.

Well, they're also fat, like cheese is big there, right?

Well, that's— Wisconsin is the state where everyone gets your— so if you have— if you've eaten cheese in the past 48 hours or 24 hours, you most likely— it was— came from Wisconsin.

Okay, there you go.

Um, the good cheese. Sorry, let me—

good cheese.

If you spent your money— and I'm not talking about Kraft cheese imitation slices, no, I'm talking about like some real good, uh, you know, cheddar, some aged Swiss, or some gouda, you know, some, some of that type of stuff. We got— we also are known for our cherries. Door County, um, is a, is a city in Wisconsin. But Milwaukee is, you know, we brew beer, we don't eat. So if you, you know, we drink beer, like when—

so when you go to Milwaukee, get a beer.

Yeah, you going— I mean, that's what the tourists— you're going to, you're going to end up having some beers. I mean, you can take the, the tour of, uh, the Miller, um, Brewery still. I mean, there's a thousand breweries there. Leinenkugels. I can go on and on and on.

Probably a lot of craft beer too.

Yeah, there's tons of that. I feel like that was birthed in Wisconsin. I don't want to like throw myself out the window, but I would just say that like brewing beer was something that everyone's been doing in Wisconsin for a long time. But in Milwaukee, I would say, yeah, you go get yourself a beer and a brat. If you're gonna go do that, I would suggest you to go do that at the stadium. Like go to the Miller, well, what is it called? American Family Insurance Stadium. To me, it's still County Stadium. You know, I call it Miller Park still, so. Go to the Brewers Stadium, get yourself a beer and a brat. They sell those 24/7. Watch a baseball game. It is baseball season. They're not doing bad. I would say that was a mandatory thing to do when you go to Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

Yeah. Don't, don't rent a Kia.

I was just going to say, don't let them give you a Kia as a rental car. They were about to do that to my wife. She had to call and flip out and So they changed it.

Yeah, I heard like the two most stolen cars now, like everywhere, is Kia and then there's some kind of Hyundai.

It's just— yeah, because there's the same— they can— yo, literally you could steal these cars with the back of the USB, like a— like say you pull out a micro USB. Yeah, the part that goes into your computer. Yeah, you can break the steering column, stick that in there, and that's your key.

Wow, that's crazy.

And that's all these kids been doing for the past 3, 4 years in Milwaukee. Killing themselves, killing other people. It's terrible. But anyway, that's not what you should stay— you stay away from that in Milwaukee. But yeah, no. Oh, there is a great place to eat. It's called the Milwaukee Public Market.

Okay.

It's on Water Street, downtown Milwaukee. It's like a food court style. So there's a bunch of different restaurants.

Like a food hall.

Food hall style.

Yeah.

So there's a bunch of different restaurants in there.

Nice.

They have everything that, you know, something for everyone. Middle Eastern, barbecue, tacos. They got the seafood.

Yeah, food hall is nice.

The St. Paul Fish Market, that's something I'm definitely, they have this stuff called salmon crack. Okay. And it's jerkied salmon.

Hmm, interesting.

And I've, you know, it's like smoked salmon.

But, Like hard.

It's just, I've, it's just, I've, everywhere else is unrep— it's not been able to, I haven't been able to replicate it. And so like I have to go and get some of that to bring home. I have to bring home some tortillas from El Rey Mexican. Oh, I'm so, my, my tummy is getting warm just thinking about eating tacos.

No, that's like, you know, it's to be a chef. So like when I travel, I always want to go eat.

El Rey, the El Rey. Market, you got to go there.

Yeah, I want to go, I want to go places and get the local, you know, the local food.

Let me give you the rundown. All right, if you really want some food, all right, you're going to go to El Rey. It's the Mexican spot. They have— it's a grocery store, but you can buy prepared food, and you're going to want to go ahead and do all of that, all of that. Uh, then there's the Italian spot on the Lower East Side. So Glorioso— I mean, El Rey is on the South Side. There's a bunch of locations. Glorioso's is, it's been around since the 1800s as an Italian market.

Okay.

They just bought the building across the street from them and closed their original store, so it's big now. Well, not just, it's been a while, 5 years or so. That's mandatory. And they have so many foods to eat, like Italian prepared foods. You could get stuffed mostaccioli, stuffed shells. You bake ziti to go. They got the pizza dough. So this is what I would get from Glorioso's, and I will be doing it myself, is I get the pizza dough.

Yeah.

Their house marinara sauce. Well, I get the marinara. My dad always gets the pizza sauce.

Okay.

I like the marinara because I'm vegetarian. It's a little chunkier. It's got the tomatoes in it.

Right.

And I get everything else that I want on my pizza from there. So I get the basil, the fresh matzo balls, et cetera, et cetera.

Put matzo balls on your pizza? You're talking about mozzarella balls.

Mozzarella balls, yes.

Not matzo balls.

Not the whole, you know, I buy fresh mozzarella and I slice it, you know, kind of like a margherita.

Yeah, because you Jewish people like me, matzo balls.

I know what a matzo ball is. No, I'm not putting matzo balls on the pizza.

That would be an interesting pizza.

Yeah, no.

Matzo ball pizza.

So yeah, I would definitely go there. GTO's is another Mexican restaurant that I will definitely be attending. My presence will be there. If you want pho, My Pho restaurant, which is a Vietnamese noodle dish.

I don't know if you're going to get a lot done with a long list like that of restaurants.

No, I'm just— I'm saying it for you, but yeah, there's a couple spots that I'm definitely going to hit up, dude, that I'm excited to, uh, see. And I've, I've been, uh, this kind of goes into what we're saying, so therapy, right? Like, you know, I've been going to therapy. I'm okay, everything's good. Um, but one of the things was experiencing things in Milwaukee basically for the first time, right? Because maybe I wasn't able to enjoy these experiences that I have been in, in the past. So going into it basically like with a clean slate, fresh canvas, and everything that I'm going to try to keep in my mind, like this is the first time I'm doing it. So I'm going to be a tourist to my own city because it's my city. Milwaukee's mine, right?

Yeah.

So I'm going to go back and see how it's doing, how everyone is doing. Yeah, yeah, man. So work-life balance, dude.

Yeah, you gotta have— you gotta figure out a balance. You can't just— you know, it's weird because in a— not in America, everybody's used to working a lot. And like in other countries, like in Europe, they have like mandatory month vacations. Yeah, and all kinds of crazy stuff.

Take notes, Allen.

Believe me, I wish we could do it.

Oh, I know.

It's just like, they're like, a lot of businesses shut down for like a whole, for like a, like in the summertime. It's just like, they'll just like close for like, like they'll have like a 6-week period.

It's just like, uh, Chinese New Year's is closed for the whole end of the month.

No, no, but like over there they'll have like different, like you'll have a business, not hospitality businesses, but some restaurants will close for like 2 weeks there. Or they're closed for the entire month. But then people have like an office business, like our business, they'll have like a 6 or 8 week period where everybody's taking their 2 weeks or 4 weeks off, whatever, you know, they have whatever, however it's set up over there. It's 4 weeks, I think, is the max or something, because I had friends of mine that like, we do business with some companies over there and they'll have like a skeleton crew going on right, during like a 6 or 8 week period of time. And everybody just goes to the country or goes to the beach.

All right. Or whatever, whatever what they're doing. We're not talking about them.

I know. I'm saying, I wish we would change our culture in America.

So what do you do? What's your— what's your— you know, how does Allen prepare himself for a— for a shift or 8 hours or a workday or whatever?

So I like to wake up early.

What's early?

5 or 6 AM the latest. Sometimes I oversleep. I'm getting old and try to wake up early and then I try to, you know, relax a little bit. I like to listen to some music, sometimes the news, and I usually out of the house between 5:30 and 6 with Rocky and we do our walk. I put on my headphones. You know, chill out. I like word games also. Yeah, so I'm into like Wordle, Words with Friends, other stuff. And I try to play like my word game. I think it's good for your, for your mind. Even my mom is 86 and we play Words with Friends. So, you know, keep the mind going. My mom used to have like 10 games going with me. I go, Mom, 2 or 3 is like the maximum. I can't keep up with you all day with you playing 10 games.

Oh, she was trying to keep you really busy.

Yeah, she was trying to keep me busy. But you know, we have a couple of games going. No, I like that. It keeps your mind sharp on making words, makes you think, you know. So I like—

you know. All right, so I'm gonna have my mom download Wordle because— yeah, there you go. Thanks.

Well, no, you don't have to down— Words with Friends is great. That's what I play with strangers.

Words with Friends.

Yeah, play with other people, you know. But it's— that's, you know, those are things that I like. I usually like read, you know. I don't just like listen to the news. I might listen to business news, but I like to— like, I have New York Times on my phone.

Yeah.

So I'll browse through articles, and I like to— if I'm not sure, if I'm going to research something, I'll sit down, research a you know, an article, because I don't believe every— yeah, you don't know with everything going on. Like, these news cycle is immediate, you know, we're in this immediate news cycle. So, you know, I like to spend time with that. I always make time for, you know, quiet time. I like to have at least 10 or 15 minutes, whether you call it a meditation or it's just quiet, even if I'm out walking Rocky. It's very peaceful in the morning where I live because there's like a golf course that's not open, so there's nobody out on the golf course, and the neighborhood is pretty quiet. So you're on the walk, it's very silent. You don't even hear cars in some— that's awesome. So it's very nice to have like those— that quiet time because all day my phone is ringing 4 or 5 employees in the office, sales agents calling in, customers calling in, text messages. I mean, today I'll never forget, I was listening to a guy who was talking about sales once. He's like, yo, yeah, I'm trying to make a sale. He goes, I'm calling the guy's office, called the guy's cell phone, sent the guy a text message, sent him an email, a Facebook message, a WhatsApp message, sent the person a a LinkedIn message. People can get a hold of you every which way. It's crazy, you know what I mean? Yeah, Telegram message, a Signal message. I mean, there's a never-ending way for people to communicate with you today. Not anymore. I mean, no, I'm just saying it's never-ending.

Yeah, I mean, not anymore.

You—

I mean, like, you, you can't really have alone time anymore, right?

It's hard to, you know. So it's important to you know, have that. And I try to have one day on the weekend where there's no— I don't look at my email unless it's an emergency.

What time do you look at your email? When you— do you look at your email when you first wake up in the morning? Uh, what time is it? Do you look at your emails?

No, usually I don't know if it's when I first wake up, but usually when I'm out on my walk, I'll browse through to see if there's any emergencies that need to be dealt with. You know, so, you know, somebody's ATM is acting up, somebody had a problem in the middle of the night because people can call tech support 24 hours a day. So you'll see if there's a ticket open, something that you have to deal with, you know, and then I'll deal with it at the appropriate time. So, you know, you just try to, you know, but on the weekend I scroll through And I just make sure if there's an emergency, I take care of it. If there's no emergency, you know, and then on sometime on Sunday, I'll sit down because who wants to look through 500— I don't— it's too many emails. My email's never-ending. Try to clean it out.

You need to unsubscribe, sir.

I do. I unsubscribe from a lot of stuff, but they keep sending it, and I get all sorts of random emails from people trying to sell me stuff, or they got your email address off LinkedIn or wherever they're getting it from, the website, and they're sending email. And I just delete, delete, delete, send them into the— send them into the junk box, you know. Nice. I mean, I wish that there was, you know, like here we're talking about email, right? So there was like a whole article about, you know, oh, Microsoft's going to add AI onto their—

oh, what do I do in the morning? I don't know.

Oh, no, no, I'm just saying I'll get to you in a second.

Oh, you get to me in a second, he says.

No, no, I just want to talk about email first. Well, let's get away from email. And then— but that's, you know, that's the morning. And I walk Rocky about 2 miles, 2.5 miles, and then sometimes some Peloton.

Sometimes it needs to be more times.

Exactly. Needs to be more times on the Peloton. What about you? What's your morning routine?

I wake up at 7. I don't— I used to wake up at 5. I used to— I printed out the Benjamin Franklin routine, right? Because I did this.

This was—

this was my thing.

What, you don't like Benjamin Franklin, Rocky?

You can see it on YouTube, maybe. Um, but yeah, you can Google it, the Benjamin Franklin routine. He would, uh, he'd wake up at 5, you know, whatever. But yeah, I did the waking up at 5 thing for a long time, and I started to realize that wasn't— that wasn't for me. It just— I just— I didn't feel like I was more productive. I didn't feel like I was getting more rest. It just— just wasn't my routine. Um, so I started You know, then I start at 6, et cetera, and at 7 o'clock is my, I get enough sleep. It doesn't matter if I go to sleep at 1 or 2, as long as I get up. If I sleep past 7 sometimes, I will still feel tired. So I wake up, I shower, do my hygiene. Then I go, I get my cup of tea every morning. I feed my birds. I sit out back and I watch them eat the bird, you know, I have some blue jays that are coming. They're coming around again.

That's cool.

Yeah. I had a lot of cardinals and a couple of woodpeckers for a while.

Woodpeckers. Keep that away from your house, man. That thing's a— I don't mind. It makes damage.

I like them. I don't care. Yeah. So I've watched my birds for a second. I try to get some sun. I mean, it's the rainy season, so it's been kind of— I've been not been able to do that. So that's been cut short. I still go feed the birds because I feel bad. There's, you know, they're always out there regardless. And then I listen to my podcast. Not my podcast. I listen to whatever podcast I want to listen to.

Do you drink a lot of water in the morning?

I don't drink any water. I drink a lot of water. I mean, I take a cup. I drink a cup. But this is my tea. Tea is, you know, it's the liquid, the water that I'm getting. And that's— I mean, I don't, I don't drink coffee ever, so, you know, all I drink is water and coconut water.

So yeah, that's my big thing in the morning is drinking a bottle of water.

Hydrate.

Yeah, gotta hydrate in the morning for sure.

Um, I, I like the warm cup of water. I used to do the lemon with the water, but whatever, it didn't— I don't know, let's just stop. And then, yeah, man, so by that time, you know, that's my routine for the morning. And then I brush my teeth and I come here. And then, yeah, I don't check my email ever. I learned this from a— I forget what— like, if you've ever owned a business, you've always— I'm sure you've Googled how to be productive, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think it was Tim Ferriss. It might have been Tim Ferriss. Anyway, I think one of those— one of the guru guys of how to maximize productivity said that you shouldn't check your emails till the afternoon.

Wow. I don't know about that.

He said if it's that much of an emergency, they'll get in touch with you.

That's true.

Right. And so if it's— if it's— if it's— if they're calling in an emergency and sending you an email, Is it really an emergency? Well, we have like, so like, I'm just saying, so I know I get what you're saying. So like on a productivity level, he would say that he, he would, and this is something that I did and I still do. I try not to look at my email until after around noon.

Yeah, we have a lot of auditing.

You do your stuff first, right? You do your stuff first because as a business owner, we neglect ourselves.

That's true.

And so we don't take care of our business first, which we should.

Yes.

And so he set a standard of making sure, you know, he checks and balances, etc., you know, making sure his business was running properly, you know, any outstanding to-dos that he had on his checklist from maybe that got overlapped from yesterday that he didn't get to yesterday. And that's— I do that the same. I— that's something that I do till this day. I can't— whoever that guy who's said that about how to handle that stuff, I think it, it works well for me and maybe not everybody else. I'll try to find— I'll try to Google it.

That's interesting. No, but like, you know, the problem— the thing that's kind of crazy is we have a lot of systems because it's payment systems, and there's a lot of automated stuff going on. So the automated messages going on are things like—

and the business owner might not even know what's going on. Right. I get what you're saying. Like you're going to catch it before it happens, like nip it in the bud before they even know.

Yeah. Like I'll get a message saying, oh, this place ran an $8,000 transaction, you know, and, you know, automatically. So I have to, you know, make sure like, hey, let's send that to the business owner right away. So they send us back the documentation or an ATM is low on money. You don't want to wait till the afternoon to tell them, hey, they need to go run over and load an ATM, you want to let them know at 9, you know, 8, 9 o'clock in the morning, you know, that there's a problem at a location or—

No, I mean, I totally understand. I mean, and I, you know, of course there's, you know, there's a time and a place for everything, right?

Oh yeah.

So like if you get an email, you know, and you accidentally you see it and there's like 911 exclamation of my website's down, you know, hey, you got to get off your butt and go see what's going on.

Exactly.

But yeah, but so I asked Samantha, Sean, and excuse me, Anna, you know, what would they, what are some, excuse me, man, tickle. What's going on? Anyway, so I asked them some things of like what, what they thought of, you know, what they would think of when they thought of work-life balance. And these are some things that we all came up with. The first thing I put down was sleep.

Sleep is important.

Yo, I used to call sleep the cousin of death. And where we come from, shout out to Nas, you know, we would utilize every second of the day. We didn't wanna miss anything. And so yeah, once I learned how important sleep was and how your body heals at night, that I really started taking it serious. So like, don't mess with my sleep schedule. All right, so number 1 is sleep, I think is very important. Samantha said boundaries. Boundaries between work and life.

Definitely have to be boundaries.

Work and personal, I mean.

Yeah, the thing is with boundaries, and I talk to my sales reps about this all the time, I'm like, you have to set boundaries with your customers. And I always explain to customers, you have two types of emergencies. You have a problem that needs to be taken care of right away, like a technical problem, You need to call. We have a 24-hour help desk for every service. Call them. You have a financial problem. That's when you call me. And on the weekend, unless it's an absolute emergency, you know, if there's an emergency, don't send an email, send a text message.

Right.

And that's how I deal with, you know, with boundaries so that customers know, hey, when you have a problem, you send an email. When you have an emergency, you send a text message.

Right.

And, you know, I think if you, you know, you deal with it that way, you have to just come up with your, your rules. I know, I know a guy that's a sales rep for us. He was on vacation in Italy for a week a couple of weeks ago. He told me he was about to rip his hair out of his head because he had clients, you know, contacting him. There's nothing he can do. They could have just called the help desk for the questions.

Boundaries, man. Set boundaries. Number 3. Exercise.

Yes.

I don't care at what cost. About a year ago, I woke up one morning feeling flabby and sick like Larry Holmes. Sorry. And then I was like, dude, because I see my arms shaking in the air like a meat sack. And I'm like, dude, that's just not okay, bro. So exercise is important, man. Um, take care of yourself. It'll clear your mind and it'll help you feel better. Number 4 is you time. Doesn't sound like he gets much you time, ladies and gentlemen. Comment, you know, below or send me an email or send him a text message because he doesn't sound like he gets much you time.

Uh, no, I try to do things where I go— like, my you time is out walking Rocky, although I'm taking care of—

Exactly.

Yeah, but it's good for me because I'm out walking.

That's exercise. That's exercise. That's not you time, bro. Yeah, that— no, you time is going to whatever thing that it is that you like to do and enjoying that alone.

Oh, I do that, like movies. No, that's not—

okay, movies. The movie is you time, but if you're alone. If you're—

yeah, alone, watch a movie alone. I love that. Take 2 hours, put on a movie, and just—

and you're, you're gonna love this one, uh, because number 5, Anna, the office, uh, manager— I call her the office auntie— um, she said organization. And we all looked at each other, you know what, that is very true because you have to organize work and your life, right? Like, your life needs to be organized work needs to be organized, then you need to organize the two so they're not, you know.

Or you can call your organization organized chaos.

Yeah, I'm kind of— I used to work like that, you know. They, you know, people, creative brains such as myself, feel comfortable in clutter, right?

Like, I like—

I kind of, in, in my desk per se, yeah. I like my stuff in chaos, but I know where everything is, so don't touch it, right? But everything else though in my life is— everything has a place, right? You know what I mean? So everything, you know, like ideally, like if I had the type of house, you know, everything would, you know, it'd be much more compartmentalized and you wouldn't see anything.

Oh, if I didn't have my son living with me, my house would be— it would be clean except for Rocky's hair.

And then, yeah, so yes, organize, stay organized.

Number 6, listen, organization's important. Paying your bills on time. Oh yeah, man, taking care of— making sure you have a schedule, you take care of your car, you take care of your going to the doctor, going to the dentist, doing your exercise. That's all part of organization. Scheduling— have a schedule. I tell everybody, have us— like, I have my calendar, right? I tell people like, oh, you want to talk to me? Don't call me up and say, oh, can I get 5 minutes of your time, right? Go to my calendar and go schedule a 15 minutes on my calendar.

Did you tell to do that?

A bunch of people, they call me first You know, I have agents calling a friend. No, not a friend.

I was about to say you're a dirtball.

No, no friends. I'm talking about business people. I'm like, you know, they're texting me, oh, can you give me a call? I'm like, if you go on my calendar and you make a fit, set up a 15-minute call, then you're going to get 15 minutes of my time. Don't just, don't just call my phone at 10 o'clock in the morning 20 times while I'm on a Zoom meeting. Right, right. Go on, go on the— go to the website, click the button, see the schedule, put yourself on there. Boom. You know I'm gonna call you or we're gonna have a Zoom call. And then make it organized. That's part of being organized. Yeah, for sure. So organization, so that way you don't schedule things. And even on the weekend, if you're going to go to dinner, make a reservation, stick it on your calendar.

Yeah. And then she said dedication.

You have to dedicate— you gotta be dedicated to your life, your family, business. You know, another thing people don't make time for is personal development. Okay, well, you're—

come on.

Okay, we didn't get there yet. Okay, we'll go through.

I mean, so like number 7, um, Sean brought up hobbies. He said, you know, but I we could kind of group that into 4 with you time, right?

Right. Hobbies are good.

And then number 8, uh, friends/family time.

Yeah.

So yeah, that's, that's the list, man, from The Office. The Office came up with that.

One thing I want to add to that is personal development.

Yeah, no, like that's— but to me that falls under you time.

Um, yeah, but when I talk about personal development, I'm talking about Personal development is things like things you want to improve about yourself, you know, what you're doing in your life, which could be like, oh, I want to exercise more. Like, we both lost a lot of weight. I lost over 50 pounds. You lost a lot of weight also.

I've lost 100 pounds.

Right. So, you know, so we know that that takes dedication and that takes hard work. And you got it.

It's a lifestyle change.

Yes, it's a lifestyle change. Literally, it takes commitment to do that.

Discipline.

Yeah. And commitment.

There's a, you know, there's one thing that one of my OGs always expressed to us was the 5 Ps, and it is proper preparation prevents poor performance. And yeah, man, those are some things that I really, you know, took, took to heart for. I mean, that's something that we would do push-ups to. You know, we— poor performance, proper preparation prevents poor performance. Proper preparation prevents poor performance. We do push-ups to that, recite it. So yeah, man, we get—

so, you know, the other things with like personal development are things like maybe your spirituality or personal development could be, you know, mental health, going to therapy.

Therapy is good. Like, I've done it. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm— I wasn't afraid of therapy. I've been to therapy a few times. I've never been to the type of therapy that I'm going to now. Um, so it's a little bit more extensive and it's crazy some days, you know, like, but it's the benefits of it that I've seen. Um, well, I haven't really seen anything, I guess, but people around me have seen a positive shift and that's good. So yeah, man, I mean, that's just, that's a part of that. But I mean, also like don't ever stop learning, right? Like if you're in, you know, for me, for instance, like digital marketing and web design and you know, all that stuff. So if I stopped reading or, you know, just staying up to date with the technologies and the way that's the improvements that have been made, you know, I wouldn't be working here. You know what I mean? Like, you would've hired someone else. And that's, I've been doing this for 10 years and I know a lot of people my age who got stuck because they didn't wanna, you know, make a change. They didn't wanna learn something new. They didn't wanna, add on a service. Like, I started off just building WordPress websites. Like, that's all I did. I didn't, you know, I didn't know how to do anything else. I didn't do graphics. I didn't do anything, right? And one morning I'm sitting there like, dude, I need to learn something else, bro. I'm tired of this. Like, it's boring me. It's killing me. So then I started reading about search engine optimization and how to manipulate search engines. The right way. And so, yeah, man, never stop learning. That's, you know, that's one thing that I would say to the— again, that's for—

that falls under you time, for me time, because that's what I was saying, that comes under like personal development. You have the person— stuff for your personal and stuff for whatever you do business-wise.

That's true.

That you have your, you know.

Yeah, because you definitely got to develop personally, you know, your stuff that you're doing for yourself and then You know, work too. Yeah, I agree for sure. Because I mean, the exercise, the meditation, the yoga, etc., that's, you know, personal development for sure. You know, mental health therapy. And then what I'm talking about, like never stop learning, you know, that's more of the work type stuff. So, yeah, because in that way you're valuable. And, you know, there's something that another one of the OGs always said, you know, how are you going to be useful? Are you useful to me? I mean, like, it's a, that's a hard question to ask someone. And like, but on a business level, right? Like, like if you're, you know, how, like, is that really useful? Like if you can't be useful to me, if you're, you know, like if, if I could do everything that you do, you know, it might not be as good, but are you really as a use to me now?

Exactly.

No, I don't think so. So like the AI thing is, is, is something you got to learn. It's something that like people in my field need to take a lot more seriously and need to— Definitely.

Not just your field. —learn AI.

No, I'm just speaking about this because there's a lot of news out there right now, like the way that Wix is coming out with this AI-generated website designer thing. And you'd be a fool if you're a Wix developer or whatever to not be afraid because yeah, man, it's time for you to— be really good at what you do. So, you know, learn that new skill, buy the drone that you said you were gonna buy to be the, you know, to add that into your services for your businesses, or the camera that you were gonna buy so you can do the Google My Business tours and all that other stuff, man. There, you know, so don't stop learning. Yeah, there's a lot, you know.

Yeah, don't stop learning, develop new skills. I'm going to tell you a little story. So make it quick. Okay, I'll be— make it quick. Owning a business, you're always hiring people, or you're talking to people who want to get— have a job. Yes, they're looking for a job. And when pe— you know, I can't tell you over the last 20 years when I talk to people, I go, in my business, you're either doing sales or you're doing some kind of technical thing that's helping my business. Like website, social media, you know, editing videos, whatever, you know, that all goes, right? So when people come in for a job and I go, they go, oh, I want to be a manager. Manage what? Like, I go to them, what are you going to manage for me? Like, are you going to manage like the office? I don't really need an office manager. Are you gonna, are you gonna manage like salespeople? So are you really good at sales? Are you gonna, you know, are, or are you gonna go, you know, I need someone to build a website. Do you know how to build a website? They go, oh, can you teach me? If I could teach you, if I knew how to build a website, I would build it myself, right? No, you need, you have to develop. Business skills are changing rapidly. Oh yeah, rapidly.

We're in the, we're in the time of, of, of technology right now where the skill, like I was talking to somebody, like speaking of that People who are afraid of like, you guys gotta like, I know it's so hard and it's easy for me to say, but like, yo, you gotta, you gotta really like do the things that you said you, you're gonna do. Like if you want to hop on the screen, you know, like hop on, start the podcast, right? Like you got to just do it, man, right? Like stop being afraid of what—

we didn't know how to make a podcast. The podcast was trash, yo.

Like we were just talking about this the other day, like there's a little circle on the bottom where you would they would see your face and it would be like a— I put together a PowerPoint presentation to scroll through. I mean, it's came a long way, man.

We didn't know what we were doing. We're like, oh, let's, let's just try it. And, and it— and we evolved and we learned more and we experimented with different things.

Also brought a little bit of lightheartedness to the office, right? So it breaks up the monotony of the day of of the grind, right? So like on podcast days, it's like not saying I guess the office is lighter than any other day. It's just, you know, it's like, oh, today we're doing the podcast. So the focus is different, right? Like you're, oh yeah, I'm shooting the podcast today. So look what we did.

We made it. We put on almost 200, man. Yeah, we put a neon light, we changed the furniture, we changed around how we're doing things. But no, you have to constantly Air horns for episode 200. You have to, you have to come, you have to, you have to be willing to develop new skills. When I hired Justin, one of the first conversations we had before I even hired him for the job, I go, you're going to come here, there's going to be a whole learning curve of what does my business do, and you're going to need to learn that. And the second thing is, is you're going to probably have to develop to develop some new skills that you don't have right now. Yeah. And Justin has done that, sometimes begrudgingly, but yeah, no, he's more open to it now than ever. Yeah. And he's, you know, coming along, you know, we've come a long way, you know. He's teach, you know, because I don't know anything about no damn websites, okay? Yes. And I depend on That's why you have to surround yourself with people who know how to work this technology. But if you own a business today and you're not— you don't know what ChatGPT is and you haven't logged into it, you need to go in there. I could teach. You know what's crazy is me and Justin could probably do a webinar on what you can do. That's the thing with ChatGPT.

There's a whole thing, dude. There's a guy that's selling courses right now.

Right. I know, but I'm just saying it's crazy. Ridiculous. Yeah, there's people and they don't know anything.

Real quick, this is— I'm gonna throw it out there. He wants to consult on how to use AI for your business, give me a call. I'll give you a, a quick rundown for a fee, of course.

Yeah, I mean, I'm—

or you could just pay me to do it for you. I don't know.

No, but I'm just saying people need to start investigating all these things. Like SAG actors, now we talked about this, right? Everybody's upset because they're You know, who has biometric control over, you know, things going on today? Like now there's a whole thing about— they were— Congress was worried about AI 2 weeks ago, and now they're worried about biometrics. What are they going to do about biometrics? It's, it's, it's all— it's getting crazy. It's getting crazy.

So work-life balance, you know, get your sleep. Make sure you exercise. Top, you know, the top 3, I would say sleep, exercise, and organization.

Organization. That's good. Yeah. Tell us what you think. What do you do for work-life balance?

Yeah, man, I'm really interested. I'm, you know, this is one of those things that, you know, will help us be more productive. So let's go. Yeah, let's go. Let's do it. Don't forget to like, smash the like button like Hulk. And then subscribe to our YouTube channel, please. Smash the button. Yeah, smash that. Peace.