Finally Friday with John & Melissa

Is that— is— I hit countdown, babe. Is it counting down, or what do I need to do?

It counted down already to me.

For me. Hey, we're all here. And we're live.

Nice.

So that whole thing about bringing you in at one at a time didn't work whatsoever. So that's a good indication about how this afternoon's going. Hey everybody, welcome to Finally Friday, uh, with John Friday, everybody. And, um, I'm missing my wife at the moment. She's in Dallas and I'm in the woods, 900 acres, uh, up in South Carolina, about to go on a bear hunt. And, um, and then I'm just finishing off a novel. So I've come away a little bit and it's going to be great. And so she's home painting away. And I've got some great people on here. And, uh, I've been— I did a bunch of podcasts in the last 12 months, and Melissa and I had the privilege of sitting with Jet, and it's one of the best podcasts I've done. He pretends it's about business Um, which is total BS because it's about people. And Chris McDonald 10 years ago wrote a book that I inflicted on my wife, and it is about these gnarly old Greek guys running up and down hills, which his book totally threw to the wind everything you could imagine about the excuses about why you're fat and lazy and you're not moving and you're not exercising. And so I encourage you not to buy his book, and don't read it, and don't be challenged because there's no way you can read a Chris McDonald book without being challenged. So I'm going to throw to you first, Jet. Why don't you introduce yourself, mate? Tell us about who you are, what you do. Then we'll go to you, Chris, and then we'll just have a chat for the next however long until we're bored with each other.

Yeah, thank you so much, guys, for having me. Yeah, so my name is Jet Panawong. I am Business advisor, worked in businesses by, I guess, trade for over the last 10 years and ended up creating a podcast to try to help small businesses. But I think for me, and, you know, we're probably going to dig into this for our creativity side, I think I needed something that was a little more emotionally connected to a lot of what I do. Because I think with businesses, it's emotional, it's mental, it's tiring, it's a lot of work. And I think when When we get into that type of world where we're trying to figure out if what we started makes any sense, right? We do this and I wanted to give a space where people can hear other stories. And that's what happened. I created this podcast and it's kind of taken off in its own world and become almost a full-time job for me. So it's been a fun journey.

That's great. Where can folks find you? We like to do that at the front so people can go follow you.

Yeah, the easiest place, I think, if you go to— the podcast is called The Personal Side of Business. If you go to personalsideofbusiness.com, it holds everything. It's got the YouTube links of the guests, you can do research. It's got the audio versions in there, you can click on it and listen to it. It's a lot easier to navigate from there. But personalsideofbusiness.com.

Great. Oh no. So John will be right back with us, obviously. So

Chris, sorry about that.

Gosh,

sorry about that.

And no, I love it.

And my satellite might drop. Uh, I got nothing, you know what I mean?

Yeah, I loved, I loved the fading voice, John, as you kind of went off frame. Yeah.

Hey, hey, listen, mate, we're a professional outfit. We're a professional outfit here at Finally Friday,

right?

Has, has any Australian ever ruined the mood of anything? I feel like anytime there's a social situation, just introduce an Australian and automatically— an Australian or Brazilian— automatically it's fun.

Yeah, yeah, it's true. That is, that is a rule of thumb I've lived by, uh, when you, you can insert those two cultures into a bad situation and we will clear everything up.

Yeah, yeah,

they'll ruin your reputation. They'll ruin your reputation. They'll ruin your likelihood of having a prosperous future because you've now got a, like, a legal record, like a— but,

um,

but they're a reasonable amount of fun.

Have you ever seen that video of the Australian guy who was arrested in a Chinese restaurant on mistaken identity? And as he's being dragged out, he's giving this soliloquy to the police. You interrupted me in the middle of a succulent meal! And he just goes on. But he's an Australian guy being taken into custody, and he takes it as an opportunity for performative art, and it's fantastic. But I thought that, to me, is the Australian national animal. Yes. A guy that even as he's going to jail Is gonna go out on a high note and entertain the world.

Yeah, yeah, it's— it has a little less shame in Australia going to jail.

Right, right, right. I mean, it's what— it's what the— it's what the country is, right?

Yeah, a bunch of bloody convicts.

Yeah. Hey, John, from

the,

uh, from the get-go, I'm gonna correct you on pronunciation, uh, I know you're thinking Golden Arches McDonald's. It's actually McDougall.

Sorry, it's Scottish. My bad, my bad.

That's all right. Yeah, Chris McDougall. And, um, one thing I like to discuss with you, Jed, is I personally have almost dwindled away from social media, uh, as a business person because as a writer over the past, uh, I don't know, 20 years, I've watched the escalation in talent of social media posting versus the amount of time it takes. John, you'll understand this too, the amount of time it takes to actually dedicate to what you're trying to write. And I felt like I can do one or the other. I can either get as good as these 15-year-olds with their phones who are turning out like Spielberg-quality videos, or I can actually finish the 2 years I've dedicated to this book. And so I've opted for the book. So, uh, yeah, so my name is Chris McDougall. I'm a writer by profession. profession. I started as a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press years ago and then gravitated into magazines and into books. And I've kind of stumbled upon, um, a niche or a genre of my own, which is sort of like narrative nonfiction adventure-y slash self-help, which I think is what really caught my attention about John's review of Natural Born Heroes because You got exactly what I was aiming for, John, exactly what I was hoping to accomplish with this book, which is,

well,

I want it to be fun, I want to be invigorating, but also at the same time I want to, you know, I want the wheels to turn a little bit and challenge some preconceived ideas.

Great. That's great. You made, you made a very interesting point, Chris, about the pressure that writers have and creative people have between having to do their self- promotion. And as a writer, when you get an agent, which we're supposed to have got, and then you're going to publish, it makes such a big difference. And we are— and people are scared of AI. We use AI as a force multiplier to do the things we don't want to do. And one of the things we don't want to do is our social media publication. We've, we've got it. We've developed a way to have our tools do a whole range of that stuff. Um, so it actually frees things. The, the other thing we do is we do things like Finally Friday. Uh, there's no editing in it whatsoever, and we do that very deliberately because of the AI and because of the performance stuff. And I, I think what we're finding is that resonates more with people. And resonates with, with what people see, what people understand. And, and I think there's this incredible need for authors, and that's what I love both about you.

One of the ways that John can get me to show up, if he, if he keeps it relaxed, he knows that I will come and participate.

Yeah, so you're gonna get a fun, a fun hang, and Melissa will show up.

Exactly. And, um, So if my feed gets a little choppy, just let me know, babe, and I'll pop off. Um, so, and that's what I love about Jet was his authenticity. And what I really found interesting about your book, Chris, is the way you were able to connect with people in a really authentic way. And I think that's a similarity I see between both of you guys. Authenticity seems to be important.

I was thinking about this because I was giving a talk to some elementary school kids recently. And as I was talking to them, I said, basically, I'm here in this profession because I was so terrible in your seats. I was constantly chucked out in the hall as a kid. I walked into the classroom in 4th grade and the teacher would take a look at me and she'd go, no, just go. She kicked me out. She could see in my eyes like, all right, this guy's already amped up. He's going to start some shit. Out the door. And back then you could actually leave the school and I could— I would leave the school and go to the drugstore where they had the whole rack of comic books and I would just read comic books. And I found that I could get myself absorbed in something if I was reading it myself. Like, that was like my form of like Ritalin. My like self-medicated ADHD was to either read a comic book or I'd sneak books into class in my book bag and hold in my lap and just kind of read to myself. So she's doing boring math, I'm reading, uh, The Once and Future King in my lap. And the thing about it was the only kind of books that would get my attention were the ones where I felt like the author had done a great job of making me feel like I was sitting across the room from the coolest uncle in the family who's like, let me tell you about that time I met the stewardess on the plane and she brought me back to her apartment. You know, and I'm 7 years old. Really? If you get that kind of a tone of voice, like, I'm telling you something I probably shouldn't be telling you. And yeah, that's been like on my reading list my entire life ever since. Like, the books I like to read, like Frederick Forsyth, Elmore Leonard— have you ever read like The Day of the Jackal? It's like, you know, guys, yeah, I shouldn't be telling you this between you and I, but some guy tried to kill the president of France. Here's the story. And so that's, that's what I've tried to do in all my books. I want to make it a book that I would like to read If I were that kid in class bored off my ass about social studies.

Yeah, and you know, to your point, John, that you made, that actually just literally said this yesterday, that, um, you know, someone asked me where do I think the, the, the, the future of, um, what we're supposed to be doing as creators online, it's going to go. And I think it's gonna— the Authenticity of what we're doing has to grow even more because I think in the next 2 to 3 years, we're probably gonna get a lot of people between AI that's gonna make stuff that we, we're not sure what's real, what's not. And then with, uh, people, accounts that are gonna do more scripted, fake setup situations to try to, to try to pull from that, uh, whatever growth that everyone else is doing. The authenticity of people just having real conversations is going to be more needed in the next couple of years than it has been before. And I think we're probably going to get to a space or stuff like this where it's just like, oh, this is a live. This is— there's no scripts. I mean, I guess you could script this, but for the most part, people are going to want to do something like this just to be able to have real conversations. And people just want to hear people talk. each other. You know, that's the thing. And, and, you know, with— I— if, if we're at a point now with AI, what we're dealing with now, I can't imagine in 2 to 3 years what we're gonna do. We're not gonna know. Like, I, I bet you we're gonna have people— I'm gonna get interviewed by someone, it's not gonna even be a person.

Oh, no.

It's just gonna be an avatar. Like, I can't tell if this is a real person or not. But, and then, you know, Chris, your point, I think that That is something that I think for a lot of us, a generation growing up, I was into that too. That was such a cool thing where we like, I don't want to read about these stories that were just like, it felt like it could just be a movie. I wanted to get into those stories where like, this could never be a movie. You know, it was just too— it was too conversational. It was too side piece, you know? So I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah.

I think it is. It all comes back to connection. I know, Jet, a lot of your podcast is all about you making connections with real human beings.

Yeah.

And for John and I, 2026, we said this is going to be the year of intentional connection for us. And so I think, I think you're right. The way Chris connects with people with this book and you connect with people with your podcast, um, I think it is That's what's going to get, um, you know, the hooks into people who are, um, really just weary of AI and, uh, stuff they don't know if it's real or not.

Because you can only do that, you can only watch those videos where people are dancing for so much, right? I feel like that happens for about 3 years and you're just like, okay, I need to upgrade my intelligence into something that connects me as an adult. And that's why all those people start to, I mean, they're There's this great algorithm that has happened on my social media feeds that it's adults listening to songs from the '80s and '90s and reinterpreting as different songs. We're like, oh, they were talking about relationships. I thought we were talking about going to the mall, right? I think this is what is going to happen with all of us over time is those 20 and 30-something-year-olds that were just like, oh, I'm just watching some guy do some pranks or do whatever. You know, I, I love it too. And then you're just like, okay, Now I need to listen to the doctor online that's telling me why my knees hurt every time I get up in the morning, right? This is real things that are attached to what I do. So I think it will— we're going to see this wave of change over the next couple of years when all this stuff starts to hit us and go, okay, let's reset and go into something that's really going to connect to us as people.

Yeah, that's very good. That's very, very good.

Yeah, I think I'm gonna like throw a huge segue out here. And say that Chris is working on a book about bodysurfing. If we want to talk about waves, tell us about your book and how did you get started doing that, Chris?

Well, it's funny because I was just thinking to myself, I'm in a way— in a way, I'm in kind of a privileged position because I don't really need to know what's going to happen. Like, I don't have to anticipate it because my job is to just figure it out in the moment, like describe as it goes. I was talking to a friend yesterday I just heard about a really vibrant body surfing community in El Salvador. And I'm like, oh, I got to check that out. And I was talking to my friend and he's like, well, you know, El Salvador, that's a seriously right-wing, autocratic, domineering culture. Like, I understand, but I'm not there to applaud the government. I'm there to observe and watch. And whatever is happening is the story. And I don't need to script it. I just got to go and show up. And that's been to me a really cool thing. And I don't know when the carpet's gonna get yanked out from under my feet because, you know, the technology may just end up sweeping me by and making me defunct before I know it. Now, I won't see it coming, but, you know, so be it. I was actually on a training run recently with a little group of Navy SEALs. And afterwards, we're having lunch back at my place, and they're talking about ChatGPT. And how often they use it for interoffice communications in the military. And because the military is so hierarchical and your vocabulary and phrasing has to be very exact if you're addressing a superior or an officer of equal rank or inferior, that you have to phrase your emails just right. And so they use ChatGPT to draft their emails just so that you don't piss off a lieutenant or you don't come across as condescending to somebody else. And I never used any kind of AI at all. So they're telling me this, and I'm nodding along like, yeah, but, you know, AI could never really replace what I do. I'm like, really? And they go, well, let's, let's give us a prompt. Like, okay, let's say a novel about, I don't know, a dragon and some villagers. And, uh, and, and, and, um, uh, was it dragon? Uh, I forgot what the third thing was. A dragon? A dragon. Villagers, and I don't remember. But anyway, I gave them these prompts and it popped it in, and within a nanosecond they started to read me this short story. I'm like, goddamn, that's good. Like, go, go on, give me more. This, um, bot had just created a perfectly scripted short story that had all the elements of success. So I realized, okay, it's happening outside of my control. And I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing as long as I can keep doing it. Which brings us to your question, Melissa, which was body surfing. So, you know, um, I'd worked overseas as a war correspondent and then a foreign correspondent in Africa and Europe for a bunch of years. And when I came out of that experience, I needed a, a real overall reset. I needed to get out of those environments which were based upon upon cruelty and suffering and just get myself back, reassemble the pieces. And what I started to do was to go running. It was a great way to just empty the brain. And I knew I would go out the door with my head like a beehive. And I knew that within 20 minutes, almost to the minute, those bees would just kind of waft off. Like, there's something about those first 20 minutes of exercise because you're, you're trying to breathe, you know, you're trying to get your body to move, you're, you're focused on all these, you know, like, damn, my shoulder hurts, I'm out of wind, where am I going to go, am I lost? Your autonomous functions take over, you know, because you're trying to steer this, this physical machine.

Don, and I call that, uh, moving meditation.

Exactly. And, you know, you may resist it for the first 19 minutes because your brain is still on what you left back in the office. But once you— as soon as you start to run out of oxygen, that's the one thing which resets everything. Once you can't breathe, you know, all of a sudden that's the only thing you can think about. And so I'll go on these runs, right? But then what would happen is I would get injured. You know, I'd be doing these runs and I get injured and like, you know, my heel, my foot hurts, my Achilles hurt. I'd go see doctors. I'm like, dude, you're, you're 2 meters tall. You know, you're, you're the size of a refrigerator. You shouldn't be running. And that's what actually led me to my first book, Born to Run, because I'm like, well, hang on, how come some people can run 200 miles, they never get hurt, and then the rest of us are hurt all the time? So I researched this book about this tribe in Mexico, the Tarahumara, who run fantastically long distances. And then over time, that became, uh, Born to Run led to Natural Born Heroes about World War II resistance fighters, led to Running with Sherman about animal-human partnerships. And now it leads to, uh, body surfing. You know, when I— when my wife is from Hawaii, when we came here, I was watching the kind of superhuman gymnastics that men and women of all ages are doing in the water. And I thought, man, you know, that is the one place right now where you can't bring your screens, you can't bring your earbuds. You got to be And if you're messing around in the water and you make a mistake, you're dead. You're dead fast. If you think you're out there floating around on a wave and all of a sudden the tide changes, you're out to sea before you know it. It's an environment that is trying to kill you all the time, and that's what really got my attention.

That's

excellent.

That sounds, uh, fantastic and terrifying all at the same time.

All at once.

It's been that way. So there's a place here in Hawaii called Point Panic, and it is like perfectly named. It's this big beautiful wave but breaks right toward a stone— toward a stone jetty. So when you're on the wave, as you're riding it, you're heading straight at the rocks. So if you do things right, you'll swerve by the rocks and pop out into a channel. If you don't, you will smash into these rocks like my friend Hot Sauce did. Derek went Face into the rocks, busted open his, his nose, his cheekbones, and his head. And there's something about that though, because, you know, you refine your craft, you'll have a great experience. You lose focus and you are being wheeled to the hospital.

I, I love— I love—

I love the fact that he's called Hot Sauce.

Yeah, and I love how Chris is like, you know what, I had problems with my ankles and my knees, but now my face is what we're willing to give up. Like, this is where we're willing to trade off all the joints with my face.

Yeah, I had trouble with my ankles and my knees, so I went running.

Yeah, there's been an escalation which may not be wise. You know what's cool about it? And this is another segue. Once you get into this world, any— I learned a long time ago that there really is no such thing as a boring person. There's just Just the wrong question. Like everybody's got something, and if you just figure out what's the question which unlocks whatever weird freaking story they've got inside them,

yeah,

then you're off to the races. And there's always the thing, you know. And with body surfing, there's this whole group of people that make these things called hand planes. And

yeah,

I just heard about this guy who's based in Japan from Southern California. And he makes these hand planes. But my friend Zach Payne, who's a great body surfer, came across him recently. And if you listen to this guy, Ben Wei— W-E-I is his last name— Ben Wei. And if you hear him talk about the construction of this thing, which is only like 9 inches long, but he describes it like he's building the space shuttle. Every contour, every curve, every bit of the handle. It's so amazing. And listen to him talk. Okay, this is it. I can spend years learning about this kind of a simple little device.

So that's— that brings me to a question: what drives creativity? Because like that guy and his hand plane, it's like, bro, like, okay, 15 minutes, I'll give you that. But like, dude, after that, like, how much can we talk about?

You know?

But the passion that drives people— like, I listen to Jet and his podcast, it's like, this is— you're phenomenal, Jet, but man, I think I'd get bored, you know?

Let me throw something to Jet and see if he agrees. So I asked that exact question to this guy Ben Way who makes these hand planes. I go, you know, what drives you? He goes, there's something that I want that doesn't exist. That's what the creativity—

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah, I, I, I can agree with that. I think, I think for me it's this, um, uh, trying to, trying to aim after this sort of black hole in our human existence that is, I'm trying to figure out what connects all of us in all our different lives, right? And I don't know, I don't know if I'll ever find that. I've thought about this every time I go into an interview and go, what am I— I want to hear about their business. And then really, it's really about hearing about who they are as a person, what they've gone through, and then just keeps going back. And then I realize I'm trying to find this— small minute or, or second in everyone's life that has led them to become these entrepreneur people that want to— are out of their minds to start businesses like I am. Like, why are we doing that, right? There's something that has caused this in all of us to be like, I don't want this 9 to 5. I don't want to— I don't want to do this like everyone else does. I want to do something different, even though I know this is risking my my mortgage, my family, my relationships. I'm gonna lose my mind trying to do this. Why are we all doing this? And I keep trying to go after that. And I have a feeling in 5 years, I'm gonna look back and go, I'm never gonna find this answer, right? But it— because every one of us has something different. But it could be this moment where, like, I keep thinking, I have this romantic idea that it's all of us at this moment when we're, like, years old looking out at something, and there's this moment of seeing our parents or something coming in, and we're just like, I don't want that. I don't want that miserable thing. I want to be free. And then that plants in us, and then we start going, you know. So I don't know what it is, but I, I feel like I keep trying to search for that too. And Chris is right, like, it's this, it's this moment I go, I think I'm gonna figure it out this time, and then I never get to it, and then I go chase after it again. You know, next interview.

Do you, do you think that, that creative people are by our nature misfits, searchers, wanderers, um, just nasty to get along with? I, I don't know.

Yeah, I, I, I believe that too. I, I think we're this, um, strange group of people, you know. I, I, I, I I'm in the world of business a lot, but it's not— it was sort of by choice, but not really, right? I come from, as a kid, I was always drawing, painting, doing stuff, and I needed to be part of, like, intertwined with music and stuff. And I think I was like, as you get into your late 20s, you start to have to make a choice. You're like, am I going to be able to make a living off of this or no? And I was like, I'm not good enough in any of those areas to do it. These are going to be hobbies. So I'm going to have to start to pick something that makes money. But it's always sitting there. There's always the artistic jet that's sitting around waiting to come out. And then this is my—

That's the mission.

Yeah, this is my way of doing it. You know, it's just, I get to be creative, but I also can live in those 2 worlds together. So, but it's true. And when I see someone painting, you know, on the side of the road and they're just trying to sell their paintings. I connect to that because I go, I get it. We're doing 2 different things, but basically we're just trying to release this artistic side of us in some sort of way. And for, for me, I'm doing it in podcasts, making videos and things like that. This guy is just going out there painting what he sees in front of him, and we're just trying to get to the same place of happiness.

Very good. Very, very good.

I like to look at creatives as like, um, these thread gatherers. Like, you know, all of life, we're all connected. It's this one great big tapestry. And, um, you, Chris, and Jet, both like, you're, you're thread gatherers. You're— Jet's pulling a thread saying, why, why, why are we entrepreneurs? Why are we— what led us here? And then Christopher's saying, like, how come some people can run and some people can't? Why do people body surf?

Yeah.

So we're, we're just pulling the threads, I think.

Yeah, for sure. And, and, you know, and, and tell me if you guys agree with this too. I think that I always look at it, if I would have, if I would have been 20, 21, 22 years old doing this right now, my purpose is different, right? It's, it's like, I just wanna, I just wanna make a mark on this earth to do something. Now going, I'm 48, getting close to 50. It feels like I want to start to learn more about the different things before I die. I just want to— I want to touch more people. I want to learn about different things that I don't know about and go, the more I learned, the less I've— the more I've learned, the more I learned that I don't know stuff. You know, as time goes on and go, oh, I get to— I didn't know this existed. I want to see more of this. But I look back at it when I was in my early 20s, you're just like, I know everything. I know I can, I can do everything. I can do anything. I have the answers to all. Now I'm like, I don't have the answers to anything. I don't know what we're doing, you know?

So yeah, I wonder if we can put a case study to the group because I had this conversation recently with my nephew. Uh, he's 30 years old. He is a trained musician, went to Berklee School of Music, you know, very reputable school of music. And he has been struggling as a songwriter and singer. He's now at age 30, and he came to me and said, okay, at what point do you step away, or what point do you fully commit the rest of your life? Because, you know, the world is full of failed rock musicians.

Yeah.

And he was asking me, so, you know, my, my path was that the life-changing moment, the family-changing moment for my family, was when my dad Who come out of the Marine Corps? He was a telephone lineman. He went through college on the GI Bill, and then went to law school at night while he had three kids and was working a full-time job. And I remember I was five years old when he got his letter saying he'd passed the bar exam. It was like a meteor striking Earth. I didn't know as five years old what that meant. You know, he opened the letter, and my Italian immigrant grandparents were there, and my mom was there, and. 3 kids. And I just remember looking around, the look on everyone's faces when they go, he passed the bar. It was like the Kennedy assassination or something. Like something had just happened that none of us understood, but the grown-ups got it. And he went from being a telephone lineman, former, um, Marine Corps guy, into an attorney, which, you know, his dad had been an apartment janitor, his father-in-law was an Italian butcher. And now you're a lawyer. And so that became the trajectory for everyone in our family. Like, you're going to law school. And my brother and my sister, my cousins throughout the family have all gone to law school. And that was gonna be my thing. Like, I was gonna go to law school, but I kept, I kept resisting it. And I would apply to law school and get accepted. And then I would defer for a year and I would keep on being a correspondent and the deferment would run out and I'd apply again and get in again. This happened 3 times. This is like, you know, 6 years of putting off law school. And the last time I tried to defer, I got a call from someone in the Temple University Law School admissions department. He said, look, we'll give you 24 hours. Either you come or you never apply again because you're screwing over somebody else. You're making people wait for you. And I had that long night of the soul where I had to walk around. At that point, I was the Associated Press correspondent based in Lisbon. So I spent a long night walking the streets of Lisbon like, you know what, man? The world is full of shitty lawyers who are having a very good life and a lot of really good writers who are having a shitty life. You know, like, you could be an amazing writer and you make— you're not making any money. And I had to think about it. And I ultimately decided, how do you want to fill your days? You know, when you wake up in the morning, do you want to put on a suit and go to a law library, or do you want to be out there running around interviewing people? And that was my response. That was my answer to my nephew Andrus. Listen, dude, I don't know if this is good advice or not, but I had to decide that I would rather be an accomplished writer who's barely making a living as opposed to a lawyer who doesn't really like his life.

Yeah.

And looking back, it was the right choice because I don't have the attention span to be a lawyer. There'd be dudes on death row right now because they hired me. You know, I would just— I would have done a shitty job.

Yeah, there's— he's like, my lawyer keeps going body surfing every day, he never shows up for his appointment. What is going on?

Good for me.

But I would like to— I would like to ask this. I have— if you could give advice to my 30-year-old nephew who is struggling to make his mark as a rock musician, do you— do you branch off? What— what should his path be?

Yeah,

I— I think there's a point in time where we move from living from the inside out— from the outside into the inside out. Like, we seem to go through these cycles. Like, in our 20s, like Jet talked about, um, we're living based on other people's perceptions of what we should do morally, spiritually, physically, educationally. And I think it comes to a point where you go, okay, what is really valuable and important to me. And if he's getting that at 30, I think that's probably 20 years ahead of most people. I don't know if midlife crisis is a thing as opposed to midlife realignment.

Hmm.

It's like, well, look, a little bit like what Jet was saying is, all my life I've been this type of person, creative. I'm smart enough to realize there may not be— I'm not good enough for that. But I've really got to find an outlet for this. And, and I know for Melissa and I, that started 2 years ago, and it was a conscious effort to turn left. Because now I don't regret having spent 63 years getting here, but I'm sure as shit not going to spend the next 63 years doing the same thing over and over again.

I was doing some reading about this. For people when they don't make the leap to, like you were saying, Chris, fully commit to that thing for the rest of their lives. And they develop what this author had termed was a shadow career. And so, for example, if your nephew had gone the law tradition and said, okay, I'm going to go to law school, forget rock and roll or whatever. And he would, um, maybe become a lawyer who was representing music artists because it would keep him close to the world.

Yeah.

And so you, if you, if you can't make the leap or whatever, you stay as close as possible to that thing that you wish you would have done. And, um, it, and the author that I was reading was talking about how, um, eventually folks that are in shadow careers will get to a point Um, to where they're extremely just dissatisfied because they, they don't— they look back and think what could have been, you know?

Right, right.

Shadow careers is an interesting term. Yeah, I've never heard it.

Yeah, no, I feel like looking back on it, there's probably people in my life that probably should have done shadow careers, you know, that got them close to where they needed to be and, and at least have that fulfillment somewhere. You know, and, and it's— I think it sucks because, you know, I think for a lot of our generations, you know, 40 and above, I think we grew up with that mentality that it has to be one or the other. Like, there was no— no one ever talked about like, well, let's just get closer. It was like, oh, you, you want to be an artist, or do you want to make money? So be a doctor. You're like, There's probably a thousand things in between that you could go into that will allow us to do a little bit both, you know. So I don't know, you know, it's, it's, it's interesting, um, that—

I think that's for, for your, for your nephew. I, I think that's what Melissa and I have. We've come to a stage where it's like we want to turn left, but we realize we've got to pay the bills. So we're very consciously and deliberately Taking steps, and I think that's that's part of what what has been part of our. I I got a guy pulling up. I don't know who these. I just need to go get a gun and just see if this is someone I need to say hello to.

Okay. Also, I think my earbuds may be running out. Can you guys hear me okay? Am I still coming across?

All right.

Yeah, you're good.

Okay, good enough. Good enough. I think one of them kicked out, but as long as I'm still transmitting, okay. Yeah, you know, maybe that's one of the real shortcomings in our educational systems is you're not really exposed to professions and careers, so you don't really know what's out there. And, you know, you're supposed to go on to university, you're not really learning about paying jobs when you're in school. And so you only know about a very limited few things and you've never actually seen them in action. And that's the thing about it. So then when you're kicked out into the world at age 22 and you're supposed to pick a career, Yeah, you got a pretty limited menu to choose from.

It is. It's a symptom, too, of not knowing ourselves. Through school, we're taught to learn a lot of things, but we aren't taught to learn about ourselves. I never took a personality test till I was like 35. And so we get pigeonholed, like John was saying, into, oh, you would be good at this. should. And I, I started school in college as an engineering major. Now anyone who knows me thinks that's entirely laughable. I laughed. I lasted like half a semester. I was like, oh, these are not my people, you know. I was good at math, so I switched to accounting. Well, those weren't my people either. And so I finally found my way to marketing. And I look around and I'm, I'm in a class with other people who have like colored pens, you know, and I'm like, okay, well, I, I can graduate here. I'll be fine.

Yeah, yeah. And, and

it's like, it's okay, I don't have to shoot him.

It's your mother.

She just decided to turn up and— okay, talk at me.

Very good.

Great. So you— just to clarify, you did not shoot your mother-in-law?

I can neither confirm or deny that remark. I'm trying to give you an alibi,

John.

Thank you very much. I did not. I was here the whole time.

There's just a— there's just a dip in the feed for about 3 minutes, so they come back on.

AI is about to introduce my mother-in-law so that people can tell that we're real. This is a live stream. Everybody just kicked out.

Are you guys hearing me okay?

Yeah, very good.

Oh good, better than before.

Say hi to Melissa. You're in the middle of 250,000 people live stream on Instagram and around the world. This is, this is Wanda. This is my mother-in-law. Say hello to everybody.

Hi guys,

we got a show going on.

Oh, I was not gonna. I was not gonna interrupt. That's the reason I was sitting in the car.

Hey, what about? What kind of food? You got?

You brought food.

What kind of food?

Salsa.

Yum.

Fresh ground sauce.

Delish.

Fresh ground salt.

Oh, fantastic.

For breakfast in the morning.

Appreciate it. It's it's finally Friday. It's a casual show.

Oh man, mix that. Mix— if you have any ground beef, mix that ground sausage with the ground beef. That's a great burger.

All right.

Yeah,

I'm gonna try me some. I appreciate it. Well, anyway, sorry to interrupt. Not really.

It's— this is a great part of being live, you know. We get to have people just show up, have in-laws just show up out of nowhere.

But isn't, isn't that like life, bud? Like, the greatest moments are the ones you don't script. And I think we've lost a generation, you know, we've got our TikToks and our whatever, and everything's got to be so scripted, so perfect, that you can't just—

Yeah, I'm gonna be thinking about hamburgers the rest of the broadcast.

I know, I'm suddenly hungry.

Well, that's on That's on Mama. That's not on me.

Well, and I did, I did get 5 pounds of fresh ground beef too while I was at Wilson's.

Any bread? What kind of bread you have in the pantry? And like, say the brioche rolls, toast it in a little bit of butter first, then get that burger in the middle, slice of tomato. Spread spread a little cheddar cheese.

Yes.

Good night, Falcon.

Now we're all hungry.

Whereabouts in South Carolina are you?

I'm near Pickens at the moment, about six miles from Pickens between Pickens and Salem. I think six miles. It's a bend in the road. It's fantastic. Yeah, like it's just really fantastic. There's a big old, um, big old lake here. It's a 900,000-acre lake.

It's real long.

It's just beautiful. I went out looking. I had one of the, the fellow who, the son, the fellow who owns the place, his son took me out. We found this old still, moonshine still, and, uh, he took me there and we went poking around in there and he was telling me stories.

And I think it's one of the, it's just been fantastic. appreciated, last unknown treasures of the United States is people don't realize how varied and cool South Carolina is, that you go from city to seacoast to mountain to utter wilderness like that, all within the space of a few miles.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah, it's beautiful, mate. Like,

I'm—

I was in Pickens today, and it's just, it's just small town America, man. Like, People need to get out of the big cities and remember that and just realize America is America. There's good people all across the board and they're just trying to live a good life.

I know, the funny thing was, um, I've been thinking about that a lot recently because when I was working overseas covering conflicts, what you find is 99.9% of the population doesn't give a shit. They want to have lunch. They don't want to fight with Putin. They don't give a crap about somebody's ideology, you know. They just want to get along with their neighbor, put dinner on the table. And it's that very tiny minority, yeah, of old dudes— and it's always dudes and they're always old— that are in power that just mess it up for everybody. Yeah, I'm watching it now, you know, like all the old dudes bickering Starting wars, sending kids off to fight them. What's the freaking point? Nobody wants this kind of crap. And, you know, it's funny because if you look at people who are registered to one party or the other and are adamant and fervent about it, but you sit them down across the table at a barbecue, they're fine, you know. Yeah. They get along fine. They find those points of common interest and desire. But anyway, it's been a very frustrating thing for me to see in the United States The same kind of rabid, frothy-mouthed fury that in the past I'd only seen in places that were in the middle of civil wars.

Yeah, and it's— and what's interesting is it's not a political aisle thing. It's just, uh, we all just want to have lunch, and on both sides of it, every— there's like, listen, just relax, learn how to body surf, whatever.

Something.

That might be the answer. You know, I might be, I might be on the cusp of a new revolution.

I was, I could say I was there. I was there at that moment. It was realized that body surfing changed the whole, the whole partisan area. Yeah, yeah.

Me and your dude in San Diego with a big scar on his forehead. You know,

I'm gonna show, I'm gonna show Gavin this. This is gonna be—

we are the new Mount Rushmore.

That's great. I love it. I, I feel like I'm in the presence of 3 great story collectors today. Like, you guys each in your own way. John is collecting characters for fiction. Chris is going around interviewing people about random things like body surfing. Jett is interviewing people on his podcast. I feel like you guys are all collectors of stories.

Well, don't you do the same thing, Melissa? How do you choose subjects to paint?

I do. Yes, I would say that it's a very good point. I do.

Well done, Chris. I was about to say the same thing. Let's make it talk.

So maybe that is just creativity in general.

Is— but isn't it? Isn't that art and creativity? Like being a songwriter or a poet or a writer or a interviewer, because I'd see Jet's— what Jet does is a collector of stories very much in his space and time.

You know what, Melissa, there's a guy on Instagram, I think he's in South Carolina, I think he's in Charleston. Um, Charleston, South Carolina.

Yeah, Charleston. Yeah. Um, it's called Velvet Alfredo, and he's, he's both a photographer and a painter, and he'll do one or the other. He'll stop a random person At an intersection, whoa! You got a great fit. Can I paint you? And the person will just stop, and he'll just and do a quick oil, you know, sketch, or he'll just take a photograph.

But what's interesting is you see the interaction where he's stopping this startled person crossing the street and has to take the picture, and then he'll show the still frame that he took, and you get to see the interaction and the person being surprised, and then then the shot. But what's to me fascinating about it is there's something about that still photo that he takes. It's a story, you know. There's a look in their eye, there's the way they're holding their body, and the same way he paints them. He sees something in them like, oh, there's a story here, and that's what comes across in the art.

That's great. Maybe we should ask him if he wants to come on Finally Friday.

Oh, you know what? Yeah, Velvet Alfredo is on Instagram. I don't know anything else about the guy. It's just that I've never actually seen him. I've only heard his voice, but the tone of his voice is of such curiosity and appreciation. And that's what works for him because, you know, you're approaching strangers, can I take your picture? You know what the answer is going to be. It's a middle finger. But there's something about his genuine warmth and curiosity that gets people to submit.

That's great.

That's interesting. Yeah.

If you get him, I would totally love to watch that broadcast because I'm super curious. As what this guy's story is.

Hey, we're coming up on the hour, fellas. Um, anything you want to, uh, you know, want to leave people with? I, I want to— before we go, I want everybody to be able to know where to find you. But what— any reflections, anything personally you want to add in encouraging people to follow their dreams or their passions or their wild left turns?

I do have a thought, if I— if you don't mind me jumping in, because it's kind of burning in my mind. You know, John, you really appreciated Natural Born Heroes, and I'm grateful for that. And to me, the message of that book is something that I think is very relevant, is that, you know, it's about the art of the hero. And we've always thought of the art of the hero being the toughest guy in the room, right? The first one to, like, throw a bullet into the chamber. But the ancient Greeks looked at the art of the hero as being the exact opposite. The art of the hero was the art of empathy. It's the art of listening and curiosity. and the desire to help.

Yeah.

And I think maybe that's the common thread that unites all of us, is creativity comes from connection. It's from seeing something out there in a person or in a situation that you want to connect with and enhance. And I think maybe that's the element that people can take away in their lives, which is that creativity doesn't come from dominance. It comes really from submissiveness. It's allowing things to enter your life, your world, your imagination, and receiving it. And maybe that's a cool thing people can take away, that to be truly heroic in the world is about being a receptor of other things, being compassionate. Yeah.

Very good, Chris.

Yeah, I think for me is to— I think creativity is is happiness, right? Trying to find that, that part of you that is, um, can thrive in creating something that you can share, you know? And I think this is something that, uh, has brought me a new life, not only to connect with people and, and learn about their stories, but I think to really allow me to find this happiness going into this second half of my life. And that I can create something that people can enjoy, share, and be able to relate to. And it brings me pleasure to be able to do that. So I think creating equals happiness and go after it and don't let anyone tell you that it can't exist in the world that you live in.

Yes, I love it. I think that's one of Chris's mantra was When you were talking about your boycott of sports, organized sports, what was it? It was less watching, more doing? Was that your— I would say

protesting, protesting staged sports.

I haven't watched a spectator sport in more than 25 years. But part of it is, yeah. And yet what I love is, you know, Happiness is a renewable commodity. It's an energy source. So if you're happy, everyone in your room can be happy with you. Yes, right.

It's like, you know, I think you can sense that with people that come into your lives. So you're just like, what is it? What are you so happy about? They're just like, I'm just doing my thing. I'm doing the things that bring the sunlight to me. I always think about that that Superman and the sun, right? Like, how far do you want to be from it? And you can stick around through it so it keeps rejuvenating you. It, it makes you shine to other people, and it's contagious. And then other people get inspired by it. I've, I've had people reach out to me and go, hey, you inspired me to do what I want to do. I'm like, go ahead and do it. You know, this is gonna, this is gonna bring longevity to your life too, and not just for these certain moments. It's gonna be like, I want to keep surviving to go through something else that's going to bring me more happiness. So I want people to find that.

Right?

Don't we all want to be that person, the person who walks into the room and everyone's like, hey, you know, they're glad you're there. And yeah, yeah, we know, we all know that person. You know, I'm not always that person, but I know who that person is. And that's, that's my goal. That's my spirit animal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree.

And that person that gives other people permission To go after their dreams, and yeah, I love that. That's good job, guys. Great.

In other words, in other words, we're saying be Australian.

It is. I think I think that's the underlying theme here. Yeah, be Australian.

Full circle. We came full circle. Wow.

Well, I appreciate you. We came we came back to stories about getting locked up.

Right.

Yeah, right. Convict. Hey, so, so, so, Jet, where can people find you, man? How can they connect with you?

Yeah, find me. Uh, my podcast is The Personal Side of Business. You can see it on all platforms, uh, Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts. My website is personalsideofbusiness.com, and all my socials are personalsideofbusiness.com. So please check me out on there and follow, comment, and, um, you know, let me know what you're going through in the business world if you're an entrepreneur.

And you, Chris?

I would just go to chrismcdougall.com and follow it from there. The only thing you're gonna find from me on Instagram is weird videos of me body surfing, which I think, you know, even my beloved wife of 26 years is like, you know what, I've seen one body surfing video, I've seen enough for a lifetime. It's the same goddamn thing over and over again. So Yeah, I mean, chrismcdougall.com.

And what about— perfect. Yeah, and we'll make sure it goes into the thing. And what about Melissa Ryan King?

@melissaking.studio. Um, and all my social media is on there as well. So thank you, dear.

That's great. You're welcome, dear. Hey, listen, thanks guys. This has been fun. And hey, when's your book coming out on body first? Good question.

I've not done it yet. Hoping to finish it by the spring, so be out the following year. So looks like 2028. That's gonna be a while. How about you, John? When do you have something coming down the pike yourself?

Yeah, we need we we not we yeah I know I hear I know man I know the cycle so we need to do something before then. We need to get you both back on and do a research visit in about three or four months. Catch up with where you both love it. Love to do it. Hey, look, appreciate you both for making the time. Thank you,

guys.

Thank you both. Pleasure to meet you, Chris.

All right.

Happy Friday. Appreciate it.

All right.

I'm gonna end the stream now. Yeah, I'll end the stream now. Then we'll stay on and say goodbye. All right, everybody. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube,

the internet

world, Xs, whoever the heck you are. Cheerio. Happy Friday. The internet world. There we go. We're out. Thank you.

That was really fun.