Ep 42 The Non Negotiables A Conversation with Keith Lubner

Welcome to Remembering the Forgotten, a space where leaders think out loud without polish or performance. No scripts, no personas, just what becomes audible when the noise drops and the mind is free to speak for itself. These conversations are not about delivering insight. They are about thinking together in real time, testing ideas against stillness, letting 2 open minds stretch each other. The intention is simple: to create a space where clarity can emerge and where listeners don't just consume perspectives but feel permission to engage their own thinking more honestly. Today I'm joined by Keith Lubner. Keith has spent decades close to the edge where selling becomes human again, where connections matter more than technique and clarity matters more than pressure. What stands out isn't how much he knows about sales, but how deeply he understands people Inside it. This isn't a conversation about frameworks, funnels, or scaling tactics. It's about what happens when performance stops being the point, when selling becomes a form of listening, and when trust with yourself and others replaces force. What matters Here isn't strategy, it's presence, the kind that lets conversations land without strain and decisions emerge without coercion. With that, Keith, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Markus. That probably is the best intro that I've ever heard on a podcast. It is you, right?

In a nutshell.

Well, it's a great intro. And it really hits home to, you know, philosophically what and how I feel about selling. I mean, we all, in one form or the other, we all are selling something. Our services, our products, you name it. And what we have complete control over is not that product or that service, but us. We have complete control over who we are and what we want to become. And so that introduction was refreshing. It was really refreshing because I didn't come on here to talk tactics. I could talk tactics all day long with everybody. I could give people Frameworks for how to prospect better and how they can do all of that. But I really like to figure out with people, like, why are they doing what they're doing and why do they keep doing what they're doing when it comes to anything— selling, leadership, you name it. So, really great introduction. That was fantastic.

Wonderful. Nice to hear. So, before we begin, When I speak of coherence, I'm pointing to a state where nothing inside is in conflict. Body, thoughts, emotions, and action aligned, moving as one. No push, no urgency, no fear driving the moment. And when I speak of stillness, I don't mean silence. I mean the part of you untouched by expectation or performance. The place that knows before the mind tries to manage it. That's the ground I'd like us to meet on today.

Okay. I, I, I— it— there's a word that came to mind as soon as you were, you were, you were saying this, especially around the stillness and the coherence and the, uh, what's the word I'm looking for being one, if you will, with yourself, with yourself. And that is a— it's a hyphenated word. It's a— and I use this a lot. I use this a lot actually when I coach a lot of people, and it's called non-negotiables.

Mm-hmm.

And what I mean by that is when you as an individual can figure out what your individual non-negotiables are, you have a tendency to come to peace with yourself. You come to terms with yourself. The stillness that you had mentioned there, if you will. Yes. When you have certain non-negotiables, because you live by those non-negotiables. Nothing changes with those non-negotiables. You don't pivot off those non-negotiables. You don't negotiate with those non-negotiables. It is how you live your life and how you want to live your life and how you want to be in your profession, whatever profession that is. And it's— I call it like your North Star. It's the direction you're going to take yourself in. And when you have that, you have a calmness around yourself, you have a peace around yourself, you have direction. And here's the really interesting thing, you're more productive.

Oh yeah.

You produce more. You realize more in all aspects— business, personal, you name it. You just get more. It's when I see people out of whack, when they don't have that peace, they're doing things for the wrong reasons. They pivot off of what they think are important things. They don't even know what those important things are. And invariably, they burn out, or invariably, they're not happy. And so it was really interesting, like the stillness I equate to like a peace within yourself, professionally and personally. It's kind of interesting, actually.

It's beautiful. So Keith, speaking of stillness, where can you just be yourself? Untouched by expectations or performance.

Wow, that is a— all right, so there's a couple ways I myself, right? It's interesting. There's physical places and there's not physical places, right?

Okay.

So So this is a really deep question, actually, Marcus. When I think about it, when I think about it, you know, I have—

Are you surprised?

I am surprised. I think I wasn't expecting a question like this. Like, oh my goodness gracious. So physically, I call it my happy place, right? And I think everybody has to have that escape. escape or that happy place where they know they can go there and everything kind of like just is pushed off to the side. Life is pushed off to the side. And life is, life is not easy for anybody. I don't, I don't know one person in this entire world that life was ever easy for them in one way or another. You know, there's different dimensions of all of that. And, and, and I mean, I can go into my story and And it's long and it's— there's some really deep, difficult things that happened. But physically, where I'm myself, it's— I'm sitting on— I'm sitting at the beach.

Mm-hmm.

I'm sitting by the water. And I don't have to be doing anything. I'm just sitting by the water or I'm walking by the water. And it's that connection with nature, and it takes me away from everything. Now, that's physically. Now, what's interesting is when I'm physically not there, or— and I'm having a, you know, and we all have these difficult days every now and then, I will actually visualize sitting on the beach, right?

Ah.

I'll visualize being there. In fact, I have in my office, I have You know, the beach is my happy place. I have a little, you know, my family got it for me one year. And I'll look at that and I'll visualize and it will completely change whatever mood I'm in, right? Whatever is happening there, whatever stress of the day is presenting itself, it'll take me there. So physically, if I'm there, that's great. But mentally, I can put myself in there. that spot so that I get, well, more clarity. I get more— I get still. I get peaceful. I get— I'm not as emotionally charged at that moment. I don't let the disruptive emotions get a hold of me. I mean, call it a form of meditation. Call it what you will. Yeah. It's just a trigger or a technique that I used many, many years ago to put myself

Which is very fascinating because, you know, I listened carefully to you and you mentioned a few things that basically determine whether there is stillness or not. And one aspect of stillness is you probably would almost have used your hands, pushed the noise outside, right?

Yeah.

So if you think about it, so you can be in a meeting And you suddenly realize noise is coming, pressure from outside is coming. So you can basically probably not even have to close your eyes anymore, but you can just picture that beach. Does that really happen?

It does. And there's a couple, a couple of ways I actually do that. It's— and you're right, if you're in a meeting, a big meeting, Small meeting, whatever the meeting is, and you close your eyes and you start to— people, that's a little strange in the meeting. Let's be real. You

shouldn't do it for too long.

Exactly. But you can mentally kind of put yourself there. And what I do is I do this even before the meeting starts. So what I do is I prepare for the meeting, which is what everybody should do in every meeting. And I'm an advocate for this. Now, I'm not getting into sales techniques. I'm just saying, when you prepare for something, you actually are giving yourself a couple different emotions, if you will. Right. You're giving yourself the emotion of confidence, and if you give yourself the emotion of confidence, you can be calmer in a meeting. You can be more still in a meeting. You can control your emotions in a meeting if you are more prepared. Confident. That comes from preparation. So as I roll into the meeting, as long as I've prepared myself, I can very easily, if it gets to be a difficult meeting, move myself into that happy place because I've prepared myself into that meeting. Years ago, that wasn't the case. Years ago, I would sometimes— I'm human. I would sometimes go into meetings And I would wing it, as they say. It would be like a pickup game. And sometimes it would be an excellent meeting. It would be a brilliant meeting. And other times, the meetings would go sideways and I also went sideways. My emotions went sideways.

Mm-hmm.

How I handled the meeting went sideways. And I recognized that this can't go on and on. I better prepare better for the meeting so that I could just handle me better in the meeting, let alone—

It's such an interesting aspect. So let's think about that for a moment. When you go out with your wife to friends, how much time do you prepare for that meeting?

Well, you know, that, that, none.

Exactly right.

None. But no, but I'm not fearful of attention in something like that. I'm not fearful of what that meeting may be about. On the business side, I am fearful with that meeting because I'm thinking, which direction is this meeting going to go? And I want to prepare myself.

Yeah, rightfully so. So basically what I want to hint at is, if we are just us ourselves, right, and we meet friends, we don't need any preparation for that. We know how to be ourselves. And if people tell me, Markus, the best thing is really going to a meeting and just wing it, I said, honest to God, I don't want to see that quality. So it is almost like an art form to understand that if I go in business, business is not personal, business is not private, as much as I am myself in it. I better prepare. It's a different world, right?

It is. And you're preparing, which is really— think about it. You're preparing yourself to be yourself. And if you don't prepare, you are then not yourself in the meeting.

Because you're taken out of focus. Because you suddenly have a curveball, for example, right? Or you have to focus on something you're not aware of. Whereas you have been prepared, you can literally be yourself.

Yes.

And I think this is a deep truth which many people who listen to the show do not get.

Well, they don't. And this all goes down to self-awareness. Right now, I'm self-aware because I have 36 years of experience. Right? I'm very self-aware these days. I've made a lot of mistakes over the course of my career, but I'm self-aware that I made those mistakes and I course correct only because I have 36 years of experience. I coach some young, young individuals a couple years out of college, and one of the things I tell them is after every meeting, just do a quick analysis of how were you in the meeting? Yeah. How did you feel in the meeting? What do you want to improve on? improve in a meeting. And what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get them to become, from a habitual perspective, self-aware of themselves.

Yeah.

So that they can adjust and become better over time. Not, oh, the meeting was great and we covered all these topics. No, no. How did you feel in the meeting and how you covered the topics, as an example? And were you you or did you feel like you were trying to be your boss or trying to be somebody else? Quite frankly, you're not.

Yeah. And I would say that is already an amazing start before we try to analyze the other person's reaction and then integrate that into our reflection, right?

Yeah.

Because the hardest thing is the freaking know thyself.

Yeah.

So here's a tricky question for you, but go ahead first.

No, I was gonna say, but you're knowing thyself, and I want to, you know, interject here. I was listening to a podcast the other day, and the podcast was, um, the podcast had Matthew McConaughey on it, the actor, right? Mm-hmm. And it wasn't one of those podcasts where, hey, what movies are coming up? Or, or what movie did you like the best? Or, or anything like that. It was really a deep podcast because They— the person was asking McConaughey what he's all about. And people have this perception of him and how he actually changed the course of his career because he was self-aware of what he liked to do. And then he stayed true to that self-awareness.

Mm-hmm.

And it was all about how to do that. Like, when you want to make a change into a different direction, how do you stay true to that? And one of his characteristics as a person is he's extraordinarily self-aware in moments of his life. And he peeled back, like, all the way through his life. He peeled back to a time when he was in— High school. Australia, you know, after— right after high school, and he was alone. And he was just examining, like, do I like this? And is this what I want to do? At that moment, being, you know, just maybe, you know, early 20s, if that, very self-aware of that. So when I heard that, it all, like, connected at that moment. Because I said, that's like a super trait of people. If you could be self-aware Of anything, you will succeed in anything if you're self-aware of what you're capable, what you're not capable of, what you want to do, what you don't want to do, more importantly.

So why do you think that self-awareness is not taught at school nor at college?

I think because society has these expectations around everything out there. You need to be like this. You need to be like that. You need to, you know, as an example, you need to go to college. And I'm an advocate for college. Don't get me wrong here. I don't want your listeners to say, what's he saying there? But we have these expectations. And for some people, that's just not the path for them. There's, you know, go to college. Go get a great job, go get a house, go do this, go do that. And all I'm saying is, if you really, really, really want to do that, that's okay, you're self-aware of that. But if you're not wanting to do that, you're setting yourself up for a life of misery. You can make as much money in the world and still be absolutely depressed and miserable. And we read stories about people like this, Markus, all the time. Absolutely. They have all the money in the world, they're billionaires, and they're depressed, or God forbid, they kill themselves. It's like, what direction do you want to take your life is what I think is— do you want to go in a happy direction or in a self-aware direction? Or do you want to go in a direction where society dictates because of the norms of society, the direction you should go.

So you would say that self-awareness is one of the first keys in terms of finding out what you actually want, and then to change direction?

Yeah, yeah. And being honest with yourself, you're self-aware, you're honest with yourself, and then to have the guts to do something about it. And as I picked up from the O'Conaughey, uh, you know, podcast, you know, I, I like listening to him talk because I think he's a neat speaker and all that stuff. But yeah,

he's

amazing. It was having the guts to stay true to that, having the guts to change. Like, he was set up early on as an actor, you know, in rom-coms. And he was making a lot of money doing that. And he purposely said, I do not want to accept more of those roles. And I'm shortening this up a little bit, but I don't want to accept any of those roles anymore. I want to go in this direction. And he kept saying no to it. And he would take on films making less money on that. Now, don't get me wrong, he wasn't hurting for money at this point, right?

Yeah.

But It's what he wanted to do. It was the, it was the self-awareness of, I want to go in that direction now. And then he had the guts to do something about it. Most people don't. Most people don't have the guts to do something about it. They're like, I'd love to do that. And then they talk themselves out of it.

Mm-hmm.

And I don't mean like, you're, you're, you're, you have a family, and you have young children, and you want to go, you know, You know, learn guitar and become a musician or something like this and quit your job. You have to be responsible.

Yes, absolutely.

Responsibly self-aware is what you have to be, right? But being self-aware, because if you are happy doing something, everything— I've just learned this— everything else just falls into place.

It's interesting. So you mentioned you've been on that path for 35 years. When did you hit the time, Keith, when you realized you were living somebody else's script?

It was about 4 years into my career. And I started my career selling, selling software. And, and I love the people around me and all that stuff. But I always had this inclination to want to have my own business. And so wasn't quite sure what that was. So I was self-aware that I did want to do that, but I'll never forget this moment. My wife and I were married about a year, and she turned to me at one point and said, you are miserable. You're absolutely miserable in doing what you're doing. And basically she was giving me, as I look back, like an ultimatum. Like, you're miserable doing what you're doing. Do something about it because

I

don't know if we can survive this. Mm-hmm. And what was interesting is I knew I wanted to do something, but I didn't realize at that moment like what I was actually projecting to the people that I love and my life. And I was projecting this misery, actually. And it was a moment where I just said, I got to change this up. I got to go in a different direction. I got to be more aware of this. Because that was my life. And that was the most important part of my life. So that, again, was like a North Star of mine, right? Non-negotiable, like my family, non-negotiable. And it was— Literally within 6 months, I had made a move to another company and laid the groundwork for my first company within that timeframe and put myself on a path where probably not even 6 months after that, so it was less than a year after my wife had said this to me that I'd start up my first company and then it just started to take off at that point. And it was all because, you know, I was self-aware, because she made me self-aware of what I was projecting at that moment there. That was, you know, over 30-something years ago. And then the journey just kept, you know, meandering and moving and going. But I know, it was a valuable, valuable life lesson that I had to learn at that moment.

And I'm sure you took quite some courage for your wife back then.

It did. Well, if you know my wife, she's very direct and to the point. So she was probably just saying, hey, man, you know, I'm going to go this way with or without you. I don't know. But, you know, it was the honesty of that. And it was like a slap on my face. It really was. And I'm very thankful for that when I look back on it because it took me on this trajectory, a really nice trajectory. And on that trajectory, I had numerous offers from clients that would want to hire me as an employee.

Uh-huh.

Many, many, many times. And I said no to every single one of

them

over the course. Why was that? Well, I said no because my North Star was I wanted my life to be like a certain way. And I wanted this balance in my life and the family was part of that balance and everything had to be in balance. If I got any one of that out of balance, I was actually going back to that moment where my wife probably you know, slap me in the face with that statement, right? I knew that the balance was really important. I'd have— Markus, I had to have equilibrium in the different parts of my life because I didn't grow up that way. I grew up with— it was that my equilibrium was not equilibrium. It was completely out of whack. So I knew that's what I wanted. That was the North Star. So I had these job offers that I could have made a a lot of money. Some of them would require me to relocate and all that stuff. And I said no to every single one of them. And every time I said no, something good happened on the backside of it with my business, every single time, every single time. And I just realized, like, this is where I need to be the entire time.

So basically, your wife's honesty kind of saved you.

Well, yeah, and that's what we need in our lives. We need people to— how do I say this— to pleasantly be honest with us around things, not harshly be honest with it. We have people— I coach clients a lot of times, and bosses are like, oh, I'm honest with them. And I'm like, yeah, you're pretty harsh with them. They're people. And you don't know what they're going through. So you have to understand what they're going through. Then you can be honest with them and you can help them. I mean, that's your number one mission as a leader is to put people in a position to win, right? It's not for you, it's for them. And it's having those people that could tell you things like that. And so sometimes it's a spouse. My children are now older. 30, 28, and 24. My children now give me honest feedback about things, which, uh, it's, it's such an interesting part of, like, as you, as you evolve as a parent. I am their parent, but yet I'm starting to see them more like a peer almost, which is really interesting. And they can give me feedback, you know, Dad, I saw you do this, or Dad, this, you know. And, and you can listen to them. I mean, friends could say, why, you know, why'd you, why'd you do that? And as long as you know that it's coming from a place of goodwill, I think we all need that, quite frankly. And I don't know what's interesting.

Exactly. I mean, that's what I really want to spend a little bit time on. I know for a fact that many people listen who are the ones in the situation itself to my show. But many spouses and partners of those people listen to it as well. So I highly, highly, you know, recommend to really do what Keith's wife has done with him. When you see things, speak them out. Because quite often, whether it's a man or it's a woman in this situation, They simply do not see it.

No,

right? That's the thing. And they might even pretend to be happy, but they're not. They might even put up— I assume, and you know, when did you have kids already at that time?

We, uh, yes, yes, we— yes, my, um, for— yes, we did. My son.

Okay, so that would have been the classic to put up a good face for the family. So nobody really pays attention to how miserable you are.

Yeah.

So I believe it takes courage for a partner to really speak out and say, honey, in all honesty, and in all love, I need to mirror something, you know, or if you don't have the courage to speak it out, Ask a question. Yeah. Like, honey, how are you really doing? Because I believe exactly as you said it, this is something that's so missing, those mirrors today. I remember when I was teaching, I had one exercise. And as you can imagine, Keith, out of 14 people, maybe 1 or 1.5 picked it up seriously.

Okay.

And I said to them, create 3 questions. The one was, for example, why do you like spending time with me? Another one would be, you know, what makes me special? Like, give it some thought, just be creative, and ask a person honestly to answer, and ask people who really you believe that they will be positive with you because you don't need to be— to meet someone who pulls you down, right?

Yeah.

So that one woman took it to the extreme. She had 100 guests where she was a maid of honor at the wedding, and she printed a questionnaire quiz and handed it to all the guests. Guess what happened? She received a plethora of mirrors, took all the answers, put them on a huge board, studied that stuff every morning when she got up and every night before she went to sleep. Keith, after 2 weeks, I did not recognize that woman anymore.

That's amazing.

Because real self-awareness will have consequences.

Yes.

Right.

And you have to be willing to— yes, you have to be willing to know that, that they're going to have consequences. You have to be willing to accept those. Right.

I can tell you, go ahead, please.

I was gonna say, it's one thing to be self-aware of it. It's a whole other thing to be self-aware and then do something about it.

Absolutely. I can tell you, one guy asked me, Markus, What is the price of working with you? And it wasn't money. And that's exactly it.

Yeah.

That's exactly it. The price is not money that people fear. They find the money. They're afraid of what comes out when they start looking into the mirror. And I know this is something you and I have, have in common. So I'm soon coming to the end, but this is one question which I really am curious about. When you are in stillness, what can pull you out of it? And what helps you especially to come back to it again? Because I'm sure many feel themselves exactly here.

So when I'm in stillness, what brings me out of that How do I— what brings me out of that?

Yeah, basically, what kind of distortions are here? Because, you know, basically what I want to show is that you're a human being. You're not constantly in stillness, that somebody else realizes, huh, he has these issues that actually take him out of stillness. And then what I'm more interested in, what helps you then to go back into stillness?

Okay. Yeah, the big— now I understand it. The biggest The biggest thing that brings me out of stillness is one that helps me get back into stillness at the same time. It's the same thing.

Interesting.

It's the same thing, and it's fear.

Oh.

Yeah, I have— in fact, I had this conversation with my wife the other day, actually. I've always had this fear of failure. this fear around money and failing around money and this fear. And it goes back to my childhood and my parents, for different reasons, they were divorced and everything, each had to claim bankruptcy and my brother had to claim bankruptcy. So as you can imagine, as a kid growing up, that fear was just deeply embedded in me. And the thing is, I recognize it. Now, it's a good thing and it's a bad thing for me. It's a good thing that it keeps me sharp and keeps me focused. It's a bad thing when I start to obsess over it.

Mm-hmm.

And I will obsess sometimes over fearing all these things that could happen. And at this point of my career and my life, they're not going to happen. I still fear it happening, and it causes me not to go into stillness because I get anxious. And if I get anxious, I need to go do things about it, and I'm not calm and cool and collected. Mm-hmm. So the fear drives me to understand that I need to be calmer, cooler, more collected, because I think better that way. And if I do that, I'm, I'm actually tamping down that fear. So it works both ways, which is really strange. Does that make sense? The interesting thing is I'm self-aware of it. Like, I know I act certain ways because of that fear. And I said it to my wife out loud just, just the other day, actually. I said, This is coming from a place of, I'm afraid because of these things. And the nice thing is, years ago, I would not have been able to say that out loud to anybody. I now can do that and I know it and I'm aware of it.

Congratulations.

And then I can move myself into what you said, like the stillness or the calmness, or I meditate. I sit there and I'll meditate or I'll do yoga and it'll bring me back over so that I can, I can manage it. I can't get rid of it. It's always going to be with me. But I can manage it better than I did years and years and years ago.

Yeah. And I believe that is the key to really understand, gosh, we're humans. Those fears are literally like birds who will always fly around us. But we can prevent them from actually building a nest. and taking home on our, on our hats, right?

It's a good way of putting it. I mean, what, what I say to myself is, I'll say something like, if I, if I'm feeling these, these feelings and I'm having these thoughts, I'll say something like, welcome to the party.

That's amazing.

Welcome to the party. Because they'll be swirling around, swirling around, and I'm not trying to Knock them down or get— because then I'll get anxious and get frustrated and all that. I'm like, because you can't get rid of it. It's there. Like, you can't get rid of feelings. Feelings are— you can't get rid of emotions. Emotions are part of the human existence. So you just say, welcome to the party. I'm feel— I'm feeling fear right now. Welcome to the party. And it's almost like an acceptance that allows me to say, all right, you're here, I'm here, and this is how I'm going to deal with it.

Yeah, that's so beautiful. Keith, if someone feels overwhelmed right now, what would you want them to return to?

That they're not alone. That's what I want them to— I mean, everybody, I think, my opinion, I think everybody in this world feels overwhelmed at times. Mm-hmm. And there are differing degrees of it, right? But it doesn't matter. Like, if you feel overwhelmed, you feel overwhelmed for your reasons and your reasons only. I feel overwhelmed for my reasons and my reasons only. It's still feeling overwhelmed is the point. And what I'm getting at is knowing that others feel this way as well, you're not alone. Could be— this is what I do. I'm like, I'm not the only person in this, in this, in this beautiful world that is feeling this way. And sometimes we think that way, like, oh my gosh, I, you know, does anybody else feel the way I feel? Well, the reality is, yes, they do. You're not alone. Nobody is unique in this, in this, in this regard. We're all going down this, you know, on this journey of human existence. And there's been, and there are, there will be millions of people that are going to experience the same things that you're going to experience. It's okay, is my point.

I love that. And as you said, reach out to someone and just open up a little bit, huh?

Yeah, yeah. Have that network.

That might really help.

Have that network of people that— even if you don't have a network of people, just knowing it's okay And this is why, boy, we can go into a whole other podcast of this. This is why I— You'll be back. I have concerns over, you know, the younger, younger, younger generations because of what technology is doing these days. It is actually moving us away from that human interaction that you grew up with, I grew up with. We know how to handle it and interact with people. They don't. And that's why you're seeing just in the news recently, you know, Spain is going to prohibit phones for kids under 16 years old. It's a re— there's a reason they're doing that, because they're noticing that they're, they're not able to connect with people, and there's some psychological problems happening that way.

So the problem is not so much the phone but the social media on it, right?

Yeah, that's exactly right.

If he would only call, that would be fantastic.

That's exactly right. Yeah. My son, at times growing up, he said, Dad, I wish I grew up when you grew up. And I'm like, well, why? Because I feel the same way about you. Like, I wish I had all this cool stuff and all. He goes, no, no, no, because getting to know people and connecting with people You guys naturally did that because— and he realized it— because you had to. Now people hide behind all this stuff and you're not really making a human-to-human connection, and it's really difficult. And I thought, wow, I'm really proud of you because that's— that is— that is pretty deep when you think about it. When a teenager is telling you something like that.

Mm-hmm.

Around— they wish they— they wish they were forced into a situation to have human conversations with people in real time. That's what he was saying to me, essentially.

Because your son understood something. You know, our age, we see it as just as normal, as a given, right? But for somebody from today's generation, they look at— we went through school of hard knocks.

Yes.

We learned how to communicate. We learned how to have conflicts or not. But we actually were forced by life to learn those life skills, which the new generation will pay bitterly for it, very bitterly. Because it's not just that they don't know what to do, they wouldn't know how to do it even if you would take social media away and put them into rooms.

Yes.

They will probably go into depression on sight.

Yes, yes. I've actually had to teach people, different generations, how to make a phone call.

Yeah, I'm not surprised.

I'm not surprised either. I'm not surprised either. Right?

We're living in crazy interesting times at the same time.

Yeah. And then it's exciting times too, right? Because there's so much

Oh, absolutely.

So much cool stuff with technology these days. But there's always a— there's a— again, back to a balance, right? There's always a balance. And we just have to, as a human, figure out what that balance is for ourselves. And then we can exist in any world.

Yeah. With that, thank you so much for this conversation, Keith. It's been a great pleasure.

Yeah, Markus, it's been fun. Thank you so much for having me.

You're welcome. This was Remembering the Forgotten. A conversation held in clarity, not performance. If something in this exchange shifted how you see, let it stay with you. A few quiet pointers are waiting below.