#275: How To Automate Your Way To Profitability w/ Bryant Dunivan

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people podcast email app day brian spent ex mormon work life balance upbringing thought slash running calendar women nice months meeting pretty track

0:02

sweat equity podcast and streaming show pragmatic entrepreneurial vice with the jokes. I'm your host locksmiths into my right your left in the tube is Eric Readinger. Get it.

0:14

Let's get a little value add up front, we want to give you a little value added prop right up front, you need a geo targeting. By building website, you want to do some ads to a building only, I do actually

0:27

go to gimbal.com they're not a sponsor, that's GIMP. aol.com for geo fencing ads by building.

0:36

That's how we just add value right up top.

0:39

If you want to help out the show, you can subscribe. Rate review over on Apple iTunes, podcast app, we're on Spotify, you're dancing. Okay? We're adding values you're dancing is very white.

0:56

Arms only.

0:59

That's the mom dance. That's the 50 year old.

1:03

We're on YouTube, Facebook Vimeo hit us up with any questions, and we'll try to answer them on air.

1:10

This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN. Try expressvpn.com forward slash wait three months. Off anonymize web browsing.

1:21

Don't go incognito in Chrome. You still get tracked. Try expressvpn.com forward slash white get to three months free off an annual plan. Get that anonymized browser history. I don't have to call Eric when I die. Because all that stuff is already washed away. ExpressVPN does it for you.

1:39

Our next sponsor is try grasshopper.com forward slash sweat grasshopper business phone lines $75 on an annual plan, you need that side hustle. You're doing that Etsy store. You're selling your your upcycling, some stuff on Etsy, Pinterest, whatever you got from your side hustle. You need a business phone line. Try grasshopper.com forward slash sweat get 270 $5 off an annual plan. You need a real business phone line. stop sending stuff to your mobile phone your direct personal line. That's crazy too crazy. People can reverse Google your number and then find out where you live. Yeah, there we go fast. People search calm there's another value for what the dance.

2:25

So try grasshopper.com forward slash wait get to $75 off an annual plan scalable business phone lines. You can add lines to it. You can text I text from my desktop. It's not obvious I really liked

2:39

it. And lastly, Warby Parker Warby Parker trial.com, forward slash sweat. Like the slight pitch five prepares

2:50

your horse head. You got a pig over your head. You got a frying pan face.

2:57

We get drowned at home. We should do different animal heads will come up with different ones bear heads, otter heads, walrus, dolphin heads, whatever you are Warby Parker trial.com. forward slash sweatiness catch the hook up all or if you hear me by free pairs trying to own you put in your prescription online. While ah. Not only are we promoters, but we're members. That's Warby Parker. trial.com. forward slash sweat five repairs. tronic. Are we ready to get this started with our friend Brian? Donovan. Okay. Power about

3:33

sweat equity.

3:51

Brian Donovan, why don't you throw some plugs right up top for your firm and telling people what to do. And we just try to get that out of the way at the top because, you know, I could do pretty much just said his name. Yeah, that's nice. Brian in it. It kind of annoys me when people call you, Brian. I get annoyed for you. Because I know you're too nice to say anything. It's an old man. I know. I answered everything. Brian, Brian, Brian. Hey, you know, we're like Antonio Bryant. of attorneys. Yeah. I

4:28

know, he's back in the league now. Right. Is he No, he's no, no, no way. I thought he was getting looked at because someone got hurt. Oh, you're thinking of Antonio Brown? Probably. Yeah. He said Antonio Brown. No, Antonia Bryant. He was. He's Yeah. Antonio Bryant's like the opposite personality of you. Honestly.

4:47

He's like, fucking rising nervous personality. Antonio. Dude, you don't know. Nope. Former wide receiver for those listening. You played on like eight teams. He's the crazy Yeah, right. Yeah.

5:00

Yeah. And Brian is a Chicago guy. And I'm still pissed about the Bucs losing. We're coming off that, that horrible lights. We're Brady got all those timers, and all timers that's gonna happen. Yeah. Yeah. It's gonna happen when your offensive line doesn't block khaleel Mac and a bunch of guys but yeah, that's uh that's for another podcast Why don't you hit everybody with your plugs? For you your law firm? Yeah my law firm zone and Donovan. We're here in South Tampa, I do a lot of real estate, defense work as well as consumer protection. So pretty much dirt and debt. You can look us up online at wind donovan.com. Or just give us a call 813-502-6768 Yeah, here's the phone number. Most people do. Yeah. In your for the state of Florida all your service for the state of Florida. We have people that listen outside of the area, but I just try to make that pretty clear. All our kazakstan listeners Don't bother. We're being Stan, surprisingly, hey, whatever. If it's bought listeners, it's spot listeners, whatever our numbers are going up, up up. And I like it. Exactly.

6:12

So I was I was telling air before you got on your you're kind of my go to productivity guy.

6:20

As far as you, you, your owner, operator of a small law firm, you guys have been doing really well the last, since I've known you probably the last four or five years. And it's really cool to see that incremental. I mean, this shows really about the small minutia in a kind of continuous improvement stuff. I thought I was good on the productivity apps and integrations and all those things.

6:44

But I go to you for a lot of like, I need some ideas on how to do this. Like you have an AI assistant. Right?

6:54

Yeah, yeah, use what x.ai it's basically a virtual assistant. So like, if you make a meeting with them, it looks like a lady's emailing you back. Oh, what was it? frant?

7:06

x x.ai. It's pretty awesome. So just a lot of reviews.

7:11

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Sorry, go you get Amy or Amy or Andrew or whatever. So you know, if you prefer a gender as an assistant, you can doesn't really matter which one you use. But it takes the scheduling out of your hands, it bugs the hell out of people pretty much. Is there a lot of setup involved with it? Or is it just kind of set up for your industry? Or how's it work? If it's not set up for any industry, it goes off like your Google Calendar, or I think it integrates now with Outlook too. So you're able to kind of give it constraints, hey, I want to schedule this meeting in the morning. Use like a special word or whatever, for whatever meeting you're trying to do. And it'll just schedule based on your availability. So take your calendar when you want it set.

7:54

Soon as I have stuff to do.

7:56

As soon as I need that. Yeah, but I mean, that's that thing of like, hey, might as well look into it. Now. If you if you're if you're listening, or you Eric or myself, we're setting ourselves up to a lot of work starting to I can feel like kind of coming in as Florida reopens.

8:15

A lot of people are getting kind of fatigued over COVID right now. Which is doesn't really make a lot of sense. It's just people are like, fuck it.

8:24

But the business is starting to open back up. I feel like all over the country, I get that general feeling. just reading what I'm reading and listening to podcasts and stuff. And

8:36

if anything, the time to set it up is when you are kind of slow. Yeah. And I mean, you know, we're always going into meetings and looking to show people stuff that they probably don't know about. It's another one in the breadbasket. You know, it's like, we're talking about going somewhere where it's like, let's just get in the room. So we can go through and you know, say you could use this, this and this and it's just like people like, don't want to do it that way. But there's so much stuff out there AI stuff that you can use, though, the interesting one about this, why it's better than calendly and

9:08

acuity is, is that it looks like a human's really doing the emailing. Ah, so the responses are hence why you have names like a guy pretty intuitive, it'll respond if you say something kind of off the wall and they respond to it or Now sometimes it gets lost but it'll ask you as the scheduler What do you want to do with this kind of thing? How should I respond my needs in that email over there, test that thing out, it's pretty sweet. Like I that's I bring it up at the top of the show because I think it's one of those like little things if you spent like an hour getting used to using it. It probably would save a lot of people time if you're kind of in that professional services business where man you can waste a lot of fucking time just coordinating meetings and for lawyers that I mean when you're running your own small you have what you have like five five people in house as well.

10:00

Got a staff of five with two attorneys. So we're pretty busy. You're taking, you're getting them at their best dollar per hour, because you're taking that off of someone's plate, right? It's like your best, your best hour per hour. This is how I always think about if you manage anybody, how can I get them at their best dollar per hour? Okay, well, this app kind of cost benefit if I learn this app. And the cost benefit of that is this person can spend more time going over contracts as a paralegal instead of setting up meetings that I'm getting way better value yet? Well, we should ask what the cost is, if any, on the X. Yeah, I think I use a free plan still really mean, you get a certain number of scheduled meetings? And I don't, I don't think I'm there with it. Because I do it for a lot of my intake. That's how I've automated, like, when people fill out my, my contact form on the website, it'll automatically reply with that address kind of triggered to it. And once I started doing that, I started noticing more conversions on leads and all that kind of good, good nerdy stats. But yeah, I think because I'm using it in such a select environment, I'm not really having to pay for it. Yeah, the here's the other thing you kind of you got me conditioned on and when I did this as a habit, I was much more efficient as well is tell us how you go through your your emails in the day. Because look, email is that thing of like, it's not sexy to talk about. Everybody has to deal with it. I just spent money like Friday night, and I zeroed out all my emails and I go cool. I just did that one big glut while watching finals or something. And I was like, I'm just gonna

11:36

start Ziering out again, but you've got a way of doing your emails, which I've heard other people that are super productive do and I'll let you kind of explain it. Yeah, I'll hit it for maybe a half hour when I get in, like nine to 930. I'll knock out some emails, maybe. But right before lunch, right after lunch, I'll do another chunk of them. And then after that, end of the day, I'll try to clear out or formulate kind of my list for the next day what I need to get done, cuz I have to delete it, or you know, I have to get out of the window, or else it just takes over the day. Right? If you're that guy that's obsessed with checking emails on your phone all day, you can't, it doesn't clear your brain enough to be the attorney a lot of the time, right? To be the best that you need to be right now. So he basically goes, you know, breakfast lunch dinner on it. I thought it was going to be much more complicated. It's more elaborate? Well, no, a lot of answers are simple execution and habits are kind of the difficult part right? Or, and so like, I found that to be when I really stuck to it.

12:40

Because it's like having a dirty house. You know, you have a bunch of stuff around it's like, makes things worse, like it's a little bit you're not as productive when you're out today. First thing cleanup, and then your mind is clear to Yeah, yeah, I it's kind of you're cleaning your inbox, it's kind of the same thing. Oh, in a way. I mean, you figured metaphor would be like a dirty house? Well, the thing, the thing that's tough to

13:06

the thing that's kind of tough to deal with when you're running your own business is you're always trying to bring business in on like a if you're any kind of professional services. So you're always kind of like, I need to be, you know, I always need to be, you know, client facing and I need to be like, or customer facing if you maybe your ecommerce store, something like that. Or, you know, you always need to be hitting them back within X amount of time. And you find out that like, two things a like, people don't need the response as quickly as you do it. Sometimes it can only it can make you look too eager. Like we talked about the last podcast where there's a dating, there's a fine line between persistence and stalking. Yeah, well, it wasn't dating, we're talking about me trying to get a job. Well, that too, I mean, going to get a job, if you're too eager. And that and your two, there's a fine line between like being beautiful, and being like soccer again. And I think it's the same thing with sometimes like getting right back to people, you're kind of coaching them out. The second part is like, you kind of coach them up to how that relationship is gonna work. Yeah, you don't want them expecting you to answer back in 30 seconds every time because then when you actually are busy, like, well, what's the deal here? You know, I'm gonna find somebody else who can do it that way. Right? If they get too used to that instant response, and you're stuck in an emergency situation, they're like, Hey, you didn't answer in 15 minutes? What's going on? Right? And I've lost all faith. And no, that's not a reasonable expectation for him. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a weird one. I had to learn over time that like, because I'd be really good a couple of days in a row. And then, you know, a lot of days that'd be like, I'm not, I can't check email today because I have to just focus on work. And that's just a bad way to kind of go about everything, like

14:53

really blocking out time to actually get the work you need to get done. Yeah. Well, now that you've got it cleared out, that now it's about diligence.

15:00

No daily, just doing what Brian does. I'm on a five day streak. Good. Still zero down. Good. Yeah. And if you're trying to avoid, like on your phone, just use, I use an iPhone, it's got like these screentime settings it like makes the email app disappear if you're trying to get out of that lifestyle. What?

15:17

What's the sound did not know that. Yeah, it's something it's like screentime or something? Sure I know the screen time. But you can make app Yeah, basically. Yeah, for some reason, my email just goes away. I don't know if it's like a parental control thing I did. I used to listen to a podcast called cortex. And that's what it was one of their life hacks. Okay, spend too much time in an app that just disappears from your phone until the next day. So that was something you did you put in the settings for gi or whatever, just for my work. Okay. Yeah, just for my work email. And at that point, the app disappears. I can't check it. So I can't kind of obsess about what's going on about. Interesting. Yeah, they can do that. Yeah. And I mean, look, I find myself happier. Sometimes when I don't, you don't have all those days, hit me up all the time. Use slack as well, for your inter communication, right for your office. I'm sure you have that setup. That's interesting. I didn't know you could do that. See, this is this is why I came on the show, dropping knowledge what any other, like, whatever you want to call hacks that

16:19

you use every day?

16:21

Well, I used to use, I used to track every minute of my business to get it. If you're trying to get productivity and trying to figure out where all this what you need, you got to do it. I mean, I I tracked almost religiously for probably a year, just what I was doing and found 30 40% of my time was administrative crap that I couldn't make money off. Once I started narrowing down what that was, I started delegating it out to people who, you know, could handle that for me. So I'm focused more on the billing, again, one of those new client retention, that kind of thing, you know, something that makes money versus cost money. Yeah, one and again, one of those things that really smart, everybody kind of knows they need to track their time and where it's being spent, even if you're working in, you know, corporate position, middle management, or whatever. You should be kind of tracking your time every day. hard to do. For a lot of people, if you're not used to the sort of self awareness that's necessary. It's hard to like, be honest with what you're doing. But even try their time. And it's like, well, that was I was doing, you know, well, it's like, Hey, this is for you. But to Billy, for anybody that you to build off the podcast we had yesterday. Yeah, it's hard to do. But that can be defeatist talk. No, I know, you know, like for sure. The way to do it is just start by blocking out like, Hey, what did you do for that? Like an hour? You know, right. Yeah. And just start there. And then I'm sure you start? Or maybe instead of every minute of every day you do every four hours? Yeah, but I've done I'm gonna I got six blocks of four hours, what are those gonna look like? That sort of thing. Start there, and then break it down more if you want. Yeah, I think I've told you about the timely app. It's like a Swedish or Norwegian company. Basically, you it'll track all the screens you have. So if you're, if you're like me, where you're running from one thing to the other, like I'm spinning plates, I start one plate, I'm gonna go to the next plate. gonna spin that one, I'll do the third plate, spin that one, I'll come back to the first one. That's a lot of my days kind of juggling between those. And I, I rarely take time to go back. Like, while I'm doing it, go Okay, spent five minutes on this five minutes on this. That's something I got to work on. But the timely app, what it'll do is you can go back in Oh, go, here's what your desktop screen or your phone was on.

18:42

It, you can also do a geo tracking. Hey, you were physically here. So you have like a low jack on yourself. It does snapshots of your screen also. Right?

18:52

snaps, there's tools like that it might be able to do that timely that I don't know if timely does that but it will be like you were you are in your email app for X amount of time. So you can go okay, I definitely just sat there that whole time doing emails, you know, and you can go back and kind of retro actively do it. For those that don't do it every minute. Yeah, that's a little. Yeah. But it helps that my day is, you know, I built 1.1 You know, I think of a day and point one, so that was easier for me. I used I think it was like a whatever you call them in Chrome extensions, it gives you a little button to click on things that made it a lot easier for

19:30

those apps that you know, track your screen and what you're doing. If you see ESPN, 24 minutes in the last hour, you probably got a little sidetrack. That's how mine Yeah, and the one that pops up on your phone, you know, by default every week, and it tells you how big of a shithead you are, right?

19:48

The same screentime map being a dick you're down four hours from your usual 12 on your phone, right? Whoa, what and I realized like, Oh, I'm not actually on my phone. I'm like, listen to a podcast. It'll count that or something. You

20:00

Yeah, so I don't wear the kid naked. I don't let you guys let your kids take a phone. I

20:06

I don't I don't trust that. I've made a rule.

20:10

Yeah, I know but I'm trying to his kids are about my my kids age. So it's kind of like, I try to put it now I'm trying to put in their brain. They don't ever take dad's phone.

20:22

rule to have. But here's a dad life hack for you guys. If you download the shortcuts app on an iPhone, yeah, anytime they open up their games, it automatically goes to Guided Access. You can set it up. You can't get your pictures can't call people. Keep it safe from clients. Nice. That's a good one. I've got the face ID thing. They can't even open it.

20:41

Yeah, mine somehow get in? I don't know. Maybe they look too much like you. And it just

20:47

they've got printouts of your face that they're just holding up in the front of it. They they go to my photo? Yeah. Well, I mean, there's a lot of work life balance stuff you've told me about too. I mean, like running, running your own business, a lot of people don't realize like, you really got to hone in that work life balance stuff, or you're gonna, like, I've definitely been there, I burnt out, I used to burn out all the time, like every month or two, just trying to do too much and not taking that time. Like, that's good to hear that you've assessed where you spent your time. And then like, literally looked at it and went, Okay, I need to attack this problem. And that, I think, not to where you you told me your upbringing is the Mormon upbringing. And I think that's where you get the due diligence of all that. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Yeah. A little bit. It's all regimented. You know, there's rules for everything, you tend to become rule oriented. So this kind of productivity stuff easier. We can cut out any of that religion stuff if you want. If you don't want it out there. I don't know. Is it tonight? I'm not anymore. I mean, now did? Yeah.

21:56

Yeah, I think finding those that balance, too. So you have to find that work balance. And then you got to find a work life balance as well. And I feel like you've done that in spades. To the point where when we're talking about stuff, oh my god, I gotta get my shit together.

22:14

But I mean, like, you've got the life part. It was hard for me man, it cuz you can see running a business small firm, you can really just focus on it all the time. And if you're not recharging, you're not serving people. Right? You've got to take some time for you. That was the hard part for me to tell. I just started scheduling weekends out, you know, it's just on the calendar. I'm out, you know, leave a day earlier, whatever. Yeah. Tell us about that a little bit more like, What? What is that? Like? I mean, you guys can spend your nights poring over cases and whatnot. Yours aren't? I assume? Because it's real estate. It's not as like,

22:49

time intensive. Yeah, it's not super urgent as maybe some other kind of practice fields or practice areas.

22:59

But I could be wrong, you tell me. I mean, you know, my stuff tends to be, you know, calendar data. I'm calendaring things out, February, March of next year already. So I've got a good six, eight months lead time on things where I'm able to navigate my calendar that way. Jesus Christ that I mean, yeah, that's great. Well, that's what I mean. I that's what I tell people with marketing. We can get this six months ahead of time if I had my druthers, but it's, it's one of those things where it's a little tough.

23:27

It's I almost don't want to know what I'm gonna be doing then. It's not gonna be that though. That's the thing. Right? I'll do that too. I don't want my whole life fence scheduled out. Yeah, you know, but it it's, it's just a plain nice framework, right. It's a guide, you know?

23:43

Yeah, it's a guideline, not necessarily hard. That's rules. Unless it's, you know, a three week jury trial then I'm going in February. That's on the calendar, it's gonna go the deposition flights, that kind of stuff can tend to change especially now no one knows what the hell is going to be going on in six months.

24:00

So are you guys all all zoom conferences still? You getting back in the courthouse? Or you have to get back in the courthouse? Yeah, no, we're zoom pretty much some telephonic thing. Not? We're not in person yet. But it's supposed to come to and we'll see.

24:17

So going back to kind of the the exhausted kind of work life balance. Tell us. Tell us about that. You're kind of in the midst of that. And you I know. You've got a creative outlet as well playing music. Like I've got for stand up. You know, we've got for comedy over here.

24:38

And you I think you're telling me you found like that you weren't doing anything musically. It was like it. It had an overall effect on you, right? Oh, yeah. If I wasn't playing music, or lately it's been running. If I'm not getting out and doing something for me, it's just you're drained across the board on everything. So I had to like carve out time like for the music stuff.

25:00

Trying to record something new a month, just affiliate rule just focus on a little bit. Just one, you know, it's not too much anyone can do it. Or get out for three miles a day, do a quick run, it takes 3040 minutes back to the house or back to whatever you were doing. Oh, yeah, we're like how I'm trying to do it to break it all out. We're fitness accountability buddies, because I know Yeah, I can see is on the on the watch app on the activity app. And then I have to send one of those.

25:27

We have to send one of those

25:29

pre pre automate, like the automated replies that Ernie, so. I don't know I ignore your Oh, yeah. But I like sitting those every time I see those pop up. It's just because like, I literally have never got any of them. Really, though. Oh, no, I think I would do that's fine. I think it is. You get a lot of random. You see my schedule be a lot of randomness. Like it'll be like, I'll do a lot, you know, throughout the day kind of thing. Try to get like 3am Yoga, like, Where did this come from? Yeah, that's when I'm like, I can't sleep. I might as well do something I hate Oh, don't make me go to sleep hopefully. Yeah. I look I like I said, I'm trying to get more to your kind of scheduling life out a bit. Knowing that it's not, it's definitely not going to be that way because the romantic side of you goes, man, I don't want I don't want to be like, I don't want to put a governor on myself crying but it really is the opposite. It really affords you the freedom to go do all the things that you get pissed at. You're not doing later.

26:34

right do you do? What's your taking work home?

26:39

scenario you're ever doing that? Are you kind of say I'm doing when I'm at the office? Yeah, for big things. I'll bring him home like trials. I'm always it seems like I'm always preparing for those at home. But for the most part, once I leave the office, I try to leave everything behind now. Again, didn't use too but ever since I started it's been a lot better. COVID made a little more difficult though when I was quarantining not in the office. It seems like work just surrounded me with everything. Yeah, their lens. It made me more aware of it. Yeah. I couldn't keep track a week, man. Tell me about it. Yeah, yeah. Every day we kind of blend it. It was like being a sophomore in college. When you're like, well, it's funny. It's up and you're just like, what is today? What is today? So he had he had Coronavirus and I got the cooties. He

27:25

you and I didn't realize like the fogginess aspect of it until you brought it up like three weeks later. You're like I actually feel good now, Mike? Oh, yeah. You were like, oh, weird for like three weeks. just totally flighty and not paying like, I had no idea. I just thought you're being lazy. I thought I was too. That's what messed me up because I thought it was just like, it's like, Come on, get it together kind of thing that I'm like, kind of coaching myself up and like what's fucking wrong with me? And then I was listening to my friend, Andrew Santana's podcast, whiskey, ginger. And he talks about, I mean, this kind of confirmed it really, because he's like, I've been following you for like the last like four weeks of this. And I was like, Oh, he's a very similar kind of guy to me. We're like, he'll, he goes for anger jogs as well. Uh huh. So, I don't know if Brian does that as much. I feel like you're pretty mild mannered guy. But we all got some kind of I don't know if I've ever seen an angry Mormon if I'm being honest. He's

28:25

running down the street and well, any Well, okay, yeah, a nice Brian's nice, though. Angry ex Mormon, I guess. Yeah. You're You're out of the church. Okay, well still raised. I'm assuming, you know, there's good parts to it. But everybody's got a little like, men that are working. I assume there's some kind of anger or rage inside you got to figure out how to kind of quell a bit and yeah, look, I got a punching bag, though. Yeah, I mean, fuck yeah, I look, that's a metaphor, talked about it on this podcast. I think a big issue and like, this is not gonna be PC at all. But a big issue I think with a lot of women in their 30s and 40s right now is they don't have a lot. They have a lot of rage, and they don't do it. They don't have any physical thing to do to take it out on something. I find the women I know that have that balance where they go I do kickboxing. I do Jiu Jitsu. I do stuff like that. I go on a walk for an hour. I find those gal pals of mine. They they are way more balanced. And sure, it doesn't have to be just women, any women or anybody with any buddies not playing themselves, you know, they it's just it sits inside you. It's just like this little thing is builds up and building it's like until you get it out. It's gonna be in there. It's gonna affect your life. Yeah, but you want to tell us if it does or not. I run the I run the opinion that women are actually angry. They're men just in general. That's just hate women. I don't I don't I love women. I'm just saying like, this is what I see it. This is like being the retarded Jason Bourne. I can't not observe stuff when I'm out in public. And so like

30:00

I just this is the general feeling I get. This is why this is what I'll talk about on stage like, yeah, I've generalizing and being kind of just open ended about it. But I feel that pressure, it's almost it's a feelings based thing. Like you can't. I don't it's a pattern that I'm recognizing, but it's not. Same thing. All right, I have the bit about

30:23

Oh, shit better get that. All right, yeah. Just you know, being angry. Just being angry in the car. And you have to see the person's face. Right? When you're pissed off at traffic, arguably, way more dangerous. Yeah, to go drive up and see their face. Right. And just getting that.

30:40

That's a feeling I do it. That's a feeling I feel everybody else does. I did it on stage. And it was like one of those things where like, people are like, people will go Yes, like, yeah, I can have that. So I'm saying like, I just feel like, I don't think this was such a thing. Back in the day. I feel like the softer we get as a society. We're inside rent, air conditioned all day. We're social media bugs everybody out. It's that's that social dilemma. documentary on Netflix is basically it tells you what it's doing to arouse like, all these feelings of just like FOMO and you know, you're not good enough. And really, like if you're making more than what is it you make more than 30 grand a year you're like in the top 1% of the world right and crazy like that. Like being being poor now isn't nearly as bad as it used to be. You know 50 years ago when you're worried about like, paying for food and stuff as much food cheap now like there's a lot of things where we don't look at it analytically we get these feelings from other entities and I feel like it hits women more because they're better on the feeling side. Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I just like to the times now you're probably right do affect women more but in general, anybody who's like I just think guys have more outlets now that are normal, you know to like to work out or whatever to put your bag like for women it's kind of abnormal to go to kickboxing like the old feeling and go for a walk good Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Like exercise whatever me Yeah, my Sprint's man I make myself these Sprint's good you know whenever I'm I'm pissed off you just yeah dude on your level yet off but what you don't you don't you don't have a short sprint. You didn't buy a set of cones and take your kids out and run drills like I did.

32:33

I got there yet man, my daughter like setting up the cones and I put them in a square and I do the the Sprint's like I did in football you drill? Yeah, I'll just do like, I'll do a bunch of those. The lateral speed is getting really good. Yeah. I mean, look, when Bruce Bowen out the defensive basketball court.

32:52

Yeah. Wow. You know, I used Tonio spurs. You know, it's no one like, Bruce, right?

32:59

We play pickup All my friends are like, man, don't cover Come on. Don't cover me. Because I'm like, I suck it often. So I got to do whatever I can. Yeah, you're a football guy who plays basketball. Yeah, I got that lateral movement. But talk about like, talk to me about Oh, I almost forgot. Or we have to ask everybody this question. If you could give yourself advice at 13 years old. Like there's a third, you can travel back in time, and you can go talk to your 13 year old self. What advice would you give yourself?

33:31

Don't be so serious, man. Don't just go on that. Like, I went straight from college to law school and like, follow that whole plan. Okay to live a little, you know, perfect. Take the sixth year, you know, why not? That's what I tell my kids. You're gonna go through life, and people are gonna convince you that Oh, things are so sick. Like, I'm like, No, nobody has it figured out. Nobody knows what they're doing. Like just it's not as intense as it seems it no matter what people will try and convince you up. Well, if you don't mind me, don't focus on growing up, man. Just Just enjoy the time you're gonna happen. Yeah, you're you're at where you're supposed to be kind of thing that whole Dr. Seuss kind of rhetoric of like, you'll grow at your own pace, whatever that is, but don't try to force it. You know, is that from a Dr. Seuss book? The places you'll go? Yeah, it's like, wherever you are. That's where you'll be kind of theory. And if you try to force it too much one way it can. If you party too, if you're like, I need to go be the party person in high school or whatever that can. You can force that right. It's not gonna be really hard, right? It's really hard to figure out who you are, you know, when you're younger, But, look, I feel like there I just really kind of got to understand a lot about myself the last couple of years. You know, like how I actually work by working on a lot of that mental stuff.

34:56

If you don't mind me asking, do you think being so serious, especially

35:00

That upbringing, like, I'm just assuming, because all the Mormon friends or ex Mormon friends have had, they've had that kind of like, very structured lifestyle very closed off from any, any kind of extreme kind of, there's not a lot of how about this? There's not a lot of ex Mormon probably like, dirt bike guys, you know, you know, like, there's not I mean, I mean the game, I think like Utah's like, it's it's a lot of that too. I hear the like the comedy clubs are awesome, because it's a lot of people that are like, not either ex Mormon or like,

35:40

they're just like, not part of that. So they go way the other way from the environment. They're around. But you tell me do you think your upbringing had a lot to do with you just maybe being so serious, to the point where you had to kind of catch yourself?

35:54

No, I? Well, maybe some of that it's hard to say I grew up in the Midwest. So it's kind of a lot of that Midwestern work ethic just kind of shines through. You know, if you're not working on something, what are you doing? Especially I grew up in a farm town, so everyone seemed to be, you know, okay. After school, what are you going to do? We're going to go work in a field or we're going to cut up lumber and bring it to this pile. You know, it was a very regimented kind of way of life. So maybe some of it religions something, not just your surroundings. You know, I forgot about your rural upbringing that that definitely has probably a lot more to do with it. Because, look, I got home from school it was like you're playing a sport every day. Right? It's the right fit my family implemented that and I think that's good for me, but, like going to chop wood. I'd be like, get the fuck out of here. What are you talking about? Do you have to mobile you know, either

36:46

playing with playing in the in the woods or helping your friend moveable woodpile, you know, that kind of went those different ways. I go in the swamp, and near my friend Ben Schmidt's house, there's a swamp across the street. And then we try to find the the random playboys, they're just hanging out. Nice, guys. Oh, yeah. There's always some weird everybody's had that experience. Do I find that they're about our age or older you? You always came across something in the woods or swamp or like, movie idea the porn fairy that leaves magical packages for prepubescent, but that's a weird shared experience that I've heard from like, everybody across the country, like, you know, did you find anything out in the woods where you were? Any homeless any good stuff craziness. It was we were going into the woods looking for like rattlesnakes and stuff like stupid things that could have got killed. Like, you shouldn't do that kind of thing. But we thought we were young and invincible. Why not? Yeah, yeah. I can't I don't imagine I always imagined you. You're from Chicago. But not like Chicago land, which is like it's sprawling. I've been out in like Palatine in like, taking the trains out to those like random Burg. Yeah. Yeah. No. humblebrag Yeah. June the xanies. out in St. Charles or whatever. It was right around St. Charles. He was in a small town called elburn. Well, they printed t shirts when they got a stoplight.

38:13

Oh my god. Do they remember law? Yeah, that's my headshots in zanies. In Old Town Who? Yeah. Did you remember his car driving bit? Yeah. Ah, yeah. I mean, that one. It's probably been stolen a bunch by now. But yeah.

38:28

We're we're gonna close this out. Any, any anything you want to talk about before we close this guy out? No, man, if people are interested in kind of learning more about productivity and how I do it. Look at the core Tex podcast. Everyone should check it out. It's interesting. I'm gonna get you to teach a course I think to other lawyers. I think that's the next level on how to how to run a how to run the show. That's where you make that one day. That's where you make that passive income on the E learning stack. We get a little green screen in that office. get you set up nice

39:00

and poor. Yeah, man.

39:03

All right. Well, thanks for coming on, buddy. And we'll get you a bang for having we'll get you in person next time. I know. We've been trying to get you on and

39:12

yeah. Next time, I think we'll start getting more people in person.

39:18

All right, brother. All right, man. Thank you.