In this episode we delve into the business world, stressing the importance of self-value and approaching work as a partnership. Join us as we explore independence and freedom in the workplace.
Congratulations to you. Coming to you from the love of CD Valena Georgia, with my guy here, j Henry J, coming from the Wendy City of Chicago. J, how's it going?
Speaker 2:Cold man. It's cold and windy now.
Speaker 1:So we should add. We should add in addition to cold and windy city of Chicago, and joined here by my Yoda cup. You know what I mean? It was coffee time J. I don't know if you can see that Yoda best right there. It's probably backwards. It looks like it's backwards on that side there, but it's a Yoda best cup right there.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. It's backwards, so you straight back. You know, man, if it was backwards, that mean that's the right way. With the cup, man, you're good.
Speaker 1:You know it's. It's funny because I read this article. We've got an article on the screen here with this guy and let me see if I can even attempt to. It's like in our Nauranya Murthy and this brought up a an interesting subject here that we're we're going to discuss and that's kind of work like balance. And me and you've talked about this before.
Speaker 1:When it came to the gig economy, we talked about it in certain ways, just because in our, in our world, he's advocating for the 70 hour work week for people I think it was like under 30. He did give it like an age, because I felt like there is some it that's kind of necessary to a certain degree, because I feel like you're getting it in, you're trying to find yourself for your younger man. You know what I mean. You still have a lot of that, that hustle. You're getting it in, you're not really settled and having a lot of the things that kind of anchor you down. When you get older, when people tend to have families and obligations and stuff like that, I kind of anchor them down schedule wise. When you're young, tend to have a little bit more of that free time, energy, all that good stuff.
Speaker 1:Now what's interesting is a lot of people in this, in this generation. They're not really going for it and I and I applaud that. So what I see is a lot of them being like no, we're just not, we're just not going to do it, we're not going. They're looking at people from previous generations that are worked their freaking lives away and have nothing to show for it or to barely get him by you know right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, uh, work and money and I just talked to some friends about this is work and money. Don't love you the way you love it. You know what I mean. Yes, they will. You will be out of here. You could work for a company 15, 20 years, jay, you can be out of here whether that company is laying people off. Look at AI. Right, if AI makes your job not necessary, why would they keep you? Would you keep you if it was your company? You probably wouldn't. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:So when you're thinking about things like that, you got to think about the fact that if you could, you can work your entire life and then anything can happen broken bone If it's a job, we got to do something physical death in the family, maybe you got to step away for a month or so. And then people get a little funny. These attitudes are where you thought it was a family, you thought it was love, right. And those attitudes change a little bit. Like, hey, when we well, you know we do love you, but you weren't here the last month, you like, why did death in the family had to step away? I had things I had to do. Well, we need that productivity now Other 10 to 15 years you put in ahead of this don't aren't really going to mean much.
Speaker 1:So let's talk a little bit about the for one, the difference, jay, because you know, when we were growing up it was a kind of like you just need to do it type of world we lived in right, like it was a do it or else type of world we live in, versus now these kids will just walk out. You know, I've seen from managing now, from how I was managed, is I'm seeing I have to manage a lot differently now because people will definitely walk out on you.
Speaker 1:What is your thoughts on, kind of like how that was different for us and then we'll kind of get into his 70 hour work week situation.
Speaker 2:Well, you know me and you are generation X and we come from that era.
Speaker 2:Like it's kind of a funny era we both come from because we saw the traditional standard of you know, the nine to five job of you know, and then the process of what we would go through to you know, get a degree, go to school, go to college, get a degree. And then, because we earned a four year degree, it basically was a unofficial message to you know possible employers that, okay, this person had enough diligence and discipline to stay in an institution to learn something for four years and earn a degree, for a certification or whatever you want to call it, and that was the basic model for the workforce world in our time, in our parents time, in our parents parents time. You know, to get a job at one point in time was a big deal, you know. To work for a company that made you know, if not billions of dollars, millions of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars, that was a big deal back then, you know, especially for our people, right? So you know, to even work at an important you know, because I mean we rarely would get a promotion, you know, or something like that. I mean if we did, we had to have you know, three certification, four degrees, eight more certifications on the side. You know it's like we had to. We had to really bust our butts.
Speaker 2:So all that aside, or whatever, you know, the political stuff aside or whatever like that, that was just the model back then, whereas now there are more platforms for people to be their own boss. It's not to say that the grind is not going to be there.
Speaker 1:Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2:And it's not to say that you still won't have to put in you know certain time and certain you know certain things in order to that grind to be there in your youth or whatever like that. But it's what are you putting the grind in for? Because and I know you don't want to touch on this to ship, it was kind of dipping our toes in the water with the 70 hour work we were with this man is doing. Here's the thing there were jobs out there that existed, where I don't know if it was 70 hours a week, but it was all going near that, you know, depending on the job. Like case in point, I want to say years ago, way before the pre pandemic, I was driving for Lyft and this woman, this young lady, got in my car and she looked. She looked like she was sick, you know, but she was just really tired and I said are you all right? And you know, we got into a conversation and I said well, what do you do for a living, if you don't mind me asking? And she says I'm in an international investment banker and I, that's what I'm saying. So what I'm saying is is that jobs like this already exists. They've been existing for a long time. You know, depending on how successful you wish to be, it's going to require more grind, more hours. So those there are certain departments or of the workforce world that already exist where more will be required of you, you know more will be. You know there's more of you that will be needed as far as hours, time, focus.
Speaker 2:That it's just, it goes without saying. So the fact I mean that he wants to add 70 hours, it's a little. And then it's the time that we're in now, where it you know what, not even the time that we're in now, it's people are either going to work or they're not. Max, you know what I'm saying. And the fact that you want to add 30 more hours on a week, like bro, like you know, honestly, that's not. It's like somebody slapping a band-aid on something, saying here's going to fix the problem. It's not. And I'm looking at how old this guy is and, yeah, he's coming from a different generation. So he, you know, he's coming from this generation where we need to be, and he probably might even say some stuff that we might agree with, like the discipline, the focus, the drive. There are some things. That's all right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll have to do the article we're definitely going to go through, because there are some things, jay, they're good back and forth, right, he, I think from his perspective, and you know what? Let's scroll down, let's see.
Speaker 2:From his perspective.
Speaker 1:it's more so for young Indians here, because this is in India, that's where he's based at, and you see a lot of this in Asian cultures in general.
Speaker 1:There's like the 996, that's nine to nine, six days a week. By the way, that's a solid 72 hours right there. So basically saying they he wants them to work 70 hours a week to help India's economy in general, to help kind of raise it out of, to turn it into like a capitalist, like not necessarily powerhouse, but, like he said, a global economic leader. That's what he wants to do and I wanted to kind of frame it in a certain way because I don't want to make it just seem like the guy's just some kind of tyrant. But at the end he has his motivation, can be good in the sense of he's hoping to uplift this whole country with like a harder work ethic and then kind of lift them out of a certain type of poverty situation which would be different than India, than it would be in here.
Speaker 1:But at the same time, the problem that exists is still only having so much life, right, no matter where you are on earth, you only have so much life. And I think a lot of people in these Asian, especially a lot of the younger people, if you look at how a lot of them are even bucket on the 996 situation, they're not even they're like no, that's crazy amount of hours and recently in Korea they wanted to, I think, change the work week to about 60 hours or so. It was 70 hours. I got to look and see what that was, but they wanted to add some hours and people kind of bucked on that a little bit. And I think that what it comes down to is preference. Jay, you got to look at your life and look at what your preference is right, like, what is your overall arch and goal, and I think you touched on something that is very interesting in the sense of it doesn't mean the work stops.
Speaker 1:Just because you're not working for somebody else for a 70, 80 hours a week doesn't mean you're sitting at home eating Cheetos on the couch, watching television at a whole time, A lot of times, Jay it can mean you're working harder in other areas because those other areas might not be underpaid areas.
Speaker 1:If you're working on a business and you're trying to get that business off the ground, you own a job in those first few years. You don't own a business, bro. You own a job and you're going to that job, and it's an underpaid job. You're going there to that business, you're trying to get it off the ground. You don't have that stability that somebody could just go sit in the office for 60, 70 hours a week and have. But you're building towards your future in hopes that you can have a little bit more freedom in your life. Does that make sense, Joe?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Look, you want, listen, we all want, even back in the day when I was working, the nine to five jobs. All of our goals were financial freedom, that whole thing where we want to be able to I don't care what kind of nine to five job somebody's working, if they're in a position where they have more freedom to move around to do what it is they would like to do, take a vacation at the drop of a hat, even tell certain people, look, I ain't coming in the day, I'm taking the day off, I'm doing what I need to do, and say it with confidence like that. I mean, who wouldn't take that opportunity? And so we're in an age right now where trying to keep it clean on your show, we're in an age right now where people are realizing I want to work for myself, I want to do for myself, you know, to the point where it doesn't feel like a job or whatever like that. You know I want to be, I want to be at a level of FU, you know where.
Speaker 2:If you tell me something and I don't agree with it, I'm not worried about the next words coming out my mouth affecting my livelihood. I'm not worried about the next words coming out my mouth affecting my promotion or my bonus or whatever like that. I'm not worried about that Cause. See, I'm at a level now of, like, I'm going to say what's on my mind and if I don't agree with it, guess what? I'm up, I'm an asset to your company or to whatever you got going on. And if you don't agree with that, hey, that's fine, you don't have to agree with it. I got enough going on in my bank account and in my personal life to the point where I can leave. I'm good, you know, whatever like that. So yeah, I mean, that's just how I feel about that.
Speaker 1:I mean when we come to like. Let's talk a little bit about the difference between the, the fine line between laziness and wanting the freedom in life. Right, because? In the back of the day, if you were under anything under 40, my day, let's Lord forbid. You were 25, 30 hours, that was straight laziness in my house. Oh, it'd be like you're just lazy.
Speaker 1:What do you do? Why are you not at work? Right, you know what I mean? That's kind of how the thought pattern was. Now we've seen these kids and a lot of people. You see people like influencers. These kids are using social media to pop off different little businesses here and there and a lot of people are have a lot of.
Speaker 1:I will say it's not necessarily get off my lawn ish, but I do see a lot of people from an older generation looking down on that kind of work, like kids should just be in factories or only really hard work out there is construction on the corner or if they're doing, if they're in the office almost a hundred hours a week, you know there, why are you going home at five? You should be going home at six, seven, like the rest of us type thing. You know these jobs. Once again I'm gonna repeat this several times throughout this show money and work doesn't love you the way that you love it. You gotta find out what you like, because for some people, jay, if you like the job, in my opinion all bets are off like, because then it's not really like we're doing right, Like if you enjoy the job.
Speaker 1:let's say there's accounting and it may be so hard for people to imagine somebody like an accountant, but let's say that that's somebody's thing and they really do like it, then go to work a hundred hours a week Like it's not really the same for them as it is for somebody who's just trying to get through a job. What do you think about stuff like that, jay?
Speaker 2:Okay, the first off, the influencer thing. I think we do have some, I mean some successful influencers. You know whether they're positive.
Speaker 1:What is that definition? Is that just having over a certain amount of followers again, or is?
Speaker 2:that a certain amount of income that they're bringing in A certain amount of followers, the influencer meaning that they're having to me. This is because I don't know the term right, the urban term right off hand right now, but I do know that influencers have a platform, they have a niche as far as maybe, for instance, somebody likes to cook, so they came up with a platform for cooking, their, you know influence, their chef or something like that, or a chef to be, and they're sharing their opinion, perspective and thoughts about, you know, cooking, certain dishes or whatever like that. You know, some people actually come in with a platform. Others, as we have seen, like the Jake and Logan Paul I had a little definition here that just popped up on Google.
Speaker 2:Someone who okay to persuade others to do, buy or use the same things that they do. Perfect example yep. Influencers have a following in specific niche yep, I said niche and they actively engage their audience. They can affect the purchasing decisions, others because of their authority, knowledge, position, relationship with their audience and not to mention their marketability If they're looking good.
Speaker 1:I don't think anything's wrong with any of this right.
Speaker 2:No, I don't know. At the end of the day, if people are making money off you.
Speaker 1:You should be making some of that money yourself, right? Even if? It's just taking pictures you should be making. You should be privy to some of that money if you have another company. Consumers society.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, and, like you asked me, it's like what do I think about that?
Speaker 2:I think, listen, if you're going about it the right way, meaning you know you're putting in the hours, you're putting in the grind because, listen, there's a lot of influencers and people who use social media that they, you know, who made it and are successful. They'll even share their success story, like you know, whenever they get on these talk shows or interviewed by you know, these famous interviewers or whatever like that, a well-known interviewers, where they'll be like dude, I didn't get money until I got four million followers, or until I got you know this X amount of followers, whatever like that. So when they had a million, they would. They're like dude, I was still in my mother's basement creating videos, hoping, you know, there's a grind involved in everything. Now, the flip side of that is you have people that are just looking at the bag. Right, they're looking. It's a lazy way of going about the hustle, because they're thinking, well, I'm gonna make money overnight, I'm gonna get this many followers, and then, when they realize what it truly takes to build their platform, build their following build it.
Speaker 2:Now and then, mentally it wears them out because it becomes like a job to them and they realize, oh man, it ain't gonna happen like this or like the same thing with people podcasting Some look, you love what you do and I'm sure we spoke on this before, but we would all love to get a Spotify deal, like Joe Rogan did. But let's look at Joe. Rogan. He was doing interviews and his platform before podcasting even became a thing About the club years in the game, my friend, you know I'm saying so.
Speaker 2:It's like you're gonna put some skin in the game before anything comes your way, and that's the lazy part About it. That and that's just people. Now, that's how you know somebody's just being lazy when they're just trying to skip to something purely for the bag, purely for the money, the bands, so. And then when they don't get what they think they should get within a week's worth of time or 72 hours Now they're moving on to the next and they're making as many legitimate, justified excuses as they can as to why. Well, it wouldn't work out for me. Oh man, the production was was was whacking a did. The equipment was working like, okay, you could have fixed it, yeah you know, I didn't get as many.
Speaker 2:Guess what you got to push your platform, what you want to push your plan, you, you, what's your marketing strategy? Oh no, go into it right now. You know that's lazy.
Speaker 1:You know, what's interesting here is, I Think that this should be in a perspective that just evolves over time. I mean, sometimes work just changes, you know, I mean, and people have a problem, I think, dealing with that if they feel like they've been on the other side of that situation, if you feel like, hey Well, I've been working in this factory this whole, you know, for 15, 20 years. I waited for my pension and all that stuff. They did things a certain way, but Everybody's entitled to their own way of of seeing life and wanting to do things like you don't.
Speaker 1:You don't owe people Thinking that you're working hard just because they thinking that you're working hard. You know what I mean. You don't owe people. You shouldn't have guilt. If you only work two days a week and you're making X amount of dollars, don't feel guilty about that. You know what I mean. That's your job, that's your life, that's the route that you decided to choose to go. When I was rolling up, it was just a 40 hour, bro. You weren't getting 40 and you weren't working. Well, that, and here's my thing.
Speaker 2:I'm an independent contractor now and I come from a company Independent contractor now and I come from the nine to five world and I used to think a hit. My mentality in the beginning was Let me find a job where I can get more money, especially as inflation, would you know, always go up as far as the cost of living, cost of rent, you know everything I just my solution back then was well, I got to get a different job. That's gonna make me, you know, at back in the day was like with the early 2000s, even late 90s, if I can get me a job that makes a hundred thousand a year, I'm set for life, whereas now my mentality is, you know, as an independent contractor, I Don't have to get up at a certain time and report to this desk or report to this. It feels great. You know, I'm on my own time, dude. I work at two gyms. I'm a gym rat. I love working out, I love being healthy, I love, you know, I love my life and I feel so much healthier.
Speaker 2:Now, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of ups and downs, even in my lifestyle where, you know, it's like how am I gonna do this and how I'm gonna do this? Not to mention I'm a voice actor. So I have, I'm a voice actor, I'm a boxing instructor, I'm a swimming instructor, I want to continue to add on to my skillset, to continue my movement in life as far as what I'd like to do. But I'm not gonna sit up here and say, oh, I'm riches as Bezos or something like that, because I'm not. But at the same time, I feel Richer in my time. I feel richer with the decisions that I'm making.
Speaker 2:I feel richer in in conversations I may have with certain people, like the one I share with you, with my boss, because Instead of me worrying about my livelihood being compromised, I'm actually, you know, I'm actually stepping into a situation where I know I hold value. I'm not holding it over anyone's head but at the same time, I know what I'm bringing to the table and and like we like you just got finished saying, you know, when you go to a job, we feel like we're all this validation because I've been in the company for this many years and I've done this or whatever, like that and there's a sense of pride and you know, comes with that words like, hey, I love this job, but, like you said this, like that whole street mentality. You may love the street, but the streets don't love you back.
Speaker 1:They way the same.
Speaker 2:It's the same thing with the. It's the same thing in a legal world where you may love the job, you may look and people may see how Dedicated you are to the brand, to the company, to everything, but you're not the founder. You never got promoted. And when and when the doors closed on the company because they got bought out or they're taking a buyout because they just want to, because the founders and the people want to live their life, I mean you lucky if you get a nice severance package.
Speaker 1:Lucky cuz. That ain't that, that's, that's, that's not guaranteed right.
Speaker 2:We wish y'all well. Oh my god, you guys have been great. You've been awesome. No money involved, nothing, no benefits nada, they are. So you know what that? Go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 1:I was gonna say that. You know, at the end of the day, I think that if we Approach things in a sense that nobody's owed anything from a job standpoint or from a from a life standpoint so when I go to a business, I don't feel like that business owes me. You know what I mean. I'm doing a service for that business and that business is doing I always looked at it like a partnership. As my later life, in the last like 10 years or so, so I've had my computer started, I'm a computer server 2014. So it's since 2014 to now I've always looked at any place that I worked at like a partnership. They provide me with what I'm looking for. I provide them with what they need. I'm gonna come in, I'm gonna work hard, I'm gonna give it my 100% with whatever we decide to do, but I always maintain the flexibility that I know I can walk away. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:And that freedom for me has been golden. It's been golden for me, because at the end of the day, I'm just like walk out, you carry that with you. Yeah, you have that. You know what I mean. People can sense that. People can sense that type of energy too. People can sense what when you have value or when you're desperate. You know how, like when people joke around or it's like you know, don't go to that girl all thirsty because she can smell your desperation.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm like that it's the same thing with business.
Speaker 2:It's the same thing when you're doing business and you try to. You know, man, I wanna cop this deal. I wanna you know I can safely say this Whenever I do like voiceover gigs. Now you know cause I've been into the game almost as about be eight years now, when I've been in the voiceover game as long as I have. You know I'll say it like this listen, I still love when I cut a nice check, love it Absolutely. You know what I'm saying and I'm not gonna lie. But the first thing that comes to my mind when someone wants to do business with me is okay, what's the, what's the, what's the brand, what's the platform, what are we doing? The first thing in my mind in that look the one of the. It's like maybe second or third or fourth, sometimes the top three or four or the top 10. But you know, pay is in there. I'm thinking about pay. I'm always thinking about pay.
Speaker 1:But at the same time right.
Speaker 2:Well, you look, it is what it is. I'm thinking about pay, but my first question is is okay, where's the project? What's the purpose of this project? What are we doing? Am I gonna be comfortable with it? Does the dollars make sense or does it just make sense? Because sometimes people will try to pay you beer money for a champagne reading Tells me how many businesses he owns and how he has some businesses here on the South side of Chicago, on the South side of, and for what they were paying me for to shoot every day, I would, you know, go into the you know the thing and do this.
Speaker 2:Well, they finally needed me to do a voiceover read and there was a miscommunication because they wanted me to read a certain amount of you know scripts. Well, I told them this is what I charge per script. Now the guy who I finally met, who owns this business, just got finished telling you give me an exact amount of money he's making, you know, but you're telling me you own all these businesses which translation? I make a lot of money. Okay, good for you. So you paying me per script shouldn't be a problem. Instead, you want a pity pinch and pay me what I would charge per script for just the entire script that you wanted me to read. That's what I look at when I'm dealing with business and being willing to have enough courage to just take it on a chin and walk away and not get paid at all.
Speaker 1:Well, you know I was going to say the I've. I've seen this quite often and I feel like it's just a. I feel like it's just an. I'm going to assume this was, this was in America, right, this is in this country, yeah, okay. So I'm going to assume that a lot of people, if they can pay you a dime to do a dollar's worth of work, they're going to try it. I think that's universally culturally right, like we're all going to try to at least try it. I think that what makes you there, what we can make things different, is them trying out with everybody and then coming across people who may, may, have more value in themselves and more value in their own work or don't have to take that opportunity. You know what I mean, because some people are in positions, jay, where they got to take any opportunity. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like bills are real and some people are going to take any, any dollar and I'm going to try you.
Speaker 1:They're going to at least ask. You know I used to work for a guy and a guy here in Atlanta and you know downtown we had a studio right. It's like a little audio engineering type situation.
Speaker 1:And I tell you dude was a penny pincher bro. Like I don't know if I could go below a penny, I would say he was below sub penny pincher what he would try to pay and sometimes he didn't tell them to after the work he was very shady business practices. In that sense I learned a lot of what not to do. I'm here on this dude from New York, quite a character.
Speaker 2:I really liked him, but I did learn a lot for him.
Speaker 1:What, not how not to approach certain business decisions. You know what I mean, because I feel like, at the end of the day, jay, business is business and people are going to try you right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people go people. It's unfortunate and it can affect the personal side of things at times. For me, like you know the story I share with you early, unfortunately. But in turn, what you're, you know what. Here's the thing about situations like that you learn a lot about yourself. You know like the type of person you are, because this story could have been real different if you've been like yo man. I learned a lot from him and I saved a lot of money. You know whatever like that, because you might have been better than him.
Speaker 1:This is Reginald H L. Check us out. Stay true to your high heart. Radio, Google podcast, Apple podcast, Spotify, wherever you find your podcast. See you next time, guys.