Talks with Tyger

Transcript: So, honestly what I'm thinking, I'm in a really unique situation and nobody is often open when they are in this situation.

Kenzie and I, we made some money with our business.

I successfully put it into some tech stocks, made some money with it and then instead of putting it back in the US dollar or keeping it in stocks when it just seemed, it was in July of this year.

We were down in California filming and I'm like, this seems unsustainable.

I'm almost parking my assets, my capital into clothing which is harder to liquidate but I feel like I have a higher impact on it rather than like, I don't have an impact on Apple stock worth.

But for the first time in my life, I'm slightly over leveraged.

I mean, I've had student loans my whole life so I've been in debt my entire adult life which is a fascinating thought, isn't it?

Well, it depends.

For some people, that's normal.

For others, it's not.

That's what I'm learning.

I'm just trying to be open with it with people because I've always, aside from student loans which are on pause and forbearance and whatnot, I've always had money but now I'm slightly in debt and it's a situation that most people don't speak openly about which it doesn't seem like it really benefits many people.

So I'm just curious like throughout your life, have you ever leveraged yourself or when you've been like, I mean, you talked with, my understanding of what you do is you talk with business owners kind of frequently.

You may have experienced people in that position a lot.

I'm curious your thoughts on leverage, essentially.

Yeah.

Well, in general, I mean, it's clear from the work that I've done and the life I've lived that there's different levels of leverage, if you want to call it that, that people are willing to extend and their comfort is very stew.

So some people don't mind going to the ultimate and spending whatever it is that they want to do thinking that that's going to be important to them and other people aren't willing to take that kind of a risk.

So they withhold that and on the other end of the spectrum, they're actually looking at a situation where you have not much, but you don't want to spend it with the idea that you'll pay for it as it goes as opposed to using credit, for example, and that would be what I've experienced anyway with people.

Move that just a little closer.

So you said if you'd use the term leverage, would you use credit or debt or I'm curious?

Yeah, I'm more comfortable with that.

I understand leverage is just another word that describes the circumstance and it may be more favorable for some people to use the word leverage.

Well, a lot of people buy a house and they're like, cool, I own a house, but I'm like, no, you took on a $300,000 debt.

They're heavily leveraged in what's it called, the housing market, not retail, it's real estate.

Oh, real estate market.

They're just heavily leveraged with all their capital in real estate.

Okay.

And that's true.

But it's helping them achieve what they want out of life, that they want to have a house that they can call their own, even though technically it belongs to whoever holds the paper on the house until that loan is paid off.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In your experience, do you think it's better to go, like my understanding is of what you said, correct me if I'm wrong, is when you say it goes slower, you just mean bootstrapping, which and like I'm someone, you can't offend my feelings.

I'm not hurt.

I'm speaking openly because I just want more people to talk openly about finances so it's less of a taboo.

Okay, again, my personal values are to pay as you go.

And so I'm most comfortable with that.

But I also felt that at a certain point in my life, I did want to have a home and so I did borrow money to do it.

And that's probably the only time I've really borrowed money is to buy a home.

And then pay it off as fast as I can.

That's really how I looked at it.

I just don't like to be in debt.

I don't feel like I want to owe people or anyone something.

I'd rather just say, I can't have this right now and that's just the way it is.

That's how I've been my entire life.

But I think maybe having student loans, so a negative net worth my whole life almost numbed me out to it or something, but at a certain point is just an opportunity presented itself where the financials on purchasing these and then really the reason why I haven't sold them out so I'm just preparing them is once I sell them, I can't use them for my deal goal, which is B, I want to show a manufacturer that actually has the scale and a design house.

Hey, here's a way to add a full design to close.

It's cheaper than tie-dyeing.

It's quicker, less like labor man hours.

It has a higher fidelity design because all of these clothes in here, the cotton's grown in the U.S. and it's sewn in the U.S. and I really want to hopefully reach out, connect with and work with them almost as an exit of sorts.

But as the fallback, I can sell it, which is very fortunate.

I'm very fortunate.

But it's weird having my money frozen in a very non-liquid asset.

Right and of course because the market changes, you're hoping that it changes to your favor as opposed to going the other way because it's just like the stock market goes up and down and so our changes is however you want to call it.

No, so I'd really agree except for there's nothing like what I've made.

So I'm on the forefront of bleach, like bleaching clothes in an interesting way where everyone who see like on the internet and so I've given some to friends who come on the show and people and they always just say like, hey, a friend wants to buy it.

They don't know how much like it's worth because something like what it's worth is up to marketing or like essentially like Gucci, Balenciaga, like really fancy ones like not that I would want to.

But they charge a really high premium even though the product isn't as high of quality.

So the market is just, the market's fugazi in a way.

Well the market is what it is and it changes.

That's all.

And sometimes you ride the wave and it's a good market and sometimes you fall off the board and it's, you're in trouble.

So what is that?

What could you play out that scenario for like if you'd help me?

Because essentially I'm in a unique, like my entire life I've been like I don't want to be in debt beyond student loans.

So this is a new thing.

Like literally even up till this most recent month I've paid off all my credit cards in full but I'm looking at the next month I'm like, okay, my credit's going to have a slight amount, like I mean just a couple hundred dollars on it but I can see because we do have a video client, we have a part-time like video client but I definitely did just take on a calculated risk.

I figure rather than being afraid of debt my whole life I want to confront it at a small manageable scale early just to see what because I keep thinking every big company had to leverage or had to take on debt in order to scale.

So I'm just curious, yeah, what are the scenarios?

Well I'd like to go back to your opening statement where you said you took on a lot of student debt with your ability to go to school and today that's vastly different than it was in my day because the amount of debt I took on was almost none and I was able to work and pay it off very quickly because of that.

Student debt today is at a far higher level and it's much more onerous because of that and the reason why I'm going back to that in your situation is because that's where it all began.

It's not like all of a sudden you're in debt, it's that you created that debt for a good reason in order to get an education but the way we operate today is different than 40-50 years ago and so you can't compare the two, that's all I want to say about that.

Yeah, but I will say looking forward to where you are now and where you're trying to avoid being caught up in a debt ridden situation, that's the part that I think you are most concerned about and rightly so.

I don't know that there's an easy answer to that other than to say there's two ways you position yourself financially.

One is you create more income, however that is, or you don't spend as much and so those are the only two methods that help you reduce it and of course it goes faster if you get a combination, if you reduce expense but also increase income.

So the only thing I'll say is everyone's different, every situation is different and you sort of have to look at your entire life and see what contributes to your decisions that cause you to spend money.

What are the values that you're kind of playing towards?

Well that comes from, yeah, your value system initially but you may have a certain set of values that are compromised by your circumstances and you know, we all have things that come up in life you don't plan on, I mean we all know people that have gotten very ill and they weren't expecting it and all of a sudden they have this great debt because they have to take care of themselves in order to survive.

And so I would just say that's a prime example of someone today who tended to not get into debt but found themselves in debt because it was far beyond anything they could anticipate.

Yeah, so if we could bring it to you, I mean I'm curious, what are your kind of core values or guiding, I mean is just avoiding debt, that's like a further down, you know, touch point of I assume how you want to live your life.

I'm just curious how you think about money, like you essentially deal with money for a living and we all deal with money in our personal lives.

You're someone who I would assume for a great deal of time, even more than I've been alive, I've just thought about the concept of money and I would just love to get your thoughts on it.

I mean you're, yeah.

Well I'd like to give you an answer that would qualify in every case but I can't.

What I'm going to say is the ability to manage your way of living is built upon what your hopes and dreams are really and if you can somehow coordinate what it's going to take to cause you to reach those goals and dreams then maybe you can plan it better but I can't say every situation is different, that's what I really have to say on that.

It's not a clear picture that one size fits all but I will, I know that you have talked about how do the values fit in with the way you operate in terms of your day to day existence and that's really, I think maybe the first thing to do is really to establish what's important to you and then to build a budget around that so when I say that it's important to get a sense about in the next year, maybe you could use it as a New Year's resolution or something and just say I'm going to have a plan for this next year and see how it works out and then you can evaluate that plan even six months into it to see if it's working and if it is at the end of the year you renew yourself and see how you can continue to move in that direction but setting up a budget means you have to know where you tend to spend money and then also what's important to you and how much money it's going to take to get to that level that's going to allow you to do what you want to do and those are the estimates that you have to come up with and a sheet of paper is a starting point and then you have to talk about well where's the money going to come from and so you have to analyze you've given me some ideas of how you earn income now well use that as your thought process and write down all the ways that you can earn income that you presently do and then ways that you expect to earn additional income and see how that matches up and the end of the year if you're in in the black that means you've got a little more income than what you've spent hopefully that'll go into some kind of savings or investments and doesn't mean that you don't spend money to do that because maybe you decided to buy a home so you put it into a fund that allows you to put a down payment on a home that would be one example another idea would be to that money that is hopefully in the black it will allow you to think of different ways to use that maybe you have a chance to just do something simple like open up a savings account or you may have an investor that you could talk to that you feel they're giving you some options that will allow you to make a little more than you might get in a bank situation for example but I will say this every year your goals which are built on your values will help you determine what your next year is going to look like if you put it down in front of you and sort of think it through and then the tough part is the discipline you have to be committed to that plan otherwise it'll never work it's I don't think it's any different than if you were taking weight loss classes or something it's going to help you to say okay my goal is to knock off ten pounds and in order to do that I'm going to have to do this this and this but I have to be dogmatic about it and do it the same way each time for try it for three months and see how that works and if you move it along that that gives you encouragement to continue on I'd say all of what you're saying makes a lot of sense and it's how I've lived my life up until this most recent year okay but so a large part of what brought this on is so we do video work for a living right but with AI the advent of it pretty much all digital jobs are up for they could disappear if you know like like I'm trying to hedge in a physical way and also again this is my way of parking money so I put it some investment yeah so successful stocks I essentially I took the money out that I put in just the gains right I put into cotton and bleach because at the end of the day clothing will all like and really really high quality clothing just will always be valuable to someone but it's it's just an interesting it's it's I don't think that people today have the luxury of planning so much a year out I think a lot of young people today are taking kind of bigger risks because just money I mean money inflation's what three percent a year but the amount of money that might or the amount of house that my money could buy like if I had a hundred thousand dollars and then a year from now it's I can buy 80% as much house so really like the US dollar is not a stable place to just kind of park capital yeah is the world we're living in it seems like to me I'm curious well everything's built upon trust that things are going to continue on yes and you and I both know if you just look at the news from day to day that could change any moment I mean look at the hurricane folks back in the southeast what they're dealing with who could have I mean generally speaking yeah there's gonna be hurricanes North Carolina who would have seen that yeah if I had done all this in North Carolina and hurricane came and flooded and I lost it all I couldn't reply what would I do it's so well hopefully you have insurance that would help pay for some of that but even the insurance companies are going they're in a difficult situation themselves because they can't even plan for that worst-case scenario and that's what happened and the US government and whole is is so in debt and so leveraged or you know however it's gonna be that it almost just seems like I mean just the numbers it's like I'm most likely not gonna have and what's it called when when I turned 65 so security yeah like social security is gonna run out unless some radical changes happen so I just I'm just at a point in life where I think I mean most people are on some sort of drug to stay sane I'm very fortunate in that I'm not on an anti-anxiety or an SSRI but my only like my way that I can make that happen is I'm like I have to have faith that I have a chance at success in life and it's just becoming a situation where the stable getting you know getting like a traditional job I mean like a lot of government jobs even could be automated the way quite easy like I mean like just trying to think of what feel because I went to school for physical therapy so that initial debt the initial sin that brought me into this whole place was towards something I was an 18 year old I had no no idea what any of it meant my parents said go to college I had horrible chronic pain at the time so I went to be a physical therapist just because I was like I'm going to figure out how to fix my own pain and I'm very fortunate that it happened but then the actual is funny was my third year into college my first day at a PT office and I was like oh this is not what I want to do the rest of my life but then I'm already 18 grant in debt and then just to finish out that last year of mostly extracurriculars you know so I'm like I've been $25,000 in debt since I've been an adult I see since I've joined the workforce in life right so you know the position I'm in it's funny I'm not like I don't have an anxiety I don't have a concern about it I definitely could overcome it but I just want to be open to the idea that the majority of successful businesses use look I mean like you know like you sell a house and then people say oh you you know you take a lean against it you buy two like people are very leveraged in today's society but it's something that it's taboo to think about being in debt so I'm just trying to bridge that gap in my mind of how to kind of think of those two yeah I again your value is to maybe not be in debt well there are some people that don't see it that way and they and they they as you say leverage one for another with the idea that you know ultimately if they do it well enough they'll have more than enough money to pay it all off that's their hope reality may not go with that but that's their hope and in the end we all act on our hopes yeah hope fears a lot of fear based well exactly but I fear comes into it when all of a sudden hope doesn't look so hopeful so I just say try to look at it in bite size bits as opposed to one big item that you have to take care of as soon as possible because the reality is unless you're winning the lottery or there's some kind of a windfall that comes from something yeah from the windfall exactly unless you have that you're gonna have a you won't have the ability to pay those debts off and I did want to comment about you're right about one thing when it comes to business anyway there's a time when debt makes sense and you have to know that and maybe the best way to look at it is a business that has a seasonal base so let's say they do a lot of crops in the summer they harvest them in the fall and then you know over the winter things are a little slack as far as the money coming in and but they have to pay people to keep the equipment up to get ready for planting and so forth so they take out what we call a line of credit and it's really an ability for cash flow to be there when you need it and then you pay down the line of credit when the money starts coming in from your sale of your products if you could look at that angle in business it makes sense for them to have debt and then while you're not using it you're not gaining interest on that it's strictly only on the balance that that's left so if you pay off that line of credit when your money starts coming in you have zero interest but you have access to it as you need it that would be a to me a good use of debt there are other businesses that I know about that if they want to buy equipment and and it's good tax reasons to do it at a certain time of year and the accountants will will validate that they'll just say you have you've earned this much and you're gonna need this equipment next year and in order to get full benefit of your depreciation and so forth now's the time to buy so maybe you you don't have the cash right then and there so you borrow money for the equipment and then later you pay it off but you've made a good decision because you've got what you need to continue to grow your business to pull it back from money because I don't want to you know pigeonhole you let's take a quick breather of just who you are what are some foundational things that have happened in your life that kind of formed who you were events like decisions to take that job or to move there to meet a partner I'm just curious kind of you know some framing behind all of what you're saying okay well I mean really we're all part and parcel of our upbringing and our values that are imparted to us by people close to us so you know that's certainly part of my life too so breaking news your parents were a big part of your life yes I know what you're saying but in this case for me it was my parents and I was raised in a very typical American household the second generation Irish American in Boston and and so I I was raised in neighborhoods where you know there were four to ten kids in the family it depends on that and so everyone was struggling usually the the fathers worked my father was a railroad car cleaner so what did he do he cleaned railroad cars for 44 years he he also was involved in bringing the troops onto Omaha Beach as a coxswain in the Navy and he had some medical issues that came from that so he wasn't able to progress in his career like a lot of folks were but he certainly was a model for me in terms of understanding what he valued and you know he taught me a lot through that method and my mom stayed at home raising five children and and it was a case of we always had enough to eat and so forth but it was tight and I had to get scholarships in order to go to school and stuff so that was my way of helping to pay the costs and I worked from the time I was 13 on this sort of like well well it seems young my dad actually started it when he was eight we were both caddies we caddied and and which taught me the value of service and and the fact that you if you wanted a dollar you had to earn it you know and that was and I actually look forward to it I I know you don't hear that so much anymore especially when you're looking for people wanting to work they just don't seem to have that interest interest it's it's an interesting I mean the idea that I have the freedom to try to create a good or service that people want to on their own volition spend money on right is the most driving force in my life it's it's a beauty well that's a wonderful gift and as you point out not everyone has it but if you do I know you'll be successful because you'll feel good about yourself number one and number two you'll help other people feel good about themselves so what after high school and college I went into a program that some people are familiar with today's it was called AmeriCorps and I worked in Appalachia which in the coal mining towns that were built way back in the early 1900s and I worked on the subject of housing even then housing was pretty bad for the people that lived in those towns and so but I did that for a while and then I later worked in social work setting helped to establish a mental health facility in Humboldt County and in fact it was the first one and was able to work as a bookkeeper for them but I did all the fundraising for him too to get him going and so that was very interesting yeah that's sort of like well there was a big gap in service in those days that was in the early 70s and so I had a chance to first of all learn to do things I never dreamt of doing while I was in school and again college schooling in general is is very valuable in terms of understanding the theory but the practical application of that theory is what pays you and so you have to try to figure that out and so that was one thing I did and then went back to graduate school and got a degree and I thought I wanted to do counseling and elementary education so I did that and then finally we came to Cottage Grove where I got a job in the school district and worked there for a while and worked for the Catholic Church and their education program and then I said you know I'm really most interested in community relations it took me that many years to sort of sort out what is it I was really interested you're held by that age but so I was about 29 when I realized that so I was about 29 when I realized it and then I started applying for positions that met that criteria and I was able to go to work for Pacific or which is an electric utility in the Northwest and I ended up working in customer relations and sales and I did that for 32 years ultimately I ended up being in charge of the energy efficiency programs for five states and and residential energy efficiency throughout those five states and it was a very interesting job in that sense because that sort of the framework in which we're operating today because first thing you want to do is save it and then you can grow it from there but and we do need to grow it because we have more needs for it but so become as efficient as possible that's kind of the net fit in with my value systems too that I was talking to you earlier that was a kind of a from that I ended up going into public office for about 14 years and that was interesting too because that gave me another dimension to my understanding of how the world worked and also how you can make a difference in people's lives and so I'm curious to delve into that so it's funny you realize that when entering the bureaucratic machine that is the government yes is when you realized the impact you could have helping people yes yeah I'm curious but now you don't work for the government I'm curious I don't you know yeah I'm still doing it helping people yes it seems easier to do not at the government well different yeah maybe let me explain what I I don't know if you have you ever taken a course called junior achievement never heard of it okay well it's actually a nonprofit organization that's established somewhere many years ago and it's basically privately funded and they are they operate in different locations I assume they have it in Eugene now but at the time in Cottage Grove they had junior achievement and some local foundations paid for a director to come in and teach you how to work with children and and older kids too on the issue of our our capitalism for for the United States what it's built on and really the best learning I ever got I felt in in terms of business understanding was how important it is for business and government to have a place in society because they actually I know it feels antagonistic many ways but if it if it does its job right the government provides a level playing field for business to be successful and if you don't have that you're in a country that you know you can't make it or it's owned by the country and and so you don't have capitalism yeah and so I'll just say this it's really that was a basis of my learning that I felt again was in line with my values that said you know we want to have a place where people can take an idea and run with that idea and hopefully make a living off that idea and not only that but the society benefits because no one else has thought of it either and so we all learned from that and so I felt like that was a major learning step in in my process and and so if I'm there right now yeah I have an idea and and I ran and it was of use to society our videography marketing business and now I have a second shot on goal a second one because as a hedge against just as a hedge against AI because it's very just you know first off I love video I hope to be able to do it continually forever right but just we've been meeting some clients who are like I just take a bunch of stock footage with an AI voice over like they just have it do it all for them right so just just being pragmatist and saying what's currently happening rather than just saying oh I hate it or oh I'm gonna fully use it because I really don't like the impact it has in terms of the only thing that's really of true value in life is human-to-human connection right and having an AI or just like some word salad kind of jumbled up in the middle it seems to always usually obfuscate the real core message of the communication so it's it's it's something I use you know in parse but it's not like a wholesale item that I'm like AI is like the backbone of my thing but just getting away from tech that's also how I've stayed sane and managed to not be you know anxious in a world that's every day or talent with climate change is gonna kill you so even if you're financially successful right you know the plan is gonna be done especially by your kid's age so it's like Jesus how do you deal with that and then you know all the jobs are getting on it's like and then you're like there's there's so much that could fill it so just getting away from that and making a really unique but like man I just the most conviction I've had for any financial shot on goal or anything that I've set my assets into is is this it really has helped just to get away from your computer for a little while but what's the space that you're talking about you said building a space where people can take an idea and run with it mm-hmm what's what's the well that's the entrepreneurial spirit in the United States I feel and I don't say it's not in other places obviously most democracies have very successful businesses but I'm gonna say it's the generation of the idea that comes with diversity I think and I say that because I know some people feel like diversity is a bad word or something I don't feel that way at all I feel like if you're part of a group of people you want people to look at things differently and out of that will come some ideas that will generate income because you create a product or a service that many people want and and sometimes they don't even know they want it because it's a I wish I had an example right off the top you can probably help me with that but just think of something that no one ever knew about or thought they needed paperclip okay yeah I know paperclips are dying it seems like but I still use them from time to time but I'm gonna say for a while they're pretty pivotal there in the world right I mean that's and whoever came up with that I knew that the world benefited by it but no one else knew about it you know until they start seeing well yeah I can do this with it you know I saw just say it's it's sort of like what makes us uniquely human is our ability to think and I love the idea that people can invent things and that's part of my joy and the things that I do in life is I find myself talking to people that have done that or I've demonstrated it and it gives me hope that we can solve problems because we have that diversity of thought that allows unique solutions to come about it's a very interesting thing just diversity of thought like Kenzie and I just my partner and I like we've just running a business for going on two years we've just realized that almost any new problem or challenge that we face we just we have almost diametrically opposite modes of thinking yeah and it's just been really fascinating to be like okay well what's the best of the both options or what's the middle ground it's there can be diversity of thoughts and two people who are probably twins but maybe one of them had a unique situation just it's it's very interesting just diversity of thought really does allow just new ideas to enter the mix yeah I mean and frankly people some people are highly paid for those new thoughts and I would just say what it's it's what keeps things moving and if you look at the history of humankind it's really in order to survive you had to keep moving and whether it's always good or bad is secondary it happens because it's required to move on and that's really ultimately the things that are bad get dropped off and things that are good are enhanced or grow into something else but we're fortunate I think that's why I really love the United States is because we're built on that spirit of people coming here to make life better for themselves and I I can speak for my own family that way so I I feel like most families would say the same thing and that word hope is really the ability to take you to that next level because if it's too far out there's no hope and you give up mm-hmm and so what you want is an element of hope what do you hope for today but you know it's changed over the course of your life right I'm curious what like today is your hope my hope for the future well it's hard to talk about it right after the election last night but I'll just say I hope that the United States can somehow find a way to realize that the values that made us what we are the values that will help us in the future too and not to lose sight of those values and you and I have just talked about some of those values but I in the end you know I'll speak as if looking at my grandchildren you know what I would like them to be able to have is a sense that life can be challenging but exciting and that there is a hope that you can actually enjoy life mm-hmm and and as long as you can do that you'll want it for other people after you you know so I don't know if that's the answer but that's kind of what I'm thinking I'm continually hopeful about that I think I do my best work when I'm mentally at peace with myself and and and feel good and I'm enjoying it and it's just I'm I'm persistently trying to remind everyone around me at all times nobody's making like nobody can force you to be upset today like like at the end of the day you really can just it's really hard to say some people have horrible situations but right they're born into it actually but a lot of people in pretty good situations make you know their own little living hell fun but essentially just the idea that being happy I said I mean I believe you mentioned that you grew up Catholic or as part of it and Catholic guilt is a phrase that has been around in society so a lot of people just kind of internalized the idea that like being happy will have an equal and opposite negative at some point in life like people feel that like happiness is unsustainable it seems like this that's kind of the the general idea that I get from a lot of people but I personally just think I have I build my best relationships I do my best work when I'm happy or relative happiness you know so I'm curious kind of how you came around or did the Catholic guilt never quite stick for you and you've you know here's yeah I'm not here to speak for the Catholic Church but I can say this that whatever faith or whatever way of life you're raised in you know if that's the basis of your value system which it typically is there's good and bad and what I want of course is to try to do as much as possible the good sometimes I fail but I also know that life is full of ups and downs and I would like to be happy hundred percent of the time but I don't think the human individual is capable of a hundred percent happiness 24-7 I'm just saying you it's more like a trend as opposed to a complete ability so you want to be moving in the direction of happiness to feel like you have that hope to enjoy things in life and yet so you say you've been happier over the year yeah I feel I feel that way myself do I have my moments absolutely just like everyone else I have every every same same emotions that everyone else has you know and some of them they're all valid but the they aren't necessarily what you want at the time but you deal with it the best you can I think it's important to sustain yourself with good people around you too because there are moments when I maybe I can't handle something very well and someone else can and you talked about Kenzie and you and your decision-making with your business and so forth and I I thought of my my spouse how the same reason that we have come from a similar value system we have a complete opposite approach to it and with but I say to her is the same reason we get together and argue and disagree on things is the same reason why I think we make mostly good decisions and that's from a 360 degree look as opposed to a 180 look and that's all I'm saying is find that find something that you trust the other person and that trust sustains you during the difficult times that's about it and that's where that's where we have a very similar value set yeah but then it's just the approach to every every situation is just like it's almost like mind-blowing the first like handful of time and not even just with her it's with everyone right it's really kind of mind-blowing the first time you like see someone's thought process to a situation it's like I would have never considered that or gone there and you know sometimes it's better than the way like I currently thought about it sometimes it's like oh like it's the exchange of ideas really is the ultimate like goal of what kind of elevates all of a community or a family or you know humanity right and we know that there'll be times when it's just not gonna go the way it you would like it to go but in the end you just have to get through that time period and that comes from support as well as your own self mobilization you know your ability to pass something any examples of times in your life that have been like that like you know you feel okay talking about I assume in hindsight as far as you know be a difficult time you mean yeah you've been bringing it up a couple times I'm curious what that like when you're like you just got to get through it it's well I try to compare myself to my father and I think I have nothing to compare you know what he dealt with not and I gave you one example of his life but he grew up in a family of 11 children and when he was eight or nine he was actually given away to his aunt and uncle to raise him because they they didn't have enough food in the home and I didn't have that I grew up in a pretty solid environment even though he had some challenges for himself and I think my mother had to take on a lot more responsibility because of that but I admire her for that you know her ability to do that for myself I have the same disappointments everyone else has which is you know I didn't get a job I wanted or I didn't have I didn't get a good score in my tests that I wanted you know I I have the same or I didn't make that basket when I should have you know those are the things that come up on a daily basis that are sort of annoying looking back on it but it's right that's just the way it goes you know and hopefully you know I've had some times in my life that are I can't think of any that would be dramatic and other than the time I was dealing with my brother he he had juvenile diabetes and he was they were they actually needed to get a kidney transplant for him and so all of our all of his siblings tested for it and I happened to have the best match and so it's so this is 40 years ago now and so and so when you know it I'm 3,000 miles away everyone else is back there you know and I'm thinking to myself well you know if it's meant to be it is and but the problem was they assigned a doctor who was my advocate and he had an advocate and the idea was that you had to make sure you wanted to do this or else it would be one of those things that you'd regret and so I'll just tell you this much that I think it was about February March that we started the process and and the doctor kept questioning me and making sure that I was okay I was getting annoyed because it was taking so long you know and of course I had a cold right when it all started and about nine months eight months nine months later I finally said to the doctor you know I know you are playing my advocate to the ultimate but I'm gonna fire you I said that meaning I have to have another doctor because you're not letting me do this and I think I should and so that was a tough time for me dealing with that and after the operation my cold was gone so for nine months I had a cold and I realized it was all stress-related because what wondering when is this going to happen and having to put it off and then have to fly back of you know and actually they wanted to do it in Portland but I I said I'm not gonna take a chance of my kidney not making it back there and then and then being inserted so we laid next to each other back in Boston and that's when the operation took place that was a it affected you know my family and everyone else in it yeah so being in stress for nine months yeah much less right the end of it you run kidney down that's oh I didn't realize how much of it until I until the day after and I said my cold is gone you know mm-hmm so I said to myself that tells you what stress does yeah stresses it's working in the background it may not it may not be right there you're gonna you like your car is gonna hit something and you know it's gonna happen that's a different kind of stress but something that's operating in the background so that would be one example I have since that experience have you been able to recognize it better when you're under or is that the most extreme stress you've been under or like if well I do I'll give you another example like have you recognized it and been able to be like oh I think this is stress whereas yes I have to answer your question yes I have I mean that's again part of life's lessons you know you just learned what works and what doesn't yeah that's a good way to look at it it's a science you're right I was gonna say signs like signs are just being able to just hey maybe I'm avoiding thinking about something you know and maybe that's just cuz no I think you you have a good sense about it that's what I would say yeah yeah but we all have those stories you know it's not the same story for every person but we're all dealing with so from a health standpoint that was something that and I was only about 35 at the time so that's a big decision at 35 to give a kidney for a brother that's yeah surreal that's a situation most people will never experience right and I mean but most people would do it if they had the opportunity it's just that maybe it didn't come along so you don't maybe they did something else you know what I mean we all have something that we faced with you know so it seems like from because many times throughout this episode we're close to an hour you've mentioned values but you haven't explicitly said yours my guess if I were to like ad hoc after hearing all that you said say my guess is family and community would be pretty much your paramount and hope hope faith belief in a better belief in the things getting better and then community and family I'm curious if you have a third or if I'm if I'm you know how am I how my guess is I think you described pretty concisely exactly what most of my life has been like and I I feel like most people other than having differences in each of those would have the same story but I can't think of anything else off the top anyway that would make a difference in terms of values that the one thing I'll say about the community aspect was that my my commitment to the community whether it's through work or through public service was I always felt I was it was an extension of my family so I viewed that as my family also so the combination is really and everyone does it differently I know there's some people in the community that have the best-looking yards that you'd ever want to have which I don't have but they do and it adds beauty to the community that's not me but maybe I could help in a different way and so I found that's my interest in public service was in working through policies and procedures that made life better hopefully for the community and today you get you're getting to do that I'm doing this in my job by helping well my goal would be to help every business be successful and if they are successful that means they'll create jobs for other families and the community benefits because now you have healthy economic families that are able to move in a direction that they want to to make it a little bit more precise in what way do you help businesses succeed because that's a that's a very it's an open it's a very broad statement but the way I would do it is the way you do do it and well that's right you're right thank you for clarifying I would sit and listen to someone tell me about their business and what they want to do sometimes it's a startup sometimes it's an existing business and and then I'll just say you know what are the challenges you're having about that and then they'll tell me and then sometimes I I may have some ideas that they hadn't thought of that make a difference sometimes I don't but I will say in every case they can count on me being able to provide insights that they might not have had and maybe even connections with parties that can help them further their goals and and that's what I get my enjoyment out of the current position I'm in it's one of the most joyous things in life is connecting two people when you know it'll benefit their life and it reflects well on you to both of them because you connected them it's truly one of the like the most like subtle but like profound joys in life is like this would benefit everyone if you two got together and it doesn't always work sometimes you introduce them and even though it's seemingly a perfect match there are slightly different fields or like interests or you know it's it's it doesn't always work but when it when it does work and you know it's it's really beautiful well I'm glad you feel that way because that's you summarized it very well thank you yeah closing thought this is my first episode back it's so this is sorry if I was a little rough and tumble you're very well spoken I have one question for you though okay all right eye contact I think when we met at Lane Small Business Development Center fair you had an amount of eye contact that I don't normally get much in life part of the reason I started the show was I didn't aside from Kenzie I wasn't just sitting and talking to people like people just don't sit and talk to people very much anymore where we're not like checking the phone or eating or like some distraction but on the show you've had a level of like less eye contact some people do none the whole show right which is an oddity but you clearly are comfortable with eye contact I'm curious if there's just a level of deep thought oh here I go yeah I think part of part of my thinking on that is I'm trying to think of how to respond if I'm just having a natural conversation with you and I know you're trying to set it up that way and that's a good format I think but I'm not necessary practiced in what I'm doing and I'm trying to think through how can I say it in a way that makes sense to not just you but your listeners you know and so it causes me to look to the side to give myself focus on how can I say this you know whereas opposed to having just a conversation with you no cameras yeah so how could I do you think better achieve that goal of that because that is my intended goal right because who listens to this it's it's it's it's I mean the most impactful person who could listen this podcast would be your grandkid in 30 years yeah and be like wow and just just that familial connection yeah you know like the reason I'm doing this is tenfold documentarian of people and their place in life for some people it's not working or getting ideas out for everyone it's different but my intended goal is just to document an authentic just conversation of two people sitting in a location okay like are you cut is there enough room this is my previous room with the you know the episode you watched we had more room behind us so I'm a little bit closer to the wall I wanted you to have some room are you comfortable in here I'm comfortable in this space yeah and then yeah some people might not be but I am and let's see I'm not sure how I could help you make sure others have just you know me yeah what may have made a difference maybe the topic I should have started with personal and then transition I think that would have helped yeah again I'm a little it's been a whole year since it's okay and I'm you know I'm much more able to talk more personally like most human beings than I am professionally but I'll say that would help mm-hmm it would get me probably started on the right foot mm-hmm that that's a good time I'm not sure what else you could do other than say upfront to someone you know you just explained to me why you're trying to do this and and that helps me understand why it's important that I paid look to you when I'm talking that's probably the best thing you can do because it's a starting place for people and then in the end you're learning what works for most people I think none not just but then start with a personal so I would say those two steps are probably gonna help you with other people beautiful I appreciate that I've workshopped what to tell people before the show so many times and some like just sometimes it can be read wrong and then people think it's a certain thing so it's really hard because it's not only am I confirming hey do you have time to meet to people do you also have time to meet in person and are you okay recording it right and it like so it's like there's so many checks right to get someone on a like on an episode and just communication has such an opportunity to create confusion right and my main goal with communication is to reduce confusion and just you know so it's it's the pre like preamble I will I'm gonna give it another attempt of just saying does that what you mean by preamble yeah yeah maybe what I text you about the show or what I tell you or before we start hearing just and he's anything that's setting the stage because I will say diversity of ideas not telling people anything about it right how I've played off of some people's energy like some people just take the reins they're like they've been waiting for an opportunity to be on there they've just been dying for it I'm like cool you can do whatever you want with it like you have a video recording of yourself and I've learned and I've actually adjusted what I do on the show because of them so it's an interesting thing of leaving that open right by not kind of defining what I want it to be right because yeah it's not necessarily an interview although the goal of it is to get your ideas like you see your story for maybe some ground like grounding about who you are but really it's like your way of thinking you know just capturing that I think is right goes back to the exchange of information that's what helps people have better lives the end you got a couple of nuggets in here I appreciate it thank you for coming on thank you for talking to Sharon yeah that was a it was a joy okay well thank you for asking me and hopefully I'll be anxious to hear where you go with your business you know because you've given me some insight as to what you're trying to do and I know you have to physically move as your next major step but after that hopefully you'll be in a position to grow your business appreciate it yeah it's it's an interesting situation my quip is nothing's for sale because a lot of people have been like hey can I buy some but I didn't buy and then die at all just to trade it back for money I just traded money to put it into this because cotton doesn't go bad right it's funny vintage teas are actually worse significantly more although I'm not surprised I know it's people really crave that texture I'm curious if you feel like this kind of cotton shirt just like it's just thick it's comfortable it's comfortable that's what I would say mm-hmm the word is comfortable because I can't I remember this guy when I first came to Cottage Grove 50 years ago I went in to get some shoes you know and he said do you do you want some socks with those shoes and I said oh no I got socks he said well do you have the kind that are you know you buy at the store that are polyester polyester and so forth I said yeah how did you know he says well most people do mm-hmm and he says well what I have is cotton yeah and I said yeah but cotton doesn't last as long he said yeah but it's a lot more comfortable it breathes and he says what he said he said you'll come back to me in ten years and you'll want cotton yeah that's what he said to me and did you are you well I do now yeah I choose I prefer that I when I say cotton it's it may be a mixture a mix I don't I don't look yeah I have more natural socks I'll use that so I would say January of this year I didn't own any I wore mostly hand-me-downs yeah I wore I had no idea the makeup or none of no specific brand I wore random clothes but I had a chronic physical pain oh and I started wearing just cotton shirts and it's purely the the breathability the heat retention would cause me to start messing with it and then activating the muscle would generate heat yeah which would then get trapped again huh and I didn't know I was trying to find all these are my dehydrated what's the cause of this chronic physical it's not pain what I deal with that with earlier before I went to school was pain this is more of just like a motor tic or like an annoyance or fatigue I said it was for a couple of years and then so finding the answer to that well was so like transformational of like oh this can not only my comfort my just because when I'm comfortable I just feel better I'm not thinking about something something isn't distracting my thought when I'm comfortable and especially the ability to like the fact that it removed pain in my life was I'm like oh this is this has value this is you know what is value value is something that improves people's lives right that that's a good way to look at it but they have to understand that value I mean you can say all you want but if they don't get it it's you know this value and maybe science knows this value but if they don't get it then they're not gonna buy because they have to understand it so that's the secret I think how do you help people see that what you have is gonna help them mm-hmm yeah it's really tricky because I mean marketer it's I think about all the time but specifically online you can't tell someone how it feels right you just can't right and every company is like we have a super soft and then you look at the materials and it's a hundred percent polyester and it's just it's it's not the same fortunately the designs that have been adding to them look high quality enough that people have a lot of interest in purchasing them and then I have the faith that then them having a hundred percent cotton that's of substantial quality will then make them want to get more later on when are you gonna sell those are are you those right there are ones that have picked off but the amount I think about the amount of time and energy would take to you know wrap it up wrap it up ship it shipping costs but essentially the majority of them I want to keep because my real driving goal is to find an existing manufacturer that has the workers they have the place because I mean this is smart yeah this is one person with a small backyard made over 500 pieces where the entire the entire article of clothing has designs on it and it's it's significantly higher than tie-dye I did some tie-dye as examples because like that's what a manufacturer should probably base it against most people have like a hippie association with tie-dye or whatever it is but essentially if you just look at the fidelity of like tie-dye gets kind of blurry I see that and this doesn't and it doesn't it goes down to the individual level and it's takes a tenth of the amount of time and the actual like taking a clothing and then altering it it costs significantly less because tie-dye you have to let it sit for 24 hours the dye is expensive you have to soak it in soda ash so the the fibers react whereas I've just everyone's fear-based not bleaching clothes or they bleach it in a certain way but I just saw this glimmer of what it could look like and it's just been this progression of every single one that I did it'd be in a different method or a slightly different way and it just kind of built out into being this thing where I could reliably and consistently get designs that all looked quite different and so those are hoodies if you believe it or not no but like oh I see yeah this as like clothing like it just it doesn't necessarily exist on the market you can have polyester that's printed with like a faux design but then at the seams like it won't match up so it's the fact that this is like it's I've created a new thing for the marketplace and I don't want to rush into exchanging it back for US dollar like I put all the energy and time into exchanging US dollar for this you know do you have it patented I don't think it's a patentable idea I don't know that it is or it isn't that's why I'm asking and your technique might be that's why I'm asking um funny enough I'd I'd almost teach it out of the just like I'd open source it like I'd meet the manufacturer and say I'd love to just like teach you this and then I'd love to clearly this should show my drive and passion for this industry I don't think that this is the tip like the edge of the iceberg like this isn't the end of my knowledge like I say if if I have more like capacity to to test and to try new things I mean I've done all this without even sewing or hemming or anything like much much less like cutting and adding like these things so clothing just took me out of the blue I was always digital my whole life I I wrote like a book and a screenplay I put an album out like I was in a music I was into writing video really took me and then that's the one that actually could make a career with so this is my first physical venture and it's it's really rewarding in the sense that nothing that I've ever done people have been able to hold in their hands nothing people nothing's created as much of a positive feedback of people are just like out in the blue just like just down the world of like can I get that or where can I get that um well let me tell you why I'm asking the question because I don't really know a lot but I would just say I would talk to a patent attorney and just see if if it is reasonable but in the end you created an idea you're you're the entrepreneur I was describing and um by the way who did this I made the table it's that's awesome I appreciate that yeah all my life I've just been consistently aren't funny R&Ding whatever I've been I've been had at my at my disposal so I made this five or six years ago so the epoxy on top starting to crack I think right there so you know it'll it'll have to be replaced at some point in life but but yeah well it's funny that is it on paper or is it on cloth this is a butcher block yeah um and then I took acrylic paint oh with oh it's right on the block right on the block and then epoxy over it okay yeah it's funny I'm just now putting together how similar of kind of a design pattern these have and that comes from I didn't just before I bleached before I bleached I would screen print so I make designs I put them on screens and then I put them all over clothes and like this is glow in the dark some of it's reflective where it's actually like the light will shine back at you this is so laborsome to do oh it's it's I mean I could do 25 things where the entire thing has a design in the same amount of time it would take me to do two or three I see articles of clothing like this yeah and clearly like I had a path I had to drive to cover the whole thing in some way yeah so this was just like oh hey I figured out how to scale it because for years people were like you should figure out how to scale clothing and I'm like no I'm just doing it because I want the clothes that I wear I want to them to be unique and you're like mine right and then I would gift them to people like the ones that I'm like that one slightly doesn't fit me this or that um but then the bleach and then the highest quality ones I'm just going to add a couple designs onto such as you know this is a yeah this is a bleached article of clothing but then it has a couple like so they're all tests and at the end of the day um with the patent office I think someone could try reverse engineering but there's a bleach has existed and clothing has existed for a long time there's the reason why someone hasn't made this um I don't know I it blows my mind it took a lot of tooling around and playing with it I I had probably 30 piece 30 shirts that had holes in it and rips because the bleach would eat away at it yes so it took a long time to first off realize how to make it so the bleach wouldn't do that affected yeah affected yeah so yeah no it's it's it is my driving passion in life I am that I am that um entrepreneur in a way oh yeah I would say um well again the reason why I brought that up is if you didn't want to get into the actual manufacturing of it but you could find someone that would do that that you take a percentage of everything that they sell as opposed to you know it just becomes a source of income for you well that's a good size looks good on you I appreciate it this is one of the earlier ones I guess that is my goal and my hope was the goodwill in people a lot of my most profitable like business relationships started by doing free work for them or like coming with value in the hand um teaching people so they could teach their team certain things so my hope was that that's possible in the retail world but it might be too large a scale it might need to be but I don't I don't know if it'd be like the time and energy it would take to patent it to like be like make sure no one can do this when it so you know like it's it's a very interesting nebulous kind of concept of how what I should do or the other idea is just to set up a consulting business and you are paid for your knowledge and you're hired by certain companies to provide them with that expertise that might be another way to take advantage of your knowledge because that's what it is it's knowledge uh people people don't know about it or they don't have the ability to create something that good and you've got examples of it and that's they're always looking for something yeah that's part of the reason I'm not selling all of them or the majority of them is I'm like well I don't want to yeah I change it back and then it's like ah like the whole goal of it is to show that it's like one person can do this level of scale and the amount of mess-ups I have is so low so it's like like all these ways that would speak to a manufacturer and a like a scale facility like I'm trying like speak in terms of like hey like financially makes sense less labor less cost like the actual material um it's a new thing in the marketplace that has so I'm going to sell some to show that there's a proven market for them but yeah I'm excited to update you where I do go with it yeah I well and the other thought I had I mean just I don't want to keep you from doing what you're trying to do but I I'm thinking of it was one of the thought I had you had oh do you ever read have you ever read Dr. Seuss um yeah and just if you can move the mic you can move but if you just move the mic with you oh I'm on live yeah we still we haven't cut it if you're hey I'm like you know I didn't know okay well I'm just saying to you um Dr. Seuss Dr. Seuss do you read okay there's a story in one of his books it's a great story for you because of what you're trying to do with your shirts um it's about the star bellied snitches okay and uh I wish I had a copy of it with me because I don't remember all the details I just remember this um people are attracted to certain things and the people who have the money and power can get what they want it seems like and so one day oh sorry I'm actually you can manhand you can grab it and go like this okay I tell you at the end sorry so I'll just say one day this guy comes to town he has this machine with him and in this town there's two kinds of people the ones that have it all and the ones that don't have much and you see that in life so it just appears that way anyway so he's he says to the people without their heads are down they're they're they're miserable in life and he says so what's wrong you know and they said well you see those other guys over there you notice they have stars in their bellies and they're going around with their heads up in the air and they're telling everyone how great they are and so forth well we want to be more like them so so he says well I can help you with that and they said really how well you just give me a dollar and then you come into my machine and when you come out of the other end of the machine you'll have a star in your belly just like those guys so the first guy goes in he does that and he comes down wow I'm like these guys and my head goes up and all of a sudden the world looks hopeful and I'm excited and so one of his friends comes over and says what happened to you and he says well I'm not like you anymore I'm like them and he said I know but how did you do that he says you see that guy over there in the machine you just give him a buck and then you go through the machine and so he's okay so he goes in and gives him a buck and comes out the other end he has a star in his belly too and pretty soon the word gets out and all these people that were heads were down and pretty miserable start paying a dollar each to go through the machine and by the time they come out there's a line and and ultimately everyone has a star in their belly oh guess what happens it's no longer special yes so what happens to people that had the stars first they decided to they said to the guy hey can you help us out and he says what are you trying to do he says we don't want to be like these people we want to look different and he said okay come on into my machine give me a dollar and so he goes into the machine comes out the other end no star in the belly and pretty soon his buddy comes with him and says hey how did you do that and he told him he went through it the same process pretty soon they had a line going through and by the end of the story it was one complete line going through the machine and everyone's either miserable or happy and then and by the time it comes away the only thing it shows is the guy leaving town with all this money coming out the top of his machine and i said to myself right there that is so typical to to the economy that we know today people are always looking to be a little different and recognized and you're doing that for them really you you may not see that but it's unique and people if if they feel like uh it allows them to get the attention they want which is what they want they want to at least be recognized if not um more than that um i would just say just read that story i thought it was worth mentioning because i i've never forgotten it i read it 40 years ago and reading it to my kids and i'm thinking to myself this is a lot more useful than all the other stuff i'm reading so i'll just say to you uh take go back into your dr suz and see if you can read about the star belly sneezes our belly sneezes and uh and that will hopefully give you some ideas to how you can ultimately do it maybe not you yourself but you have contracts with someone that allows them to do it and you make money off of it yeah i like that i appreciate it i will read it i'll get back to you yeah thank you very much yeah that's okay i i always feel like we're so complicated if we just become simple and that's what dr suz did he just pointed out things that seem overwhelming like the uh lorax you know with the environmental issues that came up well he made it really plain so that even little kids could see that wasn't good yeah that's a very that's and meaningful impactful in a way where it stays with all of us that's exactly yeah i like that well thank you very much for coming on you know being the first guest back and hey you might be one of the only guests on the show well he never know that could be at the beginning of explosions yeah or more or less we could move so i'm glad i catch it