The Apex Podcast

Redefining Success: Breaking Societal Norms to Forge Your Own Path

August 01, 2023 • Apex Communications Network

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In these episodes, Jan and RJ jump between talking about their weekends, what it's like growing a marketing agency, and other show types. For the next few months, they will be working their way through 52 pieces of advice to live by.

Today's pieces of advice include:

1. You are the only person that can determine your definition of "success."
2. Goals are important, but not as important as effort.
3. Be a jack of all trades and a master of one.

Are we too entangled in the web of societal standards, losing sight of our unique definitions of success? This episode urges you to break free from these chains and discover your path to personal success, one that is fueled by your passions and values, not by comparison or societal norms. As we journey through the tricky terrain of defining success, we underline the importance of authenticity, individuality, and personal happiness.

While success is a personal journey, one cannot overlook the role of effort, accountability, and goal-setting. Imagine the satisfaction of setting ambitious goals, not dictated by societal norms, but by your own aspirations, and then achieving them through sheer determination and resilience. This episode affirms that no feat is too great, no goal unattainable and no dream too far-fetched, with the right mix of tenacity and self-belief. 

But what about job security and continuous learning? We do not mince words when we say these are pivotal for personal success and growth. Whether it is about honing your unique skill set to make your mark or broadening your skills to become a versatile professional, we've got it all covered. Plus, we delve into how cross-training can weave a fabric of trust and productivity in a team setting. 

We love answering questions, so if you'd like to have your question answered live on the show, shoot RJ and email at rj@chasetheapex.com and we'll be sure to include it in our next episode!

Follow Us on Social:

Jan Almasy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-almasy-57063b34

RJ Holliday: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-j-holliday-jr-b470a6204/

James Warnken: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswarnken

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/51645349/

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Website: https://www.apexcommunicationsnetwork.com



Speaker 1:

Welcome everybody to another episode of the Apex podcast. It's been a couple of weeks. We've been super busy here at the office, but welcome to another morning Spent with me and RJ. Hello, rj, what's going on everybody?

Speaker 1:

So today we're going to be diving back into our 52 Theses, or the Three Lessons a Day podcast. We're slowly working our way through a document. For those of you that haven't listened to one of these episodes before, we're slowly working our way through a document where, when we first started Apex, we were given an assignment to write down 52 pieces of advice that we wanted to try to shape our company around, shape our lives around, and so RJ and I have been going through these in batches of three. So if you go through and you find any of the 52 Theses episodes or three pieces of advice episodes, they're going to be a part of the casual Monday series Now the casual Tuesday series, and they will have little lessons throughout the day. So I'm going to go ahead and read the three that we're going to be going over today and then we can just dive right in.

Speaker 1:

So the first one is you are the only person that can determine your definition of success. The second one is goals are important, but not as important as effort along the journey. And the third one is be a jack of all trades but a master of one. So the way that RJ and I typically do these is kind of a three parter. We're going to talk about the sentence itself, what it means to us, how we've seen it applied or how we see other people apply it, and how we choose to apply it in our daily lives. So we'll just go ahead and kick off with this first one. You are the only person that can determine your definition of success. So for me, I really think that this speaks to the idea of happiness more than anything.

Speaker 2:

Someone's not happy. Someone not happy.

Speaker 1:

Right now, right now. Rj, do you want to take this one? I'm going to mute for a second and let pepper out this is live action right now.

Speaker 2:

Short, technical dog-o-break. But back to what kind of yawn ended with there, saying that it kind of relates back to happiness or how you choose to make your own happiness. I think, especially with today's day and age, you see a lot, you're inundated with a lot on the internet, a lot of people doing well, a lot of expensive things. A lot of what it boils down to is it ends up being a lot of talk and it becomes very, very, very easy for you to look at all that stuff and get discouraged, or how do I want to say this Feel like you're behind and it's better to keep in mind or it's the best thing to keep in mind that you yourself are on your own path and trying to put yourself on someone else's path whether it's because of the success that you see them in or their level of happiness or whatever it may be that you see on their end that makes you feel that way, and if you try to put yourself on the same path that they were on, you're only doing a disservice to yourself. Everybody you know walks down their own path at the end of the day, and nothing that I've done is the same way that Yon's done it, the way that Yon's done things is not the same way that I've done it, nor is it the same way James or Logan or Alyssa or really anybody that we've come into contact with in the last five years Everybody. It's strange to kind of sit back and look at the grand scope of all the people that we've interacted with and noticed the multiple different ways that people have gotten to the same point, all starting in different places and taking different approaches and everyone's kind of on their own timeline.

Speaker 2:

I'm the oldest one here and if I were to look at someone from my perspective, yeah, many times in the last five years I've been on Instagram or Facebook and been like damn, I must be really doing something wrong here because I'm not where they're at and I feel like I'm doing as much you know just as much work as anybody else is that I've seen and then eventually one day you get to the point where you're just kind of like I am giving it my all and I'm going down the route that I know I need to be on, because things are going the right way and I'm going to get to where I need to be without putting pressure on yourself to conform or dive too deeply into someone else's path because you think that they're doing better or are more successful or make more money or whatever it may be, or at the end of the day, like John said, that they're just happier than you.

Speaker 2:

This is a whole other commentary on social media, but definitely do not judge someone's real life happiness from the posts and stuff that they put on Instagram and Facebook.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. Yeah, I 100% agree with that.

Speaker 2:

The people yeah, the people that post the most are usually the ones that are the most unhappy. If I've learned anything, yeah, there's um.

Speaker 1:

There's definitely a Disconnect, especially between certain platforms like Instagram especially. I think is is a big player in this. Where you know you want to take like the highlights or the polished moments. We talk about it all the time and it's like in social media is really people's highlight reel. Mm-hmm, it's not their day-to-day.

Speaker 2:

You don't get to see all the bad times, or the night so great times right, no one's no one's posting that shit.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and a lot of like you don't. You don't get to see the lack of something that somebody's getting in person. That's making them seek that thing out Online, you know there's. So that's a whole can of worms. You can get into that for sure. But just, I mean to throw my little two cents in on this Before we move on to the next point. I think everything that RJ said is 100% accurate, and there's been. I've also had experiences where I've been like sobbing in the back of my car, just like why, why couldn't I have been Happy with my nursing career? You know that was stable, I had benefits, I had a salary, there was a group of friends.

Speaker 2:

You missed. You missed out on the traveling nurse boom.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I missed out on travel nursing. I just had a conversation with somebody that the other day they're like do you ever miss nursing or regret not pursuing?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we're getting paid quadruple right?

Speaker 1:

I was like there's a time when I was, you know, 10 grand in debt, couldn't afford to buy a McChicken and my friends were making $180 an hour. That I was like, oh, maybe I messed up.

Speaker 1:

Yeah maybe I messed up, but now I'm like looking at the healthcare system. A lot of those people Like and my friends that were in those career fields and even people that I didn't know, that I just watched on social they're extremely unhappy. They feel like they're getting the the healthcare systems beating the hell out of them. And I look at my life over the last five years and I've, like progressively gotten more centered, more, you know, happy with my pace and I get to control my Schedule and do things like go and live in Europe for a month while still working.

Speaker 2:

So I can tell you what to do.

Speaker 1:

See my grandparents, while also make sure that you know I'm still contributing to my company, but I wouldn't be able to do that as an RN. So you know there's that flipside, there's a trade-off. So I, if you have, if you have been struggling With feeling super unhappy, here's like a little framework that I use. Don't adjust the goals, because sometimes unhappiness can be because we're shooting too high and we just can't achieve that thing. But I would argue that it's not because we're shooting too high. I think you should keep that goal the same. Obviously, I have a very lofty life goal, you know. Keep that goal way out there. Keep pushing yourself. Lower your level of requirements for daily happiness. Don't lower the level of requirements for your overall goal. That should stay high. You should shoot for the stars. But if you On a daily basis or like I'm only gonna be happy if I make it to the gym, I make it to the grocery store, I get this ice cream, I play with my friends, I go do this, I had a good day at work and like, everything has to go just right for you to have a good day. You're gonna have a terrible day almost every day, but if you're like, okay, all I really want to be happy today is like I'm gonna be grateful for the fact that I have A curing in my house that can make coffee, you know, and I'm gonna be grateful for my cup of coffee. I'm gonna be.

Speaker 1:

A lot of people will take it all the way back down to the breath, which I know is super, super cliche, but wake up in the morning and take that first deep breath and just say thanks. You know, just start with something small like that and it sets the stage for the whole rest of your day To be anchored in something that's more. You know, gratitude focused, or you have a definition of success that it's like, as long as I'm, I feel internally, I don't feel a sense of stress, you know. Or I was able to hit 80% of what I wanted to do today. I count that as a win. That's a passing grade. Right, you don't need to get an A on every single test, nor will you get an A on every single test. Nursing school definitely taught me that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

As long as you're getting the passing grade, you're good.

Speaker 2:

This. This might be Semi controversial, but I know a lot of people or you hear this a lot you'll hear people tell you like to live in the moment, be happy in the moment and all that stuff. But I do truly think like Happiness to its higher, like highest form can only like really be experienced as a retrospective Mmm. And I feel like if, if you like, if this goes along with your point of saying like, ooh, don't, don't set yourself, go, don't don't.

Speaker 1:

Load yourself.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, don't, don't hold yourself to just such a high standard, but hold yourself accountable at the end of the day, that you can look back at everything you did that day before you go to bed and be like I'm, I'm happy, it was a good day, right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there's actually. I mean this. You want to. You want to dive into controversial talk about Andrew Tate. There's a lot of things that I disagree with that he says, but there's a couple of things that comes out of the woodwork every now and then that I Can't jump on or I agree with.

Speaker 1:

And one of the sentences that I heard I Can't remember what interview this was in, but he had like just gotten done, talking about being depressed and something like that, and he was like you don't want to be happy, you want to be proud of yourself at the end of the day. I can agree with that, and if you could be proud of yourself at the end of every day that you made decisions that you know are furthering where you want to go or who you want to become, then you will be happier on a regular basis because you're Prouder of yourself and you are stronger in your decisions, and that's that's a big. That's a big point because you could get, you could be happy. We'll just use diet and exercise, because that's one that we always focus on.

Speaker 1:

You can be happy in the moment eating a dozen Krispy Kreme's, but at the end of the day, are you gonna be proud of yourself for holding yourself to the standard that you normally Didn't be our hell that yeah now that's not to say that if you specifically say Two Saturdays from now, after busting my ass for two weeks, I'm going to go to Krispy Kreme and enjoy a dozen Krispy Kreme's yeah and by all means go for it like you've put in the work. You know you do stuff. You want to have a little cheat day? All right, cool, as long as that cheat day doesn't turn into a cheat month.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, then you're solid keep it real reward yourself every now and then, but not every day. So, all right, let's? Um, we'll go ahead and jump into the next one, because I think it kind of plays into exactly where this conversation is going. It says goals are important, but not as important as the effort along the way, and I think, like exactly what we're talking about right now, you shouldn't adjust lofty goals, like if you set a really high goal for yourself.

Speaker 1:

Rj and I are in the midst of that right now. We did quarterly planning for the company and we overshot our revenue goal by half a million dollars easily. But we're not adjusting that goal because what we want to do and what we talked about is we want to live our lives the rest of this year keeping the pace that we have been, as if we did, if we could actually pull it off. That's still the goal. So we're not going to lower our standards, because when you take a goal that you have and then you realize halfway through that you may not be able to hit it and you lower it to adjust to yourself, your effort just will decrease by. You know, I'm not gonna.

Speaker 2:

We'll just say like 20% probably more than that, but Something on it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because your brain now will say like, oh well, if that's the goal, that I only need to put in this much effort, and it makes it yeah, exactly, exactly. So once you set that thing, keep it high. I I think in the whole realm of like happiness and the day-to-day activities and keeping yourself motivated and stuff. There's another quote that I think sounds really similar to this, that I've heard a bunch of different times and I think it's something like Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn't work hard.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, oh yeah. My wrestling coach said that all the time. Yeah, I'm sure.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, that's, that's another, that's another great like phrase or another way to look at this thing is that you can have all of the you can. You can make vision boards and you can be in your head and you can Calculate out all the different things that you need to do and write them all down and buy the journals and get the self-help books and do all that other kind of stuff you know. But at the end of the day, I'm a perfect example of this. I've attempted the 75 hard by Andy for Silla four times and I've only successfully completed it once.

Speaker 2:

I Don't even know what that is.

Speaker 1:

So basically it's 75 days of two a day, workouts, gallon of water, you read chapter of a book a day and no booze or something like that.

Speaker 1:

So I'm like I've only completed that one out of four times that I've attempted that and that's because I just didn't put in enough effort, like I. I planned it all out, I had the goals and everything else like that. The effort just wasn't there. Effort was only there one out of the four times. I still had the same amount of talent, I still had the same amount of goal planning, I still had the same amount of calculating all my meals out and all that other kind of stuff, but the effort was lacking. So that's kind of my message on it is is If you're an over analyzer, like I am, or you're too much of a thinker, like there's a reason why sometimes the most successful people don't have the highest Like analytical skills, and a lot of times it's because they just do things and then think about them later and tweak them as they move along. They're not trying to constantly reevaluate Well, maybe the goal is wrong. It's like maybe you just need to pick your shit up and yeah get after it a little bit.

Speaker 1:

So that's kind of my take on it.

Speaker 2:

Minds, minds way quicker. It just kind of comes to Holding yourself accountable and and keeping that pressure on yourself. When you I'm trying to think of the best way to describe this, because it's like when you go to school and you're in school and you have tests and you know you need to, you know get a certain grade or whatever it is, obviously you have to work to a certain degree to Ensure that you get that passing, passing grade. There's a reason that teachers, when kids are struggling, don't just say what well, an A is now an 80%. Oh well, an A is now 70%. There they're in most areas of life. People aren't going to move the goalposts for you to make things easier on you, and so you shouldn't do that for yourself, because once you start moving the goalposts, it becomes very difficult to stop moving it and then eventually you're making Zero progress. You become complacent. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I was muted over here talking to myself You're good, but no, I 100% agree with that. It's the incremental shifts that, over time, result in somebody like you know basing their life success on throwing the high school touchdown Like that. Yeah, I actually really love the way you put that, because I think that's a really practical thing to watch out for, for people is is the world is unforgiving. I think one of the harshest and the most freeing like reality checks that you can get is that no one actually gives a shit Nope, at like at all.

Speaker 1:

We do not care you if you leave a party. I guarantee you within a minute of you leaving that party, people have forgotten.

Speaker 2:

You weren't even there.

Speaker 1:

They're talking to the people that are still there. They're in that moment, right Like you get cussed out by somebody at a red light five minutes after you drive away. They're not thinking about you and you're just thinking about, like why I got yelled at by some person at a red light and if you keep thinking about those things it'll be negative. And then on your side of the house with the goal stuff, like if you keep moving that goal post, those people aren't going to move the goal post for you.

Speaker 1:

Like they don't care, and the people that really want to push you I think you mentioned, like a coach, right, Wrestling coach. The whole reason why they're setting that goal post there is to get you to grow in order to reach that goal post. That's what that goal post is there to do. So if you, if you're like, oh, I need to lower my goal because I'm feeling stretched, you're operating on the wrong feeling, Like you should be feeling stretched if the goal is in the right place, Because that's the whole point of a goal.

Speaker 2:

Ooh ooh, if you want another, another lifting analogy for anybody that is listening to this and works out, there's a reason that they call it doing reps until failure and not doing reps until you decide to change what the rep range is. Yeah, that's 100%.

Speaker 1:

That's 100% true.

Speaker 2:

The um you're. We are always under the, the, the philosophy that when we set these goals, even though we've gotten to a point where we're like, yeah, that's probably untainable for us in this, you know, next six months or calendar year or whatever it may be I'd rather attempt to get as damn close as possible, to push ourselves to that point and then and then fail, knowing that we did everything then to move the goal up and make that monetary amount that we decided on a year ago something, you know, something less. And then then God forbid if anything bad happens miss that again, because I'm gonna feel like real shit.

Speaker 1:

Right, right, yeah, agreed. So note to self don't change where your goals are. Keep yourself, you know, rooted in gratitude on a daily basis and recognize that most people don't actually give a shit. So you're going to have to be the one that has that discipline.

Speaker 1:

You give a shit, all right, cool. So this last one kind of switches the switches the vibe a little bit. So the first one, the first two that we talked about today, were more about definitions of success and goal setting. Yep, this one's more about skills and what types of skills you want to have. So this, the last one for today, is be a jack of all trades and a master of one. So this I actually is something that I kind of pulled out of a conversation with my grandfather from Slovakia. So the traditional one that we've heard, or that most of us have heard, is be a jack of all trades, master of none, or a jack of all trades master of none, right, and you're kind of you refer to somebody that's a generalist in that way and it's not necessarily meant as a compliment all the time. Right, is that that person's jack of all trades, like he knows a little bit about everything but doesn't actually know anything about anything? Very surface level Knowledge, right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So jack of all trades, master of one is pick, you know, earlier on in your, in your life, I would say between like 15 and 22, 15 and 21. You're just, you're experimenting, right. You're trying a bunch of different stuff out, you become good at a bunch of different things. At least this is kind of how my parents raised me, right, you want to be in different clubs. You want to. We were in 4h, we had I got a job as soon as I turned 16. There's all these different parts of life and it was like you have to kind of be good at all of these things but you don't really need to dedicate yourself to one specialized craft, necessarily, and that's all well and good. But in a world where technology moves super, super fast and you're rewarded for specialization At some point, you kind of have to pick at least one thing. Yeah, that makes you super passionate.

Speaker 2:

At least makes you stands out.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, makes you stand out and as you age, I like to think that you can have like a. You could be a jack of all trades but a master of one in a couple of different categories. You can have one hobby or lifestyle thing, one work or professional life thing and one like personal interest, right, and you could be a master of each of those things. So for me it's like my professional stuff. I decided, out of all things, and I'm going to try to master, I'm going to try to master team leadership, like I'm going to listen to I listened to, you know, three hours of podcasts a week on organizational psychology, team leadership and business building. So that's one thing. But then on like my hobby side, I really like being a master of kind of like the whole gardening aspect of life and like farm living. Right, I know a whole bunch of different random stuff about different taking care of different types of animals, different types of plants, all of those types of things. I really really enjoy that. That's my master.

Speaker 1:

But around those two things, the kind of jack of all trades aspect is like, yes, in business the leadership is my primary focus, but what? In the last month I've set up a Google Analytics for account. I've helped code things on Squarespace, I've written blogs for clients, I do SOW work, I know how to run payrolls Not that I do that stuff anymore, right but like I have a lot of those skill sets in my back pocket. So I am a master of one thing, which is trying to figure out how to lead this. You know, mary, band of miss it, but on the opposite, like the, I am also still a jack of all trades when it comes to business, because of the fact that we were founders, right.

Speaker 1:

We were forced to understand all of this stuff in the very beginning. So that's kind of my, that's my my synopsis of that, mine.

Speaker 2:

If I'm critically looking at this, it comes down to two things Job security. Job security, I think, I think that's that's a big thing. It comes down to that saying when, when I hear, when I first saw it is point number one, job security and to it kind of translates into never stop learning. So, if you can, if you can find that one thing, you master and I'm strictly just talking about inside business when, when, when I'm referring to the quote If you find that one thing, it will help you solidify yourself in there and help you build confidence in that you know what you're doing within that particular niche inside of your profession. It will also, if you are a master, if you are a proficient in it as well, you have other people within the team that rely on you, and then you can rely on them as you're broadening your horizons and learning the other stuff, that you're trying to become a jack of the.

Speaker 1:

I would say, yeah, you're like leaning on each other's zone of geniuses while you're learning things from the beginning.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I would. The point I guess I was trying to get across is if you don't have that one thing that you've mastered or that you're you know I don't even know I don't like the term master because I think there's always new stuff coming up and new stuff to learn but the one thing inside your organization or company or your circle or whatever it is, that you're better than 95% of the other people use that to your advantage to open up doors, teach other people to raise their level of understanding and awareness of what you do, and nine times out of 10, they will return the favor in showing you what they're most proficient at. And that's how you kind of you expand your knowledge. It gives you even more job security. Even after, even on top of the one thing that you know you're, you could wake up every morning, clock in to work and do with your eyes closed. Because if you one, if you're taking that one thing that you're good at it in your only concentrating on on that and you're not broadening your horizons, one, it becomes very apparent to the people above you what they need to look for if there's any reason to ever replace you. But if you are, you're extremely proficient in that one thing plus, you know a little bit of this department, a little bit of that, a little bit of this, then it. Then if, for whatever reason, they are looking at downsizing or whatever it may be it, it throws a huge wrench into their, their plan to try and replace you because you do a lot more than what you signed up for.

Speaker 2:

I'm not saying go out of your way and throw more work on your plate, but if, if you know enough to be, you know, dangerous in those other positions, it adds so much more value to you as a, as a standalone employee, to you know managers or above you, or or even potential hires. I know this because me and James are currently working on a resume which I haven't worked on a resume in probably over a decade, and most resume examples I'm looking at are skills and I'm like, holy shit, I know a lot Like I know a lot more. All, all, all you, goddamn you. Look at mine. It's like ooh, cpac certified, able to audit, also super proficient in payroll, but also can do business. You know marketing and brand strategy for you, but also super proficient in Google, sweet and Microsoft work, but also is super good at problem solving likes public speaking wheelset, sit at a computer and run budgets all day. So I'm like God damn, I'm all over the place.

Speaker 1:

Dude. That's why I keep to, I keep telling people that like, don't, don't shy away from starting a business and treating those first four years as a, as a supplementary bachelor's degree. You know, like the only difference is that there's no way in hell that a school is going to end up paying you outside of, like a scholarship or something right Thanks to go there. But a business has the potential to pay you back and grow beyond that.

Speaker 2:

If if you're not specializing in something either, then that also makes you extremely vulnerable in terms of of of job security.

Speaker 2:

So you have to play that kind of comfortable middle ground get yourself in, find something that you like, become exceedingly proficient with it, and then take a look at round you, at the stuff that you know interests you, but maybe not as much and try to learn as much as you can.

Speaker 2:

In the event.

Speaker 2:

I mean, you don't know how much of a of, of of benefit and an ass asset you come to become to the company and or even individuals that know just when we started cross training in in.

Speaker 2:

This is specifically for people who are probably starting their own company or work for a small business or something like that the amount of weight off of at least I can speak to this my own shoulders when we started doing cross training, just knowing, hey, if I get sick or something comes up or I have to go on vacation or whatever, that there's not just one but two other people that are you know just enough to get payroll out the out the door, so our team gets paid on time and I don't have to worry about you know, doing payroll on my iPad in the middle on on a plane or something like that. That just that level, that that level of you know clarity in your head that all, all things are covered, there's, there's no need to panic because not everything rests just on your shoulder. Your shoulders can can, honestly, I think, lead to large amounts of you know increases in productivity from your team when they're not so stressed out because they know you have their back.

Speaker 1:

I could double click on that 400 times. The founders like take this as something that if you, you know, have a co-founder that is in a single task and they're the only one that's responsible for that.

Speaker 1:

Take RJ's heed and set up a program because you don't know how much mental anxiety that person might be carrying around. Because they are, they feel like they're the only one that can do their job and if they go down, then their job goes down. That's a very, very. I've also experienced that. I experienced that a lot, a little bit earlier on in our existence.

Speaker 2:

I mean we have, we have a client right now that I think a large, a large reason that his business runs into so many, so many issues and he runs into so many roadblocks himself is because and this is also kind of another aspect of it I don't think he he's, at least in the last you know 10 years, hired the right people into the right seats where he feels comfortable enough to relinquish responsibilities that, ultimately, if he didn't have to worry about scheduling and payroll and bill pay and collections and all that himself, he'd probably be able to run his business far more efficiently and be far more profitable if he knew that there was somebody in his company with the ability to take that stuff off his plate, get it done right, get it done on and on time. And I think with our help, we're eventually going to be able to get him to that and get him to realize that there, there, this is a multifaceted portion of his company that needs, needs, oversight by someone other than just him for the sake of the you know, the company's longevity.

Speaker 1:

Right, agreed, agreed, um. So I think we can wrap this up with, like I'm going to. There's a little framework I want to talk about, like how do you actually become a jack of all trades? And then we can end the episode. Um, because I think that this is kind of an important thing to bring up. Um, because we've been talking about how do you go from being a jack of all trades to mastering one thing and dedicating that balance. But it's like, how do you become a jack of all trades in the first place?

Speaker 1:

Uh, and something that you said really stuck out to me. I don't know if I've realized this about the way that I approached these things before, but the way that you just said. It really hit home, um, when you said you find a skill. You get to the point where you become exponentially better at that skill and it takes you way less time to perform. And then you find another skill to add into the booklet. And I didn't think about that like this, but I've done that in nursing the military when we did apex, like everything.

Speaker 1:

You dive into a situation. I like to call this phase messy action, right, you just kind of start doing things, um, and you do things for a living. You're a little while and then you do research to try to figure out, like, okay, well, this is what I thought that I was doing, how can I make this a little bit better? And my colonel always used to say, like, when we got to a new unit or when somebody changed jobs, he's like the first three months this job is going to take them all 40 hours a week. Um, after the first three months it's probably only going to take them 35 hours to get all 40 hours worth of work done. Yup, and by two years into that position, it might only take them half of the work week. They should be flying to get that stuff done.

Speaker 1:

And he said that's it's always good to self recognize when a skill is taking you like half of the amount of time that it used to take you to get done. It's time that you have the space now to add in a new trade, to become highly skilled at Yup. So I'm not I'm trying to not say master right, because I like the way that you said that too Like we never really truly master something. Um, but you can become highly skilled in something. It decreases the amount of time it takes for you to do that thing and then, as soon as you have enough free time to add another thing into your life, to go learn that new thing, do it, try it.

Speaker 1:

What you don't want to do is be in a place where you have like three things that you're trying to learn and they're all taking up 40 hours a week of your time and you go and you find a new shiny object and then you try to master that thing. I've been a victim of that, overstacked my schedule way too much in the past. It just ends up to like just feeling crippling.

Speaker 2:

I think that kind of goes failing at a whole bunch of different things. You're changing the goals.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yep, yeah, you're adding in a new goal in the middle of a three month goal.

Speaker 2:

Don't do that. Stay strong yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, so cool, all right. Well, this is going to be the last podcast for a month that I record stateside. I will be traveling all over Europe here for the next like month, in a week or so. Arjun, I will still be recording podcasts as long as I have stable Wi-Fi. So we'll check and see what that looks like over there, and if I don't, then we probably won't be recording for the month of August. So just keeping you guys posted on that front, we'll send out posts via LinkedIn or Facebook to let you know if we're going to end up having episodes.

Speaker 2:

What I'd like to do actually is, if I don't mind, just talking to dead air. So if anybody's listening to this and anybody has questions, send them. What email should we send? Actually, you can send them to me, yeah, just send them to me. Have my Instagram, docholiday92, or send questions to rjatjaseatepexcom, and if he doesn't have stable Wi-Fi, I can just do an episode of answering questions if anyone's interested.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that'll work. I can get you and James on here in the month of August.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'll drag James' ass on here.

Speaker 1:

Cool, all right, I don't have anything else. Anything on your side, any events coming up, rj, or are we good?

Speaker 2:

to talk about Nothing. That. I can think of off the top of my head. Everybody have a great week. All right, I'll flip side everybody.