The Apex Podcast

Navigating Life's Path: The Value of Stepping-Stone Jobs, Dealing with Stress, and Embracing Personal Growth

September 27, 2023 • Apex Communications Network

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After years of working two full-time jobs while simultaneously studying for his nursing degree, Jan can attest that not every job has to be a dream job to serve as a stepping stone for achieving your dreams. 

Jan and RJ explore this very notion in this episode, recounting personal experiences with jobs that didn't quite fit the long-term vision, yet played an instrumental role in paving the path towards it. The crux of the matter? Recognizing that your decision to be there was yours alone - a choice that offers more empowerment than one might initially discern. 

We don't stop there, though. This episode also dives into the gritty reality of life's ups and downs. Sharing insights into how we've trained ourselves to make decisions under stress and how pushing our limits has led to personal growth. We embrace the notion that failure is sometimes necessary for success and discuss how progress is often piecemeal rather than immediate. So tune in, hear our tales, and gather some valuable wisdom from our journey.

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/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ApexCommunicationsNetwork

Website: https://www.apexcommunicationsnetwork.com



Speaker 1:

The button, you know, get things rolling. Good morning everybody.

Speaker 2:

Great Google and Mugli.

Speaker 1:

Google Mugli.

Speaker 2:

What is that?

Speaker 1:

What is that from?

Speaker 2:

Oh, it's a song by three, six, six mafia.

Speaker 1:

Why is I? Oh, I'm thinking of Mugli, not Mugli Great. I was thinking of the jungle book.

Speaker 2:

That's also a good, good one.

Speaker 1:

Also a good one, but definitely not three, six yes yes, is it the last, last podcast in September? Yes, it is, which means this is the perfect time for us to remember to plug, that next week will be first Friday, october 6th.

Speaker 2:

Ah, yes.

Speaker 1:

We can remember that this time because it always sneaks up on us every single time.

Speaker 2:

But I will. I will be out of town.

Speaker 1:

October 6th is first Friday.

Speaker 2:

I'll be in town for first Friday, but I'll be out of town Monday. Oh the second, third and fourth, I'll be gone.

Speaker 1:

Gotcha, I'll be gone those days as well.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1:

Where are you going?

Speaker 2:

to be Tattoo, of course I, so the two that I got last or that previously this year were both unscheduled. They were a cancellation, and one of my buddies moved his appointment so that and then Chris offered it me to go. The only one that I truly truly had scheduled all of 2023 is the one in October.

Speaker 1:

And that's this one coming up.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

The rest of it were just spontaneous.

Speaker 2:

Correct. So I felt bad Because even my parents were kind of like sure, you want to do that, like less than 10 days before your sister gets married, and I'm like, yeah, I'm not getting married. We talked about it.

Speaker 1:

It'll buff, it'll be all right.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, so that that's the last one and that'll put the finishing touches and stuff on my arm which will, which will be nice and, as moving forward, I have nothing really really all to to play in tattoo wise after, after this one. So wrap it all up.

Speaker 1:

So, just like this was the year of the Tats.

Speaker 2:

Yep, finish blaze through and finish my arm.

Speaker 1:

How many do you have on your arm? Now, like what's the total count?

Speaker 2:

One, two, three, four, five, and I can fit six and seven. So shoulder shoulder will finish everything from like my shoulder down down to my wrist and then, if I ever wanted to, there's, there's room on my hand.

Speaker 1:

Hmm.

Speaker 2:

The old Job stopper.

Speaker 1:

You'll job stopper. Is that what they call those?

Speaker 2:

Yes, they do In the industry. They face in hands. They call those the job stoppers.

Speaker 1:

Yo, I didn't know that.

Speaker 2:

That's definitely what they call them in Willy Wonka the everlasting job stopper.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the everlasting job stopper. The everlasting job stoppers, yes, yeah, yeah, I could see that. I could see that being a thing like that. So does that mean you just got to wait until you were, like, successful enough that you know you won't need another job in your life? And that's when you get your hands tatted.

Speaker 2:

Correct and Mundo, which I, which I don't think. I'm far off, but it will kill my mom. So, OK, we got, we got some time. Some time needs to pass before the hand tax.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, rj's out here getting hand tats in his fifties. He'd be like finally, you know like yeah.

Speaker 2:

Either way, I don't want to speak ill on it, either part of it.

Speaker 1:

I'm just letting you know where it's at. Anyway, today we're going to be continuing to dive into our the fifty two pieces document. So for those of you I have no idea I'm not even going to try it too early, for those of you that have not listened to this type of episode before basically what we do is we had a document that we came up with very early on in our journey of apex that had fifty two pieces of advice on it and in each episode we go over three pieces of advice and kind of go back and forth between what we think that piece of advice is useful for in different situations or how to explain it a little bit better. So today we're just gonna do that same structure. We're gonna go through three pieces of advice and kind of just banter back and forth on where we think the place could be applied in your life. So the first one today is called it's not about always having your dream job. Sometimes it's about whether or not you have a job that can help you achieve your dreams. So I'm gonna hit that one more time just so that you got it, and then we can dive into it. So it's not about always having your dream job. Sometimes it's about whether or not that job will help you achieve your dreams.

Speaker 1:

So for this one, as soon as I read this this morning, I am teleported back to the probably three years-ish of my life that I was working two full-time jobs while in nursing school, and both of those full-time jobs I did not have them because I dreamt of becoming what that job would allow me to grow into for the rest of my life, right? So the first job was as a maintenance man at a apartment complex and then the other job was working midnight security at a juvenile detention center. So neither of those jobs like I didn't wanna grow up and run maintenance on apartments and I didn't wanna work inside of the juvenile detention system for my entire life. But they were both super, super flexible. On ours. I was able to learn skills that I knew that I was gonna use for the rest of my life at the maintenance job, but then also at the when I was working nights, because I would work 11 pm to 6 am at this job, working security. I used to listen to my lectures and stuff like that all the time while I was working security, walking up and down the hallways or looking at the monitors and stuff like that. I would study for nursing school, so it kind of gave me a chance to both work and study, get stuff done, because obviously I was working the other job during the day so I didn't have a whole lot of time to do homework during the day.

Speaker 1:

It was very, very tiresome, very definitely showed me that I didn't want to do that type of work for the rest of my life. Like I wanted to finish my nursing degree at the time in my life I didn't picture owning a company, so it was very much so. Just like I need to get my nursing degree, I need to go out and start into my career and start building something. Because this ain't it. But it's not that I didn't like the jobs. I loved the job while I had them but I knew their place.

Speaker 1:

Like I knew that I wasn't looking to make myself 100% happy at work. I think that that's unrealistic. Even with owning a business, there's days where I like absolutely despise having to do some of the work that I have to do, but I do it because it needs to get done, and that's the kind of the same thing with jobs. I think it's a mistake to look at a job like this is going to be my source of happiness, and if it doesn't make me happy every day, then it's not worth doing. I think that's an unhealthy way to look at a job relationship when it comes to work. For the vast majority of people, if you can find a job that you don't hate and that helps you pay the bills and lets you live the life you want to live, that's amazing.

Speaker 2:

About as much as you can ask for.

Speaker 1:

That's as much as you can ask for.

Speaker 2:

That's a lot, that being said.

Speaker 1:

Right, right, it's a lot more than people think and I'll kind of leave that. I'll just kind of leave that there as far as my piece goes. Your job isn't responsible to you to make you happy all of the time, and this idea of every job that I have, or the first job that I have has to be my dream job, is kind of yes, it's not how the world works.

Speaker 2:

So I mean, I think we can. You and I both can be a little jaded from sitting at the top of someone who owns their own company. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1:

Fair.

Speaker 2:

And I would say it's a lot easier for someone like you and I to get to a place where we like what we do every single day. Um, but for the vast majority of people, I don't. I really, truly don't think that that's an option. Also, long story short, if you're someone who just truly likes working like a dog every single day, you may. Maybe you need to look in the mirror, pick up a hobby or Right.

Speaker 2:

I don't know, I, I, I, I, truly I mean I know there's people who will sit there and be like if I didn't have my job or Whenever, whether I like it or I don't, I would just be bored. And Actually you know who says that all the time is is my girlfriend Jenny. She's, she's little miss Busy body and um, I, even now she'll say, oh, I need to be doing this. I, you know, I like work because it keeps me busy and it challenges me and all that. But you would be so hard pressed to think that that ever came out of her mouth when she had two months off during covid.

Speaker 1:

She's like this is great she's like.

Speaker 2:

I get so much more done and I don't have to worry about being at work on time and all that. I, I think if anyone really had the option, they would. They'd never choose to go into Work ever. And if you have that mentality from the same side of a coin, I mean it. If you wouldn't choose it every day, don't expect it to make you happy every single day.

Speaker 1:

Hmm, hmm, that's a good, that's a really good point. Bring it down to the level of choice.

Speaker 2:

Like you, have the ability to choose and so if there was, I mean I it's hard for me to say, because really, truly, I never really worked any jobs that I Didn't want to do or didn't choose myself to be there. I didn't have someone place me in a job. I, you know, had the luxury of being able to work for family the majority Of my life, prior to starting this. I think the only other jobs that I really took because I want I wanted to was GNC and and jerseys.

Speaker 2:

Mm-hmm in jerseys. I just didn't want to get punched in the mouth. I don't think anybody wants that and then.

Speaker 2:

GNC is just the the way that the franchise I worked for decided to do sales and stuff. It Caused me great mental anguish, um, and so I had to had to walk away from that. But I never once walked into GNC and was just like, wow, everybody likes me here, my boss likes me, my co-workers like me. They'll be less harsh on my selling tactics, not doing it the way and selling the things that they want, or they should be nicer and want to keep me around, and Even though I'm doing the opposite of what they want me to do.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Does that make sense? It was like they wanted us to sell this one particular way because the products were higher, marked up. But at the end of the day, when you see people come in and return them, or they want you to push fat burners to 70-year-old people you're like oh, Jesus Christ, this is not going for it. It's not for you. You're going to have a heart attack. I'm at home. I didn't kill Nancy and her husband Todd and go home and they're like did they say, take two of them or 10 of them?

Speaker 1:

They take half a bottle of fat burners, yeah exactly, and so you know.

Speaker 2:

but so I actively made the choice not to push those things in hopes that I could make up sales in other areas. That made me go home and feel less guilty and it backfired. But I didn't walk out of that GNC when they gave me the option to stay or and do exactly what they wanted me to, or leave and think to myself, well, I did this and I did that and they should have been nicer to me. And you know, my job would have been a lot better if I could have just done it the way that I wanted to do it. It's not a successful business because everyone was doing the things the way that they wanted to do it.

Speaker 1:

Right, right, well, and I think a big thing that comes out to me in the way that you were just describing that stuff right there, is that it's a choice, everything that, especially if you're from the US and you have the opportunity to go out and apply to different, multiple, different job locations and get started in your career. Like I remember getting started, it was okay, I'm going to work it. I can work at a part store, I can work entry level construction, I can work fast food or you know, or a grocery store or retail, I think are like the main areas you mostly get a job in, right, and I was like I can't picture folding clothes all day, I'm not going to do that. I ended up working fast food and a combination of like contract landscaping, because I was like, okay, I like to be outside, I want to learn more about, you know, tractors and slopes and scaling and all this other type of stuff with landscaping.

Speaker 1:

And did I end up doing any of that? No, I just ended up mulching and mowing lawns. But, oh boy, and the fast food side. You know, you just, there were days where you just had to be like I chose to be here. That is what it is, and your choice with GMC right is like I'm choosing to be here but I'm also GNC.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but I'm also choosing to not. I'm not going to compromise my integrity for what the job is telling me to do. And then you had a choice for you like I'm choosing to leave now or they're like leaving. They gave me the option I can stay and do exactly what they want, or I can leave and I'm not doing that. Yeah, choosing to leave, but that recognition that, like this was all me. You know nobody. This was my choice, this was my way of doing things. Nobody forced this on me, nobody. You know it's not. You know you're not being sent to an encampment and being forced to mine Cobalt out of the side of a mountain.

Speaker 1:

You know. So yeah, so again, wrap that point up it doesn't always have to be your dream job. You're not always going to be 100% happy at work, but as long as it's in service of what you see for your bigger vision. It doesn't always have to be perfect, so all right. The second one the best way to be sure that you'll be able to survive taking a body shot in the ring is by taking body shots outside of the ring. And when I say body shot, talk about boxing. I'll talk about going to the bar, about boxing. So this one. So for those of you that don't know what a body shot is used for in fighting, body shots aren't typically your knockout punches. Right, they can be if you hit somebody really, really hard and like the liver or something like that, that, that it takes somebody out. But body shots aren't typically the knockout punches, but they will steal your wind. So you take a body punch and you're not ready for it.

Speaker 1:

It can make you feel really out of sync, like you're really out of motion with yourself. And so a body shot inside of the ring. You know you compare it to something in life. They're like super unexpected things that throw your entire day into a loop, right? So like, picture yourself in the boxing ring or whatever. You've got a plan of attack and then all the sudden somebody steals your breath away from you. That plan of attack no longer matters. The only thing that matters is getting your breath back. Right. Same thing in life. Like you have your week planned out down to the tea or a day some people like to plan out months in advance. Right, you got that all planned out and then all of a sudden, life throws you a curveball. Just take your wind away and you're like, oh crap. You know you're driving a car and all of a sudden your engine blows. Or you're trying to get on a flight and it ends up being so delayed that it's canceled and you get pushed back the next day.

Speaker 1:

Right, like situation. Situations in life where you have absolutely no control over the situation in the immediate, but you have to figure out a way to get back on track, right, yeah, so this quote for me is really just. If you don't purposely put yourself in difficult situations, they're going to force you to make decisions under stress. Life is going to force you into those types of situations at some point and you either can have been on the practice field and practiced making decisions under stress, or you can wait for life to force you to adjust to that and then deal with it then, and for me it's all about getting your body used to what it feels like to make decisions when you're stressed out, because adrenaline is something that pumps anytime we get stressed, right. But there's ways that you can trigger adrenaline in your day to day life. You can trigger adrenaline by pushing yourself to a new weight in the in the weight room. You can activate adrenaline by going a little bit further than you thought you were going to on your run. You can activate it by trying something new that you've never learned before and failing at it, right.

Speaker 1:

So like a guitar or an instrument, or going to a pottery class in person, trying pickleball and being terrible the first time you play pickleball, right, any of those types of things activate that adrenaline and then it forces you to make decisions To what that feels like cold plunging is another big one.

Speaker 1:

Right, because everything in your body is screaming for you to get out of the tub, but you've got to force yourself to stay in there. Any of those types of tasks will prepare you so that when life hits the fan, even though your body is screaming at you to be like nervous and in a panic, you have better mental control over that. So that's kind of my plug with that one is yeah, the best way to survive taking a body shot in real life is 100% to do it in training, and that body shot doesn't need to be a physical punch. It can be literally anything that life throws at you to take you off track. If you're not practicing, you know dealing with life in general, life will take you by surprise and it can be a real pain in the ass to try to regulate yourself.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's probably it for me.

Speaker 2:

The I don't know. I think this one's kind of kind of simple in terms of, I think, an underlying meaning of it. But you can't, you can't expect growth if you don't put yourself in situations where you can grow. And I think that's in that that should be applied to any aspect of your life work life, personal life, gym life, whatever you want to call it You're, you're just going to end up doing the same old thing. If you don't put your neck out there Doing the same old thing, be the same old thing, you'll. You'll never progress forward if you, if you don't kind of take that first step, yeah, I can suck and sometimes it can set you back, but I that's probably a good thing in the long run. It's better to kind of take a step back, re-evaluate things and make slow progress forward than making no progress at all.

Speaker 1:

Boom Inches compounded over years yeah, that could be its own whole thing. Progress doesn't need to be made in giant bounds Overnight.

Speaker 2:

No good progress is made overnight. Let's put it that way.

Speaker 1:

No, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, stuff has to be built, and build solid over a long period of time. Yeah, sir, um, where is this last one? I just had it pulled up here. Hold on, oh, here, it is Okay. Sometimes you need to let things fail in order to get it done right. So this one I'm not going to spend too much time on, but this one I I remember being a kid, and this is where I think a little bit of like, ego and stubbornness can come in on things I used to, when I would try to fix something out in the garage, or I would be like, oh, we grew up on a farm, right?

Speaker 1:

Um, I would get so ingrained in a process of, like, trying to fix something using the wrong tool, or I couldn't find quite the right thing to do, so I would just start, you know, jerry, rigging it, you know, and I'd get so deep into the process and it would be like, oh, this is definitely not going to work. But I wouldn't not commit to it because I already it was like no, I have a plan, this is definitely going to pull it off, this is going to work, this is going to work. And then, like my dad or my grandpa or somebody would come out and be like what the hell are you doing? Like this is definitely not going to function. And I was like no, no, no, no, it's all good. And they're like well, why didn't you just do it the other way? And I was like, well, oh, I couldn't. You know, I couldn't find the tool.

Speaker 1:

I didn't want to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but I would come up with all these excuses, right, and it's because at that point I was knee deep in a really stupid plan and I wasn't yeah, it wasn't willing to backtrack. But if I would have just been like, oh no, I definitely failed at that Like, can you show me the better way to do this? I would have probably learned a way, but easier way, to do that and gotten it done quicker and more effectively. Right, so everybody would have won if I could have pride checked myself and been like oh no, I actually am, I have no idea what I'm doing. Can you show me what I'm doing? What's?

Speaker 2:

going on here.

Speaker 1:

And I think a little piece of me, like a little piece of that person, still exists. He's very, very much so diminished. I tend to probably more on the opposite side now. I tend to ask everybody's opinion and then make my decision, kind of an accumulation of all of everybody's perspectives in one decision. But I still will get to a place where, like, okay, I'm trying to create a piece of content and then I'm going to do something else and I'll just tap out quicker. I'm like, ah no, this isn't going to work.

Speaker 1:

I need to take a step back and see why this isn't working. I'm not just going to beat my head into a wall because I'm like, oh no, this was my original plan, this has to work. No, my end mission is for it to get done, and to be done correctly and effectively. It's not to get done according to my plan in any sense of the term. So that's my stance on it. Sometimes you get into situations where you might be knee deep into building something or doing something, and this is how lies take people down right. They start at something small and then they get bigger and bigger and bigger, and you have to lie about different things and blah blah blah, remember everything.

Speaker 1:

You got to remember everything and then it just ends up toppling like a tower of babble type thing. So if you feel yourself stuck in the mud, don't let your ego get in the way of just doing a hard reset and starting all over again.

Speaker 2:

Do you want to read the quote to me one more time?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it was. Sometimes you need to let things fail in order to get things done the right way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think what you said summarized it pretty well, but truthfully, it comes down to you're not. What is my, what my parents always say to me. I think we talked about this. Either I was talking on here or we. I was talking to someone about it, but how Poor of a sport I was when it came we were. I think we may have just been talking about this on the last podcast.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I flip the game board. Yeah, yeah, trouble.

Speaker 2:

OK, so it was on here. I just want to make sure I did a lot of talking over the weekend. I want to make my brain started fusing conversations together, but One of the things that I remember my parents always telling me is you know, whether, whether it was, you know board games or wrestling, or baseball or this or that or whatever it was, always just keep in mind that there's always going to be someone out there that's better than you at something, unless you are the 1 percent of the 1 percent that is the best in your field sport, game, whatever it is.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

But even as I've gotten older, I don't think that holds up, because everybody has a bad day. So on any on any given day or any given month or event or whatever it may be, there is more than like, more than likely there is somebody out there that's better at you than what you're trying to do. Right, you kind of keep that in mind when you're looking at processes and stuff like that and you're kind of up against a wall. It should be reassuring in the fact that there you got to kind of flip the script in your brain and be like oh God, I'm never going to get this done, this isn't going to get done, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what to go from here. It should give you reassurance if you tell yourself there's someone out there better than me at this, that there's hope to get that project or goal or whatever it is done, if you are willing to ask for help.

Speaker 1:

Right, and that's kind of the key indicator. You have to be willing to ask for help. That's the ego check piece.

Speaker 2:

A lot of the times you can kind of be worried about people helping you or willingness to help you, but I found nine times out of 10, if you tell somebody that you know they're better than you at it, they're more than likely to help you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, 100% Now if you go up to them and you say I'm pretty sure I'm better than you at this, but I'd like you to take a look, they're probably going to tell you to pound salt, right. But if you humble yourself and at the end of the day, your goal is to get the project done and that's it, not how it gets done or whatever, or that you're the only person that touched it, then you can negate a lot of that anxiety and bad feelings about your, I guess, position within the project or task or whatever, and at least have the self-awareness to ask for assistance and the project ends up getting done and all parties are happy at the end. So I mean, I guess, if you want to tie it back to the quote itself, you may have failed your individual task, but at the end of the day, the overarching task still gets done. So no harm, no foul, if you ask me.

Speaker 1:

Right, exactly, and that's where I think the second part of that quote gets done is like sometimes you have to let things fail in order to get it done. So I like the way that you just described that. It's like the sub-task within the overall mission. Sometimes you need to lose a battle to win a war.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly Very similar analogy.

Speaker 1:

So I think that's it as far as the three pieces of advice. Again, like we were mentioning at the beginning of this podcast episode, october 6th here in the Canton area will be first Fridays. You can find more information on first Friday and stuff by just typing in the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce or visit Canton into YouTube or honestly, just type in Canton first Friday.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you'll find it and information will pop up A lot of great drink specials, a lot of great restaurant specials. They typically have concerts and things of that nature going on in downtown and I'm sure that, since it's October, it'll be fall themed.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, oh one, it's first Friday.

Speaker 1:

Let's see, let's see.

Speaker 2:

Oh, it's Barkstober.

Speaker 1:

Is it going to be doggoes everywhere downtown?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, on Friday, october 6th, first Friday, is going to the dogs. Join us for Barkstober Fest, our annual pet friendly themes back, gather your favorite furry friends and head downtown for a night of music, art, shopping, entertainment like Canton first Friday can deliver, and it looks like Canton first Friday concert. Oh, friday, october 6th, disco inferno at Jersey's Cafe at Centennial Plaza.

Speaker 1:

You taking Theo down there to hit some bust a move.

Speaker 2:

I would, I'm, I'm more than likely, I probably will. Oh yeah, if you go to, if you go Canton first Friday dot com, they give you a map with all the vendors that are planning on being there and itinerary and stuff. That'll be nice.

Speaker 1:

Well, that well. If you're in town, go ahead and go check that out. It's always a good time. I always enjoy the can first Friday, so I will also probably be at this one. I'll be just coming back from Chicago, so cool. All right, everybody, until next time. If you haven't subscribed, make sure that you go ahead and do that, and we will catch you on another episode of the apex podcast next week. Have a great week guys Later.