Episode 7 - Steve Richman

I do like the TikToks when everybody's using their feet. They look like they're playing soccer with one another.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

To me, what I keep going back to right now, because it is work and we're scared for family, we're scared for friends, and we're scared for work, it's all about health. I started to think about all those things. It came out in the late 90s. There's a guy named Brian Dyson. I'm not sure if you've heard of him. He used to be the CEO of Coca-Cola. I know you've heard of Coca-Cola. I may even have a Coca-Cola in my refrigerator. We brought my mother-in-law over to stay with us. She's on our island and she loves Coca-Cola, so that was one of the things on the supply list. There was plenty of that at the store, so I didn't have a problem finding that.

He did this thing, and I agree with most of it, and I sort of put my own spin on it just a little bit. He says you talk about this work-life balance. Well, it's not really work-life balance because work, if you're going to balance things, they're supposed to be equal. Your work is not supposed to be equal to your life. Work is a part of your life, right? It's a subset as opposed to being a balance or an equal. So he says there's really five balls that you, me, everybody on the planet in our industry, we're juggling five all the time. What do you have to keep up in the air? You got to keep up with your family. You got your mother-in-law there. I got my wife here, my daughter here, but I'm calling my son all the time to say, 'You okay? You okay? How you feeling? Are you drinking enough?' So you got your family. Especially today, we need our own personal health. You got to keep that up in the air. I don't know about you, but every single time I swallow, it's like, 'Oh my God, did I just have a sore throat?' Somebody sneezes in the house, we're all running. We're in North Carolina right now, and the pollen just hit. Everybody's sneezing, everybody's coughing. Which one is it? So you have those two. Of course, the third we already said is work. You got to balance work. Work is part of it, so that's very important. You have to balance your friends. It was beautiful. I got to talk to you for 10 minutes before we started this call just to say, 'Hey, what's going on? Let's catch up.' And then there's this spirit. For spirituality, spirit, religion, love, that whole big ball that we're juggling that all sort of goes together. He says while you're juggling all this and you're trying to keep them all up in the air, one of the things you have to realize is they're not the same size, but they're not made of the same thing. Four of them are made of glass, but one of them is made of rubber. Meaning if you drop any one of the glass ones, it's destroyed. Even if it doesn't shatter, it will be cracked. It will never be the same. Rubber, it'll bounce back. You know what that is? That's work. Everybody's work, work, work, work. It bounces back. You and I were laughing, not laughing, but commiserating about what happened in the past when everything happened back in 2007, 2008. We've been through that. You know what? That came back. The industry recovered. We have jobs. It does bounce back. So we put this emphasis on that one, and that's really the most bouncy. It's the one that rebounds. We spend a ton of time there, but we don't really believe that it can rebound. In reality, that is the one that rebounds the best out of the five of them. One thing that I do look about with work is people think that they have so little control. They try to control work. I think this is just the brilliant showing of we're not always in control of it, and therefore we have to go with the bounce because the curveball is going to be thrown at us. So that's sort of where we are with work. It's going to be okay. It might not be tomorrow. I mean, we know what rates are doing. It's crazy, but there are certain things that we can control. We can control who we do business with, who we network with, all that. So I'm good with that. I want to talk about the other four for a second. Where I think people get a little bit... we concentrate so much on work. Family is the one that we see that's most flexible. That's the number one because that's the one you can reason with. You can't reason with your doctor. 'Hey, can I just have McDonald's three times a week?' There's no reasoning there, but there are consequences. The doctor's never going to say yes. So you can always look at your spouse or your kids and say, 'Okay, but we'll do that this week.' So we tend to push that one aside a little bit because it's most flexible. But when you really look back at it, the one thing that family wants is time. They want you. They want your time. So when I look at this and I see where we are, especially with me being home right now, my kid's going, 'Can I have less time, please? Would you go back to work?' We're kind of done with this now. It's like, 'I've had plenty.' But you and I travel all the time, so in a way, our families are used to us not being there. So when I'm home, it's concentrated time. It's not me thinking about 12 different things. So now is a great time to spend that time and hit their number one objective. The second thing when I think about family, which is a brilliant time for us to be self-reflective and help others, I used to want to start this. Who knows, Ginger, maybe you and I will start this one day. It's called Family University. Instead of helping people become better parents, it's Parent University. The theme of Parent University has always been in my brain: making better kids by making better parents. When I think about what's going on in the time that I'm spending with my family, it's not really just that I'm looking at them. Our kids will do what we do. So I don't want you to wish for your kid whatever you wish for your kid. Make happen for yourself. Whatever you wish for your kid, make happen for yourself. So you know, I hope that my kid has a good job when they grow up. Well, if you don't have a good job that you like, guess what your kids are going to do? They're going to follow this. I hope they're in a loving relationship and they have good communication. I hope that they're safe, they can figure out how to save. If you're not doing that, they're going to learn it from watching what you do, not what you wish for them. Quite frankly, I say this to you, Ginger, to me, we have really weird jobs. There's no real job description for what we do. I get that all the time. People are like, 'I don't really understand what exactly do you do.' The answer is bottom line, I like what I do. I love what I do. So my kids are hopefully learning, 'Hey, I can figure out what I enjoy doing, what skills that I have and that I like,' and they'll do that instead of me saying, 'Go be an entrepreneur,' but I wish I was, but I'm not going to go do that. Do the thing, be the thing that you want your children to become. So that's how I sort of juggle that family, both with the time and with that. Health is hitting us right across the face right now. Health physically, but there's the other element of mentally. You've got to keep that mental health up. For me right now, I eat a quick lunch and I go for like an hour walk. I think there's something about that sunshine, something about just getting around and moving that helps both mental and physical at the same time. I don't jog. If you see me in person, you'll say, 'I bet you don't jog.' I still want to go out there and you have to get that on both the physical and the mental end. That's the thing that I think we procrastinate the most with. Family is flexible, so we ask them to bend. We sort of push to the side. We go, 'Well, it's sort of like a snow day, so I'm going to go eat whatever I want to eat and I'll start my diet tomorrow.' I don't do New Year's resolutions, especially for health, because I don't want to just be healthy on January 1st. You should be starting right up front. So here we go. We just said, 'Hey, what are you going to do? I'm going to balance the family, the health, work.' The next one is friends. That's why I love being in the banking industry. I look at friendships the same way as a banking relationship. You get out of it what you put into it. Is it a negative interest friendship or is it a positive interest friendship? Someone pops right into my mind when I say this. He's a guy. If I don't call him, I don't hear from him. If I don't say, 'Hey, let's go out and grab something to eat or you want to go to lunch,' unless I make that first move, you'll just disappear. You know, it's like, 'Oh man, if you don't want to be friends, that's fine.' If you're not getting something out of your friendship, and when I mean something out of it, I don't mean financially, but if that person is not adding to your joy, your life, your comfort, hey, it's a bank. Change banks. Spend the time with the friends that you're going to get something out of and get something out of you. Then it takes me to where I disagree with Brian Dyson. Those are the four, and he says you got to juggle your religion and your spirit. I'm more about spirit than I am about religion because like you said, we're in this world together. So I talk spirit instead of specific religion. But I don't think that that's a subset. I think the spirit is sort of like the life, and you need to deliver that to all four of the other balls. You need to bring your spirit to your family. You need to, especially with the mental health, bring your spirit into your health. That's what yoga basically is. You need to bring your spirit to your friends and to work. That's a big one. People will say, 'That's pretty good, but how much does spirit cost? How much does spirituality cost?' I ask you this, Ginger. Do you know how much spirituality costs?

I say it's two G's. Two G's. Not two grand, but two G's. Grace and gratitude. I love that. It's grace and gratitude. That's what you need for your spirit. If you have grace and you have gratitude, I'm a big Brene Brown guy. I really like her stuff. I read her book. She's out of Texas. She's awesome. But it's two G's. It's grace and gratitude. What's grace? Grace is looking around and giving other people a break. Grace is saying, 'Hey, they're juggling their balls also. I don't have to help. I'm not going to create a distraction so one of those balls drops. How can I help that person?' Gratitude is to look around and say, 'Thanks.' As horrible as this is right now, guess what? Our family's doing good. I'm not going to the woods, and I'm happy about that. Right now, I'm stranded on my island with my wife and daughter. Thank you, great. Because for you and I, this so easily could have happened when I was in the middle of the road of God knows where, and I'm in some hotel sitting by myself. Could you imagine how much worse that would be than hanging out with people that you love? I think most of us were out of town when the decision was made that we're not going to be out of town anymore. It was one of those things like, 'I've been gone for two weeks on the road. My number one thing is I got to get home.' I'm thankful that I made that decision before the airline shut me down and said, 'You're not going to go home.' So that's why I look at those two G's. Right now, I see it a lot online, and I love it. I hope this carries over. Is there somebody who's older who's in line at the grocery store? Let them get ahead of you because they need to get away from people. If the appraisal comes in 10 minutes late and you're trying to get it, give a little grace. Who knows what's going on in that appraiser's life? A co-worker made a mistake. Someone cut me off in traffic. My daughter, you go back to being what you want to be. My daughter right now, she got her learner's permit on Monday. The DMV goes down on Tuesday. So this is great. Nobody's on the road, and we're driving around. She actually had somebody, brand new driver, and we're at a traffic circle. She's like, 'Oh, what do you do?' Brand new driver, and the person honked and went around her. I'm like, 'You know what? They might be sick. It's good that they got out of the way. Let them get home faster than me.' Could we get upset, angry? Have a little grace. Have a little grace with your family, your friends, your health. Have a little gratitude. Be thankful. So when I'm juggling those five, those two G's, I apply them to the four, and that helps me. That's where I am today.

That's why I said the spirit goes to all four of those things.

I got back on Friday from Atlanta, so you're seven days. Okay, so I am... this will be the longest length of time that I've been with my wife since 2000. So we're about to find out. I hope she has grace and gratitude.

Oh, the babies for sure. I'm yeah, they're going to call them the quarantines.

I think yeah, exactly.

No, thank you. I appreciate you. Great story, great advice. The two G's, I think, is very valuable to have the gratitude and grace. I have my gratitude for you and for what you do. I look forward to seeing you again sometime soon. We need to do something together. We've talked about that for a long time.

Awesome. Thanks, Steve. Thank you.