I'm just picking up some of the ambiance. Oh good, I'm not even going to remove it, You're just going to leave this there. Yeah, it's just a little wake-up. It's like what are they doing?

How are you doing this? Are you just recording it on?

Audacity. Oh, okay, we're just doing back to Audacity, back to it. Well, it's the only option we have If we use Discord. We got a writer, baby, we got a writer. So this is we'll give it a special name this is Corporate Strategy, raw, like WWE, you know.

Corporate Strategy Raw Right, I like that.

Yeah, it's because we're auditioning. For the first time ever. After 150, 40 something episodes, I finally see you in person. I've met you.

I was going to say what's weirder? Is it weirder that we see each other in person, finally, for the first time, bruce and Clark come together? Or is it the fact that we are in a public mall right now, sitting next to a carousel, and we have a rider folks? She is riding it and it looks like incredible fun.

I picked this seat to record because, one, I wanted some mall ambience, but two, I was really hopeful that the carousel would go off. And what a perfect time to start recording, as the carousel is rolling Guys.

There's a line. There's a line for the carousel right now. Heck, yeah, this is great, this is going to be awesome. This is good. This is awesome. Okay, well good, I Okay, well good. I'm happy we're doing this live. What day is it, clark? It's.

Black Friday. It's Black Friday. What better place to be than in the mall? Yeah, I said. Clark was like hey, can I come to your house and we can record together? I'm like no, absolutely not. I've got a better idea. I have a fantastic idea for a podcast, all about business. Let's go to the crowded mall it's a great idea and record a podcast there.

Oh my goodness, yeah, we don't know what we're doing. We decided not to just come together and do a podcast to see how that would go in lands. We just decided to rip the band-aid and say and we're going to go in person for CorporateStrategyphys Raw Edition, right in the middle of the mall. I just got the weirdest look when I said Raw in that place.

There are children around us. There are parents around us. I'm wearing a Corporate Strategy shirt. Yes, the brand is on the line. It really is.

Okay. So Bruce is literally wearing one of our shirts right now Just the white tee, the black logo right across the chest. He is repping the brand. I'm repping the brand. We should have discounted the shirts for Black Friday.

We can't discount them any more than they already are. We'd have to pay them. We're giving them away at value. If you want to buy a corporate strategy t-shirt, I have to do is go to the link tree in the show notes. Man, you're plugging it already. Get yourself a t-shirt. It's Black Friday.

I feel like this is gonna be really hard to stay on task. Yeah, we got a line for the carousel. We got three oats loaded. There's no empty seats on the carousel. This is gonna be extremely the carousel is full.

Is it children's carousel? We clark and I are not allowed to ride this is.

It wouldn't fit. I couldn't fit. I'm convinced you wouldn't want to. No, definitely no. Well, where should we start? Should we say how was your thanksgiving vibe check?

yeah, vibe check. My thanksgiving was great. We went to some friends house to avoid the family. Um, it was really nice. It was about an hour drive away, so that was the only downside, but we were there a good five hours, had some good food, had some good talk.

It was great Good vibes. How about you? It was good. Yeah, ours was just packed with family. We are super blessed because all of our family is within like a five mile radius, so literally we just hop right across the street, go to one house, hop across another street, go to another house. It's got really culty vibes. It's great yeah that's good.

You're building a compound, which is exactly what you want to do in this day and age. Oh yeah, Family up, compound up. See you spent time with family. I avoided them.

Yep that just gives you an idea. Yeah, yeah, that's the situation. You didn't see your family at all.

No, Wow, Technically I did go to my parents' house to steal their pressure washer you did a task, yeah, on Thanksgiving to go see your.

Did you do it to see your parents or just cuz you really?

need. I need the pressure wash I needed to. My wife has been re not refurbishing, she's been like redoing the entire house, so we had some vents that we need to cleaned and I had the day off Obviously it's Thanksgiving, I'm pressure washed. So I went and I stole their pressure washer.

Gas power. Did you say happy Thanksgiving, or you just went in there, stole the pressure washer and got it?

I looked them in the eye and I said what is wrong with you? And then took their pressure washer.

Thanks for the pressure washer, thanks. See you next Thanksgiving. Thanks, I'll return it then.

Have fun at the meal today. Have fun at the meal that I'm not going to be at because I don't want to be there, oh boy.

Did you? Okay, let's talk about this. Did you have any inclination of any work in your life between yesterday and today, or were you totally off of work? You didn't have anything to worry about. Everything was taken care of.

Believe it or not, you're going to hate this, oh no, you're going to hate this. Oh no, I got an email. I got two emails yesterday. They were both from HR, so I had to respond. How did you know you got them?

You got your email on your phone yeah because I didn't and I was like, well, I'm kind of glad I did, because one's for the new hire coming on and one's for my existing teammate who needs a new monitor. So I'm glad I was able to respond to those emails to move things along. But yes, I worked both in the physical sense as well as the corporate sense yesterday. That sounds terrible it was terrible.

I had a couple fires pop up on my side.

No.

We did a product release because we work international on Wednesday evening we thought, yeah, yeah, everything's going to be just fine, no big deal. So we're like okay, go ahead and do it. It was like 8pm on Wednesday, before Thanksgiving. In hindsight shouldn't have done that, but needed to do it. We had something going on in our Asian side of the business, our Asian market, so we had to do something on that day and, of course, something went absolutely wrong. So the team was up for like three hours that night, didn't really figure out what's happening. And then in the next morning they figured out what's going on, they got it all resolved, got it all fixed.

But my team unfortunately had to work like half of Thanksgiving. Are you serious? I didn't work. I texted the person I had in charge and I said hey, I'm here. If you need me, just give me a call if you feel like you need extra hands. And she looks, said hey, I'm good, I'm good, we got it. I'm like okay, she's like yeah, it was our decision. We decided to keep on trucking on and go through with this, and so we're going to take ownership and do it. I one, I loved it because I was just like thank you for the ownership, but two should have never done it on that day.

That was a mistake, yeah I mean, that was the first mistake was ever doing anything serious a day before a major holiday. That's talk about rookie mistakes. That's a rookie mistake. That's a rookie mistake. Right there, I agree, which is not the theme of the pod, but it is interesting that this happened twice now.

Two rookie mistakes. Alright, minor rookie mistake I did. I used the focus modes on iPhone and my alarm did go into sleep mode and left my alarm on for at 5.15 on Thanksgiving Day. It was great. What time did you want to wake up? That's a good question. I mean I like to sleep in, so probably like 8,. 8-ish would have been ideal, but no, 5.15. It was awesome, and then the pets woke up. So at that point there's no going back. Yeah.

The pets are the alarm For us. They usually get my wife up around 6.45. I would sleep through it, but once she starts stirring about I'm stirring about you can't stay down. Yeah, no, I mean, sometimes I do, sometimes I fight through, but other times I don't. Yeah, yeah.

That's unfortunate. Yeah, yeah, it's. Usually I'm a very light sleeper, so I'm about the same, yeah. So, yeah, both of us work your.

I mean I'm having a great Black Friday.

Yeah, Black Friday so far as I've seen.

Have you bought anything?

No, actually. No, that's a lie. I did buy a what do they call it? White Christmas gift, secret Santa, secret Santa, that's what it is. I bought a Secret Santa gift for somebody. Got an okay deal. It was from your place. You hate most Amazon. I had to buy it, though, amazon. I don't know where I would buy this thing, otherwise I'd have to go to the mall and actually look around stores. Whatabouts is it? What did you say? Whatabouts is it? Oh, it's a neck massager. Oh yeah. So my options were go to a mall walk around a bunch of stores which I am at conveniently and try to find it, I guess.

Support local business. Why would you do that? Yeah, why would I do that? Why would you?

ever do that. I want them to go out of business or buy it off Amazon. Clark gets capitalism Not actually, or buy it off Amazon and risk the batteries exploding when it's on my loved one's neck.

So obviously option B is the right choice.

So I mean if any logical person would say I'm buying it off Amazon. Of course, a minor convenience makes up for the potential death of a loved one, always, every time.

I actually have an Amazon Prime subscription right now, do you, I do, for the shows. They gave it to me for free. No, what did I have to buy? What did I have to buy?

I had to buy something that.

So I've gotten really into repair of electronics, recently Soldering oh, I know what it was. I had to buy a heat gun. Okay, I could not get it anywhere and it's a nice heat gun. It's not some knockoff thing, it's a nice heat gun to repair my PlayStation 5 controllers and Home Depot, completely out of stock, you know, couldn't get it on Target, couldn't get it anywhere. Only place was Amazon. Yeah, is the official retailer for this thing.

I'm trying to think like where in the world would I go to get a heat?

gun. This is the problem.

They don't exist.

I thought they were still open. No, no, radio Shack's gone, wow. And that Wow. That's the only place. That's kind of. The problem is if you want to do anything with electronics, you really only have a few places to go. There's Monoprice for cables. You know, I like iFixit. Ifixit's good. I have a whole iFixit repair kit, which is fantastic. But they didn't have the heat gun I needed, so I had to go to Amazon. They gave me a binge it. Yeah, I might have to crush through it, but I'll get it Fair enough.

Yeah, well, maybe we'll do some shopping after this. Yeah, why not See what's around town? A little Black Friday haul.

So we're slurping on some boba teas, because that's what you do in the mall. Naturally, you slurp them down, and we're on a Black Friday pod at the mall of all places. And then I thought well, you know so many people are working today that are not in corporate. These are, you know, entry-level, first-time jobs that lead you to corporate. Very true, and I've talked about it a bit in the past. I think you have too, but we've never really talked about first jobs and the lessons learned. So what better topic could we pick for the worst audio setup possible than to discuss our first jobs?

The best part of this is the audio just sucks. This episode will never air.

Oh it will. It will still air, I don't care how bad it is.

Oh boy, I might have to put a little warning at the front like.

Record it on me like I'm so sorry. This audio's awful If you make it through.

It's like dark souls, congratulations you've done something that many people can't, oh boy. So who wants to start? Do you want to start? You want me to start? Oh well, he just took a massive sip of this boba. He's about to spit it right out of his mouth, so I'll go ahead and start. All right, thinking back, little clark, little Clarky, what was my first job? I talked about it a little bit on the episode with JoJo. I've always been a little entrepreneurial, so, similar to how you said, you're now repairing technology. I think some of the early endeavors that I did that weren't like a job. Job is I would repair games and stuff like that. So, like you know, repair games and stuff like that. So, like you know, in the old Game Boys and stuff.

The internal battery would die so I would replace those and I'd buy the Pokemon games like the yellow, the red and all that. Replace the battery and I'd sell, make a good profit. So I'd go to GameStop, buy them, repair them, sell. That was a little bit of my entrepreneurial spirit.

About how many cartridges did you go through?

Oh, there's a lot really I was making good money. I was making like 30 bucks a game.

It was wild because I'd buy them here uh, not here specifically, but I'd buy them at gamestop and they would be like three dollars, five dollars, whatever, and they'd say like, yeah, it may or may not work. Like that's when they could actually sell things that were a little non-functional and I would sell them for like 35 bucks on ebay. Do you know what year this was? Oh, maybe, oh seven, okay, okay, oh six, yeah it was pretty early on.

The sad thing is is now if you had those same cartridges, you could probably sell them for like 10x the cost, make way more money, way more money. Yeah, yeah, you were. You were holding on to gold, you just didn't know it yeah, I was flipping things on ebay all the time.

That was part of the gig. Yeah, it'd be like ebay or go here, buy the games, prepare them, sell money. Then it was sweet. First gig, that's a great first gig.

Yeah, it was awesome.

Alright, where did I go after that? So, after I did that, what was my first official job?

What job did you? Get a paycheck?

Yeah, which ones were they actually getting a paycheck for? I think the first one I remember is the inflatable bounce house. I worked at an inflatable bounce house company. Oh, phone's going off, and it was awful. It was god awful because I was in florida. Why, oh well, okay, I was in florida.

Yeah, the heat. You're rolling up these massive, super heavy bounce houses, driving around and dropping them off of places, inflating them, coming back late at night. So basically it was like a full day, because you'd start in the morning, you would drop them off, you go out, do all your drops, then you'd have lunch, then you'd start picking them up in the opposite order. So literally like 10-hour, 12-hour days. You'd just do that. The worst thing in the world was water slides. Water slides because you drop them off, they're dry, they're clean. You drop them off in a field in this miserably hot weather. They would get wet throughout the day. And then what happens? Everything around you gets muddy. Yeah, everything of red ants. So you go to pick that thing up. Not only does it weigh like four times as much, but it's covered in red ants. It's so hot. It's just miserable picking this thing. They should just make those things illegal. They really should.

I mean, people definitely died, oh, absolutely you know the number of bounce house deaths that go unreported every year? Yep, you know. Every time a child dies in a bounce house, you know some, some big wig fat cat is suppressing it to keep the bounce house industry going. It's very sad. I've been seeing more bounce houses lately, yeah, except for a while I thought they were dead. The deaths are on the rise.

Children are dying. Go to your local mall. Folks Support local businesses. Don't get a bounce house.

Write to your senators stop bounce house deaths. Stop them. Stop them now, immediately. So did you learn any valuable lessons?

in these jobs. Oh man, well, the entrepreneur one for sure. I mean, I learned how to use my resources the internet, ebay, being able to stand up, things like PayPal accounts, all those things, I think played into understanding technology a little bit more, and then obviously I was taking things apart and putting them back together all tech wise. So it's like I'm learning a little bit of sales. I'm learning how to use helpful tools. I'm learning how to like go here and like buy other things and find how I make money by flipping them the other direction. So I think it's fun to value. Is there that I'm just like okay, I can carry these forward. The bounce house is one almost like pure grit that's all I can explain that.

Yeah, no, I know, it's just great it's.

It sucks, but you got to put your head down and just do it. I got one of those. Yeah, yeah, do you want? Do you want to go back and forth or do you want to just?

yeah, let's go back, yeah, so, so yeah my like, my first paycheck job sure was downstairs.

So my my first paycheck job was being a summer camp counselor at a uh, a college that I would eventually go to and graduate from, really Exclusively built for rich white kids. If you weren't rich, white or a child, you could not go to this college. So my first job was being a camp counselor at this incredibly racist establishment. Wow, I did it two summers in a row. I think it was 17,.

No, I was 16 the first year, 17 the second year, and it was a really fun job because I was basically just going to camp. I would help run the sailing class, I'd run the circus class, do the computers class. You know these like 12-year-old little craps of kids who, just, you know, they'd punch me in the face, they'd punch me in the butt. We'd have fun. You know it was a fun job. That sounds awesome. It was a great way to spend the summer and it paid. You know it was minimum wage, but it was enjoyable. But the lesson I learned from this job actually is the importance of networking, because all of the teachers that ran the camps and some of the senior level counselors I would ask them what they did and we'd get along well enough. They liked me and it ultimately led me to my second paycheck job.

Oh, interesting, one of those connections actually led you on yes Wow.

Because I was making minimum wage. This is like 2000, 2005, I want to say 2006 yeah, I think it's 2006. So you know, just po money and it's a fun job. But it didn't pay well and one of the dudes I was working with like, look, you don't want to do this job here at this rich school for white kids only. The real job you want to do is become a landscaper. Sounds like a great idea. Pays twice as much, plus you're just landscaping all day. How hard could it be right? So I kept that in the back of my mind because when the summer ended, you know, I finished up my last year of high school. I was getting ready to go to college.

This same, this very same hog works for white kids and I applied to be a landscaper that summer, got the job and not only did the pay double, but the lessons learned quadrupled. I tell you what if you ever want to really learn how to live life, do hard manual labor. It starts at five in the morning and ends at three in the afternoon, every day of your life for four straight years. Just do it. You did that for four years. I did so technically, I did it three and a half, I mean round up.

The first summer I only worked the summer and then I went to school full time. But I started working part time at the school when I didn't have class. The next summer I ended up going to night school. I was like, screw this, I'm gonna get paid full-time to do this job. Go to night school at night landscape during the day, which is just an insane statement.

Now that I think about it that's because I don't have energy to work eight hours at my desk, but somehow I worked from six to three and then went to school from five to ten every day for three straight years. Wow, and then after that, I ended up becoming a manager at a sculpture studio. I was working at the same Hogwarts for white kids.

Hogwarts sounds awesome. You were just job after job. Did you double your salary?

No, actually I took a pay cut to go be the manager. But let me tell you, like you said, you learned grit. What I learned was this is where I truly learned I could do anything. Yep, I started as a weed picker, just picking weeds. The whole summer, all I did was pick weeds and they, you know, they're like hey, you seem like a. You know you're, you're burly enough to hold a shovel, can you dig trenches? And it's like well, yeah, it's certainly beats picking weeds and I might, you know, build a little muscle mass. So I started doing trench digging for the land.

The irrigation team, to which I started picking up some of the skills they had Eventually just became part of the irrigation team, learned how to do full-line irrigation, keeping all the college kids' plants wet as humanly possible.

I learned so much.

I learned about what my body could physically handle. I learned that, no matter what the task was, it needed to get done and I'd have to do it, yeah, and whether I found someone to help me or had to do it myself, like the problems were mine to solve, yeah, and I look back on those days so fondly, like the time I wanted to die, but now it's like those were the golden years of learning because, truly, I had to learn how to use all kinds of mechanical equipment, maintenance it lay pipe for irrigation, understand water pressure, understand what plant coverage looks like for sprinklers, understand what roses you know. Roses are carnivorous, no idea. You feed them bones and blood. Really, yeah, if you want really pretty roses, you've got to put bones and blood on them. That's wild and it's always cow and it smells terrible. I learned how to make bombs out of fertilizer. I learned that if you get the right mixture of fertilizer and you go to your bank, there's a certain wall on the side of the bank that you can put the fertilizer next to.

What was this company you were working with? It doesn't matter.

But listen, the lessons learned were invaluable and I attribute most of my success to landscaping.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I know you're being a little joking, but at the same time I can tell it's genuine.

It is genuine, you actually learned a ton of skills I did, you know, thinking back to picking up those bounce outs like grit. But to your point, it's like a little bit of like time management. It's knowing that the faster you work, you know, the faster you're going to get the job done Correct and you're just done with this crap that you have to deal with every day. And so you kind of do learn those hard skills. It's like you've got to put your head to the grindstone and be like all right, I'm going to just go in and get this done and you kind of go numb with other things. Focus my tasks, get my thing done, do it effectively, get out, and I think you'll learn so many valuable lessons from it. You really can. Yeah, yeah. Well, what did I jump to after speaking of, like, doing really crappy jobs? Yeah, when I went to college, I already knew I wanted to do computer stuff because I dabbled with software, all coming back from taking apart those games and everything. So I was like, oh, yeah, computer science. Um, I got recruited to play a sport in college so I was poor, poor. So I was saying, yeah, you get a job. So what did I do? I found out I could be a trash guy at my school and I would pay for some of my tuition. I'm like, yeah, sure, same thing as you. It's like get up at 5 in the morning and I was in a northern state so it would be snowing outside. How I rate my workplace happiness. I learned about autonomy in that job Because the guy who managed me, he's like listen, you just need to get these things done.

I don't really care how you do it, but you got to do them this way, isn't it the best? It was awesome. He's like here's the keys to the truck. Yeah, good luck. And I'm like okay, no training or anything. He's like no, I'll ride with you once you know, I'll show you the ropes, but I don't care if you do things differently, I just need these things done. And I said, okay, cool. So literally every morning I show up at 5 am just me, hop in a truck. I'd go and do the route. I'd find different ways to optimize it, how to get better, how to improve, and he'd always be so impressed because he'd be like hey, you're doing this really fast, how'd you do that?

and I'm like, oh smart, I like that did you manage to get a first run last run time?

wise estimate give me an estimate? No idea, I mean. I would say it definitely was like a 25 increase, you know, in terms of productivity on that run. So I could get done because I got paid the same. You just told me to clock out at the same time in the morning, so then I'd hop into class after that. And so I noticed, hey, I'm getting done faster. I can go and grab breakfast real quick from the food hall before I have to haul it into class. So I learned how to be efficient with my time, manage it well and do the job well, so I can get done sooner. I love it.

I attribute so much absolutely, I wish I worked a little bit of retail. I never did, you never did. I never worked retail and it's a big regret of mine because I feel like I would have learned a lot about just sales and business right, which I've now had to learn kind of retroactively professional, yeah, in the corporate setting. But you know, I know one of my, one of my really good friends, who we used to work with at Big Corp, he worked at the Apple Store and you know he told me stories about working at the Apple Store and I was like man, I kind of wish I did that, yeah, because that would have helped me in my more customer-facing roles years later.

Yeah, it's such a good point, because actually, years later yeah, it's such a good point, actually, funny enough, I did work at a job store.

I know you did.

Before I worked there, though it's actually funny talking about those hard-working jobs. It makes me think. Not only does it teach you all these lessons, but hard-working jobs and blue-collar jobs also sometimes help you realize this is not what I want to be doing and how can I get out of having to do this and being in the sun and having to do hard labor every single day into something that I can be a knowledge worker. So it kind of gives you that push to be like I want to be more aggressive to hit my goals. So I don't have to do this crap anymore, I don't have to be up at five in the morning shoveling compost in the middle of the winter. It was just brilliant. So, yeah, I actually got a job shortly after at Apple and, speaking of like not knowing your limits, at this point I was still doing my compost trash job. It was trash job, school Apple that was literally my schedule every single day. So, to your point, it's like working 16 hour days because you got homework to do at night and all that just kept on repeating the cycle. So you really push your limits and find like, oh, I can do a lot, yeah, I can achieve a lot of things. But to your point of retail, like Apple was such a formative experience because one they put you through rigorous training, even if you're working in retail, like you literally had to go to an off-site for like five days, intensive eight hour days where you are practicing scenarios, you're learning about the core values of apple, you're understanding the technology, how it works, and they literally make you role play. It's like, okay, sit down with bruce, you guys are gonna role play this type of scenario. Bruce is an angry customer and he is upset because his phone is having an issue or whatever. It is Like use your talking points and go through this guy, and so I really love the care and attention that they even put at that like ground floor. But then it also helps prepare you for success, like thinking of that lesson. It's like they put in the time and effort to set you up for success. So when you're in that experience, you can do it really really well.

Yeah, and I absolutely love working there. It was a dream job. It's like I get to play with tech all day, I get to talk to people. To your point about retail, you get to learn customer service, you get to learn how to deal with angry people and the training that they put you through is all about like, building rapport and diffusing situations, and I learned so many valuable lessons working for that company and company and then being able to step up to your point of growing in a company. Being able to like oh, now I can work in this angle with a genius bar or whatever. Now I can be an apple kid, now I can do whatever, and so it really provides that ladder of like oh, I can learn different skills and continue to work my way up into those different positions. So it was awesome.

Retail absolutely agree, everybody has to do a retail job yeah, my, my follow-up like I teased it is after I was was in landscaping. I went into, just I managed a sculpture studio. Believe it or not, I actually had a phase where I was really into woodworking. Really, I made a sculpture and sold it, got some money. It still resides at Hogwarts Wizarding School for Rich White Kids. Yeah, really, it's on display, it's in their library somewhere.

I was going to say it's in their library, you can sit on it. It's a stool. It's big. It weighed over 100 pounds. It was made of balsa wood.

I created this whole sculpture style where I would create these perfectly symmetrical blocks and then I would dowel them together to make shapes. Wow, and it actually created this really strong, just cohesive furniture that's both functional but it also looked cool. It looked like a pixel monster kind of thing. I've always been into retro games. I love pixels. So I made this really cool pixelated chair or stool and I ended up selling it. But that led me to the guy who I was working in the studio with. He's like you're always in here anyway doing your projects. I will pay you to sit in here and make sure the white kids don't cut their fingers off on the table saw. And I'm like well, we've got to protect the whites. So I ended up taking that job. It came in a pay cut, but the nice thing was it was at night, so I'd go to class and then I'd just go hang out in the sculpture studio until midnight 1 am in the morning, and make sure the whites didn't cut their fingers off.

And then you were out of the heat, you weren't sweating your butt off the rest of the day and you had all morning and afternoon to do with school.

Correct, it was good, it was toward the end of my college time. So I was in all the 400 courses anyway, the really hard ones that were actually required like attention. I couldn't just fake my way through it. So it was nice to be able to have that time. Kids never came into the studio anyway, so I can catch up on work. Yeah, I could build sculpture and you know it was pretty chill until they shut the whole thing down. Great. And then I was like, well, I'm not going back to landscaping so I guess I'll just be unemployed for a bit. But that eventually led me to start looking for internships in computer science, which which I was pursuing, to kind of get ready for the ultimate 11-year stint at Big Corp.

Love that. Yeah, and it's actually interesting because both of us started out as interns. You obviously helped me get the internship because we knew each other living proximity at the time. But internships are so important because it goes back to that networking piece. It goes back to what do you actually enjoy doing? Because you might find out in an internship. Wow, I hate this. This really really sucks, but it's on the job training. Typically you get paid for it. It helps you understand like what is working in this career field actually going to be like. So I think internships are those things you should absolutely pursue, especially when you're in school, going to college, whatever it is. You know what's sad is you should absolutely pursue, especially when you're in school, going to college, whatever it is.

You know what's sad is, you're absolutely correct. In my first internship was at this advertising agency. They wanted me to help them make little games in Java and other fun languages for their ads, and I hated it. I said, man, I really hope real work isn't like this internship. I hope coding isn't like this for realsies. And it turns out it was. So that was a valuable lesson learned that I chose to ignore. But yeah, it brought you to good places, though it did. Well, I'm glad I suffered for the seven years I did in programming to finally realize that I hated it and never want to do it again. You know it was worth it. It was worth giving at the time, a third of my life to it.

Yeah, yeah, totally worth it. Totally worth it. Yeah, it's actually. We had the opposite experience. I loved programming and I loved the. We were lucky enough in my internship that I worked with with Bruce I had the opportunity to. We had a lot of autonomy. We could basically do whatever we wanted, as long as it was like making things more efficient and better, which we did. It was crazy. Our manager would just be like what are you guys working on? Like it wasn't like hey, go work on this. It's like what are you guys working on? All right, cool, that sounds good.

They had no idea.

Yeah, they had no idea to me, like, try new things, open up different technology and try to get to understand those, and I love that and bruce was a good programmer to learn.

why do you you were good, I was not, you were good, I was you totally were I hated every minute of it but it's surprising because, like for me, I really enjoyed it and it opened up doors to doing other things, eventually finding product management and, I think you know, going back to our rookie careers before I joined Corpo, all those experiences that I had, like learning the business side from Apple, like learning, oh, I've got to be a retail associate, I've got to make sales numbers, I've got to try to push like different products on people to help solve their problems. Like I actually hated sales because I hated it being a numbers game. I truly wanted to solve problems for people that mattered. And so, like, when people come in, my internet actions would be so long. Sometimes I'd be with people for four hours. I'd be like how do I fix your problem? How do I make this a really good experience? How do I turn your day from being really crappy to really good?

And I wasn't great at sales because they were like well, you're not pushing the numbers hard enough, you need to like be efficient thing, get them out. Like. That was the game and I was fortunate. And when I lived in the north, it was less of a numbers game because they just didn't have so much volume. When I came back down south, it was all a numbers game. It's like we got to push numbers, we got to make sales numbers, we got to make money the south has always been about numbers.

It's very true. Even back in the civil war it was really about numbers. It was all about yeah how many? Whites, can we get you know?

somehow it's turned into the racist bot. I don't know how it started. Also, we are in a public mall, so it is just blatant.

I think the lesson we're going to learn from this is never put me in a public setting, because I have this really weird attention-seeking behavior where I try to upset people the children on the carousel are just jaw-dropped right now.

They cannot believe, they don't know what's happening.

Someone did come by and ask about how they got invited to the school of Wizarding Whites. So you know, I did have to tell them A brief segue.

Let me tell you about the school. But it taught me sales is not the thing I want to do. I want to solve problems for people. Technology enabled me to do that and then the business acumen that I did pick up, working the range of Apple and being entrepreneurial. It kind of led me into being product management, where I have to interface with customers. I have to find out what the needs are, the pain points are, and then we have to build technology solutions to solve them. So everything I did prior to this, I think, led to what I'm doing now and finding the career I really enjoy.

Yeah, I would say exact same, but I think I did find the career I truly enjoyed and it was digging ditches. I really would. I swear, Scout's honor.

He's got his hand up.

I'm doing the Scout symbol. If I could get paid what I get paid today just to dig ditches, no, my God, you would do it. I would do it in a heartbeat. You're crazy. It's so enjoyable. Let me tell you, there's nothing more satisfying in the world than looking at a blank canvas of dirt saying, okay, this quadrant is going to be roses, this is going to be azaleas, this is going to be Xanadu. They need this much water. Digging the trench, laying the foundation, putting in the sprinkler heads, then putting the plants on top of that, turning the whole thing on, seeing the mystic rainbow that occurs as the little overspray interacts with the rising sun.

And then you look at your plants and they're happy. They're sucking down that water, they're growing, they're flourishing, it's colorful. You walk away from that project. You come back a year later and it's like life has happened there, you know. It's like the plants are still there.

They're still happy. The irrigation maybe you change a head or two. For the most part it's still working. It's job satisfaction. I can't write a paper in six months without going through 250 revisions, six pages. I could landscape an entire college campus in that amount of time and it looks good. It looks so good. There's a satisfaction to it and there's also just the. I love being able to work with my hands. I like being able to put my body into the work, the sculpture, the landscaping. You know anything I can play with with my digits. Really get the hands in there. You know, get them dirty. Have some dirt under your nails. Play with with my digits. Really get the hands in there. You know, get them dirty. Have some dirt under your nails. Become one with the earth.

I love it. I do it. You just got so passionate.

I love it. I do it right now. I'm going to go do it. I'm going to walk outside this mall.

I'm going to landscape this mall At first I thought you were insane and then I was like I'm sold, I'm in. This sounds awesome. Let's start our own corporate strategy landscaping company why not?

Hey, you jest, I'm in, I'm 100% in.

I mean, I'll be honest, I'm looking outside at the landscaping of this building. They need some help. This used to be some sort of pond, it just was a pond. It's just leaves and rock.

Now it's just rock. You really got to put effort into it. You gotta love and care about it. You can't just say, oh, let the water sit the water can't sit.

Let me tell you cleaning fountains. My gosh, I've cleaned pool. It's so satisfactory because you know you take the pressure washer, you're scraping all the algae off the fountain. You know it might be just dribbling, you're just spurting out little spits of water, nothing, nothing. And then you clean it. You turn it back on and you see the beautiful fleur-de-lis of water coming out of there. My God, what a satisfying job.

He's going to quit his job.

I mean I'm looking at him.

He's questioning his life choices. He's literally hand over his head right now, staring out the window and dreaming that this could be his full-time job.

One of the most fun things you get to do in landscaping in Florida. I didn't know this was the landscaping pod. Now In Florida we have, you know, because it's because it's a tropical environment, we get the worst kinds of bugs we do Also we have more riders. All right, the carouselers are back. It's about to go.

And this is a story that I definitely want them to hear. So there is. You know we get locusts occasionally, we do, we do Lots, and locusts can absolutely destroy a beautiful landscape. Because, you know, the prettier the plant, the better it tastes. Yeah, truly. Like you know, a lot of the tropical plants in Florida super juicy, so they're eating the plant for the water, unless it kills you.

That could also happen.

That can also happen, but somehow they know not to eat those, which is part of the problem. Yeah, so one of the jobs I had to do is, during some of these basically plague of loci that would come in, I'd take my pruning shears and I would just start go chopping heads. You would really just cut them off. You just had to cut them off. Wow, because you had to be fast about it, right, because they can hop and they're huge.

Oh yeah, I mean, these things are like the size of a hot dog sized locust, if you're following my measurement. So you'd kind of creep the pruners up on the back of their neck where they couldn't see you and then, just One fell swoop, I went through so much WD-40 getting bug guts off those pruners every day. Hundreds of them, Thousands of them. It was a plague Clark.

It was a plague he's making very violent hand gestures and these children are very concerned Thousands of them. It was a plague, Clark, it was a plague. He's making very violent hand gestures and these children are very concerned. So what's the moral of the story?

I think you should.

I think everyone needs to work Either a crappy minimum wage job Right or retail. I think retail is so important. You learn how to deal with that. You know customers angry people, happy people how to have conversation, how to sell things Like it's such a critical job.

I think the other lesson is don't forget where you came from. Right, because your stories, my stories we see the reflections in our work today. Absolutely Right, like I think about the satisfaction I had in landscaping. And I think about the satisfaction I had in landscaping and I think about the dissatisfaction I have in some of the projects I work. Why was it easier? What changed? I think we have to evaluate and think about. Can corporate become more like a landscaping?

team Heads off locusts. Yeah, that's the moral.

Sometimes you've got to sneak up on a locust with a couple of pruning shears. But I think, in all seriousness, the lessons we learned then can be applied today and we shouldn't look back and say, well, that was the past, this is now. I think there's value to be had. Yeah For sure.

I agree. It's also, you know, I look back to those jobs too I don't know about you a lot of times. They were fun because like you're learning new things, like you get that, the feeling of getting that first paycheck is just unreal. You learn the value of money, you learn how to you know there's so many life lessons to your point. It's like put in the time, work those jobs. It might suck for a while but I promise they'll pay off. It will. That's really the way I look at it. I'm like all those jobs were formative to where I am now and where I'll continue to go, and happy I did everything I wanted, completely agree.

Wouldn't take it away. I still put on my resume, do you the landscaping?

Yeah, wow, I will remove things I've done, just to have it on there To have landscaping on there. I don't go that far.

It gets brought up in every interview I've ever been in Bounce House does never make it for. I love it because it tells people I can do the back-breaking work I can endure, and I did it for four years in the Florida sun.

I mean four years.

Yeah, that's pretty impressive, yeah, three and a half technically, but you know, we're rounding up, we're rounding up.

On a resume. I always round up. Also, these riders are going for round two. They just fired it up again Also. There's no way we're going to do. Is it Me or Is it Corporate? It's been too long. It's been too long In this ambiance.

We're approaching the 40-minute mark. Wow, corporate Strategy Raw. I'll be honest Corporate Strategy Raw is weird.

I don't know if we're ever going to do this again. I don't know either. We're going to see how you guys react. World, are you doing we need to? Corporate strategy raw, with cams on? Oh, we do. I do want to get a live stream going. Maybe. Corporate strategy on the town? Yeah, maybe we walk around and interview people. Corporate strategy in a boot oh, canceled, canceled. I want to go around and ask people what was your first job? What do you do? Now? Let's do it. What do you hate about your reading it?

a personal recorder, the two-way mic speaker you have. That's only records, one way, yeah absolutely.

What do you do now? Let's do it. What do you hate about your phone? We didn't get a personal recorder. Yeah, we can just walk around with it. The two-way mic speaker you have, that only records one way. Yeah, absolutely so. Hope everybody enjoyed this episode of Cobra Strategy. No, and I shouldn't have said that so loud, I'm getting looks, this is scary.

If you liked what you heard, do share it with your friends. If this is utter dog crap and you made it this far, congratulations. Like you're a true friend of mine, that should mean something, really. Should you want to hang out with us, you can do so by going on our Discord. It's in the link tree below. If you want to support the pod and keep it ad-free, same place Buy us a coffee. We're currently on our ad-free stint, thanks to one generous donor, I think it's coming up soon too.

We're going to get some ads back, probably in the next two, three months, is it really? It's not been that long, has it not? No, oh I feel like it's coming back.

We got a full year. Yeah, okay, so we're good. I think it's July-ish, we'll cut this.

Don't. Okay, listen, okay cut. All right, we're going to hop back in, all right, yes, we are totally fine. You know, if you like us a lot, give us money. We desperately need it. Our ads are coming back next week.

All right, so we hope you like ads. If you don't donate, that would help. Again, if you want to buy a shirt, we don't make money off of it. He's wearing them. I'm looking at you, it looks awesome. I mean, we probably could sell stuff and get rid of the ads that way too, but I don't believe in it.

Neither do.

I I don't believe in profit.

No, definitely not. We actually want to give you guys all of our money.

I would give you the shirt for free if I could.

But I think that wraps up another episode of the Corporate Strategy Podcast.

Give me an email. Yeah, if you think this was a worthwhile endeavor, we will look for other locations or expand the brand in other ways.

So do let us know. I'm just in awe of this situation. I mean they're going for round three, these kids on the carousel are having the time of their life.

They're never going to stop. I just want to say real quick before we close I come to this mall at least once a week for lunch because there's some really good food court. I chose this spot because I've never seen a human being ride this carousel in 20 years. Clark, this carousel has been here 20 years and it's never been ridden. It's been ridden five times since we started recording this podcast.

There's a line there's a legit line waiting to ride this thing. This is insane.

And on that note, all I have to say is keep it, carousel. I'm Bruce and I'm Quirk and you're on mute. We'll see you next week. I'm going to let him run for a few more seconds to get the ambiance.

Just let him get that ambiance.