Clever Angle
Helping people find work that they love through the stories of others. Join host Tevin McGee as he interviews a guest from a different field of work every week to give the listeners a better understanding of what jobs there are in the market and the roadmap of how to get there. Come along on this journey as he searches for the answer to the question of is college in 2024 overrated? With the boom of online learning and swelling nationwide student loan debt Tevin is on a quest to better inform his audience of which career paths NEED to go to college and which paths may have a different way of achieving your goal. So if you are undecided on your future career or curious about a certain field and want to hear from people that are in the trenches of that career already then this podcast is for you.
Clever Angle
#47 Building a New Life in Orlando with Jordan Owen
Have you ever stood at the precipice of a massive career shift, heart pounding with equal parts dread and anticipation? Jordan Owen, our returning guest on The Clever Angle Podcast, knows that feeling all too well as he recounts his daring leap from finance to construction in the heart of Orlando, Florida. It's a tale of not just career change but personal reinvention – from trivia nights that birthed a burgeoning social life to the universal application of sales skills.
Hear how Jordan navigated the waters of new beginnings in a bustling city, where relationships are the currency of progress. We wander through the streets of Winter Park, unraveling the importance of interpersonal skills, whether you're coordinating construction projects or fostering community bonds. Jordan's story is a masterclass in adaptability and a reminder that sometimes the most strategic career move is the one that doesn't come with a playbook.
As we wrap up, Jordan opens up about the textures of job satisfaction and the allure of chasing what sets your soul on fire. We muse over the value of college education in today's world, with Jordan's experiences painting a vivid picture of how alternative paths can lead to success and fulfillment. This episode isn't just about charting new paths – it's about the courage to walk them and the joy that comes from discovering where they lead.
We are on the road to reaching 1K downloads per episode by the end of the year, so if you could share this episode that would help us out a lot! What careers do you want to hear about next??
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And we are back. Here is another episode of the clever angle podcast. My guest today is Jordan Owen. Some of you might have recognized Jordan from either the watch this Wednesday podcast or he actually did one of my, I think the second episode of the clever angle.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Jordan was a guest on there talking about finance. Jordan brother, how are you doing, man?
Speaker 2:Dude, it's. It's good to be back on a podcast with you. I mean, that's all that matters, right.
Speaker 1:Jordan, can you just tell us a little bit about what you've been up to since we've done that podcast?
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, it's been a whole yeah, I mean it's been a whole another year. I mean, yeah, it was 2020, wasn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so 2020, it's all left Jonesville and come down to Orlando, florida, to join a construction firm. I was doing some consulting work with them first. You know sales teams and things like that, and this is I think this is a good conversation that we're going to have which is a lot of your people that listen to this podcast, I don't know what they want to do or kind of are stuck in a position where you don't know. You know, am I doing the right thing? And I'll say this, like now, since moving down to Florida now, I host three trivia shows around Orlando, you know, and have a pretty thriving little side business there. I do play by play for the arena football team. You know, during that I was on the TV broadcast this year where got picked up by ESPN. And, you know, during the day, I'm a day walker doing the construction stuff. So you know, I do a little bit of everything around here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're just a man that wears many hats you know what I mean Always into something.
Speaker 1:So tell me, how did you get sparked into that? You know, when we last talked, finance was something that you know. You were really good at talking to people negotiating. You know just the natural things that you need in a sales like, job, like that Door. Yes, you're giving financial advice, but I am in the camp now as I've expanded my knowledge that pretty much everything is sales, and you were really good at that.
Speaker 1:So what made you want to say, hey, I'm packing up everything, I'm going to Florida, I'm going to go. It's for a construction company. I mean, you're a 7. Yeah, I mean that's right up your alley.
Speaker 2:I mean. So here's the thing. Here's the thing. Like you said it right, everything is sales, but for me, I wanted to. So I don't know when this is going to come out, but at the time of recording, you guys are in the middle of a snowstorm and it's zero degrees outside. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:That was happening to me when I was in Arkansas and I was like I can't do this anymore. I can't sit there and look. Just I just want to be around here to do weather. So I was like I want to move to Florida. What kind of careers are in Florida?
Speaker 2:And this construction company called me. They saw my resume and it was very like sales based, leading, team based, things like that. And so they asked me hey, would you be interested in coming down working with this and working with our sales teams and trying to grow that kind of division that we're doing? And initially wasn't interested in it, but after talking with them I was like, yeah, that sounds like I wanted to do something new and that was the easiest path to get into it. And I feel like you can take and do what you want. Just, you got to make it yours and any kind of career. And I say that you know, maybe you're an accountant, but if you can really look hard enough and know the right people and are friendly enough, you can meet the right people to make any kind of career what you want, and that's what I'm going to turn this one into at this point.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I mean, as someone that's kind of rooted where he is, you know, I've got a lot of reasons for why I decided to stay in Jonesboro. Family was being the biggest one, and that's, you know, my young daughters growing up. I want them to be able to be around their grandparents and grow up because that's something that I didn't have. So to me, especially in my early 30s, that's something that is very important to me.
Speaker 1:You know when I start writing the things that I can be happy doing. Obviously, my ultimate goal is to make it doing podcasting. That's my ultimate goal and I'm going to keep working towards that goal. Cool thing about podcasting is I can connect with you all the way in Florida.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So you said weather was a big thing and initially that it didn't sound like something that you wanted to do. That was just enough for you to just kind of just put it all on red and not know anybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, honestly, honestly, it was. But you know me, I feel like I don't. I don't go into places where I don't know anybody and that's if I have one skill in this world. I feel like you could drop me in Bozeman, montana, and you come back and check on me in three months. And you know, I found a restaurant that I know everybody in the restaurant. I found a, you know, I found a bar that I know the bartenders and we kind of that's just what I do, and so it was nothing to move to Florida and kind of start that over. And now it's just something, man, it's, it's fun to do and I don't know if Orlando, I visited Orlando, so it just felt very welcoming to times that I visited, and so I was like I just want to be around more weather, I want to be, you know, around the beach, I want to be around water or sunshine. So no other place in sunny Orlando, florida.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so take me through what that process was, moving from Arkansas to Florida, like what was your last days like in Arkansas, and how did that, what feeling were you experiencing when you were getting ready to move?
Speaker 2:And so I mean you know, kind of a little bit of not regret but just badness of leaving Cause that's all I'd ever known. For 30 years I grew up, you know, in the same house around you, you know, 10, 15 minutes from where you were. I was, that's all I ever known and it was kind of scary going to. You know, an area where there's like 2 million people, you know, around this Orlando area, not necessarily in Orlando, but around the Orlando area. So I was sitting there and just not just kind of scared to jump in, but there was a video by Steve Harvey, you know, and it's always it said jump, you know, just jump, jump.
Speaker 2:And I watched it like a thousand times, I watched you a thousand times. I was like, okay, I'm just, I'm going to do it. But again, the saddest part was the relationships that I built, like again, saying that what I just said, I went into like three restaurants I went on Jonesville that paid for my last meal and said, hey, we'd love to have a new thanks for coming in your Q 49. Mama, saying places like that that I had developed meaningful relationship just outside my daily friendship that's. You know, leaving those relationships with the toughest but trying to find new ones were were just as much fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you packed up your life. You know, you left, like Simba, obviously, the sun always comes back home eventually.
Speaker 2:So we're not worried about that.
Speaker 1:But you know what was it like when you got to Florida. Like, where do you stay in Orlando? Do you stay kind of outside Like you're in winter park? Is that where you're?
Speaker 2:at. Yeah, I was right in the middle of it. I was right in the middle of it, so about a mile and a half from downtown, and I just got lucky. I honestly got lucky. I was on a Facebook page that told me it said hey man, I was like, where do I move into Orlando, where? And everybody said winter park, winter park, winter park. It is a little bougie, but it's it's the nicest part of winter park. And so I got lucky and then I ended up moving.
Speaker 2:So I'm seeing a flyer that said hey, trivia night at this pub. And it was like a mile from my apartment. I just walked there my first night. I did walk there and I was like I don't want to go do this trivia night. And wit, and the trivia host was a young guy like myself and he was just hanging out drinking, having a good time, partying, cutting up with everybody. I'm like, dude, that's what I want to do. I want to go ahead and talk, to introduce myself to him, and we started hanging out. You know, then, he's helped me grow every friendship I've had down here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you're down here. You're in a new place. You just started introducing yourself to yourself, acclimated as the, as Jordan would do. Yeah, and so you move in. You're getting ready to start your job. What's it like doing the construction off the rip?
Speaker 2:It's the so, honestly, it's not. It's not exact. It's almost exactly what I was doing. I'm just using a different vehicle. You know, until I say that I'm still talking and communicating with people every day, like that's not changing. I was doing that in finance. I'm doing that now.
Speaker 1:What is your exact role? What's your exact role as your company?
Speaker 2:So what I do now is I'm a project coordinator, so I'm the first person you see on a job. So when you, when somebody calls our construction company and says, hey, I want to build, you know, I want to add two bedrooms to the back of my house and I want to build a, you know, add a, redo my kitchen I'm the first person you see, I come out, introduce, introduce myself, introduce yourself myself to the company and I kind of get you acclimated to what it's going to be like for the next whatever four or five months, of what you're going to go through, walk them through. You know, hey, this is what's going to happen around your house, this is what you're going to go in here, this is what the money looks like, and then I'm that contact the whole way through. You know, if anybody that listen here has ever worked with a contractor, sometimes it's not a fun experience because those guys are always busy, they're running around, they don't, some of them don't talk the best of people.
Speaker 2:You know they're very good at building houses, but you know maintaining meaningful relationships is not what they're best at, and that's what I'm best at. So I work with the owner hand in hand. His name Dan. He's not the relationship building type that's, that's kind of my job, and so I build the relationship with the client, the homeowner, and I'm that filter between him to the homeowner and the homeowner to him, you know. And so we're me and him work as a team and we just we've built a pretty good, successful thing going on. So I want to go back to one thing of how you got here.
Speaker 1:So how did they find you? You said they were looking over your everything. Somebody called you. Was this because you were updating your resume on LinkedIn, on indeed. I'm kind of on indeed. Yeah, so I was on, indeed, and I kind of just posted my resume on.
Speaker 2:Indeed, and it was more around like sales jobs, around Orlando, you know, and I was actually doing it out of Tampa because I thought I was going to move to Tampa and this construction company out of Orlando called me and was like, hey, your resume looks weird, you know, but you don't look like you have any kind of construction background. But that's not necessarily what we need. We need somebody who can maintain and keep relationships going. And I was like, yeah, that's, I mean, that's exactly what I do, so that's, they needed somebody that could be, you know, a face of what they're doing and you know that's just what I'm doing. So were there any other job options or was this like the one of the?
Speaker 1:first opportunities you got and then you just kind of jumped on it or no. I had three or four other options. I still had the finance option.
Speaker 2:You know, I can still go to about two or three places that we're looking at hiring finance, you know, to do some some sort of account manager to, you know, advisor, because I still held all my license. So I was like I'm not going to do that. I still held all my license, so there was a bunch of people doing that. But in that world, I mean I was tired of wearing a suit every day. I was just I was tired of it. I mean, right now I get to rock a polo and maybe a pair of joggers or a pair of jeans if I'm going out to meet clients and I'm wearing jeans. But if I'm in the office all day, I'm just on a lake with a pair of T-shirt and short. So I mean that's, I'm kind of living the life that I wanted to live.
Speaker 1:So, as far as job satisfaction goes on a scale of one to 10, where would you say you're at in this current job right now?
Speaker 2:I guess a tricky question, because not this, I don't. I don't necessarily love the job title and the job, but I allow. I love what the job allows me to do because it allows me to meet so many new people around Orlando like fun fact. I mean, I'm not going to say it, but I, you know, I'm doing a project right now for somebody who's very high up in EA sports. I know when the new game's going to come out. We might need to bleep that out, but I know when the new college football game is coming out, you know, and so I know.
Speaker 1:If somebody from EA sports hears this, that's what I know, I've made it, that's what I know. So you know, but like, that's that's seriously like.
Speaker 2:I develop a lot of meaningful relationships around people around Orlando and that's that's what I like. I don't necessarily love the day to day of like you know, maybe something's messed up at a homeowner's house and I have to hear about it and I deal with it. That's not always the fun part and sometimes clients get upset because expectations are not met. Don't like that man. That's not a fun part of the job. But connecting with a lot of people around Orlando, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool and I like that part of my job Because it's allowed me to do like I said. I now host trivia shows. I now get to do play by play at Fernda Arena football team. I get to do tons of like private events that I emcee and host private events. Like I would have never gotten to do that with what I, without what I'm doing. So I've made the best of my courage to George.
Speaker 1:No, 100% get that, and there's a stat that I put on the podcast Instagram Every 4.1 years, an American changes career pass. Yeah, would you say that your dream job is still out there and, if so, what would you consider your dream job?
Speaker 2:I would say anything, something with the microphone in my hand, I mean. Whatever that may be, I'm not not kind of narrowed it down just yet, but I think that's that's my favorite thing to do on the planet, you know, host some, something of some sort. But I also love owning my own business too, and I think, in the current role that I'm in, my goal is to own my own construction business at this point. But I'm very in depth in the world, yeah, I mean I'm very, I'm very hands on In this world and I'm getting a lot of things that I really like to do. But I just did a lot of things that I want to do. I want to own my own construction company, kevin, we talked about. I want to open up, you know, open up a barbecue place here in Orlando that has like stand up comedy, live music, trivia shows, like I want to do that too, and that's something on my list. And then I want to keep doing the TV stuff. I mean I had being on TV, hey man, it's kind of fun.
Speaker 1:No, absolutely. And the cool thing about it is and one thing that I want people to be able to get out of this show is you're not stuck. You're not stuck anywhere. You are able to switch to things that light you up. One of the great things about what I've learned through podcasting is you know, just because you go to college to get a degree for something doesn't mean you have to do that for 30 years, doesn't mean that you have to be, absolutely not.
Speaker 1:You don't have to be a teacher just because you got a teaching degree. We are still in a position where we can change and we can go on to different things. So, having those interests and knowing that about yourself, knowing that there's a lot that you want to do and it might not all be in the same thing and you're still growing and we're still getting to know ourselves, man, there's things that I'm doing right now that 10 years ago, I promise you, I would not have ever seen myself doing and been interested in and that sort of thing. So that's really cool that you're allowing yourself to you know, kind of learn and get to know yourself in all those different areas.
Speaker 2:Dude, you hit it on my degrees in education. I'm not a student. You know what I mean. So I just yeah, I mean we talked about it at the very beginning, I was going to be a coach that was what I was going to be in Three or four years down the road.
Speaker 2:This is something that would have never thought I would have been doing to them. But the other night you know a little bit I was hosting a show that probably around 150 to 200 people were there, All you know, and I'm sitting here getting to control the music, the. You know the way the crowd feels, the ups and the downs, and like never would have thought I'd ever been doing it, you know, and that's it. And then that right there just that's the most fun I've ever had is a packed house. We have a packed show, Everybody's having a good time, you know, crowds booing, I do it, I got booed. I got booed and I thought that it was going to be the worst thing ever and I just something changes in your body where you just kind of feel at home with it and it's just you got to put yourself out of your comfort zone. That's what I think is what I'm trying to say there, and got to put yourself out of your comfort zone.
Speaker 2:I messed up, like so I literally messed something up and you know me, I don't I'm not the best at focus. I can talk out my hands, sorry, I mean I don't know if we're cussing the clever angle, but I talk out my butt sometimes and sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. I messed something up and it was more of a playful boo, but you know it can get to you if you don't watch out. And I think the resiliency of just knowing that what I am I'm grateful of doing this and having a good time, so it's making me extremely grateful. I just rolled with the punches, kept it going and dude yes, you're not stuck to the long short short you could. You can literally do whatever you want at any time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, man, it's just going to make you resilient and a lot of people would have given up right then you get booed and you're doing something. Oh, man, it must be me. You get inside your head and you do all these different types of things, and I learned a lot of that from from playing tennis. You know like it's such a lonely sport. So you get to you, you're in your head a lot, you're thinking a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1:And so to be able to put yourself out there, man, like just even us doing this podcast, dude, anybody that listens to it like, unless you've sat in this seat, unless you've done what I've done, you know you don't really know what is, uh, how it feels to be on this side. You know what I mean. So, like, just the ability to get outside your comfort zone, do something that you normally want to do, do something even though, in spite of being scared, you know that's real courage to do, to do that.
Speaker 2:So I'll tell you this everybody listens to this show. There's going to be a time where somebody's going to ask you to do something and it's your answer is going to have to be yes or no. I encourage you just to, at least 70% of the time, say yes, you know, because you never know what you're going to get out of it, and that's the only reason I am where I am today is because I've said yes to probably about 90% of when somebody asked me to do something. Yes, yeah, whether I know how to do it or not.
Speaker 2:Like my first trivia show. He goes hey man, you want to host this show downtown Orlando? And I was like, yeah, sure, I never had hosted before in my life. I didn't know what I was doing. I just showed up, tried it and then you know three, you know probably three shows later, all of a sudden, the guy who plays Neville Longbottom from Harry Potter walks in the bar because he lives in Orlando and I'm sitting here drinking a beer with him and just watching a trivia show, having a good time. But you know, it's like I never I would have said yes to that opportunity. I probably wouldn't have had that opportunity to just sit and get hammered with Neville Longbottom yeah.
Speaker 1:And you mentioned that one of the first things that you did when you got into town was, you know, you went down to the local pub and you met a guy that was hosting trivia. When did it become a thing to where they were asking you to host? Did you just build that rapport with one of the owners or somebody that was doing it, or you know how did that kind of come about?
Speaker 2:Well, so I'll give credit to his name's Nick Siddle, and I'll give a ton of credit to that guy. He just knows he builds, he's always an attorney, he picks juries for a living and one of the things he knows is he knows how to read people pretty well, you know, and I just introduced myself to him. We started hanging out and I told him I was like dude, yeah, I'm on a podcast called Watchless Wednesday, you know, and I just that was in the area of Tevinah, but me trying to tell everybody.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to tell everybody. I'm like. And then he was like he was like okay, so we started talking and hanging out more. And he was like would you ever want to do something like this? And I was like, hell, yeah, dude. Yes, put me in front of a microphone, I'll do anything. And he was like all right, sounds good and it. I mean, it was probably three months from the first time I sat foot into the door of that trivia show, from the time I hosted a trivia show, so I'd say probably three months.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean you have that out, just that outward personality to. I mean you're 6'6, for goodness great. I mean you're intimidating whoever you're around anyway, you basically probably just walked up to the guy and was like hey, give me, give me a shot.
Speaker 2:I just did it.
Speaker 1:There are just regular sized people out there and someone that might be an introvert. What are some advice that you would have to being more extroverted and taking chances, even though that they it's really still not outside the comfort zone.
Speaker 2:Sure. So a couple things. A nobody cares about you. So when you think that everybody's thinking about you, everybody's thinking about themselves. Everybody's so worried about the way they look, everybody's worried about if their shoes look fine with their outfit. Like you, nobody's thinking about you 24 seven.
Speaker 2:So just kind of don't take yourself so seriously, just kind of breathe for a second.
Speaker 2:But I will say, probably the most important thing I can do is be nice to everybody that you meet like they throw hand, laugh, cut a joke with them and make everybody, make everybody has that one friend that you love and you feel welcome with right and you know from Kevin has mean you when we see each other.
Speaker 2:We got to put that because we hold each other, we, you know, and I do that Like I try to make everybody feel like they're my best friend and all that's done is to make sure and I treat everybody with respect, whether it's the hostess at the bar, whether it's the owner of the bar, I treat everybody with the same level of respect. They all get a hey, how's it going, how was your day? You know, they all get the same level of respect from me. And I think for an introvert or for anybody who's wanting to break into a field. If you act like that, people are going to want to be around you and they're going to. When they think of opportunities to give somebody, they're going to give it to you because you're a joy to be around.
Speaker 1:Has there ever been a situation where you're hosting trivia or in your construction, you just anytime that you've been in Orlando where you've made a fool out of yourself, got embarrassed in some kind of way?
Speaker 2:All the time, tim, all the time I hosted a show, they asked me to fill in for a show and they're like hey, can you fill in at this bar? I got there, the mic did not work and at a huge bar, it is huge bar, so it's like perjury rules terms like let's put at the back of Buffalo Wildlings, right, okay? So that's about the size of the trivia show, and it was packed. No seat was empty. So I stood on the bar and yelled the questions because I wasn't. Everybody come to play trivia and the mic did not work.
Speaker 2:I was 20 minutes outside of Orlando so I couldn't run, get a different mic and come back, you know. So, like the trivia show had to go on. So I literally stood on the bar and yelled the answers the entire time and you know that everybody was like this was so unique and so crazy. Some people thought it was terrible, you know, and then. But some people thought it was unique and fun and was just like, surely, dude, that was so embarrassing having to stand on a bar. Admit that my mic did not work, that I brought, you know, and so it was either sucking up, you know, go home and pal, but they'd pay me to do this man, they, they pay me to put on a show, so I'm going to do it, no matter what. No matter what.
Speaker 1:Have I ever told you the geography B story from from grade school? No no, okay. So sixth grade we had a geography B. I don't know why they decided that in sixth grade we were going to have a geography B.
Speaker 2:We went to the same sixth grade. I know exactly I don't fit my geography B.
Speaker 1:So it's okay. They had like this initial test. Like hey, you know, I can't even remember like top five, top six from each class that does good on this geography test quiz for the geography. He's gotta be in the geography B in front of the whole school, right? So quick side note geography is like my worst subject ever. But I'm sitting behind David Hornbeck and I just like I don't know what possessed me, but I was like I'm gonna just cheat on.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna cheat on this little this geography quiz, bro.
Speaker 1:I'm going out there, I'm getting on this geography B list, so obviously, cheat like China was one of the answers to one of the questions. I'm like, okay, cool, they called my name and it's time to go out there for the geography. Like. This is like a week later or something and I'm out here, bro, I'm telling you I don't know anything about geography now I'd probably still get waxed by some sixth graders in geography. But I go out there and they've got like this map, they've got this globe and you're having to identify these different things in the geography B and I'm just clueless, bro, clueless. So I just say I say China three times in a row and I just get eliminated and have to sit down and that was like one of the most embarrassing things ever. I'm like dude, I put myself in this position on purpose, it's my own fault and still to this day, it's just one of those things that just kind of haunt me.
Speaker 2:So you were know something like small world moment. I was in the same geography B. I made it to and we were in the gym. We were in the gymnasium.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, I was there.
Speaker 2:I was there, I was in it and got eliminated immediately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, immediately. I think Western Weeks won the geography B or something like that. But I'm just like dude, why did I care so much about being in this thing? Like I mean, obviously I wasn't interested in it because I never took it really seriously. But yeah, you're absolutely right, nobody cares. Nobody cares about it.
Speaker 2:I was in Miss Stepford's class. I don't know if you remember Miss Stepford, but I was in Miss Stepford's class here. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:For sure so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nobody cares. You're right, though, nobody cares.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what are some lessons that you would say that you have learned since being in Florida? Top things that you've learned since leaving home.
Speaker 2:So it's OK to be scared Like so.
Speaker 1:Dropping gems out here, already out the gate.
Speaker 2:So what you're seeing now is I just moved into a brand new house and it's a team with a two bedroom. It's a two bedroom house, it's bigger than I. It's probably on the top side of my budget of what I can afford. And I had to literally call my mom the other day because I was scared, Dude, and I was like, not that, I was just what, if? What if it all went away?
Speaker 2:You know, and that's the first thought, you know, when you do something that's out of your comfort zone or you take a risk on something, could it all go away? You know? And then my mom looked at me and goes Jordan, you work so hard that, no matter what, if you lost everything today, you'll still be fine Because you know you always find a way out of it because of your work ethic, you know. And so I was like, yeah. Then I looked at myself and I was like, oh, I could afford this place if I host five shows a week. You know to be a show's a week, and I just, you know, I think that's the interesting thing.
Speaker 1:That's the interesting thing, Jordan. Once you open your mind to different thoughts, you start to you start thinking of ways to be able to do that. So like, if you want to make a hundred thousand dollars. You probably never thought about that before, but once you start thinking about it every day, your mind starts saying OK, how can we make this happen?
Speaker 2:You figure out a way.
Speaker 1:Like you exactly.
Speaker 2:You figure a way out, and yet you're exactly right to have it. And so that was Be OK, to be scared in that moment, because they never know who you're going to talk to and they might open up something you know in your mind. And I'm like man, I just didn't even think about that because I was so freaked out in the moment that the most logical answer never came to my head, you know. So that was one of the biggest lessons of here moving to Florida Like I've never, always went in with just kind of a bull in a China shop, rhinoceros, forward energy and being retrospective one time and being scared. My mom dropped a huge jam on me. That just was not expecting, you know. And the second thing is is you control how you treat everybody around you. So if you're not liked, or you're people don't like you or people you know are standoffish towards you, it's because of you, it's not because of anybody else around you. And I just I think that a lot of people today Are upset with the current situations. They think people don't like them and it's like man, if you would just take a second and just literally from the time, from wherever you walk into somebody I said that earlier to them. And if you just treat everybody with warm and welcoming embrace and remember their names and talk to them and just do the bare minimum man, your life's going to open up. Because I'll tell you this, I've made OK Money in Arkansas from time to time.
Speaker 2:But like I hosted a trivia show and one client that I just he she came in. We started having a good time. I started giving their team hell a little bit. We had fun at the end of the day. She asked me what I do. I said construction. I told me you had a phone call about it. I was like Kevin, you will not believe the cat that check those cash from one person and I didn't even know it just had 10 days ago. You know to the point where we're sitting there and she's handed me over as much business as I can handle because she loved the way that I was nice to everybody in the bar. She was like oh yeah, I want to work with that guy. So everybody's watching. Everybody's watching how you treat people. But everybody is also worried about themselves. So don't take yourself too seriously. And it's OK to get scared, that's yeah.
Speaker 2:Those are my like kind of lessons that I would teach somebody.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, man, and those are powerful lessons that I know a lot of people are going to get a value out of. So I've got a question that I'm going to start asking my guests and do you think in 2024 that college is overrated?
Speaker 2:Can I answer yes and no?
Speaker 1:Yes, and I want to hear why.
Speaker 2:OK For the traditional education? Yes, I think so. Yes, but what I've learned from my time in college was there was a lot of times where I learned critical thinking skills.
Speaker 1:That helped me today a lot, and so I don't think that, see, see now you're sounding like a politician now, because I think that you would have been the same. You're knowing with or without college Maybe, and you're probably right, you're probably right. The time that you spent in Orlando, those four years. You know now it's 25, 24. So 2020 is when you were still here, Rock with me and Jonesboro.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The same four years would have been some the same amount of time someone would have spent getting an undergraduate degree.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1:Yeah, this life experience going out here, being in the field, shaking hands, learning that networking is powerful, how you treat people, respect. It's OK to be scared. Those are things that I didn't learn in college. I don't know if you did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I didn't. I didn't. No, no, no, no, no, I didn't do that. But I just think, like man, there's, there's some things that I didn't like. I learned how to be, and I don't know if it's now this way it is, but there is just there's so many more ideas out there than than yours, and I think that's, but I don't think I needed to pay 50 grand to learn that, you know. That's why I say that. But just, I think it is important to learn. There's a lot of skills that you can learn. They're not, you know, education based.
Speaker 1:But let me ask you this, then Let me ask you this Because your answer was yes and no. So you're trying to play the fence over it. So I'm giving a definitive answer here.
Speaker 2:I'm going to say no, then no.
Speaker 1:So OK, so lovely. I'm still challenging you All right. So do you think that, with the way that technology is, the internet is you know we live in the most information at the your fingertips era that I think we've ever lived in?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you not think that a lot of those, the same things that you would learn by paying somebody? Like if I paid $50,000 outside of college, like if I just had 50 K and I could just spend it on education, learning the things that I wanted to learn, and you know this, and that marketing, whatever it is, I could use it better than going to organized school? So that was the basically the thing. Like if someone gave me a $50,000 alone, it was like, ok, you can get all the education you want. It wouldn't be in the capacity of school, it'd be you know courses, it'd be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got 50,000.
Speaker 1:So now I can afford to do like a nonpaid internship. If I have 50 K, I'm like I can go work under that carpenter for free or whatever, not have to worry about bills, versus like that's just going towards tuition and I'm still having to work in college and I get it, there's still a place for college. Because I think that there are certain degrees that obviously I want my educators, I want my doctors, I want all these people to be certified and educated. But I mean, like can we start shedding some light on? An art degree probably isn't the best thing for an artist, you know. An exercise science degree? That's not something that people are. If you're a good personal trainer and I can see like okay, jordan's jacked.
Speaker 1:He obviously knows how he got jacked, I'm not asking for your credentials. If you're my personal trainer or my personal chef, you know what I mean. Like you can throw that in the kitchen.
Speaker 2:You're 100% right. So I say that too. I wanted to try to like. I do toe the line of there are some skills, but like there's a guy on Instagram I don't know his name is David Meltzer. I don't know if you've ever fought him in, but he taught me nine, like 9,000% more of business and gratitude and things like that than I'd ever did learning college, and he would. He would gladly take my $50,000 and I probably would have made it a whole lot more. So, yeah, I do. I'm like you my lawyers, my teachers, my doctors. I do want them to do school, I want them to be certified, I want them to be the best of the best. But, man, there's so many ways to to get around the bases at this point, you know you don't have to go to the traditional power, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. You used to use to have to go first, second, third home. You know nothing. You don't have to do that anymore. You can go anywhere with where you want to.
Speaker 1:No, and I think that it's because that there's so much more opportunity, access to information and a lot of things, that before you know, if you wanted to know X, you couldn't just go to the internet, you couldn't ask Google or chat GBT or all of these things Like. There's opportunities, like if I want to learn coding, I can learn coding just directly. I can go to these websites like Udemy and Skillshare and all of these things where people have put in time to make these courses and, you know, instead of giving it to this university, I can give it to someone that's worked hard and created this, this platform, and learn things that way and get to choose at like a lot lower clip as far as the financial compensation. So I'm just to the point where, like I get it.
Speaker 1:Higher education has its place and it always will. But for the people that don't really know what they want to do, I wish that there was less funneling them into just kind of making this rash life decision at 18. Then, like, hey, maybe you should check out a trade school, maybe you should just work, or maybe you should read these 10 books or you know, whatever it is, because I suffer from that type of education, where I went through this entire game of you know game of life, or 12th grade. Now I'm a freshman in college and now I'm in, and you know what I felt after I graduated?
Speaker 1:I felt like empty, because I felt like I was at the end of the rope, and then I didn't get what they promised me.
Speaker 2:I didn't get a job. You know, like the job that you didn't get, exactly, you didn't get the end of the rainbow and look, look, look, everybody look at me dead in the face. If you want to go be a plumber, go be a plumber Like, because I pay plumbers so much money being in the construction world right now like plumbers, electricians, and those guys are going away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the thing. Those are trades man. Those are trades that you don't have to go to college and get a degree. You can go straight to a trade school. For a fifth of the cost, like 10K. You can be a plumber.
Speaker 1:You can be an electrician, you can do all of these things and those are the backbone and which our society is built on, and I absolutely like I promise you if I can go back, or I'm having to give you the heating and air guy I'm having to give the electrician, I'm starting my own business because one you're still owning your own business in a sense to where you get to control your own time, to where I can do more of these things. Or, you know, if I go back, maybe, now that I know myself a little bit better, I value I know that I value that time off and being able to be with my parents Maybe I do go to the route of becoming a teacher because like, okay, I'm off in the summer, I'm not gonna coach.
Speaker 1:I've seen how people go down the coaching road and you're basically you don't have any time off of your coach. Maybe I'm just having the fourth grade science teacher and I'm off on Martin Luther King Day, and I'm off on spring break and I'm off on Christmas morning in the summer.
Speaker 2:And that's a pretty good life, and that's a pretty good yeah.
Speaker 1:And guess what? I'm still podcasting during the summer, I'm still doing all these things that I get to love. Maybe I got a gardener, I don't know.
Speaker 1:But now that I'm starting, to figure out, like what I know a little bit more about myself now. Then I did at 18 when I was just kind of just fed. This is the next thing that you do and you're almost kind of penalized when you don't know what you and props to the people like. If you're 18 and you knew exactly what you want to do like you were in the minority, I promise you, because a lot of us were still chasing our ex-girlfriend. That broke our heart from three years ago and all that.
Speaker 1:Like our brains weren't fully developed to even kind of make those decisions and here I am signing this fast for 20 KS a semester and I'm like, yeah, sure, that's fine and not really knowing the ramifications of what I was getting myself into.
Speaker 2:Right, nah, I'm just saying 100%, I agree with you.
Speaker 1:So but yeah, man, I appreciate you taking the time to sit down and kind of talk about what you've been doing, Cause you're a prime example of you can switch it up and you can be happier and you can keep evolving into something that you're not done yet. You're still in transition, You're still moving through the journey and that's the best part to be able to know where you want to go. But enjoy the ride, Enjoy the ride, experience things. Stop to smell the roses, the flowers, meet the people along the way.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely, and what like this. I told you when you first started this it's a genius idea, so keep it going. I love you and thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Yeah, this has been another episode of the Clever Angle podcast. Thanks again to our host, jordan, for taking the time to sit down with us. Follow us on all socials. At the Clever Angle, subscribe on YouTube if you're listening on there or watching on there, and until next time, peace, peace out.
