Meet Sandy: Why We’re Bringing Back Off The Collar

(upbeat music) - What's up, dude? How you doing? - Doing great, man. How are you? You know, it's been just one of those days. I don't know, everything. Nothing seems to be working. Nothing, but we got our desks set up. We got our mics or cameras or equipment. How's your whole equipment situation handled out? Amazon primed? - Yes, I'm so glad you brought this up because I've been using the same webcam for like 12 years. And it seemed perfectly fine, but I wanted to get a new and better webcam. So last Sunday, I got the Insta360 link too. And I was super excited about it. And I was like, "Hey, this is such a big step up "from what I previously had." Until I saw Prickin on Tuesday, they released a new version. It's the Insta360 link to pro. I'm like, "Okay, like. " - You're two days old and then they got version three already. - It's almost zero difference, dude. Like there's no benefit that I need from it. But I can't be outdated on day two of owning a product. So that's been grinding my gears. But yeah, I got my microphone. I got a nice webcam. Life's good. - I had something similar happen. I just, I don't know if I told you but I started working for like a, I won't say their brand, but a ski boot company. So I cussed some ski boots and everything like that. So first time I've ever like really got shipped for boots and know the size of whatever. So basically how it works is you get the shell of the ski boot and then they put like a custom liner and then they infuse the liner with foam and it gets all formed your foot. So I found out my boots were two sizes too big. So I went down size and then they put the mold in and whatever. So I buy them, I don't know, they're like $230, pretty good. I go check back the website like two days later. Like literally exactly what you're saying. And they decrease the price 40 bucks. - Of course. - Yeah. - I send them an email immediately and I'm like, hey, you know, I just bought these. Can you give me a refund? Luckily they gave me the money back. But is that not just like either you don't go check back the website and you just don't know or you need to start checking every time you buy something and just see. - Dude, that's the thing, nobody checks, right? Like once, and I don't know about you but when I go to buy something, I love, especially if it's a new thing that I maybe don't have or it's a new area, a new hobby I'm getting into, I don't just buy something. I love the process of learning about it, researching it. I watch YouTube, people review, they're like, oh yeah, here's 14 different web cam side by side by side, I don't even know what I'm looking for. I don't have the proficiency, but I love researching it. I sit up there at like midnight with my tablet instead of sleeping, like watching these videos, trying to learn all the stuff, then I buy something. I'm not going a week later or three days later to see if the price change or if there's a new product. I'm like, I learned the thing, I got the thing, I checked the box, I'm moving on. - Yeah, yeah. I feel like AI is ruining that for me, just using, like how many times I put into Chatchee VC, like find me the best version of whatever, like microphones or whatever it is, just because like, I don't want to make a bad choice economically, but I'm also like, I kind of want to know why they're going to pick this for that or the other. - 100%. - Anyway, there's too many options. I think you'll be fine with whatever you get. I mean, oh, we're going to be doing either way. I think we should probably start the show. - Let's do it. - All right, let's start the show. - Thank you guys for tuning into another episode of Off the Colour, I'm your host, Nick Johnson. Thank you guys again for checking back with us. We are on version six or seven or 12 or, I don't even know at this point, but who are you were just listening to is my new co-host. I still don't really know what to call you. I've known you for, since we were 13 years old, so going on 20 years now, went to the same middle school high school, something like that. And I'll explain why I don't know what to call you. Sandi Arami, thank you for joining the podcast. What are we, why? What are we doing here? - Well, I have a legal name and I have a personal name and I have a nickname and a couple other people have started calling me another name. At this point, I have five or six names out there, but I go by Sandi, man, I'm Sandi. - Well, Sandi is what I've known you as for the majority of my life. And I think it's just gonna be that, but if I say your other name, we might up to go and sign an NDA or something. So what we are doing before I get too far into this brand new format, this episode is sponsored by Arcos Golf, Talkspace, Instacart and Factory Meals. Go ahead and check them out in our bio on Instagram and on Spotify. We are going to be doing these, I'm going to say weekly at this point just to get some sort of cadence going, really in a new format that through some trial and error, Sandi and I have agreed to start pushing forward. It's something that I think will give a lot of our audience something different to think about in their daily lives. For me, maybe resulting from COVID a little bit. We're kind of on this path of people are starting to wonder what they're doing with their lives, I think a little bit. And we're gonna try to learn from each other. We're gonna get some everyday people for everyday stories. These could be success stories. These could be the opposite failure stories. It's just going to be open, honest, improvised conversations with normal everyday people. We're gonna follow some sort of a format to ask kind of the similar questions of how people deal with their day-to-day lives, the stresses of their lives, what they're looking forward to, what got them to that point in their life. Yeah, we're gonna have some fun with it. Did I miss, I feel like I checked off a lot of those boxes, but did I miss anything, Sandi? - No, I don't think so. I think more than anything, this is an exploratory process. It's a learning experience, right? We want to learn what gets people out of bed in the morning, what gets people motivated, what stresses them, what bothers them, what we can all learn from each other. So that's why I'm here. I'm here to learn and of course have fun with you, my good friend, and yeah, excited. - Yeah, let's talk about it. What did we, we're gonna give a little preview, actually, sorry. We're gonna get back to some formatting of the podcast before I forget, and we'll get better at this as we do more episodes and I'm not totally in my own head. But every episode will start with three gratitude and a breathing exercise. We are keeping that from the last season. Really do think it's very important for everyone listening to get as much as they can out of this episode. And if you can get some gratitude, some good feelings, go in to start your week, all the better for it. So my gratitude for the week, actually grateful for our health, our health is here and now, and we're doing everything we can for myself personally, trying to hit the gym as much as possible with this year. I know it sounds like a New Year's resolution, but maybe it is, maybe it isn't. We've been actually working out pretty consistently for a few months. My lovely fiance doesn't allow me to stop. So that's been good and I'm very happy that we're moving towards that. Happy to be able to ski, grateful for skiing. Something that I grew up doing my whole life, but now I have three mountains within an hour and a half of me and working out a ski place part-time right now and learning about a lot more about skiing than I thought I ever would. So that's been awesome. And then thankful that Sandy made me do this again. I did not think we were going to be podcasting again, but it needed to be for the right reason. And I think this is gonna be a really good time. So that is my gratitude for today. Sandy, why don't you take it away? - You know, I'm realizing next time I wanna go first because I feel like you just, I had them in my mind and you said like two out of three of them right there. So that's, you know, not fair, but-- - You should just hold up a finger every time. It's like, yep, yep. - Yep, that on top, yeah, got it. - No, I think first and foremost, I'm very grateful for my health. At the moment, I've had a number of surgeries, kept me off the tennis court for a long time. Last year I had a number of muscle tears, you know, just basically immobile for cheese, I don't know, 30 or 40 days out of the year at different times. So very grateful that at the moment, I've been exercising, I've been running, I've been biking, I've been lifting, I'm gonna get on court a lot this weekend. So very, very grateful for that. Also very grateful for my wife, just the best relationship I could have ever had. ever asked for, just super happy that, you know, I've known her now, geez, I think 13 or 14 years. We've been married six and a half. Just very grateful that we're able to just continue having a great relationship every day. And it's a choice. And we can talk about that later. And then also, I'm grateful for for you and for this opportunity, for this podcast. I mean, your friendship has meant a lot to me over the years. But I never thought I would turn into the ability to learn as much as I hope I'm going to over the next few weeks, months years. So very grateful for that. Well, I don't know whether it's a cry or a laugh. Man, you got me. I think you dug deep into my soul there. Okay. Well, let's get into it. We're going to go through. And again, I fear. Dude, we'll get better. This breathing exercise, get it out of the way, holy crap. Maybe we added too much stuff into this. But breathing exercise for today, do some box breathing in through the nose at a count of five, hold for a count of five, and out through the mouth for a count of five, and hold for a count of five. So goes in a box, probably seen that many times before. But again, in through the nose, through a count of five, hold it for a count of five, out through the mouth for a count of five, and just do that as long as you feel like it's serving you. If you could do it through the whole episode, more power to you, start your week off right. Okay. So we're going to go through our questions that we kind of go through. We'll go through on all of our different interviews with our different guests with Sandy. So he's going to be our, our guinea pig, so to speak for this season. You alluded to it a little bit. The, let's start from the beginning here. And where did we meet? You know, where are we from originally? Give us a little bit of a little, a little sandy aramean, and his, his growing up in, we'll start there. Yeah. Well, we met in San Diego, small little coastal town of La Jolla. Yeah, I don't actually remember if it was middle school or high school, but yeah, we met either at La Jolla high school or, or Muleans middle school. I think I want to say from cross country is actually where I first met you. So probably high school. But yeah, I grew up in San Diego. Very lucky to have done so. I know, you know, everybody loves to say the weather is perfect. But also I would say where we grew up, we had a lovely, just, just open and free childhood, just between playing sports and going to the beach and, you know, having fish tacos, it just was everything that I would imagine in the movies like a great childhood to be, so to speak. So yeah, that's, that's where we met. That's where I grew up. And that's where I'm still lucky enough to call home today. I did serve a very brief sentence I like to say in Los Angeles and San Francisco, but I'm, I'm back and hopefully I'll never leave San Diego again. So you have a bit of a background. You had mentioned tennis has always been kind of a part of your life. Your background career wise has been in finance, but finance. If you want to maybe just give an audience an idea of, you know, what brought you into, you know, we can start with tennis, and then, and then drift into, you know, your career and finance. But give us a little bit more insight there on like, you know, what, what was the bug that bit you in kind of both aspects there? So I played a lot of sports going up. I guess at an organized level, I played a lot of soccer in basketball. I got pretty serious into swimming around middle school or so. I did a lot of surfing, obviously, being in San Diego. That's a, that's a very common one, a lot of skateboarding. I've done other random things like archery as well. I remember I got my master archer badge. I think that's shooting 250 points at, I can't remember the distance now, but I got that in like 11th grade or 12th grade or something. And I was like, oh, yeah, I'm going to be a professional archer. Didn't end up doing that. But that was a, that was a fun learning process. Tennis specifically actually kind of came late in life. But it's the thing that's just overwhelmingly took over. So I started playing tennis. Um, I think the summer right before high school is the first time I like held a racket and try to hit a ball over a net on an actual tennis court. And the reason why I was kind of stupid, um, I had a crush on this girl. And she was taking tennis lessons a couple blocks away from our high school. And I was like, okay, I'm going to go impress her. I'm going to also go to the same place and play tennis with a friend of mine. Just a couple of courts over. And she's going to see me playing. And she's going to be like, oh, yeah, like that's awesome. I'm, you know, and a big crush on her, right? I did not get that story right. You can't start the sport to impress someone. You got to be good at it. Yeah, you better make sure you're good at it. If anything, I probably ruined any chances I may or may not have ever had. But luckily for me, it didn't work out for the girl. It did work out with tennis. So I, um, at the time I was still swimming, you know, more or less twice a day, um, and taking that seriously. But I just fell in love with tennis a lot more every day, um, the playing, the, the getting better, the, the watching, I mean, this was, geez, I don't know, 2004, five, six, somewhere around there. Roger Federer was just coming into his prominence and his most dominant era. Raphael Nadal in the years to come would start, um, you know, really troubling him on all surfaces, joke of it, a few years later, I, I started my tennis journey at the beginning of the golden age of tennis and was able to ride that out until, you know, today, and I still, I still play competitively, compete in tournaments, um, try to pretend like I'm still an athlete at this old, old right page with my bad back and my horrible knees and stuff. But yeah, love it. Don't act like you're that, that old, what are you like, 34? Uh, I am. And, uh, I guess relative in life, that's not that old, but for, for, for any, for any, some, anybody who ever thought they were ever an athlete, uh, yeah, it's too old. Yeah, we get somewhere in terror. I think there's, this is something I thought about recently, uh, that, you know, you mentioned the golden era in tennis. I was, for anyone new listening, I'm, I'm the golfer of the group of, if anyone knows me, that's kind of my entire identity, I would guess. But the, um, the errors of influential, which I don't think is it even a proper way to phrase it because it's more than that. But influential players seem to be dwindling as, I'm, as you and I are getting older. Like when, I was a kid, Tiger was coming through the, like, into his prime and creating what the sport is today, you know, you have the same thing with Federer with Joe Gavitch, uh, with Nadal and you see it in Alvarez and still Joe Gavitch, but, but, you know, not to dive into sports too much, but like, what is your thought on, you know, we were, we were watching at a fellow the other day, and an NBA commercial comes on and was like, I haven't watched an NBA game in so long, because there's just nothing to drive me to it. Um, and like, we, might say, I got a conversation like, what is going to happen when Stefan LeBron are gone? There's like nobody. And like, there's no Jordan coming in the woodwork. Like, do you, do you, do you see any of that in any sport? Yeah, it's, uh, God, it's such a tough question, because I felt the same way about the NBA specifically. I think NBA is suffering from, uh, a number of challenges that maybe other sports aren't, but you alluded to a lot of things that are pretty global across the board. Um, I used to watch 82 Laker games a year, um, plus every playoff game. Um, and, and that was like a religious thing for me when I was like a kid. Uh, and actually, when I first started playing basketball, I was still watching Jordan. I mean, it, like, I was so young, but still, I mean, it was late 90s when I really started playing basketball and loving basketball with my family, my uncles and stuff. And that's like the Kobe Shack era, right? Exactly. The end of Jordan, the start of Kobe Shack dominance, and that's right. And I, I rode that all the way until cheese. I don't know, maybe 20, 10, 11, 12, and then after that, like, it just got harder every year to watch the NBA. And now, you know, I just had, um, my two brothers-in-law over for the holidays for Christmas. And, um, they were watching all the Golden State Warrior games. And it was just so hard to watch, man. It's like now the NBA, I think, is suffering from all these, uh, defensive fouls. Like, if, literally, if, if a defender is like closing their eyes and they put their hands up like this in an offensive player touchism, they call a foul. And I'm like, it's just so hard to watch now. Um, it wasn't like that a long time ago. I think a lot of sports are realizing they want more scoring, because that's what's exciting. Um, you know, soccer is going in this direction. And I felt a lot of the changes have been resulting in higher scoring games, NBA, of course, as well. But that creates situations where it doesn't feel, I don't want to say not fair play, because it's rules in both, both teams engage in them. It just feels different than it did 20 years ago. Um, you know, even same with tennis, you know, a lot of changes to the surfaces that the players play on the racket technology. And the type of balls create a situation where a very specific type of play is encouraged. Is it better to watch than it used to be? Depends if you ask, if you ask me no, but yeah, that's the direction that these sports are all going from a viewer perspective because they're entertainment at the end of the day. Yeah, there's definitely a push towards you know, lower attention span like maybe the sports were just too long in general. I don't know if it's my thought goes to two things that documentaries and sports have exploded over the last two, three, four years. Absolutely. I now thinking about this out loud, is that just a reflection of exactly what we're talking about is there's no Jordan, there's no Tiger Woods, there's no guy pushing the narrative anymore. So they feel the need to create multiple narratives within these documentaries, right? They're creating you know, characters instead of one character because they can't get one person to franchise an entire league anymore. That's right. And I mean, from a viewer perspective, I think one thing that's always so great about the documentaries be it you know, something like drive to survive for Formula One, for example, which is something I've been watching since I was a kid and I remember growing up like I couldn't tell people I watch Formula One like in America that just didn't resonate. They're like, what the hell is that? Now I'm having conversations with friends about Formula One as if it's like a normal everyday thing. So that's awesome for me personally, but you have something like that where you can create a bunch of these characters. Now in another realm of documentaries, I'm seeing a lot on Amazon Prime, for example, on very specific soccer players. You know, and those have been doing super well. And I think what that keys in on for a viewer is access, right? Viewers love to feel connected. If I watch a game, be it soccer or basketball, a Formula One or tennis or golf, I get a certain amount of results and performance and excitement. But if I watch a documentary on how a person thinks and trains and acts behind the scenes, I feel like I'm as a viewer getting that access, getting behind the scenes footage. That's always going to be resonating with with viewers. That's always powerful. So I'm happy to see all those documentaries come up. Yeah, it humanizes them, right? It allows, I mean, it's very similar to what we're trying to do here a little bit is you start being able to see how the sausage is made, right? It's like you get. And for me, it feels like it's leveling the playing fields a little bit. You're starting to see how top performing athletes handle themselves. For me, mindset seems to be a huge thing. You see it a lot in bigger, you know, NFL sports is probably the one I would think of the most baseball as a similar way. But they all have, it's almost like a grand sense of delusion. I don't know how else to describe it is for you to perform, for a human to perform at such a high level, say in football, they have to be so confident. It's almost not even confidence. It's like if it didn't, if the term itself didn't exist, how would that person be? And that's how it kind of is if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, going on a bit of a tangent, let's go into one of these other questions here. So we kind of obviously have talked about sports. I think that's one thing we always connected on. Can you walk me through right now what a typical weekday looks from you? And you know, if you have a certain routine that you abide by, if you have, you know, I almost want to call it superstitions, you know, certain things that you feel like you need to do every single day. But is there anything, like I said, that's intentional that you do for your day to day. You know, something along the lines of work, life, balance comes to mind. Yeah. No, yeah, absolutely. And so what I would say is it, it differs throughout the weekend, the week and weekend. I don't, I don't necessarily hyper focus on any one day. And why that is the case is I try to make sure, for example, I do two runs a week. They don't have to be long. They don't have to be short, fast, whatever. They just have to happen twice a week. That could be Monday and Friday. I'd like to get on my bike once a week. At the moment, I'm doing Zwift, which is like a, you know, I hook my bike up basically to a smart trainer and I have like a laptop that turns it into a virtual game, but it's very realistic. I try to do that once a week. I try to lift something heavy. I have a garage gym. I'm lucky enough to have that. I try to lift something heavy once a week. I can always do more, but I just can't do less. And then I feel as much of the gaps with tennis as I can. Sometimes that, you know, if work is busy and we got stuff on the weekend, maybe that's only twice a week. Sometimes if I have a tournament on the weekend, I'm playing more. Maybe that's four or five times. So that's why it's not super critical what happens on any one day. But like, for example, typically a day would look like I wake up, usually around 7, 15 or so. I have my breakfast. I have my coffee. I walk my dog. I go to the office. I do work in corporate finance. It's, you know, I'm what I think 13 years or so into a finance career. I'm typically at the office. Again, you're asking for a typical day. I'd say somewhere from like 838 45 to let's say 5 to 6 pm. But if I have nothing else going on, yeah, I'll leave at 515 530. If I have to stay late, I have to stay late. You know, that's just the way it works. When I come home, I'm on a clock. Like I'm very stressed about time usually. I'm on a clock for am I exercising? Okay. If I am exercising, that has to happen the second I come home. If I let anything get in between me and that exercise, that exercise isn't happening. Now it helps a lot if you have something organized like I'm playing tennis with you at 630. Okay. Well, it's scheduled. I get to go. But if I'm planning on getting on Zwift and getting, you know, one hour bike in or going for a run or, you know, lifting weights. If I let myself, you know, I'll just watch some dishes of prep dinner. I'm not doing that workout. So I'm stressed. I got to get that workout in once I've done a shower. Usually my wife and I will either have some leftovers or make dinner together. We typically like to make dinner together a couple times a week. We'll watch one television show, whatever watching at that time, Netflix, Amazon Prime, whatever it is. And then now it's like 930 right now. Now what do I do? Unfortunately, I'm not one of those guys that just like sleeps at 10 wakes up at five, you know, whatever does the morning yoga. I wish I was after my swimming days. I do not like waking up and working out in the morning. So at that point, usually anything that has to be done administratively, like emails, bills, you know, looking to stuff, research, webcams, research, whatever I'm going to do, that happens sort of between the 10 p.m. and midnight window. So that's what a typical day looks like. What I do between that sort of six and an eight, that's what flex is. Is it tennis? Is it working out? Is it seeing friends? I used to do trivia on Tuesdays. That that was the thing. Now you asked very specifically, like, do you have any superstitions? Do you have any must-haves? Hey, as I get older, I feel like this time increases, but I don't like to go, geez, 48 hours out of hard max without working out in some way. When I was younger, it used to be like 16 hours. Like I can't imagine at 22, I would ever have gone 24 hours without exercise. But now 48 hours. So like, for example, last night, I went and saw my family. We had dinner. I did not get an extra, I went straight from work. I got home at like 10. I didn't exercise that day. So like tonight, I have to get on that bike. There's no way I can't, you know, I can skip that. So moving is very critical. If you could, can you do the rest of the podcast on your bike? Is that doable? You might hear a lot of panting and breathing and there'll be a lot of sweat flying at the camera, but yeah, sure can. Well, we'll get some ziplock bags and just cover up the equipment. Exactly. Oh, I, you know, sometimes my wife comes in the garage and she's like, what the hell are you doing in here? Because I'm like, you know, a lot of times they have these races and you're fighting against these people. I'm like, I'm like, making these sounds and she's like, are you dying? I'm like, get out of here. Oh, the interesting thing is it sounds like you don't have very much downtime. Your, your Monday through Friday is more or less spoken for. I somehow made you agree to do this podcast once in a while, but what did I say? I said my biggest, my biggest concern is time. I mean, is it not everyone's concern? You know, I think one thing about that I would definitely recommend any of the listeners look into, there's a book called My Morning Routine and this kind of feeds into exactly what you're talking about. That is a eye opener in a lot of different cases. I don't remember who it's but I'm sure I could look it up. I'm being lazy right now, but it basically goes through. It goes through all these different successful people and what their morning routine is and some of them are freaking wild. Some of them have structures, some of them don't. I would say, if my memory serves, surprisingly a lot of them don't have a whole lot of structure, but there are some internal clocks or internal warning mechanisms that they all have towards one thing or another. I would say, as I've gotten older, the routine and the morning has gotten important, but looser. I'm not really sure why that is. I think we have had a tough go of it, just in our household with moving and everything like that, and the holidays drained us, so it's like waking up right now, and the sun comes up later. It's just kind of like harder to get up in the morning, but I will say, and this is where Lauren Rashnote is so good about this stuff, and I've always been horrible, is she does not let us like falter. This podcast as a perfect example is like, there's times where I'll start something and I'll get into it for like six months or maybe three months and then it will just stop, and I don't go back to it. Working out is another one, like that's something that I honestly dread, but it has been, I gotta say probably six, seven months of continuous like training style, working out again, which I haven't done since really when I was in college and like high school and training to like play professionally. That's awesome. That's so, I mean, it's good and bad. I, it sucks. Not gonna lie. I hate it so much. Like, there's times where I just, I do it, but if I had a choice, but this is a thing. I think the one thing that she was really, that Lauren was really good about is we mixed it up a lot. So we joined class pass probably in that same time frame like six, seven, eight months ago, which allowed us, especially in specific beach where we lived, there's so many workout places around there that class pass would work and it's basically like you get a subscription every month, they give you a certain amount of points and every class is worth like five, six, seven points, whatever it might be. So you get to like pick and choose and then you'll you'll end up finding like the places you like to go and I ended up doing like hot yoga again and I think that's what's kind of after doing it and seeing not only the type of people that do it, like it's a very wide range and I'm usually the only guy or it's either they're all like 22, 23 year old women or they're all like 75 year old men and women and there's like me that's kind of in between and I'm just kind of, I did yoga in college but like hot yoga to me in combination with like cold plunging and stuff is the only thing I've really seen show some like actual evidence that my body can kind of snap back to it's, you know, where it's supposed to be. That's awesome. Sorry, I'm going on tangents. Well, let me just jump in real quick and say my morning routine is written by Mr. Benjamin Spall and Michael Zander. So that's that. You know, you brought up a good point. The structure. Yeah, I personally don't have a ton of downtime. It's the way I operate. I wouldn't necessarily say that's a good thing, by the way. You know, I mentioned I just had my two brothers in law over for the weekend and my wife's family is very much like they'll all sit in a room and just hang out together and chill and do nothing like do absolutely nothing and you know me well enough probably to know that very few things on the planet can bother me as much as what I just explained. I like I'll get like straight up anxiety. And I'm just like, all right, what are we doing? So I'm going to go in the garage and build a piece of furniture. I can't sit and just do nothing. So I, you know, I think you've noticed this in recent years, you're like, hey, you know, Sandy, you want to go get a beer? You want to go hang out and what do I always say to you Nick? I'm like, I am you notice. Yeah, I'm like, I'm usually free four or five days out. I will almost never be free four to five hours from now almost never because I fill up that time and you know, I'm always thinking, okay, like, okay, this podcast ends. I'm going to bike. Then I got to make dinner. Then it'll be like 10, 15 and then I guess I can read 20 pages of a book before I sleep. But if I bike for a little longer, I do a longer route. Maybe I can't. I'm always thinking this way. So it's good in that I feel like I get a lot done and I love exploring new hobbies and trying new things. So I think that's awesome, but it's bad because, you know, compared to a lot of people that are just sort of like really chill and relaxed and low-stressed people, that's awesome. I envy them. I'm just always like, what's the next thing? What are we doing? When are we doing it? Come on, hurry. You said in an hour, it's been an hour and seven minutes. We got to move. Right. I feel like we miss an opportunity for you and I to have like a sitcom moment because we didn't live too far from each other. And there could have easily been a time where I just knock on your door with a bottle of alcohol. Like you see in all the sitcoms and then just like, you motherfucker. All right, come in. Like we could have easily pulled that off and I feel like one, I do envy you that you can keep doing that over and over. Like you're constantly trying to move. But sometimes you got to have that guy be like, yo, you got to fucking chill for some. It's absolutely crazy. And if you came over, it's not like I would have turned you at the door unless I wasn't there because I was, you know, doing something else that was planned. But in my mind, the second I opened the door and you're like, hey, let's have some alcohol. I'd be like, yeah, come on in. All right. So how am I going to cancel what I was supposed to do? And okay, I guess I'm like, that's the first thing that goes through my mind. I'm going to patch you on the back, give you a big smile, walk you in. I see to take your shoes off. And I'm going to be like, all right. Shit. Okay. So I'm not going to do this. I got a text that guy. I'm not going to be able to talk to him at 10, like I'm panicking in here outwardly big smile. Huge panic outward, outwardly mid sip. Yeah, exactly. It depends what alcohol you bring. You bring something nice. Come on in. You bring something bad. I'm sick. It'd be a couple of 40s. I'll take it. Yeah. So I want to go into a little bit of your, your childhood and growing up. I do, I do want to mention though, you and I have not always been this way just for the listening audience out there. You which started, we're 33 in mature and talk way different than we did when we were 14, 15. I would hope so. There's a, there's a lot of gay chicken being played when we were in high school. And it sneaks its way in. You guys might hear it every now and again, just a random dick joke that comes out of nowhere. I mean, what was my, what was my nickname in high school? What do you want to tell people that you? That was on me. My mom always says it's my mom always says it's not where you're called. It's what you answer to. So oh, and you answered. God, it just sounds so mature. You're right. We're not 14. And at the time, it was hilarious. And now I'm like, I can't believe I used to say that. Your nickname was Nick, my Johnson, because Nick sounds like lick Johnson, Venus. You know, it just fit the gap. It did fit the gap. That's what she said. So anyways, you know, you guys are going to get some a good side of us through my, we might have a couple on hench moments. Who knows? But growing up, what was, was there a plan? What was your adult life like intended to be like, I know when I was growing up, like I said, Tiger was was on the, on the scene and everyone wanted to be like Tiger. So I kind of knew from early age, I wanted to play professional golf. But I always kind of wanted to do something performance wise. I was an actor in high school too and doing this podcast is kind of up that alley. So is there, you know, did you want to be an astronaut? Was there a little fire engine in the kids bedroom? Like what was, what was the dream? So I think I had two kind of universes at different times. The first one was athletics. I just, you know, whether it was me being obviously, I was going to be better than Kobe Bryant at basketball. Like when I was five, that was the obvious answer or seven or whatever to, you know, soccer. The first one I took really seriously was swimming somewhere around ninth grade or tenth grade. It may be eighth to ninth grade. That's when I started swimming just a lot. Like twice a day, and I wasn't doing it on a team. I was just like doing it because I enjoyed it. I think around 11th grade, this was ahead of the 2008 Olympics. So this was maybe a year and a half before them. I tried for Olympic trials. And Jesus, I'm not gonna remember the times now, but in the 50 free, I was like 1.2 seconds off or something Olympic trials. And that might sound impressive, but every swimmer that's listening to this right now is just gonna be like, well, that's not close at all. Like it's impossible to make up this 1.2 seconds, but I was so sure I was gonna be some form of athlete. Then around that time I was really ramping up with tennis. Obviously I was gonna win Wimbledon. I mean, you know, of course you can't do that if you start tennis at 14 or whatever. But yeah, I really wanted to be some form of athlete. I just saw that. Like I was doing everything I was supposed to do. I did super well in high school. I got good grades. I got a good SAT score. I went to college. But in my mind, I'm like, well, I'm not. What am I going to, like I'm working finance? No, that was never on the radar. It was like, well, I'm gonna be a professional athlete. Okay, well, like, okay, I'm graduating from college. Maybe I should like have a job while I'm obviously gonna be a professional athlete. And then that's when I started changing from I'm gonna be a professional athlete when I was like 21. Like, well, hold on. I should have been a professional athlete by now. And I'm not really that close in any specific arena. I was gonna be a CEO entrepreneur, right? I think our era, maybe now kids in college think they're gonna be influencers or I don't know, Instagram people. I'm not sure, YouTubers. When we were in college, I think the common answer was, I'm gonna start my own company. I have started a few of my own companies. Nothing to the point of like, you know, me making tens of millions of dollars in retiring. But I thought I was gonna be like, you know, a Mark Zuckerberg. I had no idea what I was saying Nick. I didn't know what it took to do that. I didn't know the first company I started was in 2014. I was selling like package small, you know, online sales, direct to consumer, packaged goods, watch headphones, sunglasses, as a cohesive brand. I was like, yeah, when I launched it, when I launched the company, I thought I had a good idea. I did a lot of work with the manufacturers, getting the products to be exactly what I wanted them to look like. I thought I had made it. I even sold one thing in my mind. I was like, I made it. Look at me, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a CEO. Wow, did I learn a lot that year? 'Cause that's when the work starts. That's not when the work ends. So yeah, that's growing up by athlete first, entrepreneur slash CEO. Second, finance corporate America, absolutely dead last, never thought I'd ever do that. - Is that, so your desire to be an athlete entrepreneurial is that stemmed from like how you were raised? Like, did they have certain expectations for you as a child that you thought a lot of people, I think, are instilled at a very young age, what success looks like or what they should go around that, like not to be any sort of stereotypical racist, but I think a lot of Asians in general are pushed towards medical fields, I don't know why, but there's something in the way that they're brought up that instills entrepreneurial mindset. Like you mentioned, I had the same thing for my dad. My dad did startups when I was also high school. So maybe entrepreneurial was on the cards. Did you have like an influence that you think you can stem that back to? - So I've had a number of very large influences directly from my family, as you said. I guess first and foremost, my dad is an orthopedic surgeon. He's like software-tired now, but he was an orthopedic surgeon for like 40-some odd years. And I remember in high school, I told him, I didn't want to pursue medicine. I took like AP bio, I got a good grade, but I just didn't love it. I was like, dad, see, I don't like AP bio. I'm not gonna do medicine. And he's like, that has nothing. Oh, okay, like he didn't fight me on it. But I remember what he said at that time, I was 10th grade, I think. He said, I don't care if you're a garbage man. I really don't. I don't care what you wanna do. I just care that you do it to the best of your ability. So when, and that was a big thing for me, because when I eventually did decide, hey, now I'm gonna be a financial analyst, I'm gonna pursue finance, I'm gonna go, you know, go up the ladder in corporate American finance. His first thought was, okay, when you're getting your MBA, well, you said finance, right? You wanna do this business thing? Like, when you're getting your MBA? Only reason I got my MBA was because my dad, every conversation I had with my dad for about four years was about the MBA. And I mean, I mean that, Nick, every conversation I had. As I, hey, dad, like, what do you want for dinner? Dinner. Guy doesn't have an MBA, he's thinking about dinner. Like, every conversation was about that. So that was one big influence. My family, I had a number of athletes in my family that played that national level for the country of Iran where my family's from in soccer. So growing up, I saw my uncles training a lot for soccer. Even, you know, at this point, they're not professional anymore. They were like in their thirties, they'd moved on, they're here in San Diego. Even then, they're playing indoor leagues. Actually, the water tower, where we used to play. And, you know, pour one out 'cause it's a, it's been closed since COVID. I remember being four years old at the water tower watching my uncles play. So they played a very high level of soccer. So I saw their training and their regimen and their performance in an athletic capacity. And then I had one, I guess two uncles that were entrepreneurial. They had started their own companies, very successful companies when I was, you know, late '90s. So I had a lot of that. I had the work ethic for athleticism from a lot of members of my family. I had entrepreneurial activities from some uncles. I had my dad's just insistence for always bettering yourself in whatever field you choose. And I think those things all kind of combined to create, hey, you know, I'm gonna be an entrepreneur, I'm gonna be an athlete, I'm gonna try all these things, I'm gonna pursue new hobbies. And that level of obsession that I still have, I find a new hobby every six months. But it's not a cursory view and just kind of move on. I dive, I dive deep, I research, I try a lot, you know, I think that comes from those influences. Yeah, that's a very rare outlook that your father has that, you know, doing it to the best of your ability, no matter what it could be. Do you, what do you credit that to? 'Cause I would say, you know, it can be a very similar mindset, but projected a very different way, right? And I think that has, from being an outside source, I feel like the way he phrase that to you does not internally put pressure on you. It gives you options, but you have a very deep understanding of, you know, how he sees the world and how he expects you to see the world and how to grow into that, you know, it's, and I wonder how, you know, maybe you can speak to as well, but the thing that comes to mind for me was the, when I played soccer, my dad was a college soccer player, so he obviously has some sort of deep invested, you know, whatever it might be towards me being successful at soccer. He got to a point that he couldn't watch me play. He thought he was putting too much pressure on me, which I love soccer. I never even knew it was a thing that he was felt, he was pressuring me, but, you know, I think you kind of get where I'm going at with this, is like, what? I just find that that is such a rarity in that perspective. Do you feel like that is driven you, or do you feel like you've had to adjust it for your own path forward? - Yeah, I think both, to be honest with you, at times it drives you, and at times it drives you crazy. I wrote all this, for anyone listening, if you have the opportunity to still talk to your dad, if he's still here with you, I urge you to ask him a lot of questions about his life, and I did this with my dad not too long ago, and I wrote a lot of the answers down, so I just have them forever, like, where did you go to school? What did you study? Why did you do this instead of that? Now my family has the added complexity and layer of being from Iran, and so a lot of the questions I asked him were like, well, why, you know, the rest of my family all came here after the 1979 revolution? Why did you stay kind of stuff, right? And so I got a lot of this great information from him. One of the things that I got from him was, so in Iran, I don't know if they still do this, I, you know, I haven't been there, but at the time, you take national exams, sort of at the end of high school, to see what kind of college you can go into. I don't remember, it's tens of thousands of students around the country take these national exams every year. I'm gonna, forgive me if I get the number wrong, but the order of magnitude is correct. He placed ninth, I think, in the country, that the year that he took his national exams. So this is the mentality, and I asked him, like, well, what did you do to do that? He said, well, I decided after I was like 15 or something, that I can't, you know, I can't just, I'm still gonna pursue soccer and, you know, I love it. but I need to do something for my academics. So I decided three hours every single night I was gonna study for these exams, starting like two years before they were to be taken. And the sacrifices I made all my friends would go out and play, and I can do anything I want. I can play as much as I want, as soon as I'm done studying. So I remember writing that down, and that's the mentality that he had. So at times, that drives you Nick, right? It's like, I don't need to be the best at anything today. I do however need to do 10 minutes, 10 minutes of something today to make me better than I was this morning. And at times, that drives you crazy because sometimes, you know, sometimes it feels like relationships are falling apart, work is crazy. I don't know, oh my God, I look at the to-do list for tomorrow and I've got 14 things to do. And sometimes you just don't want to put in that 10 minutes. So yeah, the short answer to your question is it's both, man, I mean, sometimes it drives you really far, forward, and life becomes easy. You're like, dude, 20 minutes a day, and I'm making progress. That's all I need. I just need to be a little better. And other times, you just like, I don't know what pressure, it's not pressure, it's, I don't know what expectations you have. I'm never gonna fill them. In my mind, I'll never be better than my dad at, you know, discipline, sacrifice, hard work. I can't even, he comes from a different life a different time. I can't even fath, you know, the opportunities I've had growing up, and you've had as well growing up and, you know, completely unbiased opinion, but one of the best places on earth, I think. I'll never, ever fill my dad's expectations. And that hurts sometimes too. - Yeah. Yeah, I think we're all given a sense of identity at an early age, whether it's false or correct, is to be determined, but it's something that probably just set in stone how you are, and then as we get out to mention COVID, but I still think it's a huge catalyst. It really allowed us to, as a world to reassess things. A lot of things are still, there's still remnants of it. Be something that our children will read about. No, our grandchildren will read about. It was a huge, huge change. And it made, it made a lot of people, I mean, I'm on employment, it's crazy right now. The job is crazy right now. It's all run by some sort of AI. It's just, you and I have gone through it, unfortunately, this last year. But it's. - Can I throw a wrench in there too? So I was, I was in between jobs for a couple of months, luckily over the summer last year. So I basically gave myself a summer break. Oh my God, it was so nice, Nick. I would get up, still around the same time, you asked like what my typical day looks like. Well, it was very different about, I don't know, seven months ago or so. Yeah. I would get up, I would have my breakfast. I'd have like a 10, 30, 11 AM tennis sun on me, you know, almost every day. I'd come back, I would do some exercise at night or in the evening, I would make food, you know, great meals, I just, I loved it, I loved cooking. And so I realized once I got this, you know, my current job and again, in corporate finance, the happiest period of my adult, like working years, was this past summer, is the happiest I've been since I was like, you know, 21. So what does that say? Like I wasn't making a dollar. I was just playing, I wasn't spending a lot either. I was just like eating good food, playing tennis and working out. And you know, again, still all the house responsibilities in my dog and in my wife, of course. But so, so how does that shift your priority? Like as you think about work and balance and future and goals, you know, I was thought, I need more money, I need a better job, I need a better title, I need more responsibility, I want the newer, better, faster, cleaner, you know, everything, house, cart, whatever. Do I? I don't think so. COVID I think put a lot of that in people's minds too. Before then, I think everybody was on kind of the train tracks going in a direction. After that, it's like, well, life put on pause for be it weeks or months or years, depending on where and who you are. And how does that shift our priorities? Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of people that we're able to pause, take a look around and be like, what the fuck? Right, it's like, what is going on? Like we were able to as a species reset, which will probably never happen again, hopefully. But it's changed so much of how we do daily things. I think it's what ultimately will determine the next five, 10 years of how everything falls out. You know, I do want to say we're getting towards kind of the end of our time. We're about, you know, we got a time for maybe one, one more question, but I think it does go six hours. It does go fast. Well, that's because it could be a killer format and we just skim the surface. I think we've given our audience a good idea of where this is going. We do have some more stuff that we're going to add as we're growing and getting a little bit further on. I will close out with one more question here, but before I do, I do want to thank all of our sponsors. Like I mentioned, Arcos Golf Instacart Factor Ready Meals and Talkspace, we have considerable discounts on our LinkedIn bio on both our Spotify and our Instagram. So be sure to check them out. And again, thank you for making this episode possible. So throughout this up and we can obviously have another episode and just follow suit because obviously we can talk about this for days. And I'm learning, you know, more about you and I've known you for 20 years. So this is obviously we're doing something. I want to do one of these on you now. - I know, I don't, we'll see if you graduate at that point. Let's see what would be a good one. I think it depends on how morbid I'm feeling at the moment. It's like, do we want to end on a happy note or do we want to end? I mean, it's not really a sad note, but how deep in the woods do I want to take this? - Okay. I'm gonna let you pick between one, two, or three. How about that? - I get a pick. Love it. Okay. Just sorry, you got to pick a number one, two, two, three. - I thought you were gonna read them out. - Oh, no, you don't get to know. - You don't get to know. - One? - Okay. What feels more important to you now than it did five or 10 years ago? - I mean, so many things, but specifically, I'll say a couple, one time. I have never, like, you read this in the books. Memoirs, you see it in movies and say, oh, time is the most valuable resource. And you're like, yeah, okay, like, no, I get it, yeah. No, that's true, yeah. I have never been so stressed about my own time as I have over the past few months. Like we talked about, like, I don't like being idle, you know, just keep doing the next thing and just, but I've realized that everything we do has a cost. Now, these are all fun things, like, let's say you do 10 things in a week and you want to do all 10 of them. There is still a cost. You wanna do 'em, they're all good, they're all fun, they're good for you, you hang out with friends. There is a cost however to hanging out with friends. It means I can't also be doing X or Y or Z. I've never thought about that as much as I have over the past few months. And I think maybe it's because I was, you know, without a job for a couple months last summer and I had an abundance of time, still wasn't idle. I wasn't playing video games and hanging out and like, you know, no, I wasn't, I was very active. So I would say what feels more important to me now than it did a number of years ago, one is definitely time. Two, one thing that feels a lot less important is work. I mean, I still do my job, I still want to grow, I still wanna develop, but the analogy I gave to a friend recently was when I graduated from college, it felt like I started running down this path. And maybe there was a wall in the future, maybe there wasn't, but I can't really see what the rest of the path looks like. I'm just running. Then as you kind of grow a little bit, you go from job to job or you go get a promotion or you go up in title or whatever, you're just working on how to run faster, how to run more efficient, how to run at a faster pace, whatever it is, you're still not thinking too far ahead. You don't see what's at the end of the path. Then I went and got my MBA, I got a full time MBA from UCLA Anderson, met a lot of really great people, got a lot of great value out of that program and really enjoyed my two years there. Now I come back in the workforce, I'm running really effectively now. I think, I mean, who knows, maybe I'm still not, but I think I'm running really efficiently. All of a sudden, I'm getting really good at running on this finance path. But I'm also now starting to see a silhouette of something in the future. Like at the end of the horizon, I'm seeing a wall. I'm like, oh, shit, like, I didn't think of that. Now, wherever I am in my career, and I still have a long way ahead of me, whether I do something entrepreneurial or something else, this corporate America lens, I see a wall in the future. And it's a shame I spent all this time getting good at running, just to realize I'm running into a damn wall. So that's the analogy I gave. So one thing that's not as important to me now, not that it's not important, it's just it's not going to be a huge priority is what happens to me at work. If I get laid off tomorrow, if I get fired, if the company goes under, you know, but, you know what I mean, like, I feel like five years ago it would have affected me very, very strongly. And I put so much of myself into the next promotion, that next career jump. And now I'm like, yeah, I still want all those things. I go home to my family every night and that what I do between six and 10 p.m. is a lot more important to me than what I do between 730 and 6 p.m. So I guess that goes back to time at the end of the day. So yeah, short answer is time. Yeah, for sure. I think that's something, you know, not to bring COVID back, but that made people think about it. Also, you and I are, you know, I'm about to be married in a few months. You've been married for a while. Like those things became not that they weren't already important, but I think as we're getting older and as we're kind of going through, you know, some shit career wise, excuse my French, but some changes, you know, it reprioritizes things. You know, I don't think I could do any of what I've done the last two years without born. There's been so many things we've gone through. We've changed jobs multiple times. We've moved multiple times. You know, it's, and you have the same thing with Garrett. Like I've known you and your wife, uh, together when you were at college at, at USD, like, you guys have been together a long, long time. It is something that, um, you know, hold a high pedestal for me as being your friend, for this long. Like it's a good example, but it does take, you know, you had mentioned it does take work. I think there's something to be said about, you know, I'll try to close off the show here with a thought is we have a lot of resources at our fingertips now with AI. I'm a really huge advocate of it. I think it's made my life not just work wise, but everything a lot more efficient, a lot cleaner. Um, it's not always right, but it gets my thoughts consolidated and it gets things organized and it gets things done efficiently so that I can spend time on the things I actually care about, which spending time with the family it was born with, you know, I've used in the last, and I've kind of had this plan since we moved, trying to build a structure for me to follow. Because I know how my tendency is to try things out for a little bit and then kind of wean off of it. Like it just, I always have a habit of not crossing the finish line. Yep. So me too, buddy. If I were to say anything that closes out as a thought is use some of the tools that you have to add your disposal, it doesn't have to be AI, not for everyone. I think it's great. I kind of probably overshare with it at times, but it does give me, I think that much more added, um, direction. We've used it on the podcast here just to kind of get some brainstorming going. It's like having another bouncing board that knows a lot of shit. I mean, that's how I respond quickly and response quickly. Yeah, you know, I've, I've used it for work, um, you know, it's helped me organize some, some stuff that is a little bit, you know, I would call very minute tasks, um, stuff that just takes time, like spreadsheet stuff that, you know, I know how to do, but it's like if I can have it do it while I'm doing something else, you know, more, more fun to me. Careful. Don't don't tell people to use it to do spreadsheets. I'll be out of a job. All right. Whoa. Cover your ears, guys. Don't listen to that one. Yeah. Well, you still need somebody to know what they're doing. I don't know what I'm doing. I just, I just act like I do. Um, well, thank you guys for listening to this episode. You'll be having new guests every week or so, I'm going to say a week, um, this has been Nick Johnson and Sandy Arami. That's your name for this week. Next week, it could be something completely different. Thank you guys for tuning in. We will see you guys on the next episode. See you guys. Everyday people, everyday stories, completely improvised. Welcome back to the OTC new episodes. Every Monday, follow us on Instagram at off the collar. We will see you guys on the next episode.