No BS Brass Band | Meet the Brass Band That Successfully Crashed Forbes

Audio Transcription

Thrive nation. On today’s show, we interview Reggie from the no B S band. The no BS band is the band that famously crashed Forbes to become famous. Check them out. Google them right now. It’s the note B S band. Now

birthright. Do it, Reggie.

The shows don’t need a celebrity in the writer to introduce the show, but this show does to my eight kids, Koch created by two different women, 13 moat time, million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the thrive time.

yes, yes, yes and yes. Thrive nation on today’s show.

Ah, we’re turning over the show. Hosting duties to Jill Donovan, the CEO ish of rustic cuff. Joel, the thrill. How are ya? And take her away, my friend.

Thank you clay. Thanks for having me here to take over the show. Why I’m a little offended that you said CEO ish.

Well, I think you’re on the verge. I think you have to have 137 employees and I think right now there’s 129 therefore you 135 and so there you go. You get to make a point for that, by the way, for knowing the number of employees and I lose the mega point. How many of those, how many of those will I get sound effects today? Well, a lot of times I get like this one right now is the new one on one on this one here. If listen to this and try to look at me and don’t laugh. Okay. So look at me. Commit yourself. Just think of the most serious thing ever. This is like taking the act. Here we go.

It just keeps going. I can hammer you like

I’m not. No, it’s at all. Okay. Here’s the deal. Yeah, I am a little, I am CEO ish because ish means sort of, kind of not really yet on the verge. Okay. And that’s how I always feel. I still feel mom ish as well. But today I wanted to start off the show. You interview everybody extremely well and I am addicted to hearing your interviews and your interview questions. But I want to turn the tables on you today. Oh, I wanted to see if I would hire you if I were hiring. In other words, I want to, I want to interview you as if it were for a job. Okay, that sounds fair. Okay. Ready? Here we go. I don’t ask typical interview questions. That’s fine. Okay, here we go. Number one. What is your biggest pet peeve when the labels aren’t facing out? When I have to share a bathroom with people. That’s too, when you say labels aren’t facing out, what do you mean by that? Everything has to have a clean line, so I don’t like cabinets

or drawers or anything where chaos can ensue. It has to be like clean lines, organization, I guess. Lack of organization makes me crazy. So if you came over to my house and I asked if you would go get something out of the fridge and all the labels were turned around to the back, I would let it go. Would you leave? No, I’d let it go. But it is a pet peeve of mine. So I have a separate bathroom for my wife and I cannot cohabitate that we sleep in the same bed. Right. But I don’t go into the majority of the rooms in my house ever. I literally go to the kitchen living room in the man cave. I don’t walk into the, I haven’t, we sold our last house. I hadn’t been upstairs. I think my wife said like a year. It all, because there are labels that are not facing you because they’re not organized.

They’re not organized. Okay. That everything’s not organized. It’s just people being normal. And I have a hard time with that. Okay. Hired. Uh, so here’s, here’s the deal. I can tell a lot about people by their pet peeves. And my favorite answer to this question, we were having a group interview and one of the girls said her biggest pet peeve was when she was at a restaurant and people were chewing their Doritos really loud next to her or their chips or when people confuse finger foods with tea. I go, it’s not a finger food, but someone thinks it’s a finger food. That’s, that’s a huge issue for me too. But I started hearing that and I thought she seems annoyed quickly with something semi small and the guy next to her, his answer was that he’s annoyed with people who are annoyed with people who chew chips loudly.

I didn’t hire her and I hired him. Shunda yeah, I hope neither one of them are listening today. Well, you know what they say? Sorry about, that’s one of our Thrivers out there in Alabama. Laughing right there at Tim Johnson ophthalmologist. Okay, next question. You’re ready? Yep. What would your, how old are you? 38. What would your 38 year old self go back and tell your 18 year old self? Um, I would say that your network is your net worth. Uh, surround yourself with people only that lift you up or who are some people you can look up to are people who can encourage you. Um, avoid the idiots. 18 year old self would really care about at 18. Yeah, for me. Yeah. Okay. I’ve been self employed since I was 16. Okay. So 22 years. What would you tell your 15 year old self? Ah, don’t date anybody you’re about to date.

Wait one more time. Don’t date anybody you’re about to date. I dated like a lot of people in high school. Don’t date anybody that you dated. Yeah. It’s like I just, my whole thing was like, I’ll go on like a date with the person if it’s not a good fit, I move on. But I w I mean I went on a lot of dates a lot. Kay. But it ends up nobody was a match. I, there was no Vanessa there. You know, when somebody comes up and asks, now I’m going to move into a just asking you some, you’re hired. Okay. Oh wow. Oh wow. But from one CEO ish to another CEO, when somebody comes up and says, clay, I’d like to pick your brain on a few things. Can I schedule a lunch with you for 30 minutes? Your answer now? Um, currently I, this is why I say I would say I have five kids and a wonderful wife.

I like to chase around and so I’m going to have to say no, but I have an in person workshop you can come to. Um, and I’m there for two days, 15 hours, any questions you want to stay late and get there early. So like the last one I got there, I get five in the morning to meet a guy and answer his question. So I’ll do that. I’ve got a podcast we put out every day. If you email your questions, we’ll answer them. Um, or I have 160 coaching clients, but that, that’s it. And then they’re not, I value my time more than money, but I’d love to help you in those ways. And I’ve written a lot of books.

You have written a lot of books. I’ve read every single one of them. Um, the phrase, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Yeah. You heard that phrase apply, apply that to the last five years of your life. Something that you’ve done that just because you could didn’t mean you should’ve.

Um, well, I mean, depends on the point of view. I plant, you should plant a tree every weekend. Okay. So I just go to Lowe’s and buy a tree or Atwoods. Yeah. And I just enjoy it and I also buy, I don’t wear the same socks twice. Really? Yeah. Why new socks every day? Ah, yeah. I mean I just, I don’t want them, I don’t like when people touch my things, so I just buy a new socks every week. Wait, wait, wait. Yeah. You don’t like to throw them in the washing machine? No, because it require interacting with other people who do things differently than I do. Okay. Back up for just one second. I wouldn’t do my own separate washer. Let’s get somebody get clay a separate washer. No, I would just, my wife’s wonderful and my, we have a wonderful lady. Helps clean her house. I just don’t like people touching my things. I have a, I have an issue with it. Can you come over here? I just want to touch you. No, I’m just saying so like my uh, Walmart, they’d be short. They have shirts by the brand called George that you can trust George a great brand. And George, uh, they have shirts for three 99 rather than washing them. I just buy seven a week.

Do you really? Yes. Okay. I’m gonna I’m going to check, double check that cause I just have a,

I want you to see my bags of socks. You see the containers every once in a while people don’t believe me and I’m like here have a pair cause I just, I don’t know. I’d say easier for me.

Okay. Um, now I’m not sure if I’m going to hire you, but I’ll ask you two more questions and see if I will. Um, if you had, if you worked for me and I gave you a full week off and I said clay, go do something outside of the box completely outside of the box. We have one full paid week. Off, what would you do? I had a whole week. You had a whole week from Sunday to Sunday? Nope. From Saturday to Sunday work. Okay. Outside of the box, Alex,

outside of the box. Outside of the box. Well, I mean I kinda like, I kinda think I sort of live this life you’re describing. I like what I do. So know that you do out of the box, like out’s the sales side of Tulsa. What is you have one full week I’d go to Denver and I would grab a Moscow mule at all the eclectic places and just sit and talk to no one in. Listen, I

take photos of iconic and things, unique things. I love to go to places and spaces and take photos of ambiance and bring it back into my building or into my life. And I like to just watch it happen. Like I’m, I’m, I, I do that a lot. So we had a cheer competition. My kids were cheering. I went and cheered for my daughter’s. I’m there, I’m present. But then like when the other teams are going and I don’t know, the kid’s different, uh, Vanessa knows my move. I say I shall be back and I just walked around brick town just observing. I’ll go into a business and just watch how sales happens and I’m going, I wonder why everyone buys those bagels. That’s interesting. And I’ll start taking notes and I’ll diagnose the workflow and I come back with a diagram and I’m going to buy a bagel every day with my socks.

Yeah, I just mean 99 shirt there. There it is. Okay. I’m going to, I’m going to tell you what my, not that you asked, but I knew, I wanted to know if I had, if I had a perfect week, a not a perfect week. If I had, let’s just say I’m not even give myself a whole week. I’m gonna give myself three days. Sure. Okay. This is what I would do because this is, this is what I was going to do two weeks ago. I felt like if I was going to do this for myself, that I wanted to do it for all of my employees. So I surprised them on Monday and I said, next Monday I’m going to give all of you a paid week off. Really except you have to do something completely outside of the box, write a story on it, title it and bring it back to me and whoever has the best story most outside of the box, I will give you all the Friday’s off in August and September you did this.

I did this and this happened last week. This really happened. It really happened. I’ve got to my people right here now for it and so I gave them all the week off and we split it up into two weeks and then I got 130 papers. So I went with my family on vacation this week and I on the plane there and on the plane home I read all of the papers, cried at almost every single one of them. Really, really moving, really touching. One girl went to visit her 88 year old grandma got in the car, drove eight hours. Her grandmother didn’t have a single person to spend her birthday with. It was her grandmother’s birthday and she spent the whole week with her grandmother and she wouldn’t have otherwise. So it was just really cool things that happen in some domino effects. So I thought, I want to do this.

And so, uh, I wanted to somebody out there, by the way, it’s going, I can’t believe this guy spends all this money on socks every day. That turns out to be sort of an expensive thing you did there. Well it didn’t because I would have paid them anyhow. They just weren’t working. It didn’t cost me extra money. I’m just saying there’s, most people out there listening would probably say what they wouldn’t understand. And I think this is, this is, this is why I like having you on the show or I like to be on your show right now, is people that operate in a different flow and frequency could understand this. And the people that can’t don’t get it. And it’s really weird. But the more you do stuff like that, the more success

chases you. So I know you didn’t do it to chase success, but you did it at an altruistic reason, which I don’t. What was the reason?

The reason was because at the beginning of the summer I started realizing, you know, my kids are, my girls are 11 and 14 and time goes so fast, you know that and I started, it’s a tough year. It is a tough year. Oh eight do they should make a movie. What’s wrong with you? They did. So they uh, I started looking at, you know, a lot of my employees have kids and kids, my, my kids age and I just started thinking how fast it’s going to go and I don’t want them to have their kids home being watched by somebody the entire summer only to be sitting there with me. Um, and me feeling guilty about this. I know that sounds crazy cause I’m paying them. They don’t have to be there. I’m paying them because they need a job. But I thought what can I do to compromise? So they will have the incredible memory of being with their kids as well as, you know, being at work and working for them. That’s part of what made that four day work week a thing here. Yes. Okay. It’s part of that thing. You had that same feeling like you want [inaudible]

I’m married to someone who has that feeling. Yeah. And with my kids, I’m very good now at saying no. So I don’t, I don’t feel that I do work a lot. Sure. But I’m also with my kids a lot, so I, I feel good, but my wife, ah, has said things like, Hey, you know, we didn’t create kids to let someone else raise them, which we, we, we’ve always homeschooled and stuff, but still, if there’s a few hours where we were not there, we kind of, so, um, you know, I, I try to do sneaky moves. Like I hired my daughter’s friend who’s a boy, not a boyfriend cause it’s four, four, 14. I hired that guy, Joe. I got my eyes on Joey. I know what he’s up to. I, you know, I wasn’t once a little teenager and you know, and there’s, there’s no good plans. Joey, listen to this watch, be fearful. But anyway, so we brought in the Joey and we kind of involve our kids in the business. So the van works with elephant in the room and nobody takes out trash sometimes.

Well, my heart started aching, not aching. I mean, I know it sounds crazy from the outside, but I wanted them to experience something that was just, so not a week. If you plan a vacation, you know how the stress of plan vacation, I’ve heard you talk about your vacations that you, that you plan it for six months, then the going on it and then, I mean it’s, everything just takes so much out of you and not, the vacation isn’t great, but sometimes it takes more work than it’s worth it.

I have a lot of clients I’ve worked with for years who are very wealthy now or I’ve done well and I can say, and Andrew, you probably could say I’ve seen this almost to have almost as a default rule. I’d say 95% of my clients would go on vacation. Always say they came back feeling more tired. I would say if you’re going on vacation, maybe change that. Like do a staycation, maybe tell people are going out of town and then just like don’t go out of town and just hang out with the family. Yes.

So clay says just lie. So what I did is I told them on Monday, so they only had one week.

That’s more of like a deception. It’s more like if like if, if Trump is talking to the Russians and they’re like, Hey, what are you, what are you, what are you going to spy on us? Trump tastic and Trump says, just to be honest with you, 2:00 PM on Tuesday

[inaudible]

we got up at deception moves, their play says just deceive. So I told them on Monday, I told them on Monday. So they did not have time to really plan this large vacation. Yeah. And the 130 letters that I got back, I, I’m not kidding you. It put into domino effect something for their lives that they may not have done otherwise. One of my favorites was that a girl decided and thinking about what she could do, whether she should go out of town, whether she should go visit friends. She decided that she was going to sign up that week on Monday for eight on a dating app, dating app, a dating app. I don’t know what it was. I don’t know the name of the pharmacy. She signed for it. I think she probably created the app herself during the time she had, but she signed up for it. And in our Monday meeting this morning, as I was reading some of these letters, I read her letter. I just thought it was so neat and I said, how did it go? Did you get, did you go on any dates? How did it go? And she said, she met a guy, she’s been out with him three times and uh, it is going really, really well and I’m not kidding you. I think I’m going to be her matron of honor.

So, so that was just

Glen or so the winner. Do you wanna hear the winter? So are you saying as a tip, meet a guy, go on three dates, then get married. Is that what you’re saying? As long as you have. So step one, be deceitful, deceive, deceive your people. That’s tip number one. Take a week off and then take a week off a sign up for dating app for dating app and then get married right away. Jill Donovan’s tips for success.

So the girl who won all the Fridays off in Friday, in August and September, she wrote a letter and she said that she felt like she had been losing a part of who she was and it had been going on for a year or so, and she just didn’t even recognize herself anymore. And she thought and thought about what she wanted to do this week. That week. It was two weeks ago. Yup. And jokingly she said skydiving. Well, the joke turned into a reality and she gifted her 70 year old dad, this gift, the two of them jumped out of a plane. She was jumping away from any negativity in your life, jumping towards the life she wanted. It was a symbol, symbolic of what she wanted to do. And she said she’s not the same and she, she wants. So life changed. Life changed for your team. Yes. Kessler. I’m gonna tell you really quick what I decided to do. Okay. I decided to, um, I want, my dream was to go, I’ve never been at Paris. My dream was to go to Paris for a day, less than 24 hours. Take a picture in front of the Eiffel tower, paint it, uh, not paint it, but draw it in front of it with that little chair like you would as an artist.

Quick. I have audio of what I would have said if you told me I was going to a Paris for a day. This is audio of me telling Andrews. I said, is that Andrew? If you, if Jill does that to me,

[inaudible] a a long week. Questions

like, I picked the wrong weight. Quit smoking, took the wrong week, quit drink. It’s like I picked the wrong week when I’m [inaudible].

Oh, okay. So you, you like this though? Say you don’t like to travel, but for me it’s seven hours in a plane of forced downtime. Oh, so I booked a flight to Paris? No, yeah, four for myself. Okay. And for my daughter. Oh, the two of you to Paris. Okay. Can we do this real quick? We’re going to call Reggie here from, he has a, he has a group, it’s called the no BS brass band and they’re on their, on Forbes. And I was, I was on Forbes one day, the YouTube channel and I see this band called the no BS brass band. They’re playing and I like to kind of interact with these people. So I reached out and said, would you be on the show? He made a poor life choice. He said yes. So we’re going to have him on there. We’re going to come back as a segue. So it’s like a perfect Reggie’s in the middle. It’s like speaking of going to Paris with your daughter, let’s call the head of the no BS brass band. Reggie. So let me, let me hit the old dial button. Here are. We’re getting the ring in here, in that ring and action.

Don’t really pick up. It’s always embarrassing when they don’t. Here we go. Here we go.

Hello.

Is this Reggie? Reggie? This is clay Clark here with the thrive time show in the birthplace of tourism, Tulsa, Oklahoma. How are you sir?

I’m doing very good. How are you doing?

I’m doing well. And you’re joined here with Jill Donovan. She’s a guest on today’s show and she is also the CEO of a company called rustic cuff with 135 employees. And we’re excited to interview you.

Hi, how are you doing?

Good. How are you doing today?

Fantastic. I’m fantastic.

Now, Reggie, how long do we have you here? Because, uh, we, we will want to have you on the show for hours and hours. We have like 30 minutes or 20 minutes. How long do we have?

Oh, however long. I knew I was going to do this, so I don’t have anything. Nowhere to be.

Oh, you’re my kind of guy. Okay, well, here’s the deal for the members of the thrive nation that aren’t, aren’t familiar with the no BS brass band, they are familiar that our, our show, we start off every show and our show is known as the thrive time show. It’s business school without the BS. So I don’t know how I found you, but I was on, I was on Forbes looking for something and all of a sudden your, your, your band showed up there and you guys are really, really, really good. Are you, are you aware how good you are?

People tell us. But you know, you try not to think too much about that. Just keep trying to make the art. You know,

now the Forbes where you crashed Forbes. I’m gonna keep just a brief audio here so people, I see you right now in the video. Let me just queue it up.

Yeah, yeah. Now let me kind of, let me get into the really good stuff.

Fear of your life.

An Afro. I can see you there. You play the trombone, I believe. Yeah.

So how did you guys start this band? Why did you start this band? Educators

educate to a no BS brass band. We’re out of a Richmond, Virginia and me and my buddy Lance Kohler, a drummer, we were in a bunch of different other types of bands in the city, including uh, new Orleans type of jazz band. And we wanted to write our own songs, but at the time there was a lot of resistance to that. They’re like, eh, it’s fine. We can just play a clubs and we don’t have to make stuff. Yeah. But Lance and I, Lance and I disagreed about that. We thought we wanted to make something. We want it to have something own and permanent that we owned. So we created no BS breasts, which is, you know, like you guys asked about the BS.

No, it made our own stuff. No, Lance is Lance the guy rocking the mic? Is that the guy who [inaudible] well answered the drummer. Lance Lance is the drum will be queued up here. Okay. Should I see, I see Lance led drums. I see you, Reggie. Now Jill’s going to have some hot questions for you here. She didn’t have some tough questions. She’s going to paint you into a corner. But before she does that, here’s my question for you is how do you guys get paid? Like do you guys, I mean, you know what I mean? I mean, do you have like gigs you do or do you, how do you become a full time band?

Well, you know, especially with a band our size, you just slowly work at it in a way that we don’t, it doesn’t sustain each person. But then as we were doing it, we were just like, we’re just going to be like any other band. And if you can just be like any other band, it was just like pretend like there’s only three people come in and then we’d show up in, in our show is larger than life and then our price gets to go up. You know, we can, we can pull in all different types of people. You know, that’s the way we get paid. We don’t, we aren’t just doing jazz, we aren’t just doing rock. We aren’t just doing, you know, sleepy stuff. We like go into restaurants and cause a ruckus or play in theaters. Sometimes and we played in jazz festivals. We played at metal festivals. We play outside, inside on top of the mountains in Colorado in, you know, in, in Amsterdam, Albert by the fountains and stuff.

How many dudes are in the band?

We get paid by like working a lot and then we split it up and get happy. I mean if we were a band of two people we’d be like doing really, really well.

How many dudes are in the band?

We have 10 people now right now in the band and we have one woman now, which is great.

Really. It’s like the Smurfs. A singer. Yeah. Reggie. Did you all have professional jobs outside of being in the band?

Yeah, some of us do. Some of us are professors that a Virginia Commonwealth university. I used to teach at the university of Richmond and I don’t do that more. I’m, I’m mostly just playing music is the only thing I do except at home. If I play other gigs and one guy or drummer, he owns a studio.

You went from a professor to being full time in the no BS brass band.

Well, it’s full time musician, you know, no BS is one of the, of the things we all do. Anytime a musician is just not a guitar player or a bass player, they normally have more than one band that they plan. So my band was an idea, I was in college for music education and I knew all these horn players and like we should be a band. We should just be a band as instead of being, unless you’re talking about a ska band or something, there’s only going to be one horn in a band most Chicago, which had three horns in the band or something like that. So I wanted to create something that all of us, we can just be a band together.

So with, so with your band, uh, the listeners out there, some of the listeners out there, Joe, we have a lot of entrepreneurs that listen and we have Christmas parties. [inaudible] used to have a Christmas party or have you decided to have a pagan party on an annual basis? We have wet Christmas in July and then at Christmas, at Christmas. And I definitely want to hire you for that and do all the, do all your employees show up for this thing, Jill? I every single one of them. Okay. So last year, dr Zellner, my partner, I would at Christmas party, uh, Andrew, you were there, you saw that you might want to hop on the mic here. Today we’re going to, we’re going to be note free my friend. Okay. So Andrew is a, I’ve been working with us for a while here. I’ll, I’ll Mike him up here. But Andrew, how would you describe it and how many people are there at the Christmas party? Roughly 300, 300 people at the Mayo hotel. And we’re just being yuppies. Uh, w what is the song we can listen to right now? That’s indicative of what you can do. Is there a song on YouTube right now that you’re like clevis, clevis, check out this. So this is the same.

You can look up a 3:00 AM bounds,

three bounce. Okay, I’ll do it. Three, eight mounts right now. Pull it up here. I’m an amazing public type or on an audio only show. People make me want to dance.

You want to party? Okay, here we go. Across the room. I want a party. Okay, here we go. Let me get it. Oh, here we go. Oh, I’m just going to let it happen for a minute. Just give me, give me 30 seconds. Here we go.

[inaudible] so hot. [inaudible]

you guys are sick. Have you guys ever been tested for like swine flu or something? You guys are sick, man. Just huh? Wow. Yeah. Get with the Lysol.

You guys are sick. What does the girl play in your band?

She’s our new singer.

Well, she’s your singer. You have a singer. Yeah,

we have a singer, a singer, proper, and we’re in the, in the process of writing a new record now and we’re going to mix all that crazy brass fireyness what? A powerhouse. Vocalist. And it’s about to be rejected.

I have a question that I’ve been wanting to ask from 10 minutes now. When you decided to walk up the stairs at Forbes? Yeah. Did it ever cross your mind of the possibility of getting arrested?

It’s always the possibility when you walk up in a building like that, making all that noise,

but what was going through your mind as you were walking up the stairs?

We couldn’t believe that we were there. You know Forbes, which are trying to do like a cool music thing at one point and I was like sure we’re here, we’re in town, we’re in New York playing like a winter jazz festival or something and we went to the Forbes building and I started going up the stairs and there was Steve Forbes. He was just there.

Oh

Oh snap. That’s [inaudible]. If you look at that, go through that Theo of a Novias crashes floors you’ll see in Stanton and in the stairwell usually it’s like, Oh cool, boom, boom.

You just marched all the way all the way up to the rooftop. Oh

yeah, yeah. We went, actually we, we took a pit stop and like where everyone was working at Forbes and played inside of there and disrupted work for awhile and then we went to the rooftop.

Bold made. I love it. I will say that I think and I’ve been self employed since I was 16 and in red, y’all don’t get your take on this. I certainly want to get Jill’s take on this. I think being self employed is like crashing Forbes with the brass band.

Oh good man. That is very, very uh astute cause you have to have this line competence that this is, this is going to go right. So there’s no evidence of it.

Well imagine this, imagine this. Uh, you know, Steve jobs imagined that he went out and tried to get a permit to start building hardware at the age of 17 in his parents’ garage. He’s not going to get that approved. Imagine Hewlett Packard trying to get approval to open a business out of a shed. Imagine Uber even now trying to get approval to make Uber legal. Imagine Airbnb trying to get permission first. So it’s like a ask for forgiveness thing. I’ve got a question for you. I don’t, I know Jill’s going to one up me with a better question, but this is my question for you. D now that you’re a full time, do you ever worry that the manna will stop coming? Like you worry that like you, you’ll run out of gigs and you’re gonna end up living in a van down by the river with your mom.

You know what I’ll say this about music life and about business life. If you don’t keep grinding it will, the phone calls will stop coming. You know, like the only way to keep it keep the grind going is to continue to make products, you know, make records that I’m very happy about. I show up and play with other people’s bands and make a great impression or I show up on a podcast and try to make a great impression or just it never kind of stops. I’m always uh, trying to go forward and therefore try to just forget about the thunderstorm of, Hey, the calls aren’t going to come in. And then when I get times in which the calls come in, less than I would like them to come in, make sure I spend that time wisely to like pivot. Let’s, what are we doing now?

And pivot and make new music, make sure like they didn’t stop coming in because I’ve gotten stale or like, you know, always like make sure that we’re doing as good as job as we can do or I’m doing this job, the best of job that I can do to like tell people that we are available and we’re here to like rock your house, you know what I mean? As much as it is. So it’s office, you know. Um, I I definitely, I bet anyone that’s self employed is always thinking about, I hope the phone doesn’t stop ringing, but staying active I think is the, the goal, the likes of the magical bullet. You keep going, you keep the blinders on, you know, things are gonna swell up. You absolutely are going to make mistakes, especially with a, a group our size, you know, personnel issues and just interpersonal stuff.

All we are always Rouse up and egos and where are we going? How long is it going to take? Is this going to be worth the money to go that far? And you know, I don’t know any good band or company or anything that will exist without fights and conflicts, know, trying to figure out how to work through that and keep it going. This is our 11th year as a band. Wow. Which is, I don’t know, hardly any bands that stayed together that long, successful or not, you know what I mean? Groups of people don’t stay together that long period.

That is so true. And I would hire you just based on the last two minutes of conversation, what you just said, you’re just so smart. I have a question. It’s two fold because clays, clays was only one fold. So, Oh wow. Two double fold. That’s just in double folded questions ready if you, the first part is who has had the most influence on you musically for what you’re doing now. And the second part is if you could play with anyone, singer or musician, who is that person? Wow. Wow. Double fold.

Double fold. Are they? They have to be. I’m going to, I’m going to go with people who are alive now, right. People I want to play with. Uh, so of course that’d be, Quincy Jones is still out there doing his thing. I would love to be anywhere near him with our group of music, you know, and Kendrick Lamar. I mean, I love so many. There’s so many Elton John, you know, he’s still amazing. You know, uh, public enemy. Rukayah I can think of a ton of people I want to play with.

Did you say Wu Tang? What does that, did you say Wu Tang? He said Tang forever. Oh. Gimme what? Give one of your favorite old school, Wu Tang jams. Just one that’s just amazing old school. Give me something. Just old school,

uh, old school. Of course you got liquid swords, you got protect your net. You know, triumph is always great. Anything ODB did was amazing. And actually Wu Tang clan, I would say, uh, also one of my big influences in musically because I grew up loving movie soundtracks and I loved to, uh, come to movies and I’ll came a lot of that I didn’t hear about until I listened to Wu Tang clan records. And then I went and found all these Shaw brothers movies. And finding Bruce Lee movies.

Joe, I’m certainly really, I’m sorry to hear that all right there. I think I’m just trying to, you know, to add it to kind of a bonus to that fold. The double fold. You did. Okay. So back to you in the booth. Chill. And we’re in the same booth, so it’s really good. Quick transition, Reggie, best concert you’ve ever been been to

best concert I’ve ever been to. I think one of the, um,

that influenced you in some way. Happy to, yes, please. Even better.

I say the de Angelo

comeback show at Bonnaroo, I forget what year it was when right before black and Sai record came out. That was incredible. The roots were there as part of his band. Jesse Johnson from a more Stan the time was playing guitar. It was amazing. And then another one would be Radiohead, C and Radiohead. Coachella a million years ago was like transcendent. They’re like an amazing band doing amazing stuffs. Uh, Bruno Mars is also amazing. He’s done, he’s doing pop music. He’s one of those guys that like, it doesn’t really matter what he did. He could have probably been an Olympic swimmer or anything, you know, like he’s amazing. Now I have a question for you here now. I know it was rude. I talked to said for the show, I talked to, uh, Joel, we didn’t talk about it. It’s more of like an osmosis connection sort of thing with Andrew and Jill and I, and it was unspoken.

We could feel it. And uh, I was asking them, you know, mentally telepathically if it would be okay to Mike, your, uh, recent recordings sessions, uh, without your permission and to air the audio clips of the inner workings of your band behind the scenes. And they said, absolutely not. And I said, Whoa, Whoa. And it’s all mentally, it’s all just, you know, so private conversation. That’s what I’m gonna do. Then. I’m gonna, I’m gonna Mike, Reggie, cause I’ve never met him before. What better way to build that rapport than to Mike the guy. And that way you can hear that band conflict behind the scenes and you can air it right here on a podcast with someone who’s just met. So this is audio of, of you really getting into it with your, your bandmates apparently you’re frustrated about um, some certain lack of participant participation. And I’m going to play this audio clip and if you could just break down what you meant by this, that would be great. So if they’ll just let me play it in its entirety. Don’t, don’t cut us off here and we will let you have your, your time to, to counter. Here we go. Let me keep this up.

Okay. You hear that there? I got to have more cabinet. Yeah,

I hear that. I hear that.

Do you regret those remarks or, or what do you [inaudible]

I do. I do not. Not only do I did I want more cowbell that day. I still want more cowbell.

Beautiful. Do you like Kalba though? Is it one of the fundamental instruments of the no BS brass brand? Do you have a cowbell already readily available at all times when you’re playing?

I actually do. I actually have the capital available at all times. I have, I could probably grab the cow bell clear my feet from wearing this room right now.

Really, you have one.

The cowbells are everywhere. They’re there. They’re the best things that you could think of, you know?

Yeah. Okay. So here, here’s some, here’s some questions about D D D it’s a business show. So I want to get into the financial aspects of this. How much does it cost if someone out there wants to book you guys right now that did the 10 of you, that’s like the modern day, Wu Tang brass band, the, the no BS band. How much would it cost? No BS. By the way, don’t, don’t do that thing of clay. It’s going to range between a dollar and $50,000. I mean, is there a, is there a hard fee? Cause it’s an OBS band. We have to know what are you going to charge for the listeners out there to book yet? Is there a minimum fee?

Uh, the minimum, not if your friend, if you’re a friend, you know, you know how it is. You always can get

it for friends, for strangers. You know, we hover around 10 K to five K

10 K to five K and he said stranger. So it’s more strange. It’s going to cost more money, so if you’re more in the middle, it’s going to cost less, but if you’re strange earlier,

really, really cool. Hey, we’ll just do it for whatever and if you want to make it very difficult, it might be 30

Jill, it sounds like a hot deal.

No. Here’s what I would pay for. I would pay that amount if you would allow me to play my melodica with your band come a lot. Do you know what? You know what the, do you have a melodica? It’s not really a bar considered in the brass family, but you know what a melodica is?

It does. It’s not a rat instrument, but that’s okay. We have a saxophone player also. I have a melodica that I’ll bring [inaudible]

you do you play it? If I would pay you that amount, if you would allow me to come to a gig and play one gig with you. Oh yeah. What’s all you want? I, I like a little bit of Sinatra. I like some of Michael bublé songs. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Barry Barry Manilow. Go ahead. Yeah, that, that might not be quite fitting for your band, but it’s the kind of music I like. So if we could meet in the middle

Sinatra, we can do a under my skin from the live. It’s a count Basie in the change. That’s the best, in my opinion, the best for natural record. The live at the sands, the count Basie orchestra you can do under my skin. You got it. I got you.

I have an audio of geo playing the melodica, which is interesting because I know that she knew that she had audio is the irst clip. I’ll give a few different clips and you can critique her melodica playing. Then Reggie, just kind of just let her know what she could do better. Here we go. Let me, let me hit play here. Let me cued up here. This is, um,

okay. Here we go. I think we’re ready. Whoa.

Whew. Oh, Jill.

Shonda.

Oh wow.

What does it take us to the next level until it gets more Calumet track. Here we go. Oh wow. That song. That song’s going over really big right now. Enough. Okay.

In other regions of the Appalachian foothills where there was no internet service. Okay. Reggie, what are you, what could she have done better? Reggie? What could she have done better? I mean, just overall was it just the attitude was it was not having an attitude of gratitude was it?

It wouldn’t have made it. It wouldn’t have made it for the no BS brass band, but I could have walked up the stairs with you to Forbes. I could have done that. [inaudible]

you know what, I feel like the only thing missing with that is cowbell really?

Let’s see. I’d be happy there now. Okay, now, now Reggie, um, I work, ne of my clients I work with, his name is Colton Dickson. He signed to Atlantic records and his INR is David Silberstein who represents ed Sheeran and ason Morales as well. And Cola has explained to me and kind of shared me how, you know, people get paid in the music industry. So if you’re on Spotify right now, can the listeners find the no BS brass band on Spotify? Can they find you?

Absolutely. This also is no BS brass band, no BS grass.

And what’s a song they should listen to? What’s a song they should listen to? What’s ne more song they should check out?

We had hree and balance. We have a run around, we have a covers, we have a couple of cool covers. The cover of a, everyone wants to rule the world, but for fears, that’s really great. We have a cover of tape on me by aha. Uh, that’s on there. And we have um, ive or ive fully ix full month records in of live records that we made at our enth anniversary show last year. That’s on there. Uh, so much stuff to listen to.

I’m gonna play. Everybody wants to rule the world. Just a little segment of it. Then I’d like for you to explain to us how artists like yourself get paid when we stream music. So let me queue it up

real quick here. Just the live version. Here we go. [inaudible] this is your jamming out. This is that. Oh wow. This is you at next year’s Christmas party for Jill iftieth party. Here we go. I had the ability to play hits in the future before they happen. Oh man, we’re going to the chorus. Here we go. [inaudible]

our folks. You can hire these guys, you should hire these guys. You go get everybody out there. You can feed a Reggie and en other or ine other dudes for as little as ive thousand to to everybody. If you’re more strange for a stranger, it could be more, it could be en thousand, but you can hire these guys. It’s a great, great deal. Now, if the listeners out there go on Spotify and they start to stream in your music, how do you get paid?

Uh, very nearly very Negro. Um, uh, you get paid through um, like ASCAP or BMI through like the witches are, uh, organizations that collect royalties from all different types of services, whether it be radio play, TV player or things like Spotify. And it rolls over into an account. So I think it’s like, there’s so many thousands of, of, uh, streams that it takes to make even ne dollar. So usually it only people that are making money off the streaming are huge label. Like label artists that are getting millions and millions and millions of streams and it’s still mostly an advertisement than it is something they’re making money off of. I would say most artists are making their money is playing show now, playing shows and selling March.

Have you ever thought

about teaming up with the method man? Uh, yeah. I mean we paying forever. Come on.

I feel like, I feel like, I feel like he’s available if he tried. If you guys tried reaching out, I think he should do it.

You know what? I’m going to reach out to him. I don’t have his phone number. I’m sure that you do. I know you’re a [inaudible] insider. Oh. And uh, we’ll get that. Yeah,

I’m inside the chambers. It’s very secret. That’s like the,

it’s like Illuminati now. This is the take on me. They’re like version. You guys are just fine. There’s fun energy. Oh wow. I can see this.

Yeah. So people really know. We sound like

it’s so good, dude.

So I got asked what’s the future of the group right now? And then Jill’s going to ne up me yet again. To keep that theme going. What are the, what’s the future of the group? Are you guys, you headed a vocalist here? Are you putting out another album or are you touring around us?

Absolutely. I would say the immediate focus right now is finishing up our brand new album, which will be our eventh album with our new vocalist and getting on your stuff together and back, back on the road, hitting jazz festivals and playing shows up on East coast and West coast and anada, Europe and everywhere else that’s investing next move. Nobody has pressed

Jill back to you, Reggie. I know you’re musician full time musician, but you also definitely have the mind of an entrepreneur, which you have to be as well being a full time musician. Um, w I if I’m in a struggling band or a startup band as a singer or piano player, what, what have you, what is your advice looking back leven years to somebody like me?

Uh, I would say my advice would be is to econd guessed yourself less. Like every project you get started on, finish it. Even if you think it’s, even if you don’t think it’s great, someone might think it’s great. And if your plan is to continue to keep making art, just keep making it. Cause the irst record is always going to be your irst record. Your econd record is always going to be a econd record and you’re going to keep getting better. And all of the gigs and people wanting to talk to you and all this things, all that stuff snowballs after the music being something that connects to people, you know, however you do. You know? So I would say keep making stuff, make as much stuff as possible. You know, cause when you’re young, all you have is time. When you get older, your time is the thing that you’re siphoning out. Like money. You have a little bit more money when you get older, but you have way less time in time. It’s kind of what you need to, to think and make art, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Well irst of all, I love your music. I, it reminds me, my dad and I used to listen to that music, uh, that type of music, that style growing up. And so it brings back all kinds of emotion for me. Um, I love just your attitude about it and that you just have committed to it. And not to mention that it’s just excellent, but I’m just curious. My last question for you, have you ever had to part with ne of your band members because it just wasn’t working out? A, because leven years is a long time. And I, if, if all of you have been together for that long, that would be amazing. But have you ever, ever had to make a decision where you said, it’s, it’s no longer the wo of us or the no, you can no longer be part of this beautiful thing.

Uh, I mean, kind of not, we never had to, we’ve never full on fired anybody. You know, we’ve, we’ve been fired by people, you know, but, uh, throughout the years, you know, as people’s lives change, people move, you know, when people grow up and have children or whatever it is they’re going to do or just go in a different direction, you know, if you don’t agree with each other, it’s a personally, um, and it’s, it can be pretty tough, especially when you’re trying to, um, you know, you can’t really replace a friend and you know, you can only try to, that’s the difference between bands and just a company. Well, not necessarily true companies. You end up having real relationships too. But it’s tough when you’re, when you’re doing with your friends and your friends and money starts to intersect, you know, that can always be tumultuous.

So, you know, you know, going through those things, we just tried to like clear the air as best as possible and you know, speak your truth is what you got it and continue to make the art that you’re trying to make or keep going on forward with your company. And hopefully you can leave on terms that aren’t horrible. But that might not necessarily be possible all the sudden. And I guess that’s just kind of how humans are, you know, there’s going to be bad, there’s going to be bad stuff, you know, then that’s the whole thing about personnel, you know, there’s, we’re going to have bad times, you know, it’s a really close friends. You hopefully can come around to it eventually, you know, especially in the music, music world. But yeah, it’s definitely tough and a real, a real part of, uh, the life of this life.

I’m just so impressed by you. I know, I’m so impressed by you and your attitude and just your humility, uh, for being an artist and musician and with the mind of an entrepreneur that is, it’s impressive. I would hire you to come play for my Christmas party and then I’d want you to stay to play for my new year’s Eve party as well.

Hey Reggie, can I give out your phone number for the people that want to hire you as well? I mean cause it’s kinda like a irst come irst served. I give out your number or should I give out a website or how should I, what’s the best way for the to give the thrive nation, the education about hiring you guys

that the bribe nation can email s at no BS brass at Gmail dot com or they can hit me up on Instagram. I’m at Reggie pace or Instagram at Reggie pace or Instagram at no BS brass. Um, and we’ll be there. That’d be me on the other hand and I’ll take care of you.

No, I’ve got hree final questions for you coming in hot. Here we go. Um, you are very good at something. Some could say you’re East centric, meaning that you are not the center, that a lot of people are musicians, but they don’t do it full time. Or they’re musicians, but they’re not on Forbes crashing Forbes. They’re musicians, but they’re not maybe turning it into a professional thing here. So you’ve had some success. Therefore ne could say you are a little East, East centric. Um, do you have an idiosyncrasy that is kind of like your superpower? Do you have that thing? Is, is there something, do you, do you wear your lucky, lucky rubber band every time you perform? Do you refuse to step on the cracks while marching on the sidewalks? Do you have a thing? What’s your thing?

Well, ne of my things, I definitely don’t step on the lines when I’m taking long walks through the city. That’s just for fun. But uh, that’s definitely an idiosyncrasy, I guess. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t get let things go. I don’t give up, which is being obsessive. It’s definitely bad in some ways, but when it comes to trying to get something done, like getting art done or getting music done or just doing boring stuff, like dealing with social media or emails and we’re running the cap, dealing with the calendars of leven people that also have their own lives, you know, there’s a certain amount of just tenacity and like don’t give up ness that I have. I can stay up all night obsessing over something no matter what, like whatever it is.

Oh yeah. My wife was gone the other day with the kids visiting the grandparents and I started reading this book by a Tilman Fertitta and I just, I couldn’t put it down. I wanted to, I wanted to, I couldn’t. I was like, I have to only ahundred ninety more pages left baby, just ahundred ninety and that’s a hundred. And then I’m like, I got to get a coffee or some I’m tired. And then I realized, Whoa, it’s wo in the morning. I got like, I’ve got to go to sleep, but I want to read this book and I, I get it. I think most entrepreneurs are definitely obsessive about things that no ne else cares about. And that’s, that’s powerful. I want to ask you, you did a collaboration with somebody who is also known to be obsessive, if I’m getting this right. Um, Justin Vernon, AKA [inaudible], ah, you teamed up with him. Can you explain to listeners out there who this person is for those that don’t know and what you did with him?

Oh, Bonnie bears. Bonnie bear is a really, really amazing rock band. Uh, Justin, Bernie, the lead singer. And, uh, the brain behind the operation and it’s an amazing band. And, uh, I played with them often and I still play with them off and on and I thought I played with them a year ago. Uh, played with them for about, I dunno, ight years or something. Traveled all over the world, played all of the TV shows, uh, and he’s a fantastic musician and also a fantastic mind, you know, and entrepreneur by building his team and his brand that is going there.

Now my final question I have for you is, is about back to business and about marketing for a econd. You mentioned activity earlier, you got to stay that, keep that action going and activity going. What are some of the, um, marketing activities that you do to generate gigs on an ongoing daily basis? You know, what are some of the practical things that you do? Do you make a calendar and say, Hey, let’s go on Forbes this month and the next month, let’s do you have a social media move? Do you show up at local bars and play? What are the action steps that you take to generate the momentum that you’ve created thus far and that you are continuing to build?

Um, I would say making sure to make good contracts with whoever you deal with. Um, keeping up with the social media, making sure everyone possible knows about every show, which is surprisingly hard to do. Like social media is very cloudy and convoluted, you know, and they want you to pay to get people to see things. Right. So coming up with creative ways to make sure anyone in a town that we go to, uh, knows that we’re coming, whether or not is that Instagram, which is seems to be the way nowadays. Uh, and putting up links of a us plane, putting up links of our other shows. Um, making sure I know the other members of the bands have been going on and having that sort of connection, that the social, um, what’s the, what’s the word for it? Uh, that working, you know, like, Oh my other, my other fans, I has a band called Brunswick and my other band, you know Bonnie, there is like, Oh, you like Bonnie Baer, that guy from Bonnie there plays in this band, making sure everyone knows that kind of stuff. Um, and doing radio, like I tried to do a radio thing before a big show and at like local ed radio stations, uh, and posters, all that, all the old school stuff in a way seems to be just as valid now because the internet is just full of so much noise.

Oh, what you just said about it being cloudy is true. It’s so true. That’s so cloudy. And I see business owners, it’s sad, but they’ll spend all their time trying to get likes. Now they’re real quick. If you’re out there, do you own a business? You could say if I, if you’ll register with your name and phone number, you have a chance to win a boat. But people are saying, if you like us on Facebook, you could win a boat. So what happens is now remember member Facebook where if they liked you, you could just post it and all of a sudden they would see your business. But now it’s like ne enth of ne percent of the people that like your business can actually see it unless you boost it. So I mean that’s a, that’s a thing man. There’s, it’s, it’s divided so much. What do you, you said Instagram is where you prefer to have to be though.

I dunno if that’s where I prefer to be. It seems to be where people are. I think all of us are looking for the place that you could actually talk to your fans. I think you have to get your fans closer to you nowadays then you didn’t than you did before in the past. Like making sure they all know exactly what’s going on. Please follow us. And then you can definitely send them email or definitely send them a personal message because everyone’s phone is just dinging all the time. You know, everyone’s constantly getting these things. So I think a poster at Starbucks is almost just as good, just as good. You know,

back to the basics. Yeah. Well Jill, I didn’t mean to cut you off. I just want to give a supporting fact. I’m right now, Reggie, according to psychology today, the average American and Andrew can put a link to it, is being interrupted inety one times per day, inety one times per day. And the average person’s cognitive processing capacity has now dipped to the level of a hird grader according to psychology today because of inety one interruptions. I mean, imagine trying to write a paper with inety one dings or interruptions. So, um, I love that you’re connecting with your audience and if you want to connect with me just to go to mr Mambos even days a week, I’m there. It’s in broken arrow. No ne else goes there. I go there, I love it. I’m there. I’ll always be there pretty much every night. And mr Mambos, I go there whenever my wife’s taking the kids to cheer, I sneak into Mambos.

That’s my move or Atwoods and I’m just telling you that’s where we could connect. You give me a poster. I’ll probably the only ne there at Atwood. Are you familiar with that? What spreadsheet are you doing with Atwood’s? Am I familiar with it? What’s this? Where you go to buy trailers, farm equipment, chickens, buy silky chickens. You buy chicken feed a sod components, a round up weed whip. It’s a lot of stuff you’re into. I’m telling you, you start going there pretty soon you’re going to have a big lexicon of of knowledge. You build up about Kenny Chesney’s greatest hits and you’re going to meet me and you’ll meet guys. They’ll talk to you kind of different. They’ll kind of go slower. Like you think they’re in like a slow time warp and they’re going to go well out. Reggie, what was your question? And you’re like, I just want to know where the chicken feet is, where, I’ll tell you what and we’re gonna wait, they’re gonna let that pause sink in where you think they fell asleep but they’re still there. I’ll tell you what, Reggie, you a are you from around here now and then doctor, that’s a hirty minute conversation. You started it. That was, I love that ne. Love that ne. Back to your check out. Interrupt you for inetieth time today.

Dying to know Reggie. What? What’s the name of your kitty cat?

Oh, do you hear the cat?

No, not at all. No, I can. It’s so sweet. It’s like he wants to talk to us, but I’ve got to know what its name is. Marbles, marbles. Do you have more than ne cat? Are you the guy with en cats?

No, no, no, no. This was ne cat. You know, this is my girlfriend’s cat too. I’m just going to say that

I have hirteen cats, but I do have audio of your a cat. I again, I’m sorry I missed you earlier, but this is audio of your cat before the show. You’re trying to calm him down a little bit. This is the cat kind of, um, communicating. I think this is the [inaudible]

[inaudible].

It’s amazing you’ve taught your cat to baby. Calm down on that. That’s amazing. It’s before the show is rowdy cat, but now a great, what’s the name of the cat again? The Kent’s marbles. Marbles, marbles. Everything about changes named a Mambos. Mambo. r long goes in Tulsa. Well, I read you, I appreciate you for being on the show. Joel, I’ll let you close the show. You could do the hang up move where we hang up and he gets mad. You could do the non hangup. We could say thank you. We could as a variety of things you could do, but then it’s just over. We’ve all put clear. It’s done. So however you want in the show,

I like to end it by, by asking you to think about the, if you are on the top of a large mountain and you could yell ne thing, ne word down, wo or wo words down to everybody in the world right now, what is it that you would tell us?

Uh, hello.

Boom vote. You said no vote no. Really,

really vote for Reggie.

Hello. Let it go.

He’s gonna say, get out the vote. Okay. Oh, I like it. There it is. Thank you for being with us today, Reggie from the no BS brass band, no BS, a rass dot com. It’s no B S rass dot com if you care about your staff, I’m like, I’m not going to attack our listeners. Understand if you care about your staff and you want to have a Christmas party, it’s not terrible. Go ahead and go to no BS rass dot com and if you, you know, don’t care about your staff, that’s okay. You don’t need to feel that pressure. But if you, if you do care about your staff, just go to no BS rass dot com check them out. Great guys, thank you so much for being on the show. Hope you have a wonderful day, my friend. Reggie, ne more thing. I hear you have a podcast. What is the name of that beautiful podcast?

The hustle season, the hustle season podcast, what’s that about? But we’re a bunch of musicians and we talk about all of the comings and goings of what’s happening in the music industry. We talk about rock and roll history when we talk about random pop culture stuff that’s going on and especially if it has even the slightest of a music plant. So we would like you to check it out. It’s very fun.

Reggie, thank you once again and I promise I won’t interrupt you with another question again. You know, Jill, speaking of the no BS band, we were talking about Paris and taking your daughter to Paris and you hosting the show. So Jill, back to you in the booth.

Okay. I was saying if I could do anything for hree days or a week, the dream that I have had would be to fly to Paris just for a day. Go to the Eiffel tower, sit in front of it with a little chair, take out my watercolors, paint it, and then get on a plane and come back home. Okay. So it’s a stretch. So I thought this would be, I needed to keep up my airline status that I had. You have like, you know, you fly enough times that you get to a certain level and you want to keep that level because there’s certain benefits. So I thought, I’m going to see if I can get a trip to Paris that would help me keep that status. And so I found a really, really, really good deal to Paris for a day. Okay. Day with my daughter. [inaudible]

put a little, a little, a little just underneath there. Little soundbite there for me. Okay. I booked the trip. I was so excited to tell her I looked at my phone and realized it was the wrong date. Like the wrong month. What the wrong month. Oh well [inaudible] you know they say C abroad to get at Boody act down or smack them back home. That’s what I would say when that happens. Okay. That is what I said. I said when it happened and so I realized that I had to do something about it. Long story, my daughter came to me and said, mom, I don’t care where we go. I just want to go somewhere with you for hree days. Let’s go anywhere. And I said, do you trust me to book anywhere cause all the pears trips on for the actual date were crazy, stupid expensive and I didn’t, couldn’t justify it.

And I said, do you trust me? She said, mom, I trust you anywhere, book anything. I just want to be with you. And I thought this is going to be the perfect. I’ll write my paper about my anywhere trip with my daughter. And so when I was a senior in high school, the ne thing that I wanted was a trip to regon. I had never been there. I hadn’t read all kinds of books about it. My parents gifted me a trip to regon. And so I thought, this is what I want to do for reland. I’m going to give her a ne day trip, hree days, but it’s really going to be ne day in regon. I spent, I can’t seriously clay, I cannot tell you how many hours I spent on this trip. I even got ne of my friends to help me. We looked up all the activities in regon. We booked them, we booked a rental car.

I rebooked uh, I used the money that I had put in for Paris after I lost money on that and had had to have it refunded and I booked it. Excuse me. I booked it to go to regon. Um, I booked a hotel room and in by the, by the ocean. It was incredible. I was so excited. I couldn’t wait for the moment that I was going to tell her about this trip to regon. You know what Joe, when you, when you’re talking about was regon talk. Yeah. It makes me think of the classic of video game that I used to play all relentlessly as a young kid. Cause it’s the only game you could play was regon trail. Remember that game regon trail? I was, I was number ne for a week on regon trail. Let me just real quick, I got some, this is regon trails on memories.

Okay. I’ve never played regon trail nor don’t not, no, never centipede. That’s what I played. PAC man and centipede. Really that’s offensive. So she comes home from her friend’s house. She was there for a day and a half at her girlfriend’s house. And uh, she comes home and uh, at our is our, our friend’s house actually. And this from this family. And I have been dying to tell her cause I’m going to show her pictures. I’m going to show all the things we’re going to do in regon for our wenty four hours in this beautiful state. She comes back to my bedroom and I said, babe, I, you’re going to be so excited. And she said, I can’t wait mom. And I said, we are going to regon, regon. And she said, I kid you not regon. That’s stupid. I don’t want to go.

Oh, that’s what she said. She said, I have no desire to go to regon. You should’ve let me book this trip. It tells me you’re losing in Pac-Man. There’s, it sounds like the regon trail. He walks out of the room and my youngest daughter looks at me and said, Oh, I’m sorry mom. I said, do you want to go to regon? Anyhow, long story short, ive hours before we were due to go to regon, we both looked at each other and said, we don’t want to go to regon. And so there is now a trip out there. I’d canceled that trip. Now we have a trip to go somewhere because we had to get that refunded. So if we just keep booking and refunding before we know it, we will have no money left on the airline trips. And that was, that was my hree days.

Well, uh, let me, let me, let me say this here. irst off, let me just, you know what they say, see abroad to get that booty act smack them. Yacko I, I’ve got nothing for you there. I can just say this, that I, Phil Jackson, the last page of Phil Jackson’s book called, uh, leven rings. Really good book in that book. He’s the coach of the Chicago bowls and the Lakers, ichael Jordan never won a championship without them in order to Koby Bryant. They both played great careers, but they never won a championship without Phil. He’s kind like the Zen master of a basketball. And he has this notable quotable. He says, I’m paraphrasing, I’m sorry to butcher it, mr Phil. But he says that, um, most people spend their entire life chasing that which they can only find at home. [inaudible] and I thought that’s true. Cause I feel like sometimes we, we want it to be so good and then what we want is just right in front of us.

I think so gray, you know when we traveled, we tried to take our kids to uh, on a cruise and somehow I found myself at the bottom of the Dallas airport in that, uh, what’s the new Orleans themed restaurant? The uh, ah, what’s it called? Papa dos pop. It is, I’m down. I’m down there at Papa Doe’s with my wo oldest kids separated from my wife and the hree kids cause ne flight got delayed, another got delayed. They said we had room to fly standby and they’ll be able to do it. They only had room though for my wife and hree kids. So then we’re like separated now I’m trying to catch a flight. We get to, we get to Miami at like ne in the morning. We wake up like at ix to get on a boat somewhere. Luggage’s last we’re on a boat with people yelling and screaming and being crazy. Cause apparently I booked a booze cruise or something. I didn’t realize it was like a fit. The memories you have from that, I don’t know. I want those memories. That’s like telling somebody who’s like a victim of a violent crime, like the memories you have.

Do you know how many, do you know how much however slash do you how many times I, this is the S the econd time I’ve heard that story and I know you’ve told it en times, it has gotten so much distance out of just that ne trip

because I do kind of like business comedy. It’s, it’s good. There’s good material everywhere. It’s your laugh or cry, but I’m just saying my kids are like, we don’t want to go on the love boat or kids are crying when they do the femur. The love boat now that said the love Bonita redo. Yeah, we’ll have to do, I need a redo on that whole regon. We had a great time on a pontoon and Keystone Keystone now and it’s that simple. It’s down the street from you, the Brown river of hope. We went on there, we flooded the Brown leg. We went on there and pontoon. It cost us like even bucks. Some guy named Bernie drove us around. It was great. Yes. That’s my dad’s name. Really? Bernie? Yeah. Maybe he was the, no, no, no. He’s passed away. I can with Fernie. Okay. We’re going to end with a boom. We’re going with a boom, but irst let me, let me boot myself picking on a flesh, fresh wound. [inaudible]

okay, today. There we go. Boom.