SPEAKER_01 0:02

The people that do show up to work and feel uncomfortable, it's sort of like they're in this survival mode that they've created for themselves. Like, bro, this is just work. Like, be competent. Do your job. And I promise you, people won't look at you like this young guy who grew up in the hood. People won't care that you have an accent or that you're a little quirky. They just remember the guy who does his job really well. Remember, you've got the job already. You are in the building. You've already been chosen. Now it's time to perform.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Failures Podcast. Today we're talking about nine to five corporate code switching. You know that feeling of discomfort you get that comes over you when you're wearing the corporate mask all day, you're laughing at jokes that ain't funny. You're talking about hobbies that you really don't care about. I mean, who really cares about golfing? You made it out the hood, you got yourself a good job, but you still feel out of place. Trust me, Rich and I know the feeling. Code switching, corporate conflict, imposter syndrome at work, you feel like a sellout. If you come home feeling exhausted from a long day of work, just living a whole nother life from nine to five, 10 hours a day, and you get home and you speak a different way, you live a different way, you eat a different way, you joke a different way, you watch other things that nobody at the office watches, stay right here. This episode is definitely for you. Rich, I have a question that I already know the answer to. Do you ever, ever feel this way? Do you relate to the feeling of being qualified at your job, but for whatever reason you still feel like an outsider, like someone that doesn't fit in?

SPEAKER_01 1:48

All the time. And like you said, it's exhausting. And I think the distinction here is getting the job doesn't automatically make you feel like you belong, right? Like that's the difference. So you get the job, but you get into certain rooms where you feel a little bit intimidated. Maybe the CEO's in the room, maybe the COOs in the room, CFO, right? Like all these titles that, as a new guy coming into a corporate setting, make you feel a little bit intimidated. And there's a lot of things you have to adjust to. I know for me, one of the things that I've always felt self-conscious about is like how I speak and making sure I don't sound too ghetto or not use slang or not use slurs, not use curse words, not stutter, right? Like not sound like I have a New York, New Jersey accent. So there's a lot of things about working in a corporate setting that for a young guy they feel like they have to adjust to to feel polished in the room.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Yeah. I mean, Rich, why title the episode The Corporate Mask? Why use words like code switching or feeling conflicted? To someone that's never felt this feeling, this probably sounds ridiculous, right? Like, what do you mean? When you go to work, you wear a corporate mask. What does that mean? How would you explain that to somebody who doesn't understand what a minority that got a job that's predominantly people that are not minorities, somebody that may have come from a lower income area or immigrant family? How would you describe it to your coworker that is confused by the corporate mask?

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Yeah, listen, if you grew up the way you and I grew up in the hood, not in the best circumstances, low income, minority, not the best resources. We weren't given all these luxuries and opportunities in life growing up. So we very much had to work two jobs, hustle hard, put ourselves through college, you know, hustle through college, and then ultimately land in a corporate setting. And that's a distinction, right? Like our upbringing and our journey was rough. It was get it out the mud. So when you place us in a corporate setting where we have to follow corporate rules that we were never taught in high school, college, or elementary school, like now there's a new set of rules we have to learn and adjust to. And I think that's where the friction comes in because you're starting to feel uncomfortable in your corporate job, and you do want to be one of the people that are considered the most polished, and you want to feel like you fit in overall. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

If you feel like a fraud at work, don't worry. Stay locked in on this episode. Rich and I can definitely relate. Rich is in his late 30s, I'm in my early 40s. We've had a lot of jobs. The jobs that we had before are the ones we have now. And one thing that I can tell you in some of my earlier jobs, when I was trying to get into sales and marketing, I worked at a fashion company. I worked sales at a fashion company. I think I interviewed so well for that job that they gave me a title that was a little too high for me. And I could feel myself every day around a whole bunch of people that worked sales that were a little older than me and they had way more experience than I did. But it wasn't the job that threw me off. I eventually caught up to like the lingo and the pace of the job. What used to throw me off and was a constant daily reminder to me that I was not in the right company was how many times I would tell my coworkers, nah man, I don't golf. Nah, man, I had never been skiing before. Bro, I don't have a home down the shore in an area where only white people live. Nah, bro, I don't go crab fishing. That's not something that my family does. Sorry, bro, I don't watch F1. It was like daily, I would have to remind people that we didn't live in the same universe. And it got so bad to a point that I started feeling bad because I kept turning everything down. They would want to hang out after work or they would want to go out to eat. Bro, Bruce Springsteen is performing down the shore at Montauk. Come out with us, Justin. It's gonna be a good time. I don't give a fuck about Bruce Springsteen. I don't want to go to Montauk. I don't even want to hang out with y'all. These are the things that I was experiencing on the daily, and it was just a constant reminder, man, I really like the job. I'm getting better at it, but I don't know if this place is for me, and I definitely don't know if working with these people is helping me.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Yeah, and listen, I think the crazy distinction too is like when you get to these corporate settings, like I feel like you very much want to fit in, right? But culturally, it's hard to do when you came from where we came from, or if you're a Hispanic, Latino, African American, like you grew up culturally a certain way, and now you're entering sort of corporate white America with completely different cultural rules and cultural norms that you're not used to. And it's interesting, right? Because I feel like part of you wants to keep the cultural roots of where you came from intact, but you also want to fit in. So you feel like you need to adopt some of these new cultural politics rules so that you can fit into these rooms. So the distinction is in that middle line, right? Like, how do you tiptoe the line? And that's part of the corporate mask, right? When you go to work, you put the mask on. When you go back home, take the mask off, and you ultimately end up feeling like you're being two different people at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Yeah, it's crazy. Rich. I do want to bring up two questions that came up for this show topic. And I thought they were funny because they're legitimate questions that people ask when they talk about corporate code switching, wearing the corporate mask. The first question, which is hilarious, and I would love you to answer it for this young man who asks my boss told me I don't speak corporate enough. What does it mean to speak like an executive? I'm confused.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting one. That's one that I struggle with often. I think it's not so much sounding corporate as it is sounding clear, right? So I think certainly your choice of words matter, right? Like you can't be using the same slang that you use in the street or when you're with your friends in an office setting, right? Like, so there's a difference in vocabulary, but most importantly, there's a difference in being clear, right? Like you can't speak to a boardroom the same way you would text, right? Like the two don't translate. When you get into a corporate job, they're expecting a level of professionalism, they're expecting uh a level of communication skills, right? Like there's a baseline uh requirement that they're expecting that you're showing up with. And if you're not showing up that way, then that could be part of the disconnect.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

Question number two Man, I love the salary, I love the job. I'm very happy that I went through four rounds of interviews and I was selected for this position. It's the most money I ever made. My family's so proud of me. No one's ever had a job like this in my family, no one's ever made this much money in their 20s. But how do I stop feeling like an imposter at work? I feel like I don't belong in corporate America. Did I make a mistake? Should I get out?

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Man, that's the mental reframe that this young man needs to have, right? Like you said it just, you went through four rounds of interviews. Four different people evaluated you and qualified you, and then let you inside the room, gave you a badge, took your photo, like uploaded all your information to an HR system, and they selected you. So you've already won, you're already inside the building. So I think the notion that I don't belong or I'm not corporate enough, I think it's a fallacy, right? Because you tie the way you feel about being uncomfortable in a room, and you try to compare that with being qualified, right? Like these are two things that you have to separate. You're obviously qualified if you were evaluated by four different people and they hired you, right? Now you just need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable in certain rooms.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Rich, I think that's such a good point. And if you really go back in the failures catalog, we probably have about seven to ten episodes that are truly dedicated to friction in life that comes from graduating from a young man into an adult, a grown-ass man. And part of being a grown-ass man comes with friction. A lot of that friction is not having the ability to sit at home in the comfort of home, in the comfort of the people that come from where you come from, the cultural comfort that comes with only speaking in a way that makes you feel good about everything that you that is convenience. That is a life of convenience. If you can find a form of employment and a way to make a lot of money being yourself, more power to you. That's actually the best route that you can go in this life. Make money being yourself. But in the event you can't and you don't have a body of work, you don't have a resume with job experience, you got a GIFI. You got to get in where you fit in. If you're tired of wearing the corporate mask, you have to get some experience so you can build your resume and eventually put yourself in a position where you dictate and determine your future. But until then, you got to experience a little friction, my boy. Everything in this world can't be handed to you on a silver platter unless you come from a world that things are handed to people in a silver platter. If that's not you, you don't have those options. So the same way it goes with if you want to get a girlfriend, you're going to have to experience the friction of being turned down, denied, ignored by pretty women because you have to go through the process of getting a girlfriend. Then after that, you always say this, Rich small problems lead to other problems, lead to other problems, which is once you get the girlfriend, you got girlfriend problems. You used to have single problems. Same thing with employment. You got no job, but you want to get a job. You get a job, and maybe it's not a fit, but it's the first job that can point you in the right direction. So if you're someone that's experiencing a lot of friction in the workplace and culturally you feel like someone that doesn't fit in, that's fine. It's happened to the best of us. Unfortunately, a lot of corporate structure is a lot of people that are not minorities. That's why they're minorities and majorities. The majority speaks in a very similar way. They come from a very different background. That background allows them to be more comfortable in the workplace. If you don't like the cards you're dealt, feel free to fold your hand, get a new set of cards. But if you like the job, you like the pay, and you think you're qualified, you got to get through the friction. It will come with time. You'll get more comfortable. You don't have to fully dilute who you are and sell yourself out in order to adapt. But you do have to understand you're in a different environment. You shouldn't wear Tim's in the beach. That's not a place for Tim's. Now you could get mad at the beach and be like, damn, I hate this place because they don't allow me to wear Timbalins on the beach. It's like you have to adjust yourself for the climate you're in. And if you're taking a nine to five job where people speak on a corporate level, and it's mostly people speaking like white people, quote unquote, affluent people, quote unquote, or people with money, quote unquote, then that means you're uncomfortable. That's fine. You got to learn how to push through. And if you don't want to push through, start your own business where people that look just like you work with you and you can speak how you want to speak all day. But what you're not gonna do is go broke or starve. So you got to figure it out. You gotta figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Yeah. Also, don't wear Tim's to your job. Like that's not corporate.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

But I ain't gonna lie, I'm you wearing Tim's to my job, but we got different jobs, though. I feel you.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

You need to understand that if you grew up in the hood, you grew up in the school of hard knocks, right? Like your journey, your past experience, all of that helps you in a corporate setting, right? You're able to navigate different levels of friction. And I think that's an advantage, bro. Like a lot of people at work, you can tell just have never been punched in the face. You walk around the office and you can tell who's been punched in the face before and who hasn't, right? And I feel like the people who've been punched in the face know what an ass whooping feels like, know what friction feels like. And that works to your advantage. Why does it work to your advantage? Because it eliminates you from having any fear in entering a situation that's unknown, right? Like you go towards it, you're like, oh, I've dealt with this before. I've been punched in the face, I've you know, gone through adversity, right? Like I'm going to push through this, and you know, my manager, my co-workers, they'll see the type of person that I am.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Rich, what you just said made me think about a funny ass story that happened at work. A woman who works IT. This woman's from the South. She doesn't work in the music business side of our business, but she does our audio and video and she works on IT. There was a meeting she was in where someone got out of pocket with someone else and said something passive aggressive. And no lie, when the meeting let out, it was just me and her at the end. I was putting some paperwork together so I could leave. And she asked me, What do you think of that meeting, Justin? I said, It went a little off the rails, but it's fine, we're gonna figure it out. You know what she told me? If you don't whip your kids' ass, life will whip their ass for you. And I could tell that that dude that got out of line in that meeting never got his ass whooped by his mom. And that was the most culturally aligned thing I heard all day. Because me and that woman definitely came from the same place. And she was saying what you're saying, Rich. Some people walk around with a bravado and a level of confidence that is totally undeserved because it probably came from somewhere else. And you got to deal with that person. Now that's your coworker, or that's somebody that's pushing back on you. And that's where a lot of the tension at work comes from. You're speaking to me in a way that if we were outside or if we were back home, I would have handled this in a different way. So I need you to do me a favor and lower down your volume before I boom you. And that is really the conflict that I'm in most of the time at the workplace. It's speaking to me in a way that you think you're better than me when you're not. You're just my direct report, or you're someone that is vertical to me or horizontal to me on the org chart, and you give me suggestions, but you don't tell me how to live my life. And it's funny when that woman said that because I thought it was legendary. And that woman worked in a department that wasn't a part of the org chart. So she was at liberty to say what she wanted to say. But what she was really saying was people don't know how to speak in a corporate level to people that come from inner cities because they speak sometimes with a very disrespectful tone. And I'll take the quote from the woman if you don't whip your kids' ass, life will whip your kids' ass for you. And that's really the lesson that I got that day. And I think it fits with our conversation.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

No, that's real, Just. And listen, when you talk about corporate titles, right? Like the other distinction is that for sure. It's like, yo, you think you're above me. You get to, yeah, nah, you don't get that. That's the thing, bro. Some people have a title next to their name, and they think that it qualifies them and gives them the right and the liberty to speak to you however they want, right? Yeah, nah, bro. I got a father. I'm good. Yeah, or they make more income than you, and they feel like they got a chip on their shoulder, or they just got a promotion, or they're cool with the CEO. There's so many different work dynamics that you have to sort of navigate around. And I'm a strong proponent, bro. When you land that corporate job, the first six months, scan the room, bro. Scan the room, scan the buildings, scan the offices, meet people, understand who's who, understand who's conniving, understand who's eating everybody's lunches in the refrigerator, like understand who's who, because it'll allow you to know where you fit in in the equation. And like you always say, Just, it'll help you find your flock. It'll help you find the people and coworkers that you connect with the most. And those are the guys you stick with, those are the guys you hang out with, those are the guys you get lunch with, and those are the people who ultimately have your back.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Listen, I say it all the time. You find your flock by flocking. Meaning one must go out into the world and do things they enjoy, speak in a way that is authentic to themselves, move in a way that's authentic to themselves. Granted, you don't want to be an idiot, you don't want to be ignorant, you don't want to say anything stupid that's going to compromise your job, but that doesn't mean you have to fully conform into the way everyone else is living because you want to fit in. Fit in is a survival mechanism. I get that, but you don't have to compromise your whole integrity. So you find your flock by flocking, meaning you speak on the things that you enjoy doing after work that are interesting hobbies to you. You share a little bit of the weird shit that you're into at work, not all the weird shit, but just some of it. So people know who you are personally. Like, for example, I'm a big Knicks fan. I live in LA. For three years that I've been at my company, I wasn't someone that people enjoyed talking about the Knicks, but the Knicks go on a championship run. Everybody in the office knows I'm a big Knicks fan. I got security guards on the lot, on the studio lot that I work at, dapping me. I've never spoken to these people. Hey man, your Knicks, they're doing their thing, man. I thought of you the other day. I openly let my flag and my colors shine. I am a peacock. It's okay. I have my own interests, I have my own beliefs, I have my own cultural outlook. I'm Puerto Rican. I'm from New York and New Jersey. I have a way of going about my life. Some places I don't fit in. That's fine. As long as you do your job and you're the best at doing your job, people will figure everything else out. Now, if you're very average at your job, now you got to figure something out because they're not gonna let you fit in because they're gonna try to figure out somewhere to replace you. I feel rich, and I know this is not a popular argument with our community. Sometimes people use the corporate mask and inner work bias based on ethnicity or upbringing or finances. Some people use that as a shield or defense mechanism. When the truth is, maybe you just need to be a lot better at your job. And maybe they'll be more favorable to you if you were absolutely undeniably excellent at what you did every day.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

Yeah, I mean, to a degree, Just, I'm gonna disagree with you a little bit there because I feel like sometimes you get the guys who work hard and still don't get the recognition, right? Like there's this thing called corporate optics that some guys know how to play really well. What does that mean? It's the guy that shows up in a suit every day, knows the right people, has the right relationships, barely does any work.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

Like ones of the same fraternity as the boss. Yeah, bro. Like great smile, good with everybody. A people person.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Yeah, a people person, cool with the CEO, family members of so and so. And this guy's in because of the relationships that he has or his family has, and this guy knows how to play the corporate optics game very, very well. And it may be the case that he might not be the strongest worker or the hardest working person in the building, right? So there's an interesting nuance there at Field. Like you also have to know how to play the game. I want our guys to take away the fact that you did have a rough upbringing, you may talk with a little bit of a slang or slur, or maybe you have an accent, right? Maybe you came from a different country and you have a Spanish accent and it's a thick accent and you feel self conscious because you feel like you're not polished enough when you're doing presentations, right? Like that. I feel like that's who we're speaking to. Like, you need to understand that you do belong and you don't need to change. Who you are to be liked in the corporate setting.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

Yeah, listen, Rich, if you're someone who's struggling with corporate code switching and you feel out of place at work, one simple reminder that I'd give you is code switching is not your enemy. The shame that you feel about your culture and where you come from and it not allowing you to fit in is the enemy. So you kind of have to adjust the way you think about these things that are limiting you because you can't really change anybody's mind or what you assume they think about you. All you can really do is show up consistently and put your best effort forward. And if things work out for you at that job, great. You get a promotion, you move forward. And if things are not working out for you, what do you have to do? You have to find a new opportunity where the wind is at your back. You're not experiencing headwinds. Headwinds are pushing you back. They're not allowing you to move forward. Don't put yourself in a situation where you're experiencing headwinds. You want tailwinds, you want the wind behind your back, you want people who support you, people who understand you. So understand that code switching is not the enemy. That's just a friction and a very uncomfortable feeling that you're feeling. And one other stat that I read, Rich, that I thought was really important was 70% of adults in the workplace experience imposter syndrome at some point. And this imposter syndrome is what leads to drain that makes you feel like you're drained before you even do the work because you feel like you don't belong for whatever reason. You might feel like you don't belong because you're not educated enough. You might feel like you don't belong because you don't get along with your boss enough and other coworkers do. You might feel like you don't belong because culturally you're not aligned. You're not of these people's flock. You don't look at the world the way these people look at the world. But if 70% of adults hit a moment of imposter syndrome at all jobs, then that means you're probably feeling the way most coworkers feel. They call that white-collar stress. It's the equivalent of wearing a weighted vest to walk around and work out all day. A weighted vest is gonna make everything feel like it's a lot more difficult to do, in my opinion. I feel like you have the option to take that vest off and give yourself the freedom to believe in yourself. If you believe in yourself, everything else that happens after that is up to somebody else. It's not up to you.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Yeah, and I think there's a distinction between who you currently are and who you used to be, right? Who you used to be did all the work to get to this point, right? Where you do land the corporate job, you're a high-earning individual, and you're in different scenarios where you have to do like complex projects and presentations and things like that, right? Like you're in the big leagues, you basically made it, right? But now you need to perform, you're on the highest stages, you need to perform. And what's weird, just is that I feel like the wound for some of these guys is that inside they still feel like that little kid, that little kid who's on the journey, that little kid who grew up in the hood and didn't have a lot. And I think that's the conflicting feeling that this young guy is battling. Yeah, Rich, do you believe in yourself? Do you believe you belong there? I think that's huge. Yeah, yeah. It's like I've struggled in my life to get here, and now I'm here, and I don't actually believe that I'm here. Think about that. That's like what this young guy is battling. Like, you've struggled so much to get to this point where you landed the corporate job with the high earning salary, but you're battling the friction of feeling like you don't belong, feeling like you're not good enough, feeling like you're not polished enough, feeling like you're not corporate enough, feeling like you don't speak the same language that these folks do. And I'm here to tell you, bro, like you certainly can. You belong, you've done all the work to get up to this point. And I feel like you shouldn't let any one individual building, title, or job dictate how you feel and the self-confidence that you have about yourself on how to do your job.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Rich, I had a really close friend at my old job. And the whole time I was working with him at this job, our boss hated this motherfucker. Like treated him like shit. Everything that he did was not good enough. Even when he overachieved, he got raving reviews from other artists that we work with. For whatever reason, our boss did not like my close friend. Reminded him every time, every meeting we had. And I remember having a serious conversation with him because he was miserable. And I told him this from my heart. Bro, you need to go where you're wanted. Don't go places where you're not wanted. Don't beg for an invite to a party when no one invited you or people gave you half-assed invitations. If you gotta beg to be wanted, you don't want to be in that place. And needless to say, things happened at the job, he went his separate way. Now, this guy is at a whole other company in a whole other situation, and he's been promoted two times in the last 12 months since he left the company I used to work at. Now, if it were up to the world to give him his value, he would believe that he is trash at his job. He would believe he's not good enough, he would believe the culture of that company was the reason why. It doesn't matter what is the truth. What matters is you want to go where you're wanted, you want to swim where the water is moving in that direction. So you're not fighting for every inch that you get in your life. My quote for that is if you measure a fish by its ability to climb a tree, that fish will die believing it's not good enough. And that's what I think about when I think about my boy who was experiencing hell for two years at his old job. And the minute he switched up his job and got a new boss, all of a sudden he was the greatest employee in the world. That had nothing to do with him. He showed up every day, he did the work, he wore the corporate mask. Sometimes the situation you're in is just not a good situation, and you got to put yourself in a better one. No one is holding you at fucking gunpoint to stay in that job. No one is forcing you to stay in that job. It's like a bad relationship. Sometimes you got to admit it to yourself, bro. This relationship is not working. I got to suffer the friction of taking two steps back so I can take one Lambo leap forward. But sometimes you got to take that step back. And with that step back comes clarity, man. You're a fish trying to climb trees. You don't recognize your value until somebody throws you in the water. Sometimes that water requires you to find it. The world is not just going to give it to you. So again, I know we should be sympathizing and empathizing with our guy and telling him, yeah, the world is racist, man. Corporate America is holding you back. I subscribe to that, but not as much as I believe these guys want to believe it.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

No, no, no. I I agree. I don't necessarily subscribe to that. What I do subscribe to is just understanding that where you came from is not a flaw. Like you very much could wake up in the morning, go to your corporate job, do the best you possibly can, right? Do the corporate optics if you if you feel the need that you have to, take the mask off at the end of the day, and eat your arrocompollo or lechón asado at home, right? Like man, that sounds good. It sounds good, right? I I feel like two things can be true at the same time, right? The poison that I feel like young guys run into, the the issue that they run into is that when they feel like they're code switching and they have to permanently stay there. Like, no, bro, this is the new me, this is the evolved version of me. I have to be white and corporate because that's how everyone is in my job. I have to be serious, I can't laugh, I can't make jokes. And bro, that's what we're telling you to be cautious of. It's like you don't need to change who you are as a person to be accepted in corporate America.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

Listen, if you are suffering in your job and you don't make top dollar $200,000, $300,000 a year, you are voluntarily signing up to be miserable. And on this platform, we don't co-sign people that have lives that they can openly change and sign up to be miserable on their own. It is the equivalent of wearing a weighted vest voluntarily and complaining about how heavy the world feels on your shoulders. It is the equivalent of having a rock in your shoe and continuing to walk on the trail and complaining and telling everybody, damn, this freaking rock in my shoe, it's bothering me. If you don't like the situation you're in, and if you don't like the circumstances of your life enough to keep complaining about a job that you hate, I have a piece of advice for you. Take a moment, bend on one knee, unlace your shoes, take your shoe off, take the fucking rock out of your shoe, put your shoe back on, and continue to move forward. Because no one cares on the hike. Fix your situation and keep moving forward, or do us all a favor and shut up. You signed up for this life. You subscribe to this life. If you're in the situation and you're making changes, that's fine. But nobody wants to hear somebody complain all the time about some shit they signed up for. That to me is unacceptable, Rich. It's weirdo activities. I hate it.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

I mean, you you can disagree. I'm just saying. I do disagree because I feel like, I mean, I agree with you to the extent if you're the guy who's in the situation and is complaining about your situation and not acting upon it. But the other guy is the guy who does like his job and does want to be there, but also wants to feel like he fits in, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:02

Like, well, you need a new department, you need a new role, you need you you like the job, fix it. Take the rock out of your shoe, stop complaining. This complaining is just it's like it's the victim mentality all over again. We spoke about this for many episodes. It's just a different version of it. You like the money, right? Okay, well, then deal with it. No one forced you to take the job.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

Yeah, but like, so let me ask you this, Jess. If you grew up in the hood and you're working in a place where you have to be professional now, right? Like, how do you make that adjustment?

SPEAKER_00 32:36

I've been there before. That's how I make the adjustment. I'm from the hood and I've had a job. I just said I worked at a fashion company. It was my second real job, and I absolutely hated that job. And how I made it work was I showed up to work every day. I did what was required of me. I politely ignored most of the conversations with people I didn't want to have a friendship with. I did my job at a high level. And when I had free time before or after work or at lunchtime, I was on LinkedIn and I was texting my other friends on social media about different job opportunities. And obviously, I don't still work there. Actually, I do remember vividly sitting in a sales meeting telling someone why I thought complex media's list of 50 Cent's top 10 albums of all time list was wrong. And I'm in this meeting after it finished, arguing with with a maintenance man who was also a 50 Cent fan. And I'm telling him, nah, get Richard Die Trying is not better than that. My sales manager, who was a close friend of mine, actual friend of mine, turned to me and said, Justin, I think you're in the wrong business, bro. All you do is talk about music. I don't know, take a wild guess what I do for a living now. Just look around. I'm not saying that path is for everybody. I'm saying if you're not happy in your situation, but you like the money, then obviously you're competent enough to get a job that pays you well. The thing about jobs is that they're replicatable across all industries. Rich, what you do for a living, you can do for 20 different companies. What I do for a living, I do marketing. I can do that for 20 different companies. You choose the company you want to work for. Now, if you don't want to do interviews anymore and you just want to chill, then that's cool. So my advice to that guy is if you're gonna complain, cool. Happily complain in your cube and stay over there. If you want to get out of that situation, change your situation. It's no different than being in a fucked up situation, a fucked up relationship, having 15 roommates. You can complain all you want, but unless you change your own destiny, I don't understand why we have to keep listening to it.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

Yeah. I mean, I just think to myself, like all the cultural differences between how I grew up and how like most people I work with grew up. And one funny story that I shared with you off air is like we order lunch in the office every Thursday, and bro, they be ordering like these big ass trays of sushi all the time. And by three o'clock, there's still like tons of sushi left. And my hood ass mind, my like Spanish, let's he know mine, I'm like, yeah, I wish I had some tupperware to like take some sushi home and have some for dinner. Is that not a normal thought? Do they throw the food out? I mean, I don't know what they do with the food, but you want to take some of it home because Yeah, in my mind, I'm like, in my culture, we don't waste food.

SPEAKER_00 35:33

You know, we don't here's a better question. If your mom worked in that in that company, what do you think she'd do with that food? Oh, yeah, bro.

SPEAKER_01 35:40

That's food for a whole week. We're bagging that up. Yeah, but I mean, listen, these are I know it's it's funny in nature, but these are like the cultural differences that you may feel when you grew up as a minority in a different situation that you know wasn't ideal, or you feel like you grew up underprivileged or whatever, and then you go into a corporate setting where there's a little bit more abundance and people are more polished, and everyone got a suit on, and you feel like you need to keep up with the Joneses, right? Like that's sort of like the distinction here is like there's some code switching you have to do, there's some adjustments, transitions, right, that need to happen here. And I just want to remind the guy who is making the transition, right? That it's all right, bro. Like you can try to be as polished as you can without losing yourself in the process.

SPEAKER_00 36:33

One thing that you made me think of in our back and forth was a time when I was a lot younger, and I could honestly say I doubted whether or not I belonged in any corporate setting. I remember sitting with one of my favorite artists in the world, and then confidently looking back at me in a sprinter. We're on our way to one of his shows, and he looked back at me, he was like, Yo, tell me more about this idea that you have that's gonna make my album a huge rollout. Everybody's gonna know about it after you do this marketing idea. And I remember sitting in that suburban with him. This is uh a sprinter to go to a show, and for two seconds I froze because I felt in my body that he was talking to someone else in the car. There was no way that this multi-platinum, super successful artist was asking me, little old Justin from the hood, how am I going to tell the world about my album? I hear you have the marketing plan. That right there is the separation between my accomplishments, my resume, my body of work, my proof of work to that very moment. The lagging indicator was what I believed about myself. Did I actually believe I was that guy that I put in my resume? Do I believe I'm that guy that has those accomplishments? Or did I accidentally end up in a sprinter or one of the most successful artists in the world? The answer is no. You don't accidentally end up in a six-figure job. You don't accidentally end up in a corporate room where people are going to you because they depend on your level of expertise to give insights to see how this company is going to make more money. There's something about this imposter syndrome that people have at corporate settings that come from immigrant families, lower income families, minority families. It's almost like we get taught to think a little bit less of ourselves, like we're any different than another person that's wearing a suit and tie and has a nice little comb pushback haircut. There's no difference between them and us. We have the same brains, we have the same powers. Some will say we even have more superpowers than they do. So in that moment, Rich, where I'm sitting in that sprinter and the artist asked me to do my job, I froze because I didn't believe that I was the guy that was qualified. But the joke's on me, I was because I was in that car. My work got me in that moment, in that opportunity, to eventually tell him what I thought the idea was. Spoiler alert, the idea was great. The marketing campaign went well. I wound up working with this guy for another three more years. That story, what needs to be zoomed in, is the gap between my resume and my confidence. Why did I have a gap there, Rich? Where do you think that gap comes from?

SPEAKER_01 39:24

I think that gap comes from just like you not releasing that old identity that you carry throughout your life. You don't believe you belong there for whatever reason. Exactly. You make your past your identity, right? You still feel like you're that little old guy from the hood who went to you know high school in a major city who didn't have a lot of money growing up, who had to work two jobs, who had to struggle to pay his student loans, right? Like you build this entire identity around the guy who's always had to get it out of the mud. But then when you do get it out of the mud and you have the six-figure salary, you don't make that mental adjustment of like, oh, this is who I am now. I'm a six-figure, high-earning individual who lives in Los Angeles, California, right? Like, you have to be able to make that mental switch. And I think that's certainly something I've struggled with because the weird nuance there, just, is by and large, I feel like I've made some switches, but you also carry guilt that you're abandoning where you came from and you're abandoning your old identity, right? And there's a conflict there. You want to grow, you want to improve, you want to feel like your feet are filling in the new shoes that you're carrying around, but you also don't want to feel like you left everyone back home behind and you don't care about everyone, and you don't care where you grew up. And, you know, yeah, there's a lot of like distinctions there, right? And I don't, I'm trying to think of like the right word to conceptualize this crossover, right? But it's this weird place that I feel like most guys who grow up in the hood and transition into something of value for themselves, I feel like they struggle with, right? There's a there's a balancing act there.

SPEAKER_00 41:16

Rich, when it comes to imposter syndrome and not feeling like you belong in a corporate setting with people that may be a little bit more affluent than you, people that are a little bit more traditional, textbook educated, they speak the king's English better than you do. They're not from an inner city like you, they're not from an immigrant family like you. One person that I think about all the time that gives me confidence is Deion Sanders. That's a guy that did it his way. It's like you can cue the Frank Sinatra music. I did it my way. Jay-Z is another person that comes to mind. Someone that brought their culture to a profession and a level of status that they didn't have to really dilute and really tone down who they are. And I admire those guys because I see myself in a similar way. You don't have to compromise your culture. You don't have to compromise who you are, where you're from, how loud you speak, how passionate you speak, how urban or inner city you speak if you do the job at a high level. And those guys are case in point, my prime examples of people that performed at the highest level. And because they performed at the highest level, people had to deal with how they showed up. And unfortunately for the rest of the world, how they showed up is how they've been their whole lives. That's just the way they express themselves culturally. So when I think of Deion Sanders, you're talking about one of the greatest athletes to ever play football and baseball professionally, one of the few athletes ever to play two sports in the same year professionally. So you can't tell me that this guy's not gifted or talented. Jay-Z, one of the most gifted minds to ever work in entertainment and business overall. Multi-platinum artist and a billionaire from investments. This is the level of excellence that I'm talking about, where people are not compromising who they are. They're just showing up the way that they are and they're adjusting to the game as it continues to move forward. Deion Sanders, after he played football, wound up becoming a coach, a college coach. He wound up becoming a coach that people hated. They resented him. They called him a lightning rod in college sports because historically he didn't fit in the cookie cutter, idealized college football, humble, good old boy persona. He didn't wear a little polo shirt with the clipboard. No, this motherfucker showed up in a cowboy hat, Ray Ban glasses, big ass beard, talking his shit, got all his kids on his team, straight nepotism. On full display. He didn't kiss the ring. He just won. And when you win, people figure things out after you win. But if you're not a winner and you're somebody that just kind of plays the hands that's dealt, then you got to rock with what people are giving you. I know this is not super helpful for the young man taking his nine of five job trying to figure out political corporate politics. But I just want to remind him in his soul, in his body, he is king. You are king. You are someone that could run this company if you applied yourself the right way. Don't get tricked by corporate politics. A lot of this shit is about can you do the job at a high level and can you generate revenue? aka, can you help the company make money? If you can do that, everybody else got to figure everything else out, including your accent.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

Yeah, that's exactly right.

SPEAKER_00 44:49

Same way they had to do it for Deion Sanders, a Jay-Z for Serena Williams. These are all living, breathing examples of people who did it their way and the world had to eat it. I'm just saying, don't think of yourself as so small. You are so unique as someone that comes from the hood. You are so unique as somebody that comes from an immigrant family, a lower income family. That is what makes you special. Don't bottle that up and hide it because it might be the reason why you become a multimillionaire. You'll never know. But if you act just as bland, just as regular as everybody else, you're gonna get lost in the sauce. You can't be nobody else. Or you could really be as yourself. And that's something that I've definitely practiced most of my life. And I think a lot of my blessings come from that, but also a lot of people don't enjoy me because of that. But you know what? I'm cool. I'm gonna go where I'm wanted. And I think that's an important message, Rich. I want to share with the young man that's dealing with the nine of five politics. It's okay, man. Be yourself, find yourself in rooms where people want you. And if you're not in rooms where people don't want you to be in, get the fuck out of those rooms. Nobody is obligated to take a job, even if it pays a lot, straight up.

SPEAKER_01 45:57

And what do we always say, Jess? All humans are flawed. Yes, bro. When you embed that quote in your brain, you arrive at relationships and situations where when you're looking at other people, you're like, oh, this guy makes mistakes just like me, right? Like he's not better than me. And I dance better than him. And I dance bachata. Yeah. Justin, I think you you hit the nail right on the head. I'm a strong proponent of building your confidence through competence, right? Like, be competent. Do your job. And I promise you, people won't look at you like this young guy who grew up in the hood. People won't care that you have an accent or that you're a little quirky. They just remember the guy who does his job really well. Remember, you got the job already. You are in the building. You've already been chosen. Now it's time to perform. So all these nuances about, oh, I don't know what he thinks about me or she thinks about me, or I don't know if I should be eating at this lunch table. Like, that's all little kid shit, bro. Like, you got to relieve yourself from the validation of other people in said rooms, right? Because you've already been chosen to be part of that room. So you do very much belong.

SPEAKER_00 47:15

Yeah, for sure. And I think about all these moments I had in my life where I've glitched in a corporate setting and I instantly regretted it because I was like, damn, I've taken five steps back from the 10 steps that I've taken forward because I went into my more primal, urban, inner city, pseudo-aggressive self. And now I don't know what happens next. And I I usually regret when that happens. But if I had the luxury of looking back in time and thinking about every time something like that has happened to me, it's never worked out terrible for me. It's always gotten me closer to people that find me to be interesting at the very least, find me to be charming at the very least. It's almost like you ever meet somebody with like a country accent and they got that draw, and you're like, man, I like this guy a lot, but I like him because he's kind of himself. He expresses himself through his cultural lens. And guys that come from where we come from, Rich, and our listeners that come from their own background. I think you have to embrace that, man. I do remember being in a very important meeting at one of the biggest distribution companies in all of music. And I was presenting for an artist. And I was sitting next to my boss. I was sitting next to my boss at the time. And while I'm presenting for this artist, I'm going off on a rant about how prolific this artist is with his lyrics. I can say it because he's no longer signed to our label. We're talking about Buster Rhymes. And we're going off on the story about Buster Rhymes. And I said in a meeting, Buster wasn't there, we were just presenting on his behalf. And I said, Yeah, you know, the guy is notorious for his flow switching and how he can ride every beat, you know, any beat you give him. And this other guy who wasn't of our culture says, Yeah, he be riding it hard. You never know when he's gonna stop riding it. And I literally said pause and I started speaking again. But I said it in a way that was kind of smooth because that was part of my presentation. And no one really reacted in the room. It was about 50 people in this meeting. I was pausing him because in the inner city, if you come from where we come from, if you say something that is kind of comically funny, but can be misinterpreted as something that is like weird and it sounds a little off, it's kind of like that's what she said. That's the American version of pause. It was an inner city joke, a joke inside of a joke inside of a joke, inside of an inside joke. If you know, you know, if you're from the culture. And it and it slipped out of me because it's just a part of the way I communicate. After the meeting, my boss, we get in an Uber, we're heading back to the wherever our company's at. He's going through a recap of the meeting. He was like, Great job. I thought the meeting went well. We should be good with that distribution company. And he just turned to me and he said, like, Justin, did you say pause during the meeting? And I was like, Yeah, I had to pause that. That was crazy. And he just started laughing, Rich. He's like, Yo, I swear, bro, you are hilarious, bro. You're one of the most original people I've ever been around. And maybe that guy is a different boss or a different supervisor, and he's someone that's a little bit more uptight and doesn't want that in his meetings. Maybe I don't work it out with him. Maybe I don't get another contract and I got to work for another company. But you know what? The moral of the story is what I said earlier. You want to be around people that accept you for you. You don't want to be unrefined. You don't want to be a degenerate. You don't want to be somebody that doesn't understand what you contribute to help the company make more money. You have to know all of those things. You have to be excellent. But that doesn't mean you have to be less of yourself. So, this topic, Rich, I could I could do 20 episodes on this topic, but I stand very firm on the side of yes, you should adapt to any room that you're in in order to get what you want and execute the job that you're given. Anything outside of that, be yourself, man. Don't wear a turtleneck, wear a collar shirt. You don't need to be uncomfortable all day. That shit is for the birds.

SPEAKER_01 51:23

Yeah, I agree. And I think the people that do show up to work and feel uncomfortable, it's sort of like they're in this survival mode that they've created for themselves. Like, bro, this is just work. Great point. Like, what childhood wounds are are you bringing to the workplace? Like, it's just work. Like, show up, do the job, get recognition, collect your paycheck, and go home. It's not that deep. Rich, I have a question.

SPEAKER_00 51:49

What was the last meeting you left feeling like everyone was focused on the wrong thing about you, your culture, what made you different, before they even heard the points that you were trying to make in a meeting?

SPEAKER_01 52:03

It's happened to me often, to be honest. And I think sometimes I've taken my accent a little bit too far in the sense of like, man, I think they could hear my street accent, right? Or when I'm stuttering or not clear in my thoughts, I'm like, damn, they probably think that I don't know how to articulate myself properly, right? Like, I really get into my head if I'm not performing a presentation the way I feel I know I could, right? And to your point earlier, like that has a lot to do with like my past and me just being so happy that I am where I am that I don't want to make any mistakes because I know what the other side of the spectrum looks like. I know what not being a high-earning six-figure person looks like, and I never want to go back there ever again. So I'm very cautious about presentations, about conversations, relationships, work meetings, right? Like I'm I'm tiptoeing the lines of how to act in these different scenarios so I don't make a mistake and then feel like I quote unquote need to go back to the hood.

SPEAKER_00 53:18

That's pretty much every day for me. And I'm 40 years old, I still experience that. So by the way, we're gonna be conflicted forever. That's pretty much the moral of the story, unless we start our own business and you hire a whole bunch of riches.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

Yeah, but listen, if you and I feel that way, imagine the 22-year-old Justin, 22-year-old Rich. How are they feeling entering corporate America or the or just a the general workplace for the very first time? They're learning all of it, like no one teaches you corporate politics in high school or in college.

SPEAKER_00 53:52

I have the funniest story. My first job out of college, I was a sales assistant for a media company, a sales assistant. I joined this media company because I liked the content that the media company would put out there, but I didn't really know what being a sales assistant was. I wasn't a sales assistant for all these executives. These dudes used to wear suits to work every day. They used to go to Coca-Cola, Doritos, anybody that had money that would use it to sell ads on the website. And I used to help them prepare their pitch documents, their decks. You know, I used to make sure they were on time for their meetings. So I got invited to a sales meeting. It was my first sales meeting ever. And I'm gonna say his name because he is a fan of the platform. Rob Miller. Rob Miller, cool white guy, one of my mentors, taught me everything I know about being a professional, was dealing with this young Puerto Rican kid from the hood who had his first job, but I knew everything about what they were doing in terms of culture. He would call me his culture guy. And I never forget, we were pitching to Fila, and he wanted me to present three slides from the Fila deck. And he was telling me, just say what you said to me about the old drug dealers that used to live in your area that would wear filas because it was a cultural play, and he brought me in on it. And this is 24-year-old Justin, first job. Shout out to Aria. Aria was my immediate, like direct report, and she took a shot at me. A lot of the kids weren't like me. A lot of these kids were very affluent. They had jewelry, they had Rolexes, they wore really clean collar shirts to work. I don't know where they got their money from, if this was their first job, but I was broke as fuck. I was in that bitch just trying to get through to my first job. Anyway, it's the big day. I got the sales meeting with Fila. Rob Miller tells me the night before, hey, when you finish up the last draft of that deck that we're gonna present to our client, meet me downstairs at 8 a.m. Wear your best threads. That's exactly what he told me. Wear your best threads. So you already know what I'm on, Rich. I leave the office immediately. On my way out, I hit Saxfield and Macy's on 33rd and Park. I go to Macy's, I start tearing it up. I'm buying Blackscale, I'm buying Avisu jeans, I'm buying Stussy, I'm putting together a crazy outfit. I bought a pair of phone posits. Nike phone posits are like, they look like boots. They're huge. Bro, I look cool, I look fresh. I'm wearing my best threads. I show up the next day, bro. I'm there at 7 a.m. If you're not on time, you're late. I get there early. I get coffee for all the sales guys. I'm waiting. Rob Miller shows up maybe 15 minutes before we leave at 8 a.m. He looks at me, he's like, What the fuck are you wearing? I'm like, what do you mean? You said wear my best threads. He's like, yo, takes money out of his pocket, gives me a few hundred, goes, yo, go to that spot right there, buy a collar shirt, and do me a favor, man. You're in sales. Wear some goddamn buttons when you come to a meeting. Ever since that day, Rich, I don't know if you've noticed this, I've always had polo shirts and nice button-ups in my rotation. Since that day, I bought a gang of button-up shirts that, you know, they speak to me culturally. I like them. I got Rav Simmons button-ups, I got Burr Bear, I got I got Lacoste, I got polo, but I'm always gonna step out and something clean with some buttons if it's a serious meeting. But I'm gonna do it my way. But the lesson there was a fucking gallon of embarrassment, bro. I was so embarrassed because I thought when he said, wear your best threads, he meant where I'm from. For all he knew, I was in a three-piece suit. I thought I was in a suit. But to them and their world, they had a different way of communicating, a very different way of showing respect to the client. He wasn't gonna let me go to the meeting like that. And Rich, that guy, if I could show you my phone, he called me yesterday just to check in on me to see how I was doing. That's one of my greatest mentors. He taught me how to be a professional. And that was a white man. But he was a good dude and he's been with me since the beginning. And I don't resent that man for that moment. I actually thank him for helping me understand how to communicate as a businessman.

SPEAKER_01 58:08

I love that story, just those are the adjustments you're going to have to make. And sometimes you might receive that information a little shameful, but you have to learn to adjust and roll with the punches. And that's exactly what we're trying to share with the young guy here is like, don't shrink whenever you're around certain titles. Don't think that your accent makes you less intelligent, right? Like, don't feel like you need to audition when you're in the different rooms, right? You belong. You've been hired, you've been chosen to do a job, and you belong. Just be yourself, man. We promise you'll be all right.

SPEAKER_00 58:42

And if you want what's on the other side, if you want, not no one else, if you want what's on the other side, you have to be prepared for a little friction, for a little discomfort. No one's saying you have to be a fucking goofball and be a weirdo if you want to get a girlfriend. But if you want what's on the other side, sometimes you got to make accommodations to look like a person that is prepared to get what's on the other side. And the reason why I use a girl as an analogy, because not every man shaves, gets a haircut, wears cologne, puts their best clothes on every day when they go out. But if you have a date night with a beautiful young lady that you want to impress, you're going to have to do some things that you don't do all the time in order to put your best foot forward. There's no difference in someone that feels like this burden from code switching and being somebody different in a corporate environment. If you want the money that comes with the job that you are qualified for, sometimes you got to meet these people halfway. This is not your business. This is not your company. If there is a dress code or a certain baseline way of communicating that you have to meet, if you signed up for the job and you've done four interviews, sometimes it's worth it. You got to do what you got to do to get what you want. No one's saying you have to do it permanently. If you feel very uncomfortable, then don't do it. But the choice is yours. Don't take the bag of money and then complain after the fact. That's the part that gets me upset. Because it's like, oh, you took the check, but now you want to complain about the work environment. It's like, man, you got to take it with the way it comes. Rich is in a very different line of work than I'm in. I'm in the entertainment business. Rich, you can communicate what business you're in. But you and I have a protocol on what is the baseline of showing up to work. And if you showed up in anything different, I'm sure no one will be mad at you, but I bet you it'll affect your pay raise when it's pay raise time.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:40

Yeah, listen. If you can't stand the heat, get the fuck out of the kitchen. Yes, a wise man says, There you have it, man. Failures podcast. Listen, we hope something resonated with you guys with uh this topic corporate politics. This is sort of the second time we've discussed corporate politics. We felt the need to run it back and zoom in a little bit more on this issue because listen, as guys younger than us still going through this, and we hope you guys found something valuable in this episode. Give us a like, check us out on YouTube, TikTok, IG, and hit us up, man. We'd like to hear from y'all. Uh, we out of here. Peace out.