SPEAKER_00 0:02

Don't allow someone else to give you the value that you see in yourself. Because if you yourself think you're worth more, you should move that way and go and find an opportunity that sees you that way. If you allow your job and your title currently to give you your value, then you're only as valuable as the rented clout that you get from your job and your title currently. Failures podcast. Today we are talking about the status that comes with your job title. And that status becoming your whole identity. It's a really nuanced topic, but if you really think about it, it's a problem when you conflate and you think who you are is where you work, how much money you get paid, and how cool your company is. Here's a good test and a question that I could ask you that'll let me know if this is a problem that you have. If your job disappeared tomorrow, and let's say hypothetically you got laid off or you just didn't have your job, would you still feel like someone valuable at the dinner party or when your girlfriend introduces you to her friends? Would you still feel valuable if you lost your job? If that is true, then this episode is for you. That means your title slowly became the crutch for your confidence, and the status of your job just doesn't represent you on LinkedIn or Instagram. It's become your whole identity. You're the guy at the gym with the company t-shirt on, hoping someone asks you, hey man, you work there? You're the dude doing the podcast with his friend from back home with all the plaques in the background. Oh, wait, that's me. This is a problem that I still suffer from. Rich, I know it's a problem that we discussed off air, and we wanted to bring it on air because it is an issue. It doesn't even have to be a job, it could be anything. Do you have a recent work story or any story that had you sitting back and asking yourself, damn, who am I without my job or my title?

SPEAKER_01 2:15

I'm guilty, just guilty as charged, bro. This is something that I live with constantly. And man, I could remember a specific story that happened to me where it fucked me up, bro, for like a couple of weeks. I I was questioning myself, myself-worth, like how I've built my professional life. And man, it really brought me to a place where I had to do some soul searching. But basically, I got to a place in my career where I wanted to make a pivot. I was tired of the tech industry. I still had an affinity for like music. I still wanted to be in music. So I'm like, damn, this might be the right time to pivot, right? So I find this position, chief of staff at SoundCloud. I'm like, great, fantastic. Digital music agency, right? I have a background in digital media. You know, I have some transferable skills that I think will work well here. So I applied for the job. I let you know about it. And you were like, oh shit, like, are you making it far? I'm like, bro, I think I'm like top two in the runnings. So you were like, I actually think I could phone a friend and loop somebody in that might be able to help you out. So you put out the music executive back call and you brought in someone that that vouched for me at the end of the day. And bro, sure enough, top two. I'm like, damn, I'm excited. I might get this job and I could finally pivot into the music industry after all of these years. Bro, turns out I don't get the job. So I'm like, all right, cool. You know, at least I made it top two. And, you know, I'm justifying like not getting the job and trying not to feel so bad. But the one thing that really fucked me up was I requested feedback on what I can improve on or just trying to get a gauge as to like why I didn't get the job. Bro, you know what they told me, just they said, we felt like you were the jack of all trades, master of none. I remember this. Bro, when they told me that, that shit was like stabbing me in the neck. You know what I mean? Like I felt so personally offended and so personally attacked because it wasn't that, hey, you didn't get the job, like move on, right? You know, we found someone that was better qualified. It was we feel like you are the jack of all trades master of none. And it made me question everything that I've been working on up until that point. I thought that knowing a lot of different things in a lot of different industries was a positive for me, right? Like, damn, I could be in any room, I could be in the business room and talk business, I could be in the media room and talk media, I could be in a music room and talk music, right? Like I was a chameleon in that sense, right? Like I could bold myself to a lot of different situations and opportunities. And here I have an employer telling me, like, nah, bro, like you know a little bit of a lot of different things, but that's not what we're looking for. And I felt personally attacked. And it wasn't until I started to reframe my mind and I got over the fact that I've I felt so personally attacked that I thought to myself, like, wait a minute, this is actually a positive. This is like a superpower. The fact that I can be in different rooms and I can provide value in different industries is a positive. This is actually how I am built and who I am as a person and more in line with the value that I provide. But for that split second, just I allowed an employer, not even my current employer, I allowed a prospect employer to dictate my value. And, you know, ultimately, bro, I had to sit in that and marinate in that pain for a little bit before I reframed my mind.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Yeah, I mean, what we're really talking about here is about confidence. If you didn't have the job or the title, would you still introduce yourself to your girlfriend's very rich, very well off, Porsche driving, high title having, beautiful wife having coworker? Would you still feel confident if you introduced yourself as, hey, I'm rich, I just got denied by the fourth best streaming platform, SoundCloud, for a job. And I'm currently still looking for a job. Would you still have that confidence? I know the answer is obvious because I made it that way, but what is it about getting denied that made you feel a way, Rich? Because it was associated to something bigger than the job or getting the job.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Yeah, listen, I think at the time it was something that I really wanted. And like I said, it wasn't like, hey, you didn't get the job, right? Like you're not what we're looking for. That's fine. I could have dealt with that level of rejection. But the fact that they said that I was a jack of all trades master of none, I was like, bro, what about me is broken? Like, what about me as a master of none? I could literally do anything that you asked me. And if I don't know the answer, guess what, bro? I'm scrappy enough to obtain the answer and research the answer and come back to you with solutions to every single one of your problems, right? But at the time, they didn't extract that value out of the interview, out of what I was bringing to the table. And I think one of the biggest mistakes that I made was I was so eager to get into the music industry again. I was so eager to have this career pivot. I was so eager because I got so far. And then I had you, as one of my closest friends, put out the back call and be like, yo, Rich is trying to get into the music industry. And you called one of the top-level execs that we know in the music space to phone a CEO and it was executive to executive trying to make sure that Rich got this job. And I thought I did everything right and perfect to get to this very moment, only to get denied and rejected. That was something I had to deal with. Yeah. And bro, it took a while for me to overcome that pain of like not getting the role.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

But you overcame it and you wound up getting a better job. And your career took a whole different route. And now you're at where you're at. And if this was another episode, I would have gotten into the part where, you know, you got to keep going, keep finding hurdles, but that's not what this episode is about. This episode is taking the step back to the moment of denial. Like I said in the intro, if you got laid off, if you didn't get the job, if you had the entry-level job for too long and everybody else got promoted but you, what we're really talking about in this episode is will you feel like less of a man if you didn't get the job title or you were fired or laid off from the job title? Rich, we can go back and forth story for story here because there's so many moments in my life where I still have not recovered from being either demoted, fired, treated lesser than, because there's something about the male energy, the male value system, the male self-importance that is associated with status. If I have a higher title, if I have a better car, if my bitch is better than yours, I'm better than you. I think it's a very simple equation that we operate under. But the truth is, the opposite is also true. If I lose my girl, if I get my car repoed, if I get laid off, am I still a man? Why do I feel like less of a man?

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Yeah, just that's a great distinction. Like, bro, there's so many different things about life where I feel like we're getting judged as men. And one of the things is like, hey, are you a provider? How much money do you make? What do you do for a living? Where do you live? What car do you drive? Right. So we're as men, we're constantly being evaluated by the external world, right? And naturally that evaluation turns into us making these things a priority. And when you make something a priority, it becomes you. It becomes your identity, right? Like your job becomes the one thing that gives you social status, gives you value, right? Has income coming in. And in the social metric that is like, are you worthy or not? This becomes something pivotal that a lot of guys have to learn how to navigate and maneuver.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Rich, if you're a young man out there listening to this episode, and you can only define yourself based on your job title, based on how much money you make, the car you drive, just know that what you have is borrowed identity. You have borrowed status. Why is it borrowed? Because none of these things are tied to you. None of these things represent you if they were taken away from you. But if you build all of your confidence, if you build all of your identity on top of a foundation that is hollow, the minute it's taken out, you crash. You now have to die with that identity. And what we call that is rented clout. You have rented clout in order to meet people and feel better about yourself. But when the job is taken away or the girl is taken away or the car is taken away, who are you? You are nothing but a man standing there trying to figure out who I was before I had all of these things. That is essentially a problem that needs to be solved because of social media. If I can't promote it, I must not be it. So let me find something to promote myself so I can feel more valuable. And if it doesn't make you feel more valuable, at the very least, it's gonna trick other people into thinking I'm more valuable. But this is all a house of cards. And the thing about a house of cards is once that wind blows and the truth comes through, it all falls. And when it all falls, what are you gonna do with that rented clout, that job title, that corporate card? All the trips you took were paid for by the company. Who are you now, big dog? This is a question that I have to ask myself every time I renegotiate a contract in my business because I tie so much of my personal value in what I do for a living because I'm so invested in what I do for a living. But if they took it away from me, who am I? It reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite movies of all time when Mitch is in the car talking to Ace in the movie Paid in Full, and he's telling him, Man, I would love to leave the drug game. Trust me, I want to get out of it. But every time I go out, when I go to the club, the lights, the way they shine on me, the way my jewelry glistens, the women, they love me. The people, they love me. But if I left the game, will the game still love me? That is a very sad realization for a guy like myself who puts so much time and energy into my craft. I've invested over 25 years into my profession. I've put 25 years of work into what I do for a living. And if I ever lost that, I would be destroyed because I allowed that rented clout from my status that came from my job define me. So I'm not someone that really has the answers. I can't really speak to the young man that is listening to this episode with full confidence and say, hey man, don't let your job define you. Don't let money define you. Because I struggle with that every day. I feel like a hypocrite getting into this episode because it's something that I'm not seeing very clearly on. And I can't tell the young man watching this episode or listening with confidence, hey man, don't worry about it. Be your own man. Don't let money or your job define you.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

You know, just I don't know if this is a topic you necessarily have to fix more than you have to be aware that it's happening, right? Because I feel like we do it in every facet of life. Bro, I am guilty of this. You are guilty of this. Like, how many times did you go to a college or university and the first thing you did was like buy that college's hoodie because you wanted to wear it. You wanted to wear it proud and show that, hey, I'm a college university attendee, and this is what I represent. These are the colors I represent. This is the mascot I represent. This is the school that I represent, right? Same thing with a car, same thing with a job, same thing with a female. As men, we always tend to do things that we believe will increase our social value, right? And we're all guilty of it. I don't know if there's any one particular solution, but I think where it starts is just acknowledging how much of yourself is being invested into something, right? One of the things that I would uh encourage a man to really do is like, bro, zoom in on you know, human value versus your market value. Those are two different things. Like how you show up as a human, your personality, how charismatic you are, how funny you are, how outgoing you are, how you carry yourself. That's your human value. Your market value is your skills, what you provide to an employer, right? Your negotiating skills, your speaking skills. So I would start there, bro. It's like you have to learn the difference between your human value and your market value because they're two different things.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Yeah, Rich. I mean, if we're being honest and we're in the 60s of our episodes, if someone was listening to Failures Podcast for the last 50 episodes, they would tell us we're hypocrites because all we really do is try and help the young men on this platform recognize their status, recognize their value, become people who aspire for more, become people who get the job title, become people who make more money. So, what is your response to that? To the young man that's like, yeah, you guys are kind of hypocritical if you're telling me to be one thing, but then you're also telling me not to define myself by that one thing.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

No, no, no. Listen, you you have to go for it, bro. You have to go for it. You have to get the money, you have to get the career, you have to open up the business, you have to launch that startup. Like failures podcasts, Rich and Justin will never stop anyone from going after it. This is what we've designed this platform for, is to inspire and motivate, right? But at the end of the day, you also have to have the realization, to your point, just that if these things are taken away from you, that you don't crumble, that the foundation, the core essence of who you are as a human, right? As a man, doesn't crumble to the point where you can't get up and recover to then attempt again. Yeah. To then fail again. Yeah. Right? Because that's the poison, that's the wound. That's what happens when you wrap your identity around something that you really have no control over, bro. If your employer decides to lay off 60, 70% of the workforce and you're part of that layoff, you had no control over that situation. And if your identity and who you are as an individual is tied to that role and that employer, bro, you're gonna be sick. You're gonna be miserable, you're gonna get depressed. You're gonna be like, damn, all the fucking work I put in, only for them to make me part of the 60, 70% of layoffs. Facts. Think about it, bro. Yeah. I think that's the distinction that we're trying to make here is like, bro, get after it. We'll never tell our listeners and our community members to not get after it. We highly encourage you to get after it. But in an unforeseen circumstance that things don't go your way, we don't want you to have your identity so wrapped into this thing you're working on to the point where your foundation gets rocked.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Yeah, Rich. And that leads me right into the point I wanted to make, which is there's a funny thing about self-worth and self-confidence that you have to understand is that self-worth and self-confidence shouldn't come from a job, shouldn't come from a woman, shouldn't come from the clothes you wear or the car you drive. That is within you. That is something that you earn from working hard and getting the thing. You don't get self-confidence or self-worth from having the thing. Because you know enough and you have enough confidence in yourself to know, fuck it, I'll get another one. Job, fuck it, I'll get another one. Girl, fuck it, I'll get another one. Because you know that you worked hard enough to get it. Let's not confuse one for the other. The young man who is telling us, hey, how are you gonna speak out of both sides of your mouth and tell us work hard, get a good job, get a high paying salary, start your own business, but you're also gonna demonize us for using this status to validate ourselves. No, no, no. You got it backwards, my boy. You get things from knowing you can get things. You don't hold things with fear that you're gonna lose them. That's what we're trying to distinguish here.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Hey, Jess, that dude that walks around with that confidence, that's a dangerous motherfucker, bro. You know, when you walk around with that confidence that I could get another job, I could get another girl, you know, I could save up more money after losing uh a bag, right? That confidence that you have within you to know that you can get up and rebound, bro. There's nothing anybody could tell you. And and it sucks, bro. It sucks for a lot of men because they don't innately have this confidence, bro. This is something that you have to build up.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Yeah, exactly, exactly. It comes from solving the problem and trying and failing and trying and failing. But once you've solved enough times, you gain the confidence. It just doesn't magically appear.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Yeah, and I think to your point, part of the way that you work on that confidence is to really understand the values that make you an individual and the values that you hold true to you, right? The problem that happens is when your value is defined by your employer, defined by your girl, defined by a third party, defined by your parents, I think that is the confidence killer, bro. Yes. That is the confidence killer.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Yes. Rich, you saying that the confidence that comes with the job reminded me of my guy, Corey from North Carolina, who was the doorman at the last company I used to work for. Don't beat Corey. Corey thought he worked for the company that we all worked at, the record label we all worked at. But we used to give Corey a merch. We used to give him hats, sweaters, we used to invite Corey to the shows. He would obviously meet the artists because they would have to walk through the building. This man worked for a third-party company that did the security and the doormans for the major company that I worked for. Corey thought he was signed to our record label. If you went to Corey the doorman's Instagram, it was photos of him at all of our events. It was photos of him gapping up our artists, it was photos of him posing with some of the executives. When that company swapped out their security and their doorman, they downsized. Corey didn't work for the company anymore. It was kind of sad because I knew deep down inside that this dude found a lot of his value outside of the nine to five of being the doorman for our building. He found it in what he did and what he was associated with. And I think Corey is the perfect story that I could share for someone who had borrowed the clout. Someone that was using the access that he had to a company as a way to show his status and who he was to maybe his friends from back home. Corey was from the Bronx. He lived in the Bronx. He was from North Carolina. So if you really think about it, he used his social media as a way to signal to people back home in the Bronx and back home in North Carolina. I felt so bad for Corey when he got let go. But you want to know something, Rich? This motherfucker came to all the happy hours. This motherfucker would show up when our artist would have a show and he would expect to get in. And after a while it got sad because I kept thinking to myself, damn, this dude cannot admit to himself that he's no longer in the building and he is dying a slow death. And I would feel so bad that I would always pull him into the events because I knew that it was important to him. Way more important than it was to me. Because if he stopped going to the events and he stopped going to the happy hour, who was he going to hang out with? Who was he going to take photos with? Who was he going to show to the rest of the world that he was associated with? When we got into this subject of this episode, Corey came into mind, and I hope he's doing well right now. But he is the perfect person to discuss because it's bigger than a salary. It's bigger than money. It's bigger than a title. It's being associated to something that allows you to have borrowed status, borrowed clout, but it's not yours. You're renting it. At some point, you got to give it back.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Yeah, that's true. But if you zoom in on Corey, just like, bro, we all want to feel useful. We want to feel of value. We want to feel like we're contributing to something.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

We want to be close to something that's bigger than us so we could feel bigger than them.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Yes, bro. A man needs a purpose, right? The quickest way to handicap a man is just to leave him isolated in a room, not fixing a problem, just sitting there stuck and letting time passing him by. That's how depression creeps in. That's how loneliness creeps in, right? Social isolation, right? That is how you handicap a man. We are fixers, we are providers, we are hunters, right? Give me a mission, give me a purpose, and I will go out and accomplish that. And unfortunately, I feel like that is part of our DNA. That's part of who we are. But when we bring that energy into the workforce, sometimes that's not always met with the easiest grace, right? Because we feel like the more of myself I give, the more I receive. But that is not always the case. Just because you're the hardest worker doesn't guarantee that you will get the promotion. Just because you are the highest earning worker doesn't mean that you're going to get the next highest title that's due for you. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like unfortunately, like the word game is not fair sometimes. And that's part of what we're here to unpack, too. It's like how you separate your value versus the value that your employer tries to give you.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Rich, here's a test to know if you're allowing your job and your job title and all the clout that comes with where you work and what you do for a living. Here's a test that you can run on yourself. Look at your social media. Is it only pictures of you working? Is it only pictures of you doing the thing that you claim is not your whole identity? When you go out, do you overuse your corporate card? Do you feel very important when you drive into your company's building and you have a reserved parking spot? Do you feel better then when you can scan into a certain section of the building or a property? Do you feel really good about yourself when your boss invites you out for a big dog dinner or you go on a company retreat and you have to tell people, hey man, I'm going on a company retreat, I'll be back in four days. Do you feel good when you're at a dinner party and you describe to your girlfriend's friends how important you are? If I went through that entire list and you kept nodding your head like, hell yeah, I feel good about all that. Just know that that sword cuts both ways. Because the minute you lose your job, you lose all of that. Now the real question is, who are you when you're standing there butt naked with no key card to get into the building? Who are you? Are you less of a man? Are you less important? Do you not have any pride in yourself? What's your character? Is your word your bond? Are you a good person? Are you genuinely interesting? Do you have friends that like you for you? This is what this entire episode is built on. Don't let any of that go over your head. Really think about what I just said. And if everything I said in the former, in the first part, was relevant to you and the second part wasn't, then you need to take a nice 20-minute break from your job and listening to this podcast and really think about who am I without this fucking job? Who am I without all this money, without all this status? That is what we have to attack because if we don't attack that, you are guaranteed a rough, rough fall from grace. How do I know I've been there before, Rich? And I know you've been there too. Just not only have I been there, I am there, bro.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

I have a V-P. Not only are you talking about him, I am him. Listen, for sure. When you rattled off the social media, I was like, damn, he's definitely talking about me. Because all the pictures are all the offsites that my job sends me on. So to the external world, it looks like, damn, Rich is traveling all over the place, bro. None of that shit is paid for by me. I'm just running the coattail of my job. Company bonding. Yeah. Company bonding. Yep. Yeah. And bro, I have a VP title. I have a corporate Amex, right? Like I work in in Midtown, New York, Manhattan, at one of the most prestigious financial firms in Midtown. And for a while, bro, like all these things made me feel like, oh shit, I'm doing it. I am the guy, right? Like I'm moving different now. Like nobody from back home is moving the way I'm moving, right? You let that ego get into your head. Uh, to your point, and I've had this like self-reflection before, like, damn, if I lost my job today, would I still be the same person? If I left the game, would they still love me? Yeah. And more importantly, I asked myself, if I lost my job, can I do this again? Can I get another high-paying job with a VP title, with the corporate card, and be able to travel all over the place again? That's how you know when you're really doing it, is when you can duplicate your work and circle the block, how we say, right? Yeah. So Yeah, for sure. Yeah, bro. I'm guilty as charged, bro. And I think that's what we're here to highlight to these other guys. It's just like, bro, understand how all the things that your job has allowed for you. You've also allowed those things to dictate who you are. And understand that those things, like a rug pull, bro, those things can be pulled underneath you at any time. And are you prepared? That is probably the most important thing that I would tell a young man like, are you prepared? Yeah. If you lost your job, do you have the confidence to go back into the open market and land another job? Would you be okay? And most times, if you're not prepared, if you don't have that confidence, right, then you crumble. Then you stay unemployed for six months, collecting unemployment, just sobbing in your room, like fuck, man, I lost my job. What am I gonna do? How am I gonna tell my roommates? How am I gonna tell my parents? I'm a fucking loser. I can't take my girl out to eat anymore, right? Like, like your whole shit, everything you've worked on for the last six months is just crumbled underneath you, and you have no backup plan because you've made the job your identity.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

Yeah, Rich, speaking of making the job your identity, there was a story that I shared very briefly on an old episode, but I feel like this is the perfect episode to get into it and explain how I allowed my career, not just my job, my entire career path of going from a dusty kid from New Jersey all the way to a music executive and how I define myself based on that journey. Now, I am not someone that can speak with confidence in this episode about not defining yourself through your work because honestly, I still very much to this moment define myself based on what I do. I have an apartment with a room dedicated to all my trophies. You can't even see the other side of this camera. It's all plaques. Why do I need a room to remind me that I still have trophies? But all these trophies are collecting dust. Just like all the successes of my past, collecting dust, my Instagram, my LinkedIn, if you go on those pages right now, they're just posts of how great I am, all the awards I've won, all the number one albums I've worked, all the times Variety Magazine and Billboard magazine put me on their covers. I feel proud saying it right now, but why is that? Why is that? Why can't I just post a picture of myself with my burnt out feet in a pair of sandals, chilling at the crib with no haircut? Why does everyone have to play the game of status and clout and being perfect and resting on your laurels and sitting in a room full of dusty trophies? I don't know why, but I personally still live in that purgatory, in that cage that I made for myself metaphorically and figuratively. I don't have the answers, Rich, but I do know during COVID, that was the beginning of the end of Justin, the music executive. Because I had to peel myself back layer by layer. You want to know why? Because I had nothing to do. I had no events to go to, I had no artist to move from city to city, I had no work trips in Miami or Vegas or in South Africa where I had to go see artists. None of that existed anymore. I was just sitting at home dealing with the man in the mirror, thinking, damn, what am I without my job? What am I without my title? What am I without my salary? What am I without my corporate card? What am I without people that need me and I can flex on them? So the fact that they need me validates me. This is real life shit, Rich. The pandemic and that three-year gap where we had nothing to do during COVID, there wasn't a lot of motion. And I had to sit with my thoughts, my darkest thoughts. I had to reconnect with my family who I neglected for 10 years and ask them, so what is it that y'all do on weekdays after work? Like, oh, you still play softball? Wow, I didn't realize that. I stopped following my whole family on social media to follow a whole bunch of people I work with that, to be honest, I really didn't care about in that moment, that I didn't have any work to do with them. This is reporting live from the darkness that was my life during the pandemic and COVID when work stopped for me. That was phase one of me getting familiar with who is Justin when he's not talking about work. Who is Justin when he's not working on work? Who is Justin when he's not thinking about work and the next bag? This is a problem I still suffer with, but I've gotten a lot better at it in the last five years. I'm getting familiar with who I am when I'm not immersed in my work. And it takes a lot of work to do that. But I will start by asking yourself, who am I? What's important to me? What do people see me as? And what would I like to see myself as? Attack what would I like to see myself as and remove work from that equation. And you'll find yourself working on something that's really important to you, truly and genuinely important to you, not how you see yourself.

SPEAKER_01 34:22

Yeah, bro. That that's such a great point, Jess. And if you really think about it, it's almost like the disconnection of like your work self and who you truly are as an individual. And the best way that I can sort of articulate that is like if you have children, right? Think about when you go back home, who you are to those children, right? You're not the VP of said company. You're not this high net worth earning individual. You're dad. That's all they know you as. You know what I mean? You don't have this social status, you don't have this prestigious job that you work for, you're just dad. And those are the people that matter, right? But I think when we're trapped in the rat race of like working at the nine to five and the prestigious company and in the hamster wheel, and we're like playing corporate politics and we're evaluating, you know, our social scorecard and our and our external scorecard and seeing what people are doing on social media and how that ties back into what you're doing and the comparison trap. Bro, there's so much a whirlwind of information that we allow ourselves to get consumed over because we're trying to find our place in society. We're trying to find our place as men in the animal kingdom, right? So there's a lot of like mental gymnastics that we're working on to try to figure out what is important to us. Is it the job? Is it the family? Is it me, myself as a person? Is it my value? Is it how much income I generate? Like, there's a lot of processing that we have to do. And and I would share with young men or men in general, bro, just like be okay to live in that. Because I don't think every man has soul for that. I think we're all trying to find that balance between human value and professional value.

SPEAKER_00 36:22

Rich, I got it. If you are a man that struggles with distinguishing the difference between who fucks with you because of you or who fucks with you because of what you can do for them, you have to ask yourself these questions. And the best way to find out is to stop providing and giving up your status and showing people money, showing people good nights out, showing people fun based on what you can provide from them. And if you took that all away, would they still fuck with you? This reminds me of a phrase I've heard. Don't remember who said it, but if you line the walls with honey, do not be shocked if you have a room full of bees. What does that mean? If you give people treats and special privileges and a lot of extra shit for hanging out with you, you can't tell whether they're hanging out with you because of the car you push, the dinners you pay for, or all the motion that you allow them to get off of you. If you're the guy with motion, you're the guy with clout, you're the guy with status, you're the guy with the job, the title, the money. You don't know who's around you for you and who's around you for what you can do for them. But if you keep lining them walls with honey, you're gonna get a room full of bees and you can't complain about it. You are not allowed to complain about it if you keep giving people shit to hang out with you, and then you get mad because they hang out with you because you give them shit. You are to blame, you are to be held responsible. It reminds me of a scene I'll never forget from the TV show Sopranos, Rich, where Tony Soprano, who is the boss of the crime family, the guy, he's sitting in a dinner after he had like a near-death situation, and he's at dinner with all of his soldiers, and he's trying to think to himself, damn, who would try to kill me? And he said a joke during the dinner that maybe was a two of ten joke. You know, when you say a joke that's not that funny, but everybody laughs a little too hard, and you see motherfuckers laughing too hard at a joke, you start thinking to yourself, why is this person laughing so hard? And then it hits you, oh, they're laughing because they want to make it seem like I think I'm funnier than I am. And it becomes an insult at that point. And in the scene of the Sopranos, it happens in slow motion. Tony says a mid-joke, and everybody starts laughing in slow motion, and he's looking at everybody individually, thinking to himself, what the fuck did I surround myself with? You fake motherfuckers. All these people want to be fans. Yeah, these are fake people, and it hits them in that moment. It could have been any of these people that I provide for that could have killed me. Now it's a metaphor for the way you treat people in your life. If you only treat people well based on your status, and all they want from you is money based on your status, they want to take pictures with you so they can post it based on your status, then you have lined all of your walls with honey and now you live in a room full of bees, and you are to blame for that. Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

We sort of have to unpack just like why is it that we are so tied to our job, right? Like, why do we allow our employer, our boss, dictate our value? I could share a quick story, bro, that made me really self-reflect on like, damn, I should never allow an employer or anyone for that matter, dictate my value as an individual. So I worked at this commercial lending bank for seven years, right? On the seventh year, I felt like I was significantly underpaid and I brought them a range that I wanted to get paid. I'm like, hey, next review period, I feel like I didn't done enough research where I feel like I should be getting paid somewhere along this range. Well, review period comes, they significantly come under. They were like, hey man, this is the best we could do. I'm like, all right, cool. Go to the open market, 30 days, find another job. Just the job that I found doubled my salary. Wow. Literally nothing changed about my skill set, my resume, or my knowledge. The only thing that changed was that I was leaving one place and going to another. The new place immediately valued me as twice as much value as my current employer, where I've invested seven years. Think about that. You spend seven years of blood, sweat, and tears in a place. And then when you ask for something, you don't get it. But this new place, who they've never heard of you, other than a couple interviews and a resume with some past experience, takes the chance and pays you double your salary. That is how you know whether you're being valued or not, right? And in that moment, yeah, I had to really sit back and be like, damn, you need to find people, places, employers that are more aligned to the value that you give yourself. And I think that's part of the pain point. Hell yeah. Go where you're wanted, not where you're tolerated, for sure. Yeah, bro. And that's part of the disconnect. I feel like we view what we give ourselves intrinsic value. And when the world doesn't view us with the same value that we've given ourselves, we get angry about it. When your employer doesn't give you the promotion or the title that you want, you get angry about it. But I feel like the stronger thing to do is be like, hey, I know my value and I have enough self-confidence to go to the open market and obtain my value. You don't get to dictate my value, right? That's probably the best piece of advice I could give because I feel like when you harness that just, that is the superpower, bro. That little nugget, bro, will carry you on through every single role, every job, every company that you ever work for. If you carry yourself with that self-confidence that, hey, I know my intrinsic value, I know my market value, and I can go to the open market and obtain this value, or at the very least, find a company that's more in line with the value that I have already given myself, that is a superpower within itself. And you need to understand that you need to have that throughout your entire life.

SPEAKER_00 43:05

Rich, I love that story because if you really dissect what you're saying to the young man that may not be in his second job, maybe his first job, is you're saying don't allow someone else to give you the value that you see in yourself. Because if you yourself think you're worth more, you should move that way and go and find an opportunity that sees you that way. Now that is what the whole episode is built on. Because if you allow your job and your title currently to give you your value, then you're only as valuable as the rented clout that you get from your job and your title currently. But if you have self worth and you actually know you are worth more and you put in the work to earn more, you can do basically what you did, Rich. Same rich. A week later, somehow you doubled your salary. Why is that? Somebody saw the value, bro. No, you saw the value in yourself. That's what I'm saying. Rich was like, nah, I'm not settling. These motherfuckers can't define me. These motherfuckers can't tell me what I am and am not worth. That is what we're talking about in this episode. It's not about seeing yourself as less or being humble. Failures podcast is not about young kings acting humble when they put in the work. It's about allowing other people to define you. I could bag a bitch on foot and I could bag a bitch in a Tesla. I could bag a bitch in a Porsche. It don't matter to me. I can still pop out and do my big one because I have confidence in myself as long as I have a haircut. Because if I don't have a haircut, I lose all my confidence.

SPEAKER_01 44:49

Just let me tell you though, getting that confidence is not easy, bro. That's something that I had to build up over time because for a long time, and I I think I believe you can relate, I saw myself as that like young inner city kid who wasn't supposed to make it out, who didn't come from the best, always. That's permanent resources and best circumstances, right? So when you carry some of that childhood trauma into like corporate America, into the workplace, I think naturally there's a battle between I come from poverty and I come from a place where I didn't have much. And wait a minute, but I also have enough skill sets to obtain a lot, right? And those two are in constant conflict, right? And I think you need to find ways to suppress that like mentality of young, poor inner city kid, and let the new value that you've obtained for yourself through skills and through a degree and certifications to take the forefront because that is the true value of the of who you are in current present day, right? But man, these things are in constant conflict and building up that confidence, bro, it's it's taking a lot of work for me, a lot of mental gymnastics. I still deal with it today, just some days I go to work and I have the highest confidence and I could walk into a boardroom and I nail the presentation and everyone's like, great job, Rich. And some days I walk in there and I'm a little nervous and I'm self-conscious and I worry about every other word that I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00 46:23

Yes, not only that, a nine to five is tricky. A nine to five is tricky because it is a hierarchy that is dependent on maybe how two or three people in the company feel about you. And that's how you know if you're gonna keep your job or get a promotion or get your next deal or if you're gonna get a good referral if you decide to leave. A lot of it is dependent on maybe two, three people, tops. Shit, you could be taking a piss in the bathroom and your boss walks in. And if he don't say good morning to you, you feel like you're the worst person in the world because your entire livelihood, your rent, how do you feed your kids, how do you take care of your house, the gas and electricity bill you pay for is dependent on your boss saying hello to you in the morning. And if he don't say hello to you, you start thinking to yourself, damn, I knew this guy hates me. He didn't even wash his hands, he just left the bathroom, he didn't even say bye to me. I'm probably gonna get fired now. It's crazy that when your entire life is built around how you feel about your current job, your current employer, and your current salary, it can fuck with you mentally. So none of us are speaking down on high in this episode. Rich and I have had careers, careers, I'm talking about 15 plus years, where your livelihood is dependent on how two or three people feel about you. So you're entitled to feel this way. You're entitled to feel tied to your job. But what we're saying is you gotta wean off of it. You gotta have that inner confidence and the ability to know if this doesn't work out, something else will pop up. I've been here before, I've solved this problem before, I believe in myself. I know that sounds corny, but that's where self-confidence is rooted. It's rooted in that.

SPEAKER_01 47:59

No, you're right, Jess. And to make matters even worse, the two or three motherfuckers that are evaluating you and giving you value, they don't even control the money. They don't even control the money. Yep. Usually they're not the CFO or they're not in accounts, but like they don't control the money. So it's crazy how we get into the workplace and we have to allow another individual give us a monetary value and make us feel like, hey, this is what I believe you're worth. Not what the market decides you're worth. This is what I believe. That shit fucking triggers me so much. Go no, please, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 48:38

Yes, yes, no, listen, there was a dude that, bro, that you just made me remember there was a dude at my old job. I'm gonna say his name was Ned N-E-D. Ned was going through a divorce. Ned was down bad. He was at the company for a long time, and the internet and AI and modern-day learning and tools was whipping his ass. He had no idea how to do his job on a technology level, but he was really good at it on a traditional level. And he would talk to me every day about how paranoid he was, about how things are changing and how he thinks he's gonna get laid off and technology and how they need to ban AI from the job. Anyway, I was out to dinner with Ned, a few of my coworkers, and our CEO. No lie. Our CEO was teasing Ned the whole dinner, poking fun at him, saying how he one time saw Ned dancing at a company party and can't stop thinking about how funny he looked when he was dancing. We had a lot of drinks that night. Liquor was flowing. When we got to the desserts, our boss looks at Ned and says, Hey Ned, why do you do that little dance for me? That dance you did the day you looked goofy when you were doing it at the Christmas party. And I look at him, knowing that this guy was going through a divorce, knowing that this guy was paranoid about AI taking his job, knowing that this guy, his entire life, was built around his employer paying his salary. I looked at him and I thought to myself, Ain't no motherfucking way, boy. Ain't no way you're about to start dancing right now. Rich. Ned not only started dancing, this dude pushed the chair back. Oh man. Got up and did a whole shimmy for all 12 of us at the dinner table. And my boss was just laughing, crying, pointing at him. And I was thinking to myself, god damn. I went in my phone, wrote in my notes app, note to self. Build yourself a freedom outside of work. Because when you hit 55, if you're dancing for people in order to keep your job, literally fucking doing the hokey pokey in order to entertain your boss, and it got nothing to do with your work, you are in a fucked up spot, my boy. I had to remember that, Rich. I have that in my notes app somewhere, and I remembered it right now, and you made me think about it, man. The workplace is dangerous. And if you define yourself by your parking space, by your key card, by the corporate card, by the company retreats, by the vacations you take, if everything is tied to that job, be careful because you might be dancing at the dinner party against your own will just to keep your job. That's fucked up. Shout out to Ned.

SPEAKER_01 51:26

Hey man, there's no amount of money in the world that'll make me do the hokey pokey and look foolish in front of a whole bunch of executives, bro. You don't know. Rich, we don't know. I'm so angry right now for Ned, bro. Like, I'm so angry for Ned because like I feel his predicament, bro.

SPEAKER_00 51:42

Put yourself in the headspace of Ned. Just speak to that and the young man listening, think it's in the if there's a young guy listening, I would never get to that point in my life.

SPEAKER_01 51:50

We would hope not. And this is the fair warning of this episode. This is a this is the entire thesis of this episode. Don't be a Ned. Because if you zoom in on Ned's situation, getting a divorce, right? Probably having to break everything in half, probably having to pay alimony, child support. So financially, he's straffered cash, right? He needs to preserve the one thing that still gives him purpose and makes him a provider, which is his job. And that gets put into jeopardy because CEO, CFO, COO wants him to do the hokey pokey that he had to do the hokey pokey. They want him to embarrass himself to keep his job. That's pretty much what it was. Crazy, bro. Crazy. And listen, I don't think that's exclusive to being the older gentleman. That could happen as a young guy, too. How many times do the interns come in into the workplace for the first time? Yo, go get me coffee. Yo, go pick up my dry cleaning. They'll make you do shit just to test your willingness to adapt to like a toxic work environment, too.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

You know what I'm saying? Rich, hold on. Before we wrap up, there was something you brought up in the pre-show, which I thought was important to mention. It was this uh, I don't know, the best way to frame it was you were saying when you introduce yourself to someone that you're meeting for the first time, let's say your girlfriend had some friends over. And when you introduce yourself, they ask you, oh, how's it going? How's everything? And the first thing you bring up is your job or what's going on in your job or your work and your work title. I felt like you brought that up for a reason because it is an indicator of whether or not you are trapped in this, I only think about work and I define myself through my title type of mentality. What is it about that that made you bring that up in the pre-show and why is it so relevant to this episode?

SPEAKER_01 53:38

Listen, I think the phrase that is a dagger is when someone asks, tell me about yourself, and you immediately jump into your title, your role, your company, what you do on a day-to-day at work, right? Like it defaults into work, not like your hobbies, not your interests, not that you're a father, right? Not that you love camping or that you like photography as a hobby, right? You default to work. And I think that most of us like to highlight our value through the jobs we have obtained. You don't see the mechanic or the truck driver posting pictures of Instagram of his job. Why? Because it's not glorious, it's not beautiful, it's not clout chasing, it's not fancy, it's hard laborus work. And social media doesn't glorify that. You know what I'm saying? They glorify the clout.

SPEAKER_00 54:36

Yeah. From what I understand, if you really think about the problem of always introducing yourself based on your job, your title, how much money you make, your status. Typically, men introduce themselves that way. But if you think about it, it's the way we were pre-programmed from kindergarten all the way to professional level, you never really introduce yourself as anything other than, hi, my name is X and I go to this school. Hi, my name is X and I play this sport. Hi, my name is X, and look at all the things that don't represent me that I want you to see me as. So when you go from pre-K all the way to college, you kind of get into this habit of always representing yourself as something other than your first and last name. You never describe what you like, you always describe a shortcut that will help people understand who you are. People even do it with horoscopes, people even do it with the country they're from, but it doesn't actually tell me anything about you. And I think what happens is when you leave college and get into the workplace, you kind of have this like weird habit thing going on where you're introducing yourself as your job and you're not introducing yourself as yourself. And I would point that out as an indicator that lets you know you're too immersed in your job, you're too immersed in your title. Too much about your status represents you, and it's going to be a problem later on in life. So it's a good indicator that you should get into the habit of introducing yourself as, like you said, Rich, your hobbies, your interests. How are things? Things are well, man. I just entered a triathlon. I'm gonna do a 5K for the first time. I'm trying to build the backhouse to my apartment, but you know, hey, the Knicks are fucking playing well. It could be everything other than your job. But if you only speak through your job, then that's how you know you have a problem.

SPEAKER_01 56:32

Yes, bro. Listen, go get the title, get the money, build the career, mash out, right? Like get all these things that you want so you can provide for your family and live a beautiful life. But what we're saying is don't lose yourself in the process. Don't lose yourself to your career. Don't lose yourself as a professional and lose the human element that makes you you. That's the fair warning, man. Yeah, don't be Ned. Don't be net. Don't be Ned. Don't be doing the hokey pokey, man, for nobody.

SPEAKER_00 57:08

But if you are gonna hokey pokey, hokey pokey your ass over uh to share in this episode. If you felt like it was helpful, Rich and I don't run any plays to run profit on our platform. This is truly uh built and designed to help our young men navigate some of the most challenging things going on in their life. So if this was valuable to you, make sure you hit that share button.

SPEAKER_01 57:27

Yes, sir. There you have it, man. Failures podcast. Y'all, you're gonna be able to do that.