Navigating Tech: From Latchkey Kids to AI

Speaker 3 (00:38) everybody, welcome to another episode of Sugar, Spice and Spirits. I'm Mindy Kelly. We're so excited to be here with you today for this episode that is inspired by technology. So I'm gonna start off just a little differently. Yes, we will get to the drink here in a minute, but we talked about how to our radio show, Natalie, I used to bring jokes and I was playing around with a little bit of AI. Speaker 1 (00:43) Natalie. Speaker 2 (00:44) and I'm. Speaker 3 (01:05) and they gave me a couple of jokes that I just wanted to share with y'all. So have a few notes for today. So ladies, did you hear what Sam Ewing, he was a former baseball player, what he said about computers? Speaker 2 (01:17) No. Speaker 3 (01:19) They're like bikinis. Speaker 2 (01:21) Okay, why? Speaker 3 (01:22) They save people a lot of guesswork. Speaker 2 (01:25) But I'm Speaker 3 (01:29) So Emo Phillips is a comedian. He said there was once a computer that beat him at chess, but it was no match for his kickboxing. Speaker 2 (01:38) god. Speaker 1 (01:39) Sometimes you feel like that sometimes you want to throw it out the window. Speaker 3 (01:43) you do? So, hot melt went down. don't know if you all remember, it was on June 10th, I think. It was a big meltdown. Maybe it was, maybe it was sooner. mean, I don't even know for sure if that's the date, but I remember it went down, some outlook went down. We're gonna talk about that here in a minute. But before we get into the episode and how reliant we are on technology, hopefully we give you some tips that you can take away and you can use in your everyday life and in business that will help you not be so reliant on technology and maybe have a little more mental space as well. Let's talk about our sip of the day. The sip of the day, as you can see, it is inspired by this 518 whiskey. This was a present from our friends over at Focus. K9 They're out of Brazoria County and they train dogs. They do the dogs around the school. They do the dogs. They do bomb dogs. They do all kinds of training with these animals that is just absolutely incredible. They also do obedience training and this was a gift that was given to us and so we just want to say thank you to Jimmy and Rocky and your place is so cool. Y'all I got to go by and tour the other day. There are bugs out here. Yes. Speaker 2 (02:51) side if you can't tell sorry Speaker 3 (02:54) Those of you that are just listening, may want to catch it because we're like dodging every now and then. But they, got to go tour their place the other day and meet all the dogs. And there were some really cool ones. And I've actually never seen a bloodhound in person. I've only seen them like on movies and whatever. This dog, fell in love with it. my gosh. He was so cool. With that face and that snout and those ears. Speaker 2 (03:12) bigger than you think they are. Speaker 3 (03:17) my gosh, and he's a tracker and it was just it was really cool meeting him and all the dogs. So again, thank you so much for this inspiration for the drink. The drink is actually a with a maple whiskey sour. So never tried it before. Never made it before. Let's check it out and see how it is. cheers. Yeah. Speaker 1 (03:35) Let's go. Speaker 2 (03:37) sorry. Speaker 1 (03:39) She's a premature drinker. single time, Kelly's premature drinker. Speaker 2 (03:45) That's good. It's refreshing. Speaker 3 (03:46) It's really good. Be a really good like it's summertime and it's really good and refreshing. But imagine that like in the wintertime like holidays. Speaker 1 (03:54) Yeah, it's kind of like I almost feel like there needs to be like a little splash of a splash but a dash of nutmeg or something. Speaker 3 (04:01) there is cinnamon. And you know what, if you want to get the recipe for this particular drink, you can go to Sugar Spice and Spirits and subscribe to our newsletter. Remember to reply to the email that gets sent to you so they make sure you're legit and you actually do want to hear from us. You will get our newsletter that has all kinds of great information, resources for you, as well as our signature drinks that we showcase on each episode. So with that, ladies, were either one of you really impacted whenever Hotmail went down, Outlook, any of meetings, teams, anything like that. Speaker 1 (04:34) very frustrating, like when stuff goes down, you know, it's part of life and dealing with everything. However, like recently, like I don't recall that time. So I'll just say to answer your question. No, I don't recall. Speaker 3 (04:47) So you do scope. So I know this like that was a setup and she totally missed it. I called you and I called you. was like, my gosh, I cannot get into my email. Like everything on the personal side is there not on my work side with my business inside the Why But I was like Natalie, my gosh, what are you doing? You're like Mindy, one of my clients cannot sign their contract. I keep emailing it to them. It's showing me it's sent. They couldn't get to it. So what did you do outside of technology that we don't think of, but it was just so common sense and easy to get that contract signed. Speaker 2 (05:16) Thank Speaker 1 (05:16) Paper print. Yeah. Remember? Yes. Yes. But I don't remember it as Hotmel, but I remember the Microsoft issues and everything. Yeah, technology is just as good, you know, if it's working or if it's not. it's only as good... What's that say? I don't even remember the same, but it's only as good if it's working. There's so much frustration that comes when it's not working. And it's almost like a paralyzation in society. Like, my gosh, my phone's not working. What do I do? I have to talk to you. Hi, how are you? And it's like, you lose the humanality behind it. I recently traveled, you traveled as well. And I go to check in my hotel and they said their merchant account, like their credit card swipe is down. I said, okay, fantastic. Like, here's my information. Here's everything. No, you need to go to the ATM. I am on an island in a foreign country and they're wanting me to go pull cash to go pay for my hotel room. And I'm like, something doesn't smell right. Besides the bugs flying around, something doesn't smell right. So they, but they literally shook down another family member and made them go get cash. And I, luckily had some cash. We paid for it, but then I just didn't go to them the next day. I'm like, I'm not going by the office to see if they figured out their thing. They ended up sending an email like three days later and had me pay, but my stay was for five, six days. I wasn't leaving anytime soon. And they were trying to make me pay upfront for their error Remember like the card impression, which we don't have impressions anymore, but there's ways you can capture people's information, have them sign an invoice, have them sign, you know, something. They were not doing any of that. And it was very off putting for such a nice place and nice resort. to not have their stuff together in that sense. And to put it off on the customer that's showing up to relax and go on vacation. And then they're shaking them down, driving them all over the island to find a working ATM that isn't gonna scam them. Speaker 3 (07:13) Yeah. And that is something you want to be aware of. One of the things that we learned while we were in Mexico, there were locals that were calling other locals saying, hey, which ATM can we take them to? Like, what's a good, legit ATM? Kelly, I know you had something that happened to you in the past on an ATM. was what, like six months later? Speaker 2 (07:30) They waited six months later. We had gone to a hotel and we, whatever reason, did not bring enough cash and they wanted us to pay cash for the excursions. And so my husband and I went to the ATM. We each put our money in and didn't think it was in the hotel lobby, a nice hotel. Didn't think anything of it. And about six months later, this was in Cozumel, and about six months later, it just so happened that we were both at separate gas stations trying to use our debit cards. and they both were being declined. And I thought, well, that's kind of odd. And I have two separate banks. And so we called and actually one bank called and said, are you in Mexico? And I said, I wish, but no. So yeah, they waited six months and they were trying to get almost $6,000 from us and our banks caught it. yeah, but so they, and you know, going back to what we talked about how things are so automated these days. You know, I remember the years when my mother taught me and insisted on me being able to balance my bank statement. I mean, down to the penny. you know, at that point you had to figure out how much money was coming in, how much was going out, what was outstanding. And now you just pick up the phone or you look at the app and like, look, I have this much money in the bank so I can write this check. We don't write checks that much anymore, but I can go debit. can, you know, whatever. And it's so easy. when all of a sudden you don't have that luxury of just knowing you feel like you've lost an appendage. And so when, when you get to the point where you can't rely on that, you, yeah, you feel lost. You feel lost. But on, on the flip side of that, was funny what you guys were saying, how we all, I'm going to face, I'm just gonna say it. We all bitch about the fact that we get that automated press one. If you need this, press two. If you need this, press zero for customer service. This call is recorded, blah, blah, blah. And then you don't know if you're really talking to a human and everything. And when something goes down, then you're pissed off that you have to talk to a human because you're like, why doesn't this automation just work? So it's like, you can get mad either way when one thing or another doesn't work. Speaker 1 (09:49) I always want a human. don't know. did. Absolutely. Give me a human. Speaker 2 (09:53) But I guess what I'm saying is that when you depend on you know putting in your pin number and being able to look for something and it says I'm sorry our system is down right now and you're like Now I have to call and talk to somebody I don't have time to talk to somebody because it's usually a waiting period so we as humans are never satisfied we want it done here now quick and Technology has offered that to us, but when it's down it just it ties our hands Speaker 3 (10:21) Absolutely. And speaking of wanting to talk to a human, so when all this happened with Hotmail and some users from Outlook and they, there's tons of backlash on social media and saying, I want to talk to somebody. And I can remember changing accounts in the past dealing with Microsoft and you can't, you have to put in tickets. You don't always get a notice of when it's there. And that's what I would love to talk to a human. And so I feel like the way they went about it was pretty darn scary. If you think about it, that you don't know when something globally, something big like this goes down and they don't give you that. information and people are speculating and there's so much speculation and there's so many of these theories. Speaker 1 (10:55) Fierce. Speaker 3 (10:55) No way. So one of the things that we wanted to talk about today and I want to go back to this. you hit on something you said paper, which actually goes back to balancing your checkbook and so many other things. So whenever I brought up the fact that Natalie literally printed out a contract, you didn't say this, you said paper, but you that day printed out a contract and you took it over to your client to have them physically signed. You weren't waiting on the electronics. And I know doing business across the state and across town, that isn't something you can always do, but having a backup plan for businesses when you do have technology that goes down. What I will say right now is if you don't have a backup plan for what happens if there is some global meltdown or crisis, then you're in trouble. I mean, you could be in trouble. And so please make sure that that's something that you're doing. Even if you're a small business, think about the things that you use every day. If a customer called you today and you could not get into your laptop, where do you have access to that information? your contact list, do you have a print out of it somewhere? I know that sounds old school. Maybe you're like, we have way too many people. But for that small business owner that I'm talking to right now, do you really have too many? What would happen if you lost that? What if your CRM went down? What if your Outlook or your Gmail or whatever went down? So having a backup somewhere is going to be incredibly important. Speaker 1 (12:14) So I worked for a company and they didn't, they had a backup but they weren't backing up as much as they should. You should be backing up your database, your information, your drives, the month, everything. So, you know, we were there working and all of a sudden the Trojan got activated. And when I say a Trojan, for those that don't know, there's a sleeper cell that's in your database and it's activated and they want you to, Speaker 2 (12:25) One Speaker 1 (12:41) release that like in order to release your company database and your documents and your files and your classes and everything else that you have on there in order to get that released, you have to pay the ransom. So they're holding your business ransom. And if you had a good backup, you could be like, sayonara. Speaker 3 (13:00) reach out to all your contacts, tell them what happened. Don't open this email for me. I recently, very recently. Speaker 2 (13:05) with Spu. Speaker 1 (13:06) So you can tell them sayonara and then tell them to go kick rocks and upload the database, scrub it, clean it and upload from last month. And then you don't have to worry about it. And yes, as far as technology, getting spoof emails and things like that, that's very real. Like you had your issue, but being in real estate before you ever send a wire, you should always confirm with the bank, the wiring transfer information, confirm the amount you're sending, confirm, confirm, confirm human to human. that you're sending this money for this thing and then it'll prevent any kind of issues because there are people and if, if God forbid that happens to you and you wire your closing, closing amount of 80,000 to the wrong place, who do you call? Right. I actually know somebody so I could give you that information, but there's very few people that can track that down. Right. Get ahold of the bank, get that stopped before anything or get it reversed before it's actually moved from whatever account to the overseas account and different things. Speaker 2 (14:03) I always take the time to double check because my mom recently got into a situation where someone called my stepfather passed away and she got a fake email from what looked like PayPal. PayPal? PayPal. What's PayPal? PayPal. was Speaker 1 (14:24) That's a drug. Speaker 2 (14:29) to pay for that, what is it, that life lock or not life lock? whatever that keeps you, keeps people from stealing your identities and everything. Well, so it looked real and, it said, you know, hey, you know, this was in your husband's name and we're getting ready to debit your account $450. You know, if this is incorrect, please press link or call. Well, she got on the phone. Speaker 3 (14:56) you Speaker 2 (14:57) And almost $18,000 later, thankfully, thankfully she went to her bank. The guy was on the phone and my mom is a very intelligent person, but it just seemed so real. And she went to her bank and she walked inside and the vice president of the bank just happened to overhear what my mom was trying to do and recognized it and said, where is this person that you're talking to? And she said, well, he's on my phone. in my car on hold. So this bank vice president marched her happy butt right out to the car, opened up my mom's door and gave him a butt chewing and everything. And then she called me and I mean, I was like, thank you so much. And I, if you've never seen the show, the beekeeper, that is a phenomenal show. It goes directly to these horrible, hateful people out here who do nothing. but try to scam and steal from people, primarily the elderly. And I literally went to my mom's house, played that section of that movie, and she said, my God, Kelly, that is exactly, almost verbatim what they said to me. my gosh, I actually transferred too much money to your account, and I need you to transfer back to me, because I'm gonna lose my job. And they played on her sympathy. Yeah, and all through technology because she got a fake email that looked so real and it's just, you know, when in doubt guys always, always double check if you get an email, pick up the phone and call PayPal and say, did you just send this email to me? And they'll say, Speaker 1 (16:41) call PayPal. That's the problem. So herein lies the problem. All right. So you get these emails and there's little tall tells dollar mark $500 USD like you'll see USD in this sign. Look at the emails. It'll be just slightly off there. There are telltale because you can't call and then you don't want your account to be deducted $450. So what can you do cancel the damn card? Right? Just stop it. Cancel this. Speaker 2 (17:07) This past weekend, I went on a quick trip to my office in Louisiana. I've got a non-medical home health care in Louisiana. And I was taking a road trip and I wanted a Starbucks. Well, my Starbucks card app needed to be reloaded. And so I hit the button to reload it. And normally it goes on my credit card. For whatever reason, it defaulted to my debit card. I have no idea. I need to check that out. But about 30 minutes later, all of a sudden, I get this phone call. 1-800 number which I don't answer like if they want to talk to me they can leave me a message well so you can sit there on your iPhone and it will translate what's being said and It said this is TD ECU which is the credit union here in my Jackson and The fraud department and I thought well, that's weird because I really I never use that card Never use that card and so I that's kind of I so I thought well I better call sure enough I called and this was just on from Thursday I called and they said We got three back-to-back charges, one for $900 at Target and one for 400, one for 200 at Nordstrom. And it was just ironic. And again, I'm not blaming Starbucks, but it was ironic that that's the first time I'd used that card for anything in probably two, three months. And boom, boom. I mean, within 30 minutes back-to-back, I had three fraudulent charges. Now, I don't know if somewhere out there got caught. I don't know if it went, and it was all in a different time zone. So fortunately my bank caught it and kept it from happening. But it was just like, damn it. And so now I'm without a debit card, which I forgot to go get it yesterday. I don't use the card so it wasn't that big of a deal. But it just pisses you off. It's such a violation. there's just hateful people out there. And I hate mean people. Mean people suck. do. Mean people suck. Yeah, so and I'm relatively smart and thank goodness my my credit my credit union caught it But it just is it's just one more freaking inconvenience of the day Yeah, that we're technology can go against you as wonderful that as is it can turn around I'll bite you in the rear just like that like stuff going down. Yeah Speaker 3 (19:24) I didn't know we were going to talk about that. I'm sorry about that. No, great points. Tangent tax. But that's a good one. but it's good. It's good. Cheers. But in saying that, Kelly, part of what I wanted to talk about were different ways. And I've got some stats and things that we'll talk about in dependency, but is going through. So I mentioned having an emergency plan and a backup plan. And maybe that's something that we can create as an outline. And then we can put that in the newsletter and we can put that out there. We'll work on that. I we'll tell you about it. Let's put a pin in it. But I literally have gotten so good about going through all of my bank statements, my credit card statements, personally going through. And what I found a while back was I kept seeing these random charges and I'm like, I know I'm not doing it. So the company or the people, the thieves were not doing big purchases. I think they were testing it out. I found these little purchases. So I got on the phone with a credit card company, but this was because of me old school. So going back to old school, what are things that you can do? Yes, did I have to print it out? I did, but keeping up with it and I keep everything downloaded too. And then I have it separated in a separate jump drive. Well, I was able to see all these charges. And then when I called the credit card company, sure enough, picked up on it. And then they took care of all of that. But it's really paying attention to these things. It's thinking about what your passwords are. Where are you keeping those? I had to spend five hours with my security company for tech that was happening, something that I recently went through. And they're like, Mindy, with your passwords, sounds old school. Write them down. Put it somewhere. Don't save it on your computer. Yes, you can do that. Make sure it's locked or put it on your jump drive. But having those passwords saved somewhere else and then updating your passwords because there's so much technology that's out there that can figure out what your passwords are. It is a complete pain. And then they also told me not to use that random generator through the computer. I don't know. They're like, your time and think about when. I don't know what that means. Again, we're not experts here. We're not doctors. We don't play them on TV. We don't do any of that stuff, right? Two factor authentication. They have me doing like, I feel like it's three or four now, but yes. But I want to go back to a statement earlier that I was saying. So if you had that ransom and somebody hit you for that, and because you have all of this backup, you would be able to say sayonara. No, I'm not dealing with you. Hope and pray you're in that, never in that situation. But then you have to be a good fiduciary of your business and reach out to your clients and let them know, hey, we were hacked. Speaker 2 (21:46) We. Speaker 3 (21:46) We want you to know you could receive this from us. You want to take proactive steps. That's where I was going and just didn't finish that thought. So I wanted to come back around to it because if how wonderful would it be not that you're in that situation, but that you had a backup plan in place and then you're able to let your clients know because if they get your information, there's so much negativity that can happen while you're trying to clean up. your reputation, of like, and we all know identity theft is such a big thing. And you mentioned Norton, was LifeLock, it was bought out by Norton. trying to clean up that credit, it's like trying to clean up the credit that you've built for your business. It's so scary and it makes me so sad that there are jerks that are out there. So what can you do to protect yourself? And so I wanted to go into a couple of stats. So I was researching and trying to think of things, what could we bring to you that would be valuable? And there was this article that was written. I don't know anything about this college, okay y'all? It's out of California, it's the University of the People. But what they did is they referenced, they referenced a study from Penn State. And it was in, it had to do with how not to be so reliant on technology. some shocking stats were 77 % of people in a Penn State study said that society relies too much on technology to succeed. And then this one I thought was really interesting. Do y'all know what, don't you? Do you know what namaphobia is? Nomo? No, no, no, no phobia. No more phone. No more phone. Oh, yes. That's 66 % of the population experiences nomophobia, the fear of being without their phone. And you can think about that. You know, it talked about how screen time has exploded. There's heavy users that are clocking up to 17.5 hours a day. And they're saying for teams for teens, excuse me, screen time has has doubled. so then it talks about, research shows there's a positive attitude towards technology, the need to belong, social media, there are strong predictors of tech dependence. In one study, these factors explained over 40 % of the variance in technology dependence among respondents. And I don't have more information on that. But think about how reliant we are on our cell phones, we're without them and everything that's on there. So I want to challenge you right now, if you literally live, die and breathe by your cell phone and by technology, Write down the things that you have to have on a daily basis, a weekly basis, a monthly basis to live and to do your job. And what are some backups that you can create? And only you know this. What can you back up and create so that if you lost your phone, if your laptop was stolen, if you were locked out of your accounts. What can you do? And it could be old school paper writing it down. It could be getting an Excel spreadsheet or a Word document or a Google doc and literally writing all these things down and then having a hard copy in an old school binder in a place where you know where it's at, in a lock box somewhere, in a firebox as my mom used to always call them. Where your really important information is that only you know where and then since trusted somebody outside of the home that you trust could have access to that. I truly think that that's super, super important to do. And then taking it to more of a lighthearted side too, we think about all the things that we're dependent on that we do. But how many of you sitting here, I think I know the answer, but I'm not sure, actually write down an old fashioned to-do list? Yeah, I do too. Speaker 2 (25:10) I I feel accomplished when I can mark, and I had one yesterday and I said, okay, I had such a frustrating day and I thought, but you know what, look here, I got five things on my to-do list marked off out of 10, but that's good. That's successful. good. And it reinforces that positivity because when I look at this 17.5 hours, I mean, you know, a lot of that is for entertainment. And what is so funny is I'm an eighties baby. mean, I was born in 66. I'm like, you know, do the math. Yeah, am. But I remember I lived in a wonderful time when mom, mom would say be home when the streetlight. Yeah. And, you know, there's that long little thing that, know, G Y M anyway, want my mom knew exactly what it was. But I'll give it to you later. Speaker 3 (25:42) over there. I mean, my parents did that too. Speaker 1 (26:03) she's talking about. Speaker 2 (26:04) Yeah, it's so funny. If you know what this is, you were born in this six, anyway. But it was so funny because we found ways to entertain ourselves outside. Riding bikes. I I drive, I ride a Harley now. And the reason why is because I grew up on racing little dirt bikes. We did stuff outside because we didn't have all these iPads and iPhones and games. I'll be first to admit, sometimes at night I'm sitting there and I can't go to sleep. Why? Because I'm playing some stupid game. that has got me and I'm like, why are you doing it? And they advertise it saying, this will sharpen your brain. All it does is piss me off. Speaker 1 (26:43) Well, it's like latchkey kids. go back to like when we were latchkey kids. Not now technology. Like if you have a kid that comes home, maybe there there's not somebody home. You get in trouble. You can't do this. You can't do that. But at least we have technology now. I know kids like I was running a 5k the other day. Not that I run them all the time, but I was running a fight. was walking a five. Okay. I Speaker 2 (27:07) Participating. We call it Wogging. Wogging. Wogging. Walk-Jog. Wogging. Speaker 3 (27:10) We WOG Speaker 1 (27:11) in this 5k and this little I'm running with the kids in the back right the mom and me I'm picking up the stragglers from this run club and this little girl goes yeah I have an iPod or I have a what's that the iPhone tracker things she goes it's in my hair my mom put it in my hair I said baby girl don't be telling people that I said that's like your secret like that yeah that's between you and your mom and we talked the whole way but it's like now these days you know where your kid is all the time 24 7 It's like, just wish my kid would go get lost in the woods for a little, like go out and live, like build a fort. See what trash you can find, what stories you can come up with. I want to have free range kids. And it's like so hard with today's society, with everything for kids just to even live. Like people are complaining, the kids are writing. It's like, who cares? But it's just, you know, it's not necessarily technology based, but it is. It's like, Kids are always on their devices, but kids can't go outside. Where are their parents? Charge them that little boy that was just kidnapped in Milwaukee. Speaker 2 (28:14) You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. Speaker 1 (28:16) And they were like arrest the parents. The boy was riding his bike right outside his flipping house and got kidnapped in broad daylight. Like they did find him in a vacant house. Praise God. However, it's like you can't like there's it's so crazy. know, and technology helps and aids, but like what else? Like do you like, so for me, like with my kids talking about technology, the house that we just closed on the flip we're doing found a key map, old school key map. should have brought it. But for those that don't know, okay, so you younger generation, youngins, young whippersnappers, let me tell you, you'll look up the address and the key, like where you're going and the front and the index. And it's like, okay, I'm going to Smith Street. And then you look on Smith Street is on 34 and 36 and 38. So you go to those pages of a map that's been diced up into squares and put in a book. And then you have squares, A, B, C, D, F, G, H, I, and you look, follow the, I'm looking for the 6,400 block at Smith Street. So then you go 6,400 Smith Street is in K, and then you gotta follow the route to get there. Like these days people use their GPS for everything. But I make my kid look up, like we don't do devices in the car and things like that. Like, hey, where are we going? How do I get home from here? How do I get home? Because for me, it's important that if he has to jump out of a car and just, stupid thinking, also like parental thinking. how do you get home? How many people could get home from variety of places without the GPS? No, don't drive in the lake because the GPS tells you. mean, like certain common sense thinking things that society is kind of missing and we need to, and you know, I have four different kids, all four different kids, different personalities, different traits, different, you know, and you can try and parent well and teach common sense. One of them is very book smart. One of them is very street smart. One of them you want her in your corner. And then the other one's still coming up. So I'm waiting to see how he develops and grows. to see how that works out, it's, it's funny how we just don't even think anymore. Like, and now we're adding AI. So we go into AI to everything and it's, it's like, Speaker 2 (30:19) What is it? Just. Speaker 1 (30:36) people downplay or get mad if you use AI. It's not authentic. However it is, if you're prompting and you're encouraging it to say the certain things you want, it's another tool. It's a resource like a thesaurus or, you know, an encyclopedia, like you're pulling information and data. So I don't know. It's interesting times and everything is always changing and evolving. You know, I was thinking, I had a call from somebody overseas in India asked me some questions today and I'm talking to her. And I remember when everyone was saying, overseas is going to replace everybody. It's going to replace all of our jobs, but they didn't. And now you hear that with AI, they going to replace everything? Are we not going to have jobs? I'm like, you know what, if an AI is going to clean my house and do everything and I can sit back in and spend time with the family and be less stressed, then okay. Like you can't worry about things that are outside of your circle of influence. So worry about the things that you can. And technology is sometimes outside of your circle of influence. When Southwest shut down and everybody was stranded. How do you get home? What's the fast way? Brian's in Denver. Like he was coming back from San Diego. it's, do you like, we're somewhere around, know, Texas, we'll rent a car. We don't care where we're at. We'll get in a car and we'll Speaker 2 (31:38) you Speaker 3 (31:46) we are Speaker 2 (31:49) Yeah, I was trying to come home from Vegas and I tried to rent a car and but there were no one-way drop-offs. I was to drive from Vegas down to Houston and it just so happened that I was in line with a mother and daughter and we started talking and we said forget this. So we decided together we were sitting there on our phones. Yes, thank goodness and we were trying to find a flight out of the closest airport. So the three of us together shared a Speaker 3 (32:05) So. Speaker 2 (32:18) a lift to whatever the next it was the next state over and Utah but I don't remember the town but so me and this and her name was Brooke me and this mother and this daughter shared a lift for three hours and he stopped got us some alcohol on the way home thank goodness because it was we were about this time we were so frazzled because I was missing a day of work we shared a hotel room that night and the next morning we each went in went to our I to the airport, I went to American Airlines, she went to wherever. I came to Houston, she went to Nebraska. We are still friends. Hi, bro! It gives me chills. gives me chills. I found out her daughter got married. Her daughter finished nursing school. And it was just, I mean, I have chills. It's 99 degrees outside and I have chills because I met a really cool lady and her daughter. just, you have to take advantage of those things that kind of, when you... Speaker 3 (32:56) know you're Speaker 2 (33:17) you know, fall off your plans and everything. You're like, okay, you gotta make the best of things and things are going to happen. But, you know, really gained a really, really good friend and had a good time, lemonade out of lemons or margaritas. Speaker 3 (33:31) Speaking of, let's a cheers to that moment because we're in figuring stuff out Speaker 2 (33:36) Absolutely figuring stuff out. You have to be resilient. Speaker 1 (33:38) And you were able to have a connection that you wouldn't have had because you were in your device and not forced to talk to somebody. But because you were outside of your comfort zone and because you were put in an off situation, you were able to make things really happen. Speaker 2 (33:49) Yes, you pull your resources together. Instead of standing there, all of a sudden you go outside of your comfort zone and you realize that the people around you could be a fabulous resource. And she was, she was on her phone, I was on my phone and I'm like, where are you having to go? She said Nebraska. I said, okay, well that's at least this way. You're going that way, I'm going that way. Let's see what we can do. And together, all three of us worked together. Yeah, and we were, there were probably 10 of us together and we were all trying to figure out who could connect with whom and we could. Speaker 1 (34:11) It's like an amazing race. Speaker 2 (34:19) I said, were like, who and who? Yeah, whatever. So we were trying to figure out who was going to be best paired with the other person to get where they needed to be. And it all worked out. Everybody got home. You know, it was only one day, but it was just, you know, but we knew that night I was sitting there trying to check into my flight and I said, something's wrong. And I even called my friend from Southwest and like, what's going on? She was like, I don't know. And it was when everybody went on strike. It was about three or four years ago, whatever. Speaker 3 (34:46) Thank Speaker 2 (34:47) And yeah, and I was and literally my daughter was going to get in the car. I even tried to rent a U-Haul. I tried to rent a U-Haul and drive an empty U-Haul home and they said, we know what you're doing. And they wouldn't let me do it. So is that there weren't any available because. Speaker 1 (35:01) coming to Texas because everybody's coming to Texas. Speaker 2 (35:03) Yeah, and every because everybody was trying to do the exact same thing everyone trying to get home and so by the time we realized what was going on all the other flights out of the Vegas airport were already booked and so I had to go one state over but like I said, I met some really awesome ladies and Speaker 3 (35:20) You did in resiliency. And I don't know if it goes back to the latch key when we were born. We just figure stuff out. There's that common sense. But you said something earlier that I think is important because you never know the situation that you're in talking about understanding how to balance a checkbook, you know, balance a budget. I think that's something that we all should teach our kids. But if you have newer employees, you might be really surprised at how they don't understand that. And so as an added bonus to them, because a lot of high schools and junior highs these days do not have what we used to think of as home ec, which taught you how to take care of the egg, how to take care of the baby, how to take care, you know, how to type, how to sew, how to sew, how to prepare a balanced meal, how to balance your checkbook. And so these are things we all take for granted. But imagine offering that to your employees as a bonus, the younger crew that's coming up. And it's just something that, you know, maybe they do after work, during work, during lunch, something is this something you're interested in, poll your people. And in that emergency preparedness thing checklist that I want you to have, you know, have a checklist. What do you know? And this isn't about calling somebody out and saying, I can't believe you don't understand this. You may have a 40 or 50 year old on your team that doesn't understand what a PNL is. You may have somebody that's on your team that you think is incredibly. you know, smart, but there's certain things they don't know. And when you have this checklist, it's not about identifying weak leaks. It's about identifying your weak link. And that's the information that your team members don't have or understand. And so you go through that and then having mini classes for them, whoever your best person on your team is, this doesn't have to cost you a lot of money. Whoever that best person on the team is, they can hold training sessions. There's so much you can do to guard yourself when these things go down. As common sense, we think, okay, Make a friend, stranger danger, this person seems okay, hopefully I don't get killed, if it's my time, here I go. know, all these things you have to think about. Like, you have that, but it's like, what does the younger generation not have? Are they so glued to their phones where it's like, oh my gosh, now I actually have to communicate with somebody, what am I gonna do? or I'll do this on my own and they put themselves in more danger by doing that versus teaming up with somebody in a situation like this. So there's just a lot of things that you can do. There's so much that we could continue to talk about, reliance on technology and common sense and having a backup plan and going to paper and having more in-person meetings with your teams, utilizing a whiteboard and taking pictures of it. We all used to work for somebody that was big on the whiteboards. And I tell you what, some of the lessons that we learned. are absolutely invaluable. You can't put a price on it. Speaker 1 (37:50) I know you're trying to rap. Speaker 3 (37:52) However. However. Comma. As Randy used to say, it's fine. Speaker 2 (37:57) We lost one of our lights. For those of you who don't understand why I screamed, we lost one of lights because we had a little gust of wind. Speaker 1 (38:03) Really good. However, like those. So no. So let's talk about kids and technology. So they're going back because they've done everything on the computer over the past few years. All the kids have Chromebooks and they built schools without lockers, but they're going back to books because handwriting is getting lost. because they're losing, people are losing skills, kids aren't retaining the information because it's all behind a screen and the blue light. So they're going back to books in the classroom, but they can't have the kids have the books because they don't have lockers to hold the books now because of the way the development is. So there is a lot of growth there in that sense. And the studies that have come out in Texas also has passed where they're not gonna have access to their cell phones in class because it's distraction. And I know that there's parents online that are complaining and you know, I want to have access to my kid and I want to do this and I want to do that. I think that's part of today's society's problems and a lot of the anxiety and the issues that everybody faces. Yeah, you can take all the magnesium you want. You can do the holistic approach. You can do the breathing and all of that. But when you are beholden to somebody having access to you 24 seven, we put our phones on airplane mode. We're here. And it's, trust my support team and my support staff that I have helping with my bonus baby, picking them up from camp and different things. But you're not going to have access to me 24 seven. And when you work for somebody that you're on pins and needles, when the phone rings and you know, it's going to be something that's major, it's a whole different mind shift when you sit there and take a step back and you're not accessible 24 seven. And I think we, we as a society need to start putting the phone down when it's dinner time. Do not scroll on your phone. an example and be a leader. So many times we go to a place to eat and you see a couple scrolling. What are they setting up and how are they setting themselves up for success as a couple in a relationship with each other, with your kids, when your kid needs something and you're sitting there playing that stupid game, I'm guilty. Like, how can I help you? What can I do? Am I reading them a bedtime story at night or am I scrolling on TikTok at night with? Speaker 2 (39:52) Okay. Speaker 1 (40:17) You know, there's certain things that need to happen and there needs to be a change. If you expect to be the change, you got to be the change you want to see. Speaker 2 (40:23) Sometimes I'm on TikTok and I'm like, oh my, buddy, but you're right. It's not the same as sharing. It's not the same bonding and everything. going back to, that makes me all happy when you said going back to the textbooks, because I promise you, I have bins full of textbooks that have 15,000 different highlighters, 25,000 different paper clips, because I'm that person that wants to go look in the book. I mean, yes, I can, you can Google it all day long, but I like to be able to now I don't want to go back and look through encyclopedias, but my textbooks You know now granted a lot of the procedures are outdated. Okay, I Just like that textbook course You know I get where they're coming from but now that makes me happy Speaker 3 (41:03) But... fun idea for us you stay tuned because you just said something that gave me okay that we can do Speaker 2 (41:17) Lightbulb? Lightbulb, Moment Speaker 1 (41:21) Well, I think about like the Bible, like when I go to church, I used to have the Bible on my phone and I'm like, I'm, I'm so hip and cool. got the Bible on my phone, but then I'm like, I can't retain. can't, I can't. So now I have the Bible and I'll still take my notes in my Bible, but I also have my journal. So I'm journaling what the message is and what's going on so that I'm, retaining in that retention in my recall. I don't remember names. I don't remember certain things like that. So Speaker 2 (41:33) I'm like nothing. Speaker 1 (41:48) Yep, but I'll remember a story. Like remember that lady that came in that was paralyzed neck down right after she gave birth? She came in and spoke at the church. She had some great messages. Yeah, let me go check my binder. There it is right here. And I know we've done it before after meetings. Like where was this? What was that? And it's just so important to be able to reflect and take that time because so many times the phone and technology and the computer is all just a distraction. And you don't ever get a chance to step back and look at the bigger picture and focus. We see this in business, we see this in life, we see this in our family. How are we planning if we're on our phone or if we're engaged in everything else, like watching movies, watching that new Netflix series that just came out? Whatever we're filling our time with, we're still avoiding other things. We're still not doing things that are bigger picture, bigger thinking that we're in control versus being led down this path like she. You know, we really want to be, we want to be the lion or the wolf that's sitting out there. That's, that's not the wolf, but the lion that, it's protecting every. Speaker 2 (42:50) You know, it's funny because I think we've hit on so many different concepts and topics on this particular podcast. And going back to the lists, I'm a list person. Like I said, I've marked off everything. And because if I don't write it down and sometimes I will have if I have a pen and paper, I will make a list in my phone of the things to do or something, you know, what I need to do. But I'll never forget that one of the one of the things that my dad told me one time because. He's definitely old school and you know, he and I started our business together 25 years ago. And when you are trying to start a business or you're trying to do anything with raise kids, do your tasks for they, you have to have that list. I don't care where it is, but my dad always told me, he said, the shortest pencil is better than the longest memory. If you don't write it down, you're not freaking gonna remember it. And let me tell you what y'all, Menopause. That memory went. So the shortest pencil is better than the longest memory. And the pencil may come in the form of a true pencil and paper, or it may come in the form of you putting it in your phone. Write it down. But yeah, I'm a list maker. I'm not going to depend on this noggin up here to keep up because I can't. Speaker 3 (44:07) That's by Papa Al. The shortest pencil is better than the longest. I absolutely love that. And I want to challenge you because you can put it in your phone, but what if you lose it? Something like that is worthy of writing down. What's worthy of writing down? What are those things that if you lost technology today that you could go back and you could look at what your backup is? And we are creatures of habit that get used to not having crisis. And then when crisis hits, when you're not ready, you might think that will never happen to me. Speaker 2 (44:11) memory. Speaker 3 (44:37) Well, there's a lot of things we think that will never happen to me. This is one thing. Unfortunately, it could happen. We don't have a crystal ball. Maybe your lifetime, maybe not. But what if? And so if nothing else, I hope there was some nugget of information that you took from the podcast today. I want to thank you so much for tuning in. We appreciate you. Cheers to you. Cheers to old school. And you know what? Cheers to technology. Don't be afraid of AI. It's not going to replace you. Speaker 2 (45:00) right? Speaker 3 (45:05) but it might replace you if you don't embrace it. And that might be a little hard to hear, but use it in the right way. you know what? Still, old school, as much as you can, be authentic, be genuine, figure stuff out. You got this. Thanks for tuning in. Speaker 2 (45:20) And if we said anything, we sparked any thoughts or ideas that you would like us to discuss or look into, drop us an email on our website and we'll be happy to get you involved and included and we'll see what we can W-W-Good morning. morning. W-W-Good W-W-Good W-W-Good W-W-Good morning. W-W-Good W-W-Good W-W-Good W-W-Good morning. W-W-Good morning. W-W-Good W-W-Good morning. W-W-Good morning. W-W-Good morning. W-W-Good Speaker 3 (45:33) can find that our website. Lower sugar spices spirits. Speaker 1 (45:41) longest memory kicking in right there. Speaker 2 (45:49) We try to bring real topics to the table and I'm not gonna talk to y'all. Speaker 1 (45:52) was the website? Sugar spice. Also, don't forget to like and subscribe where you watch your podcast, comment, share with your friends. We're just having fun. hope you are too. you have a drink, a beverage we should try. Speaker 3 (46:05) Show topic Cocktail or mocktail because sometimes you never know these are loaded and sometimes they're not right, but that's why you subscribe to the newsletter. Speaker 2 (46:16) This one's loaded because I can move in the website Speaker 1 (46:20) Minor detail. Speaker 2 (46:21) I a great day. Speaker 3 (46:24) Cheers.