Today’s business landscape is a lot different than the one our parents grew up with.  It’s seems more and more business are launching online and having a physical space is simply not needed.  Why spend the time and effort of opening your own store when you could just put everything online and not have to worry about the same overhead?  I’ll tell you why.  It’s romantic.  It’s a way to connect with where you live.  And for lack of a bigger vocabulary, it’s really awesome.  Picture waking up in the morning, making yourself a cup of coffee and then diving to your shop, the shop that you own.  You put the keys in the door, and walk in.  It’s quiet and peaceful, but you know that in a few hours people will be coming and going and you will meet a lot of them.  You look around your beautiful little store and think, I belong here.  Sometimes owning the largest liquor distributor online is cool.  Sometimes owning the little bar from Cheers, where everyone knows your name, is even cooler.  Today’s guest, Lauren Danuser, explains the trails, tribulations, and wonderfulness of owning your own brick and mortar store.

When most of us think about the military we think of guns, combat, and camo.  There are, however, many different branches of the military.  While all are fully trained for combat, some are a far cry from the default image that we conjure up in our heads.  Today’s guest spent a good portion of his life with the Seabees, a smaller group of an already small group of naval divers.  The Seabees, a heterograph of C.B., are members of the naval construction battalion, and they help to ensure that fixed underwater structures are kept in working condition.  They also get to blow stuff up.

Living a healthy life can be hard.  It can be really hard.  It’s the whole lifestyle part that gets in the way.  It’s easy enough to eat healthy when you’re quarantined at home and surrounded by healthy food that you bought, no alcohol, and lots of motivation, but it can be really hard the moment we step out our front door.  It’s not so easy to be healthy and fit when we sit at a desk for 9 hours a day.  It’s also not so easy to be healthy and fit when it seems like we are surrounded by over-processed, high sugar, high carbohydrate food.  When you’re on the go, what are you supposed to do?  Today’s guest, Siphiwe Baleka, learned just how intense this issue could be when he decided to become a truck driver.  Out on the road with no schedule, clean food, or gym nearby Siphiwe gained over 10% of his body weight in his very first 2 months.  Rather than resign himself to the fact that that was just going to be his new life, Siphiwe decided to do something about it.  Over time, he developed a plan to make himself the fittest trucker in America, and now he helps truckers across the country follow in his footsteps.

They say that with age comes wisdom, and while I’m not sure if that’s true, I have definitely picked up on a few things over the course of my time on this Earth.  One thing I’ve noticed is that many cliché sayings are far more than just cliché.  They are as true as true can get.  They are wisdom in a tiny, bite-sized morsel.  A great example of this is, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”.  Every one of us has benefited in some way from knowing someone at some time in our lives.  Maybe it was as small as getting a discount at a local business.  Maybe it was as large as getting an interview for a job that ended up cascading into your lifelong career.  Maybe it was someone introducing you to the love of your life.  No amount of interview prep or reading ‘Men Are From Mars Women Are From Venus’ could get you in front of the right people at the right time.  This begs the question, why do we not focus more time on trying to get out there and meet more people?  Why do we not build our networks to allow more of these wonderful things to happen in our lives?  Today’s guest is a networking natural and decided to start a matchmaking/networking business.  Emily helps people build their networks with like-minded, amazing people that just might be able to help move the needle in their lives.

Money.  It’s one of those things that most of us spend a little too much time thinking about and could probably use a little more of.  Today’s guest, Mark Podolsky, was very much like the rest of us until one day a friend introduced him to the concept of land investing.  Rather than flipping real estate, just buying raw land and turning around and selling it for a quick profit.  A massive, quick profit.  Mark thought his friend was making it sound too good to be true, but sure enough, his first piece of land he sold for close to 10x what he bought it for.  Now, many years later, Mark has built a 7 figure business buying and selling land, and he now educates people on how they can do the same.  Over three episodes Mark will explain the basics of the process to us and defend his claim that land investing is the best passive income model around.

Most of us, at some point in our lives, have a pet that is one of our best friends.  I, for one, am a dog person.  I absolutely love it whenever I’m out and about and I get to meet a new dog.  I also own two dogs who, next to my wife, make me laugh and smile and fill me up with good emotions more than anybody else in my life.  They call dogs ‘Man’s best friend’, and to me that sounds about right, but I definitely believe that any pet can fill that best friend role.  It makes sense then that we would treat our pets with the same level of love and care that we treat anyone else when they get sick.  Today’s guest, Dr. Sarah Boston, is one of 50 fellowship trained surgical vet oncologists in the world.  If your dog or cat gets cancer, she is the amazing person you would want to treat them.

#include <Half Hour Intern>
#include <Handsome, Intelligent>
#include <Justin Washington>

void func(basic);
void do_something(Interesting, Awesome);

int main()
{     
std::string str = "Test";
int x = 5;
     
std::thread t{func, str, std::ref(x)};
         
do_something(Enjoy);         

t.join();
}

The amount of things we take for granted in any given moment are astronomical.  Right now, you can read this, for instance.  In a moment you’re about to listen to this episode.  That means that someone created language.  It was passed down to you.  You didn’t have any inherent learning disabilities that kept you from assimilating the language or learning how to read.  Someone taught that language to you.  The list goes on and on.  At the very top of that list, and yet somehow often overlooked, are our senses.  You can read this because you were born with the ability to see, and you still have that ability today.  You can listen to this podcast and all of the beautiful, wonderful noises in the world because you have the ability to hear.  What would you do if that ability started slipping away, or went away completely?  Or if you had a child that was not born with hearing the way that you were?  You would go and see an intelligent, caring audiologist like today’s guest, Lauren Keller.

When most of us are in school we don’t know exactly what we want to be when we grow up.  Yet, we know that we’re going to work for someone.  We put a lot of effort into learning as much as possible, grooming ourselves to be good employees for our future employers.  Then, we go through the rigors of career fairs, mock interviews, and finally the real thing.  Somehow, it never occurs to us, most of us, that we could spend this time and effort trying to find a way to work for ourselves.  Trying to do our own thing.  Today’s guests had this epiphany during their senior year of college in the midst of their own get-a-job hunt.  At the end of the year they were both offered jobs, which they later rethought and rejected, due to a budding fashion accessory company they launched.  A year later and they’re doing just fine having never worked a day for anyone but themselves.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” These are the words of the Statue of Liberty. Back when the statue was placed in New York, and even more true before it was ever erected, these were not hollow words. Many people you ask in America can trace back their lineage to a poor family in another part of the world that was looking for a new start. Men and women looking for a chance to give their children, and their children’s children, a better life. However, since the statue was placed in New York in 1886, the U.S. and world population have increased 6 fold and 7 fold, respectively. A lot has changed since America was a young country, and it unfortunately does not look like we can lift quite as bright a lamp beside our golden door as we did for our ancestors when they made the journey. Today we speak with an immigration attorney to learn about the what life looks like for immigrants that want to come to America, and how that picture becomes murkier with the governance of the new administration.

When I was a kid my sister and I used to play video games together while listening to music.  The games weren’t too particularly complicated back then, so it was perfect to turn the sound to the game on and turn some music on instead.  Since we were kids we didn’t have too many games, or too big of a music selection, so to this day I can still remember every single album tied to every single game we would play it with.  Some games I don’t even remember the title, but I sure do know what we listened to with it.  Samurai Showdown and TLC’s Crazy Sexy Cool.  Some cartoony Mario Cart-esque snowboarding game and The Wedding Singer soundtrack.  I have countless memories like this from my life where I can remember exactly what song was playing with what memory.  Music is a pretty powerful thing!  Today’s guest knows all about the power the music and its tie to emotion and memory.  Chris is a composer and specifically he regularly composes music for movies.  Some pieces that are out in the forefront, and some pieces that stay back and subtly influence a scene.  He’ll tell us all about both and the music writing process.

Wine? Check. Travel? Check. Why do we need to complicate our lives with much more than that? Today’s guest Brent realized that he sure as hell didn’t. He left his prestigious job as an Engineer to travel the world and make (and drink) wine, and he’ll tell you how you can do the same.

I have a confession to make.  I am a long time milk-aholic.  In my youth I drank it straight, in high-school and college I would go through a gallon a week absolutely drowning bowls of cereal multiple times a day, and now that I’ve given up straight dairy and things like cereal, I’ve replaced liquid milk with it’s solid butter and cheese cousins.  Who doesn’t love a salty gruyere or a creamy brie?  Who doesn’t love butter on…everything?  Yep all of my life I’ve owed a huge debt to our good friend, the dairy cow.  Today we learn about how our amazing friends are fed and what impacts the finished product that we love.

Do you consider yourself a pretty discerning customer? Do you like having cool stuff instead of having lame stuff?  Well, the whole reason that people like us are even allowed to be discerning and have nice things is thanks to people like today’s guest, Jimmy Huynh.  Jimmy is an industrial designer which means it’s his job to make products look nice and function well.  Apple would be the primary example of a company that has considered industrial design a top priority.  Jimmy will break down the fun and difficulties of working in the industrial design world.

F-R-A-N-K, is there a more beautiful combination of 5 letters in the Latin alphabet?  Frank and I have been friends since we were 8 years old.  He is, and always has been, one of the most genuine and giving people that I know.  When I had the idea for my podcast 2 years ago I called Frank and told him all about it and asked it I could have his help with editing the audio of the show.  Frank, you see, is an audio engineer for a living.  Since I had just quit my job to start the podcast I had nothing to offer Frank other than digital high-fives and my thanks, and yet, Frank being Frank said that he would love to help in any way he could.  He proceeded to chop together an awesome intro for me that made the show feel ‘real’ and to this day edits the audio on every episode of the show.  Today we get to take a look at the man behind the curtain, Frank.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you have had some not fun times with customer support in your life.  Perhaps even reading the words customer support makes you have flashbacks of one such time that really takes the cake?  Deep down we know that we should be happy that companies even have customer support, and yet you’d be hard pressed to find someone that has a favorable opinion of their time spent on the phone trying to solve a problem.  Today’s guest, João (Joe), is the manager of a customer support team for an international travel website.  He’ll give us the inside scoop on what it’s like to deal with all the haters and live life on the other side of the telephone.

Do you ever wonder where your food came from?  What sorts of approvals and checks and balances it had to pass before making its way to you?  As we recently learned in the ‘Organic Farmer’ episode, getting produce on your table is not as simple as you might think.  For better or for worse, if you live in the Western world your food will endure quite a bit of scrutiny before it ever makes it to you.  Today we learn about another side of this food chain.  Natalie was recently employed as a North Pacific Groundfish Observer for the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Fisheries Monitoring and Analysis Division (FMA)…quite a mouthfull.  Natalie’s long title meant that she lived on fishing boats off the coast of Alaska and made sure that everyone was following the rules.  Thanks to people like Natalie sustainable fishing that makes minimal impact on the overall ecosystem is a reality in the majority of the United States.

I have a question for you.  What is the one thing that permeates EVERY aspect of consumer interaction with a company?  If you looked at the title of this episode you can probably guess that the answer is the brand.  Think about it.  When Chipotle decides to add a new menu item the number one question they need to ask themselves, even more important than ‘Does this taste good?’, is ‘Does this new item fit in with our brand?’.  When Apple decides to appoint a new employee as a speaker at an event, ‘Does this person represent our brand?’.  When Target decides to update the lighting inside their stores, ‘Does these lights feel cohesive with our brand?’.  It’s pretty crazy when you really think about it.  The bigger and more successful the company, the smaller and more mundane the change that needs to pass the brand test.  Today we learn all about this test and how we can better cultivate our own brands.

Food.  It’s pretty important, ya know?  There’s the whole entire ‘don’t eat it and you’ll die’ thing, but for most of us food is so much more than just death prevention.  It’s our means to feeling good physically.  It’s our means to feeling comforted mentally.  The invention of agriculture was our main reason for coming together in large scale societies.  Pretty important stuff.  It’s no surprise then that we’re always trying to think of ways to make it better.  Currently, better means organic.  Today we speak to a large scale organic farm manager, Doug Kaba, to get his perspective on what better means, and learn more about the farm side of the farm to table movement.

I know, I know, we just recently had two episodes about sex…but something those episodes taught me is that sex is a giant topic with so many ins and outs and little intricacies that it can never really be fully explored.  It also taught me that we all have our own relationship with sex, our own knowledge of it, and our own lack of knowledge of it.  It is with those lessons that I decided to invite this week’s guest on the show and do another sex filled two part interview.  Amy Baldwin is the owner of Pure Pleasure sex shop in Santa Cruz, CA, and is also a certified sex educator.  Different from a typical HHI interview, I put out a call to listeners to send in your sex related questions.  In part one we mostly cover questions sent in by women, in part two, men.  Enjoy.