Hey everyone it's me Neil Brennan. Mike, yesterday you saw on the thumbnail if you're not familiar with him he just had a Netflix special drop called Workin Man. Before that he had a Netflix half hour on the stand-ups. I knew nothing about him until I saw him on the stand-ups and he's Barkatsy affiliated. He's part of that click-heavy southern the southern mob. Absolutely. I mean it's a huge deal. He's on Nate's podcast. He's got a podcast with his wife called We're Having Fun. His name's Dusty Slay ladies and gentlemen. Anything I left out? Well the podcast is We're Having a Good Time. We're Having a Good Time. Sorry that's what he it's a thing he says. We're Having a Good Time man. When probably when he's it works best when you're bombing. That's where it came from. I mean it's like I was doing a show at a pizza place in New York City and I just was not doing well and I just kept saying we're having a good time and the more I said it the more people got into the show. Yep as an old man named Dave Chappelle once said to me you can tell how funny someone is by how they bomb. Well I think that's right. I've never thought of that but I think that's right and I find that if you move around enough awkwardly touch your glasses enough your hat your face your nose people will be like this guy's weird but I'm into what he's doing. Yeah so I should touch my face. I mean that's what I do. I don't even know why I'm doing it. I touch my glass on three mics so much I it annoyed me and I didn't even know I was doing it. Yeah I mean I watch videos of myself and I think oh man stop waving so much but when I'm up there it feels fun I'm into it you know that's how I get physical with it. Go on get physical with it. Yeah where are you from? I am from Alabama a town called Opalike Alabama I live in Nashville Tennessee and Dusty Slay is a fake show business named to Sound Southern right? No it's the real deal I'll tell you this it's a little on my government paperwork my name is listed as Dustin but no one in my family ever called me Dustin even my parents so I'm like is it really my name if no one ever called me that they just wrote it down. And why why they do if they had no intention of calling you Dustin? My mom says I was named after a character on a soap opera named Dusty and my dad says I was named after the wrestler Dusty Rhodes so I don't know where they came up with Dustin. What's great is neither one of them are especially classy. No absolutely not. Like from the soaps or from wrestling either way you're in Alabama. I think it'd be hard press to find a classy Dusty. I can't think of one but go ahead and write on it in the comments if you can think of a classy Dusty. I mean Dusty no. George Strait had a movie called Pure Country his his name was Dusty I mean that's like you know that's Texas classy I think. So you're you have my favorite joke about country music I don't like country music I'm not like I don't hate it just doesn't work on me and I do a thing where instead of if I cut to the joke it'll get copyright flagged so I have a new custom where I I made Brian Regan just do old bits and I would like you please if you may it wasn't too good for Brian Regan so let people know about the country music. Well I'll tell you I mean the fact that you like that joke I already liked it but I was like oh that makes me feel really good about the joke that I specifically liked it. Yeah because I figured you weren't a country music fan but I say you know a good country song can have you reminiscing about times you never had like I never went to the lake growing up my family wasn't like a lake family but I hear a country song about the lake I'm like yeah I remember that you know what I mean and that's it's like it's like that with a lot of country there's a Joe Diffie song where he talks about home where I guess he's describing his home and his and I listen to it and it makes me think about my childhood even though it was nothing like mine like he says home was an easy chair with my daddy there and I'm like my parents were divorced you know my dad might have had a easy chair but it wasn't at our house yeah you know yeah it might have been in his mistress's house but it sure as hell wouldn't yeah for you yeah and it's like so I mean my my life much I liked my childhood a lot but it's like you listen to these country songs and it's like it just just describes this great family what's funny is I could I grew up not country at all and I'm a coastal elite kind of and I was like yeah country music does that yeah where it just that guitar it's like hypnotic and it makes you believe that you you got a girl that got just all the shit that all the country and you I got a pickup truck and I wear boots and I don't yeah and yeah it's a vibe and you get into it yes maybe more than any other genre that's why a lot of new country I feel like is losing that vibe right it's something about a fiddle and a steel guitar that really brings it in and we're not doing a lot of that these days what is what's new country sound like I don't know I feel like all music sounds the same now like it all sounds like a Japanese video game to me yeah all genres are like the same now it's just different accents yep you you make a good point um Alabama so when did you start doing stand-up I moved to Charleston South Carolina when I was 21 beautiful city I love it I love it I did a show there one night it was like an enchanted it's so great I moved there when I was 21 fresh out of a trailer park uh it's a very classy city I had a hard time adjusting I started doing improv and what's the name of the improv theater 99 I think I did a show there I bet so yeah if you've been there I bet you've done theater yeah real small place yeah above a bicycle shop it's a country song and this is actually no this is the real thing it could be but Charleston is such a and I did I did improv I did stand up a little bit back then but I was drinking a bunch and really party and getting into a vibe and then so I quit comedy and then in 2008 started doing it again when I was about 26 and I felt like I when I was 21 I was trying to make up all these things I was trying to make up all these cliched southern things I was wearing overalls I was doing no shoes I mean this was you know I had no idea what was going on my whole you literally wearing overalls with no shoes oh yeah my first time ever doing stand-up I went on stage and overalls no shoes uh you know I was trying to you know and not even that layering the cable guys taking it that far but I was trying I mean no shoes is un is incredible it really would you ever make your feet dirtier no no but I mean you know you're walking around with something because this was like the music farm in Charleston which all the rock bands would come there at the time so just walking on that floor is sure I mean that's Walmart feet immediately you know but a cute case of Walmart feet yeah well I want to know about the because it's not really on here well I guess it is on here oh yeah substance abuse so and drugs and alcohol will ding it all right what was the what was the premise of all the drinking drugs because I and not like there needs to be other than just like that's what you it seemed like you should do well I think you know out of high school I was like you know we we grew up in a kind of small town but right next to Auburn University right so you had this I don't know we just felt like we had this access to different drugs you know so we got into acid a bit right out of high school and we would just we did that a lot there was quite a crew of us doing it none of you guys go to college yeah some of us went to college I mean most of us were you know we graduated high school but we weren't really doing a college thing right I mean you didn't graduate like by a lot you weren't no we were you know we were happy that it happened you know it well you know and you know and not to throw my sisters under the bus they they're 10 years older than me and kind of had a different life but you know I was the first one of my mom's kids to graduate high school my two older sisters got GEDs so you know so it was a real celebration just a diploma and but yeah I mean it's just like you know you you just get bored in a in a small time and this is not a tiny town but you get bored and and and like you know we just kind of you know there was a couple of private school kids one guy he actually did go to college I think he's a rocket scientist out in this area now very smart guy but he was the biggest drug guy of the whole crew you know what does that look like every day he's doing drugs or it's like I don't know I wasn't around but he could get the best stuff I mean the worst experiences I had on acid came from stuff he gave me you know yeah well he didn't give it you know but uh you know but just you know we didn't know what we were doing you know there's no there's no regulation at all you're just getting things and I would also it sounds like this is before the internet oh yeah and you can't express to people how little there was to do before the internet it's so true it's there was fucking I mean 70s 80s not like I was alive in the I was whatever social in the late 80s 90s and there was nothing to do it was like you it was like we were all shipwrecked and did we're just in this land and had nothing to do we didn't have phone we just walk around and go what's going on let's go see if anything's happening over there yeah I mean we would stay up real late and go to Walmart you know and you know four or five in the morning and just you know play in the toy section because there's nothing to do yeah and we would drive around we would you know as the sun started to come up we'd all be on acid driving around and we'd be the only car out there on the road I remember driving biting the steering wheel as you know we're just out of our minds did you ever get arrested for it I never no I mean I did get arrested one time but it was like of all the times that was like the least I should have been arrested for you know I mean there were times or you told the cops that right you should have been here last week yeah yeah I mean it's like if I'd gotten pulled over on on acid I mean who knows what that would have been like I might have blew the cops mind you might have changed all the police work yeah if you've said it right yeah what were your asset experiences like I mean it's mostly you know like you say I mean you know we're sitting around listening to Pink Floyd watching old SNL VHS tapes staring at our own faces Will Ferrell we had Chris Farley and Adam Sandler great just that kind of stuff we're just sitting around you know this you know making little fires and you know we got I got a videotape of us doing it one night but this it's not really that exciting of a video it's just four or five dudes in a house yeah looking at the guy sitting on the floor two guys on the floor yeah you got your under overalls on no no I'm I think you know the overalls that's part of trying to make it now my dad wears overalls every day of his life so it's not totally made up but you know that was part of me trying to make up what is the appeal of overalls by the way just do you know what I mean like all right so your dad wears them why do you think he wears them you get a lot of pockets you got different things like don't you lose shit though if you have that many but I guess you wear it every day yeah I mean my dad has you have a front pocket right here yeah he used to keep his chewing tobacco and a small pistol in there and I think now we're just literally a small pistol oh yeah did he ever take it out not not he's never had to use it that I know about yeah but you know it's in there he's taking it out to show me that he has it in there you know we were in a waffle house and I was and he my dad kept saying something about this guy with a lot of tattoos in there and I was like you know you got to chill out that guy may have a gun and he goes me too you know and then it shows it to me great yeah does it make you more hungry or less hungry I was pretty indifferent to it you know I don't think I really thought anything about it you know the southern culture of guns as someone who hasn't didn't grow up there and has so little experience with guns it's just like a thing that you get used to yeah I mean it never like I I don't even know if it's a thing you have to get used to you just kind of grow up with it and you don't even think about it like I took hunter safety courses you know I'm a pretty good shot but you know we did we also learned to like not play with guns yeah you know like my dad had a gun he may still have it he had like a you know the gun belt hung around his bedpost with a gun in it like my whole childhood and we just knew plus the overall pistol oh yeah I mean we just knew not to mess with it wasn't locked he had some guns in a cabinet but no safe you know this is a funny thing of like why have if you've got one on your bedpost and one in the in the in the front pocket what are the what are the shelf well you don't sleep in the overalls you know so well no that's what I'm saying yeah I got I see that I'm accounted for that that's why he's got it next to the bed yeah what are the what are the the showcase guns for you mean like in a cabinet yeah you know you'll have the rifles and shotguns for hunting okay so you know you're not really show well I guess you are showing them off you want you know you want other hunters that come over to know what you're working with I got a home video of my dad I think this was my dad like he got a video camera and was trying to in case he got the guns got stolen but it's like him showing every gun reading off the serial number reading the brand I mean it's a whole video going through the whole thing and is he proud or is it just like this is informational I think a little of both I mean he's definitely proud he's like look at this thing so it's a funny it's I mean I get it but I it also the thing that no one ever there was a reddit thread the other day about killing a home intruder what it's like to kill a home intruder it's a joke I've never been able to do was so if someone breaks into my house I have to shoot them and then we just have to sit there and wait till the cops arrive for probably 10 minutes and is it does it become like a small talk situation like what some what made you pick you're just sitting there and then there's I mean the in the in the reddit thread there was things about like little kids and it just seems like I just take my TV I don't want to kill someone yeah take my TV I don't give a shit yeah I mean it's it's a wild thing I mean I you know my dad has never had to shoot anyone I've never shot anyone I you know I've gone hunting you know I've killed small animals when I was younger but I've never killed a deer I went hunting a few years back and as I was sitting there I was thinking if a deer actually came could I shoot it at this point and I don't know if I could I like animals I like nature and I understand hunting I like eating meat but I just don't know that I could do it well that happens in war a lot yeah that there are guys that sign up enlist get drafted go and then I think World War two they were just shooting in the air because they didn't want to kill people oh yeah which is like there's a there's also a statistic about in terms of uh repeat murderers someone if you've killed someone once there's a 1% chance you'll do it again wow so 99% of people are like did it don't no thank you and I get I did it once and I don't think that wasn't helpful for me yeah for my life overall yeah I couldn't I don't think I could live with it I accidentally killed a groundhog in my backyard and I still with a gun with a well with a trap I was trying to get something else and it got the groundhog what were you trying to get well I was trying I wasn't I was trying to trap the groundhog and take it away and question it yeah well I just wanted to get rid of it it was eating my garden I wanted to get it in the cage and then it died in there how long was it in there for I don't know I feel bad about it I was no it is well weird even killing even mousetraps is a bit like I don't love this process no I left and I accidentally left the cage set up the trap set up and it died in there and I it's I still feel bad about it like I wanted it to stop eating my vegetables but I didn't want to kill it no and I you know I tried to save a turtle the other day it was a big snapping turtle and I couldn't get it off the road because it kept trying to snap at me so I was like I'm gonna go home can you just go up behind it or they they're pretty well they get it they're pretty fast yeah so I was like and they have those necks that like oh yeah dart so I was like I'm gonna go home and get a bucket and I'm gonna get this thing out of the road and by the time I got back someone had ran over the turtle and killed it yeah and now you have a relationship with the turtle and I yeah I'm like I almost had you yeah and you just go fuck it's happening all the time all around us all the time yeah for millions of years animals eating being eaten eat just over and over and over and over and over yeah there's an Instagram nature is metal yeah I'm just I watch it but I'm I do too oh man but most of the time it's like how it's pro animal yeah nature is metal it really is about how a lot of it's just about like can you believe how fast this cheetah is yes the one the cheetah in the savannah and abrica the one that's like the football play where you can't believe how fast the it's like a trail and there's there's a people in the van or whatever and you can't believe how fast it is oh yeah it's that's the metalist of all the metal okay so it's funny I don't know where you are with drugs and alcohol now but I'm in the spiritual use of drugs or at least that's what I tell myself yeah but I would argue it is now it's a god experience every time I do it and not like a god I saw god like it's a genuine god connection are you have you evolved in any way around the drug use well I don't do anything now I kind of I was doing weed for a long time I like to say doing yeah but it's cool yeah I was doing it for a long time and just recently I quit and not for any reason I just was like I kind of was just taking a break and I'm like I don't know I feel fun I've been I've just been doing it and I actually you know I got a joke about it on the special but weed is too strong for me now yeah that that's a good job where I'm like I just do a little bit of it and now I'm freaking out and it's not every time but it's enough to where I'm like it's just not that fun and again it's the the weed that used to be available was garbage oh so bad like it was like no one knew how to do it no one knew how to grow like by the time it got to people it was junk yeah I mean you had to know a friend yeah or just go we would just go to an area of town where we knew people were selling weed and you just drive up and then they come up to your car and you give them the money and sometimes they would just have it or other times they'd be like all right I gotta go get it and then sometimes they come back sometimes they didn't there was no quality control no and then like you know even if you get robbed in this neighborhood the next time you need weed and don't have it you're like well let's go again let's see let's see if it works out statistically we shouldn't get robbed this time but yeah and it never was like I had Rob would you get robbed with guns no I just would get robbed by them just not oh they just would go like I'm gonna go around now I did have some friends that went late at night on acid to get weed to this area and would this be a black area or white area uh it could be either a lot of this particular one was a black area yeah and the guy stuck a gun in his side and said just give me the money and we're talking 25 dollars yeah and and and so instead of my friend giving him the money he just took off in the truck and the guy started shooting and my friend threw my other friend's head down in the just threw it down in the floorboard and a bullet hit the back glass and then went through the front glass and then if you sit in the truck after that like where the bullet went through would have been right through his head had my friend not thrown him down and it's just wild so your friend's the one who hit the gas yes and knew like action movie style yeah thrust your friend down yeah and I mean he you know it's you know it's his fault that they were in that situation in the first place yeah but I'm saying he saved his life that's incredible and also it's 25 dollars right maybe it could don't shoot like don't shoot is that worth it and is it worth it to drive away none of them are worth everyone ever I they're all getting f apps yes like none of it was it was the whole thing was wrong did the acid mushrooms anything a little bit of mushrooms did any of it change your outlook because because you have a cock-eyed point of view as do I as if any decent comedian just you just don't see things correctly yes or you see them you don't see them way you're supposed to you see them way you see them and you can't undo it and that's what absolutely that's what comedy is but did the drugs have any effect on that I don't know I mean you know we did think that we were all you know that was the whole thing with acid back then that's what they would say you're expanding your mind yeah you would say we're opening other parts of the brain and we don't know if that's true I don't know if that's true but that's what we would think we're opening new parts to our brain so you know we would you know we loved like taking acid and listening to a Pink Floyd album and just thinking we understood the world for a little while and then but it's so funny because you don't you're not you're just listening to Pink Floyd it's like everyone listens to the same eight things yes and lining it up with Wizard of Oz and all those goofy things all those like folk tales but we listen to disc one of the wall and we analyze that like we because you know there's no internet so there's no there's no where you can't just google it and go well what's this mean what's this about we didn't have any we just had the disc we might even been a burned disc we didn't have the album covers so we're just listening and we're just analyzing this thing to death and we you know we just felt so smart we felt like we were just uncovering the world out here beyond that was it what was it like to be on acid as you well i don't know i don't know you know that's been so long ago this was you know over 20 years ago when i was doing this but um i don't know it just felt wild you know i i had you know i had a good childhood but i you know i grew up fairly sheltered in a way like i went to the city school but i grew up in the country right so it's like you all those jokes about the trailer park right i grew up in a trailer park uh which wasn't that fun so not sure why they call it a park you know yeah my parents are divorced so i live with my mom in the trailer park and then i live with and then uh you know every other weekend i was with my dad on a farm uh but even the trailer park was in the country like it was a small i don't know 1015 trailer park 10 trailer 15 trailer trailer park yeah uh on a dirt road woods to either side of us so it's like that's what i did my whole childhood was just explore the woods and did you realize like i think differently at any point oh yeah i mean i i felt like i'm for sure like the weird kid of my friends but not weird in a way that i'm not cool yeah if that makes sense no i don't i'm weirdly i mean people aren't picking on me saying you're weird but you know we used to play i remember we used to play like horse you know the basketball but we we came up with all these different style horde i don't remember any of them but we had a notebook and it was like all right you do this and then you do that you know it's like so we're just always creating something and you you were like spearheading it or yeah it's not as an observation that i i actually think is very true he's like when i was in high school everyone was funny and then they stopped and i just kept doing it where it's you guys are riding a horse you're like have a ledger oh yeah which is funny and weird and then they all become whatever they become and you go well i'm gonna keep riding horse yeah i mean of those kids i mean it's like you know one you know it's like one guy's an electrician i'm still in touch with him another guy i don't know what he does but you know he just he's regular yeah and then another guy uh is dead and uh um so it's like uh you know everybody goes their own paths but yeah nobody's still creating horse except for me it's now it's now streaming a creating horse jesse slide okay so you just so the drug thing was just like purely recreational and purely time-filling and not even necessarily character building or just like i don't know it's just nothing to do let's do that yeah i remember my friend uh he was smoking a joint outside my car it's my best friend and i'd not seen him in a long time he came he moved away and then he came to visit me and i just hung out with him while he smoked his joint i was like you know i'm like i don't mess around with it i don't you know i'm not judging you but i don't do it and then we hung out and then you know like a year later maybe not even you know i'm now i'm drinking you know you get into drinking at the first time i ever smoked weed was when i was drinking and then you just i don't know things just start to unfold you're like well drinking i did that that was fun i did weed and that was fun now it's like let's try these other things yeah when they call weed a gateway drug they totally ignore beer oh yeah alcohol it's like that's the gateway drug they sell it fucking everywhere yeah and and it leads to no one jumps alcohol to go to yeah no the first time i had weed i was drunk at a party at my own house and some guys were smoking weed out so was everyone yeah no one's ever just you that's how it go that's the that's the that's the school that's like seventh grade is weed and then eighth grade it i'm seventh grade is alcohol and then eighth grade is weed yeah and see i was late to the game especially for a you know a trailer park kid i mean you think you know trailer park in alabama i was you know drinking in sixth grade but i'm like you know i'm 17 before i ever got drunk the first time and but i was like this is great like it just did you like the feeling of alcohol yeah i think what i still miss about alcohol is you stop drinking yeah i haven't drank in 12 years but it's like what uh and i don't really consider myself an alcoholic i was just like this is a becoming a problem for me but i um i like that when you're drinking like your your brain is like there are no consequences i can say whatever i want i can and it's like this super free feeling like you're free from your mind you're free from being like i shouldn't say this or oh you know you're just free to do whatever you want to do you know but the problem is that you know there are consequences i mean to codetown and rumsel freedom is messy freedoms untidy and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things yeah yeah well it is it is and i mean i loved it and that's like cute britney spear's knife dancing yes freedoms untidy and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things you want to free okay absolutely she's gonna knife dance yes and you want to be free who knows what you're gonna say and who knows who you're gonna say it to and how they're gonna take it when they're drunk because two people that don't experience consequences anything can happen people piss all kinds of places people puke all people fuck the wrong people they don't all of those things yes i mean i would drink i mean several times i would be drinking and i would go out back or go to the bathroom throw up and then come back and keep going you know yeah i wasn't making myself throw up but i'm like oh i had mimosas all morning and now i'm doing whiskey it's like i like when drunk people blame their methods you know like you know what i did what my mistake was that i did wick liquor it's like no it's all poison yes yes the sequence of poison you're gonna puke no matter what so yeah and and i was like it's like i read about this type of alcohol like i still don't consider myself that but i it's like when alcohol gets in your blood it's like you're like ready to go and that's me i'm fine without alcohol but if i did if i had a beer i feel like immediately i would be like oh this is what i've been missing let's do that yeah and do you kind of keep yourself from it because you just know it'll it'll yeah that's exactly right you will hit the gas and there's no break when i stopped doing it my life got so much better and i'm like if i just i don't even want to chance it i was in a church one time and most of the churches i went to growing up when you would do communion you wouldn't do it every sunday but you when when they would do it it would be grape juice i went to a church after i quit drinking just a few months i'd never been there they did communion took a shot and it was pretty big and it was wine and i sat there for a minute in that church like am i gonna go to brunch now after this i mean like i was like i mean it was wild jesus are we doing this yeah i mean it was wild father god and it passed but i was like it was scary for a minute i was like i'm about to go well i know people that did that drug addicts like great gerardo like great gerardo was the kind of had the kind of brain that if you added once he added cocaine to it and i didn't even know gerardo well but i could even when he was sober it was so kinetic and then when if you add i think it was just like like alive in a way that he couldn't fathom and with alcohol i feel like that's the same way with certain kinds of people oh yeah there aren't even the trouble isn't isn't like sloppy and all that it's like no i'm so activated it's i'd be a sucker not to drink yeah i mean that's like it's like if i drink i'm like this if i get high i go i go down and i'm like you know it's that's why weed was never as much of a problem for me because i i can't do comedy high so uh you know on days that i am doing a show i don't smoke weed you know maybe till after but it just keeps me from doing it all day every day but drinking of course i can do comedy drinking so yeah yeah mint mobile ads are easy for me because i'm i'm living this life on average takes about 30 days for a person break their new year's resolution so if saving money was on your 2024 list your odds aren't looking that great they're chief luckily i have a hundred percent guaranteed way to save you money this year just switched to mint mobile right now mint mobile has wireless plans starting at $15 a month that's unlimited talk text and data for 15 bucks a month i do it i'm living the life guys i'm saving probably a hundred and fifty 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mintmobile.com slash neal additional taxes fees and restrictions apply see mint mobile for details okay and then what's your really what's the gods where are you with god and don't be shy cuz you're an ally no i mean i've always been a christian um but when i quit drinking in 2012 i really like started to read the bible in a way that i had never done before and i just feel like i was opened up to new things and i just it just sent me on a journey really to you know work on myself and uh um you know and just uh you know try what do you think the theme as someone who i've grew up catholic but i haven't read the bible what do you think the theme or the point of the bible is like it's like i go i i've never read what is it what's it about well i think it you know i think it's many things uh you know and it's like i feel like you know a lot of christians today only go new testament right and i feel like yeah obviously jesus is a big uh is is is the major uh point uh you know it's like but i i don't know i feel like i'll screw it the old testament's like more hand to hand like whispering in people's ears and kill people and smiting right but see i'm into a lot of old testament stuff i feel like jesus did away with all that stoning and he's like you know because he says to jesus was like new age yeah he's like he says uh he who is without sin cast the first stone right yeah which to me says well none of us are able to cast a stone right here so we're all guilty so let's not be trying to stone people anymore correct but you know i like a lot of old testament stuff i don't eat pork i don't eat shellfish i gave that stuff up i don't do a lot of you know traditional holidays i try to you know keep kind of biblical holidays like Passover and whatnot i'm not Jewish but i you know i and and i don't think that you have to be to do those things do you what do you when you said work on yourself because of obviously there's no parts of the Bible that i like work on yourself but what are the things so obviously judgment for cast the first stone um what things do you feel like you you it made you work on you know i just feel like it can you know cause you to uh treat people better because you know that you know god is always watching you right so you're like uh and and and not from a necessarily a fear sense but like you know we we act differently if someone's watching us as opposed to not watching us and i just feel like if you know that god is always watching you then you uh you know you're like i'm gonna be a better person yeah you know i try to be nice to people when people don't see you know in a way where i'm not trying that to me is the best repercussion of religion is i call it super cop it's like god is super cop yeah and like when they they say it's cause of all wars and it's also the cause of people not getting punched in the face or cars stolen or candy yeah or merchant whatever like right yeah and also you know and i feel like you know i it just helps me realize that everybody is going through something so it's like even when people and it's hard i mean you know i'm not perfect i get irritated out here too but it's like when people do approach me with an attitude or give me an attitude i try to have a you know i go i don't know what they're going through yeah i remember when i was a kid uh saying something to someone at mcdonald's like you know well that's you know or not even to them but just to myself like well that's why you're working at mcdonald's and my sister was like you don't know why they're working here you don't know what their circumstance is and that always resonates with me too and i feel like that yeah also you're wearing overalls with their feet right right it's like you know it's like who are we to judge anybody you know and that that's just how i try to live my life and you know and i think um that helps me i think the it helps me to and also it's like you know it's a dark world out here in a lot of ways and you know there's hope that when i leave this world i go to a better place that this is not everything to me it's a it would be a little sad to think that what what we have here and not that my life is not good but that what we have here is is everything that we have these incredible kind of spirits living inside these bodies that no other animal seems to have i mean you could argue that dogs and cats having a horse that you've been riding for a long time the possum that you caught what do you catch right uh what did i say uh uh well we thought it was a cat you know right though but he i heard he specifically had and the turtle semi turtle had a great person and was sent in oh yes yes but you didn't do it in time so but it's like you know these things you don't you never come across like a turtle village where they're like living in houses drinking tea you know let me let me push back on that that's not the sign of a of a they have their village they have their their ponds they have their communities right i don't buy just because like well where are your books turtles like that that doesn't i'm i'm vegan so i don't eat animals just because i don't need to i just feel like i don't need to someone did a joke a long time ago where they go i think it was dan crone and he was at he wrote for county's comic and he goes he goes what did we what did chickens do to us that we're doing this to them like at this what we're just rubbing it in like let's do nuggets of them just this sadistic ass approach to all that but my my experience with having not read the bible and i got here from basically draw iowaska and dmt and mdma is that it isn't literal i don't take this literally anymore and it's not actual it's like almost a metaphor or something for an actual i don't think we have any sense of what's actually happening yeah i mean that well that could very well be true maybe we don't you know and i but i think but i do believe that we are infinite spirits caught in these bodies and because you can remember as someone not didn't even know you you've been you since your first fucking memory yeah and you you know and and i i i wonder sometimes if not for pictures or or mirrors if we would even know that we've changed right it's like because you know you're just living your life you think about yourself i i remember you i have i have a great memory and i remember things from my childhood very vividly i mean i'm sure everyone does but i i just feel like i you know i'll tell a joke or i'll say something on a podcast and a friend will message me and say man i can't believe you remember that yeah you know uh but it's like yeah i mean i think you know i i agree that i mean all the that turtle very well could have had a home that he was making his way back to yeah right but i just think that we're different as humans i think we're uh so much different and i just like to think that you know when we die it's not just over for us what do you think of nature because i now think of nature as and again i did this is all from i believe that every religion has the right uh idea which is that there is a central creation force and um this is all an expression of that yeah for sure i mean i'm a respecter of all religions because i you know i who am i to you know i i grew up you know i've changed my beliefs but i've stayed in the same religion right essentially but uh you know i don't know what to tell someone that grew up a certain a joke i tried that wasn't funny enough where i was like when you hear jewish people describe their god muslim people describe their god and christians describe their god it's like i think you're talking about the same guy it's like a police description with slight differences yeah like what are the odds that this is a different thing individually and then if you look at islam and judieism half of their holy sites are identical right they're like the the most the temple on the rock is this it's 300 yards from the muslim sacred so it's like you guys it's all the same person or or yeah and i don't you know it's supposedly all stems from abraham in the bible so um yeah so it is yeah you know or it's it is that in i don't know if the caron incorporates abraham as well but like it's the same thing you're just describing it in a different way i don't know that's why i say supposedly i don't know but you know the idea being that abraham two had two sons isaac and ishmael yeah and that's what someone told me i don't know that ishmael would have islam would have come from him and and islams from i don't know but but it's all like okay maybe we got the different names but this is the same we're all talking about the same thing and to me all these arguments and fights and wars become about real estate and human power yeah i mean even you know christian denominations they're not necessarily fighting each other but you know they they they get into fights and split and that's why you have baptist methodist non-denominational you have so many uh you know all all i guess deriving from catholicism it seems silly even like uh i've gotten to know a lot of well i don't i don't know them but i've interacted with a lot of amish menonite people how come well we have a lot of that in tennessee and i have a cabin that i have built uh in a smaller part of tennessee where a bit built by menonites and so it's like apparently are they cheaper or more or less cheap more expensive around i think they're more expensive than amish is that what you mean or just regular i think cheaper than just regular stuff cheaper cheaper yeah great but i now i don't know if you buy some amish furniture now that's a different well they're charging they got that oven right yeah yeah that's but but like you know i i was told like menonite split off from the church because they wanted to be a little more extreme and then amish split from the menonites because they wanted to be even more extreme and i like menonite uh amish you think that's the right amount of extreme i think so menonites can do they do tv they don't do tv or radio apparently but they do electricity okay that's pretty cool i mean i you know it's like we talk talk at the beginning of this about not having the internet and how boring things were and i agree um but in a way i'm like sometimes i'm like do we just have too much do we have too much entertainment a million percent have too much and i have a new theory about what western life or whatever modern life that it's we all have these decadent emotions and expectations of everything because we're all everything's catered to us so yes we all have these decadent sexual needs and decadent emotional needs and decadent like food and just all this like no i want it i want is it available get boop get bring it to me read me a book it's all so insane yeah it is i was uh at my hotel this morning and then i turned on the shower and like it took a minute for the hot water to come you were furious i was like come on i'm gonna fucking call yeah i mean you know it wasn't so extreme but i had to check myself to where it's like you know hot water is coming and i'm gonna get an amazing shower yep and then i'm gonna put on clean clothes if i don't like those clothes i'll put on the other clothes that i have yes which are dirty kind of yes they're dirty from the airplane that you were on a lot of people haven't flown yes well planes i mean what a wild experience that is i mean i got on a flight last night from tennessee and in four hours i was here and that would have been a lifelong journey that people might not ever come back from yeah years ago yeah like it would have been five months horse they might not even made it they might not have and then when they got there they're probably never coming back well yeah once you get out here yeah you've been here yeah but yeah no it was a shit was real different and we have it real good and we're so spoiled completely spoiled about everything all the time yeah and i we sound a million years old saying this but i i promise you appreciate what you have because it's incredible yeah i was riding uh in an uber one time with a an indian man and he was telling me that he's from india and he was saying that the the part of india he's from he's like uh you have to get up at like four or five in the morning because that's when they turn the water on and he's like you got to get all your buckets ready to fill it up because if you miss it then you just don't have water that day i was talking to somebody last night about ai artificial intelligence you know within five years it's going to be we're all going to have our heads hooked up to whatever and there are going to be a billion people on earth going hey do you think i could just have a toilet before we go to this brain thing do you think i could live through the period where i have running water and a fucking toilet can i just experience that quickly before i jump to this weird ass singularity like we're so separated in terms of our experiences today and then there are guys india has rolling blackouts every day electricity every day not someday when it's rainy every day and work and you're like i'm gonna fucking sue this hotel hey hi neil brennan here hey um how scrupulously are you checking your bills are you like you just kind of like yeah and then yeah that's my impression of you checking your bills my point is if you check them quickly and and you kind of just go like yeah i don't know i the end you or you see a subscription that maybe you thought you canceled that you didn't and you then you forget and then you get caught up you start listening to your podcast you know how you get rocket money is the thing for you the other day i got charged for i can't say what it was but uh i subscribed a long time ago and uh i forgot about it it was an annual charge and it's one of the things where i'll do the sample and then i'll be like i'll cancel then i forget to cancel whatever long story 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slash neal that's rocket money dot com slash neal rocket money dot com slash neal all right here's some more blocks work-life balance that's interesting to me well i you know i i'm my wife used to do comedy we met due in comedy she's from canada i was living in charleston south carolina we met at an open mic in new york city that you signed up and they gave you how long have you live in new york far i never lived there i spent a month there i have a i had a friend there his had a room come open i wanted to spend a little time i said would your landlord let me rent that for one month and he got his landlord to do it so i just went for a month uh i had saved up money and i just went uh and just did open mics every day i mean in charleston you you were lucky to get two open mics a week yeah so i was like to me i was like is it still like that uh maybe worse wow may you know because we had a nice community for a while i don't know what it's like but it could be better could be worse but it's not much better but i was like i want to do one open mic every day for 30 days i mean to me this was a wild idea i realized people are doing and i ended up doing 47 uh in a month and i was like i was just like this is amazing yeah but i met my wife at one of those open mics we didn't start dating then but we stayed in contact um and so she was doing comedy for a long time she moved down here we got married we never planned to have kids and then in 2018 she stopped you specifically didn't want to have kids yeah we talked about not having kids what were your reasons i don't know i feel like the world's always going to end at some point and we're uh you know just what you're talking about all our brains are about to be hooked to computers and i just thought why would i bring kids into the world right and then uh 2018 my wife stopped doing comedy uh the road was too much for her she she was great at comedy and she was really booked up but the road was too much she just didn't want to do it anymore yeah and then covid happened and we're like just kind of stuck at home and for whatever reason we decided that we wanted to have kids uh like and it still makes no sense to me that my whole worry this whole time was that things were gonna get really bad and then like when it's the worst it's ever been in my life i just felt like i should have kids and my wife was into it we we just i don't know something just changed in us and so we had our daughter in 2021 and then i had a son in uh i don't know 2023 uh so they're about two years apart and and so now i'm like uh my career was going well in 2018 i mean things were really happening uh that's when it started to happen and then in 2020 it was going great other than the fact that what was i see because i had no sense of until i signed on Netflix i didn't know anything about you well i was just working the road you know just out here that's why i moved to national headlining clubs in the just on the road and selling out or just like not selling out but but you know hitting my hitting my my guarantees got it but it's like in you know in 2018 i did uh just for laughs uh new faces unwrapped had a great set uh i i got a i signed a development deal with abc for a shell that never got made but i made a little money great uh and then i got that experience which was cool to write a script um obviously not good enough but no i i think it was great uh but the uh and then i did the tonight show that that year for the first time which really did a lot for me and i got you know management and agents and and then suddenly rooms that i couldn't even i did see on the tonight show yeah rooms that i couldn't even get into feature now i'm headlining so things are going well and then in 2019 i got varieties top 10 comics to watch right felt really fun and then here we go 2020 boom all stopped uh but it was a nice break for me at first i was like this is really great i've been traveling for for i don't know at this point six years straight every weekend if i can i'm going out doing comedy so it was a nice break yeah but and then thing you know things came back started going again and then we had the kids and so the career's going really well but now it's like the best it's ever been and so my career yeah and it's like but now i have two kids and i want to be a good dad i don't want to be so focused on you know my career that i i'm not there to raise my kids did you feel a change i've been told that when you have a kid a part of your brain opens up that you didn't even know existed 100 i mean when i had my daughter um i i don't know that it was all that real to me until my and i and i didn't stand down and watch the baby come out but i stood at my wife's shoulder and then i saw this human being come out that we had created uh and i was i was changed in that moment where i'm like oh now i gotta be a better dude i gotta be a better guy i gotta i have to live now it's funny how did that compare to the bible well you know the me do you know what i mean and just in terms of like the bible it's sort of esoteric it's sort of ethereal or it's kind of like you should you might want to and then this like i think the bible was morally better uh and they they my daughter was like uh just like uh i gotta take care of my health better i have to you know uh you know just take things more serious now i have to i can't just sit at home and watch youtube all day i need to like now i have to really get in gear as a as a man to take care of my daughter yeah because you know you know they say like you know women's uh example of you know their first example of a man you know is their dad or whatever i don't know what the expression is but it's like yeah i mean i want um you know uh my daughter to expect to be treated a certain way yeah so i feel like i'm the guy that needs to show her how to pay for all for dinners and stuff yeah when she starts dating she'll expect that exactly okay so the thing about work life balance i've been just been thinking a lot recently about basic gender differences is one of my areas yeah and the when you think about your performance as a man father how much of that is like i just need to earn well there is a part of that because i don't want my daughter to grow up poor i mean right but i'm saying like it how much of it's emotional and how much of it is just practical i need x amount of dollars i don't care how i get it i'm gonna fucking get it for these kids i don't know i don't think there's so much of that okay i think i i don't think there is any number figure on it i'm not necessarily number figure but like safety yeah i mean it's like it is like yeah i mean i want to uh you know make sure they have you know uh you know i don't know i want to you know i want like my house my mortgage to be paid off so we don't lose our house ever like if something crazy were to happen we wouldn't lose our house and they're they're always going to have food and things like that so i want to make you know the right kind of investments uh to to ensure that that's that's in place but i but but you know another thing is like i just want to stay married to my wife i grew up with divorced parents and at even in i'm 41 it still affects my life like you know we can't i still can't do holidays with my with my parents together and now they're getting older it's like this year i took my dad to my mom's Thanksgiving and my mom had i have two older sisters that are my mom's kids not my dad's right so uh so i took my dad to that Thanksgiving first time ever first time ever and i got them agree to to do it why'd you do it well i did it because you know both of my parents are getting old right and i'm like i want to spend Thanksgiving with both of them but now i have a busy schedule i have my own things going on i have my own kids i can't do two Thanksgiving's like i've done my whole life yeah so i'm like i need you guys to just be together but it was so weird for me i was like because i don't know they can't be cool with each other yeah like my they're not fighting but my whole life it's like they're always like i have this thing where it's like i feel like uh my problem with my parents is that they both wanted me they both wanted me like a lot of people have you know neglect issues where their parents are like pushing them off to the other one mine is like both my parents wanted me to be with them which is a different kind of tension yeah and so and rather than working it out yeah they worked it out through me where they would be like you know tell your dad you're gonna stay with me this weekend or my dad would be like tell your mom call your mom tell her you're gonna stay an extra dad and then and and then just instead of my mom knowing that my dad put me up to this and going yeah it's okay she would you know put the guilt on me and it's like this so it's like yeah that's still in me now so i show up my my daughter uh doesn't really have a lot to do with my dad she you know she doesn't see him that often but your daughter's three four she's two two and a half yeah so she you know she doesn't want to sit with my dad she doesn't want to do any of that with my dad he's you know kind of a stranger to her and she sees my mom more often so my dad came to visit me for two days my daughter would not hang out with him at all and then we all show up to my sister's house where my mom is and my daughter immediately runs up and gets in her lap and i'm like he didn't say anything but i know he saw it and it's just like and so i'm so i got that emotion in me i got guilt now for my daughter who doesn't have any of that guilt issue yeah she doesn't care at all if my dad when she hears his podcast right she doesn't care at all if my dad's feelings are hurt do you regret and trying to make it happen i don't regret it would you do it again i don't think i would do it again yeah unless i have it at my house if they all come to my house little different i feel like it's you know it was at my sister's house so i feel like i really put my my not on enemy territory i put my dad not on enemy territory right but like the word for it that not the not probably in a way game yes for sure okay so what do you how do you do so you feel guilty on the road or do you feel like like i wish there was another way to yeah i don't feel guilty on the road because i know it's my job yeah but it's like this week in particular right i'm come i've come into LA to do things like this i'm fortunate enough to have you know you let me do your podcast so um you know here i am i you know i have a few of you it was a tough decision really waited hard well i appreciate it you're welcome well i am happy to be here i mean this is really happy and you know but i'm you know i'm spending a couple extra days out out here in LA and then i fly to milwaukee where i'll do three days of comedy so now i'm gone for five days yeah so i think my daughter gets it uh a little bit she knows dad travels a lot but my son is an infant still and i think my son is like where's that guy that's here sometimes well you know they don't have memories until they're like three yeah and i hope he doesn't even notice here's the thing you're still going to be on the road yes three four five years yes i guess it's just a matter of like it is an interesting thing where it's a new not a new phenomenon where men are like i would like to be around that i want to help make the kids be emotionally healthy whereas there is a big part of men that is there it's easy to just be like i'm just gonna earn and i'm a mule and i'm just gonna get out there i'm a beast of burden i'm trying to get the money for these babies yeah well yeah i mean absolutely i mean and you gotta do that yeah right it has to you know it's like if you're if you're home all the time then you probably don't have any money yeah you know yes because even you know even if you work from home like you may physically be in the house yeah but you're in your office or whatever yes so it's like you know you gotta go earn so i just try i just want to minimize that you know what do other people say about what do other comics say about it what do other or are they bad it does do you not care i i guess i i don't talk to enough people about it but i also don't really care because i i don't know i feel like i live differently than a lot of people in a lot of ways so i'm just like you know i just want to i like to analyze i like to see what's going on see how people are living their lives and see how it's you know it affects you have a lot of ambition or for your work stuff like where are your ambitions more uh the emotional safety and healthier kids or is it the i want to make it more i want to do bigger venues and i want to i don't know that i am so ambitious it's like i was a pesticide salesman uh i would go to lows and home depot stores and sell pesticides and tell people the punchline which you kind of we kind of figured then i don't know if you can tell that by looking at me but uh yeah oh yeah i don't know if you can tell that by looking at me yeah uh but uh you know and i started doing comedy as a hobby and then i won a competition in charleson i made a thousand bucks and then the next year and in between that one and the next competition i quit drinking and then by the next year i won the competition like by way more votes and it's like so i was like oh i maybe i got something here so i start trying to figure out how to make money doing comedy but i don't know if it was so much ambition as it was i hate the other job that i have and if i can make money doing this yeah i mean i always said i don't need to be famous if i can make a living doing this then that's better than what i was doing it's so it's a such a much better way to do it yeah just like just do you have a job that's better than selling pesticide not like regional a regional pesticide guy driving from parking lot to parking lot texting the guy that you're here yeah and then and then so and so it makes you see comedy in a in a health in a proportional way which is it's better than pesticide sales yeah i mean even when i was making less money because it was a good job right i had health insurance yeah i had a car allowance i had you know i had a same hair same beard same glasses i well i had this hair at one point i did try to professional it up for a bit uh you know i cut my hair tucked in the shirt sure wore a lot of khakis yep i was really trying to do it for a minute you know but i was also drinking a lot so what you had to do you would have to drive to the low store and then go inside and you had to call in on the lows phone to you know and to a system that way they knew you checked into that store you couldn't do it from your cell phone that was like the way to get yourself fired instantly if you called in from your cell phone okay but i would be so i had that part wrong but you did have i knew yes call in but i would be hung over so i would go show up call in on the lows phone and then go back out to my car and sit and smoke cigarettes and listen to the radio for an hour and then go back in you know oh so you were there so you didn't even have to you didn't you weren't there to sell to the store you were there to sell in the store yeah set up displays do things like that but it's like a lot of times you go in and you're like there's nothing really to do today this store is set up it looks i was i just spent three days at a lows last week on a commercial and it wasn't crowded yeah like tuesday wednesday thursday in the morning it's just not it's like it's just not the busy time yeah i mean i had it all mapped out i mean there was one store in a place called vidalia georgia where it was really far to get there for me and they had a great buffet basically behind the lows i would go clock in why it was a restaurant okay yeah it wasn't just some guy out there yeah so i would go clock in walk through the store go it looks good i would find some employee i would go you guys do a great job here i really appreciate it and then leave go to the buffet eat come back clock out go to the next door and did it matter that you hadn't sold any past side no no one in fact that store would prefer i didn't do anything in their store they were like we know what we want to do in here we don't want you messing up anything so i would so it'd be great great and then comedy is is better than that yes yes do you how are your nerves with comedy i actually don't really get nervous i mean despite how i move around and twitch and and and it just seems like i may have a nervous energy but i've done enough cool things now to where i'm like i don't really get that nervous i mean i do the i've done the grand old opry like 30 times and to me like as a lifelong country fan um to do the opry is huge and there's 4400 people in there uh when it's sold out did they is the opry the one that's downtown national that's the rhyman that's the old opry okay but even the new opry's been there since like the 70s uh but yeah i mean it's like this huge and i've done the rhyman which is also like the first time you do the rhyman a lot of nerves you do it several times you just get used to it even that you know i've done the tonight show i just did my fourth appearance on the tonight show and it's like the first time i think they thought they had made a mistake booking me because i was so nervous yeah but i this last time i did it i wasn't nervous at all i was like all right i've done this let's do it i'm happy to be here now on the other hand i did the seller to uh to prepare for the uh for for the tonight show and i still i'm still nervous there because it just seems like the coolest place actually the first time i did the comedy store and the only time i did the comedy store i i was in the main room and i tripped down that little step going out i was the first one no host no warm up i got five minutes and i tripped coming off that step wonderful but i still was able to recover and had a great set yeah it was awesome great but it's like i don't know i i found a way to use the nerves it's like if i am nervous the only thing that anyone can notice is that my voice if you know me really well you can tell in my voice i'm a little nervous yeah but other than that all the moves are still the same i may touch my glasses a bit more so you're so you seem like a pretty healthy guy i mean like in terms of values and uh but like perspective you seem like like yeah this is pretty going good you seem like a nice guy it's like well i'm just uh i'm very happy to be doing what i'm doing i i don't look at it as like look how far i've come well you don't seem to have an axe to grind where everyone gets in here it get moves out here to like grind axes like where to where's the axe where's the fucking the thing i can get my axe on and show everyone and prove and i'll you know i just think it went away when i quit drinking when i was in my 20s i feel like that was my my whole thing i had built up this idea that people in high school were one day they'll see you know and when i quit drinking i just i don't know i gained a whole new perspective and i don't think it's drinking for everyone right like i always talk about drinking i don't think drinking is a problem for everyone yeah right so i don't that's that's was my thing for other people it's weed for other people it's something else yeah me and my wife have the opposite thing my wife has a real problem with weed right she doesn't do it because she i mean like i can make a bag of weed last months i would do a little puff here and there my wife gets involved it's gone in a day uh but for me it's drinking yeah beer my wife will drink but we have beer in our fridge that's been there for months but if i'm involved there never was a liquor cabinet in my apartments because me and my buddies would buy a bottle of liquor and it's wide waste it's not going to be in the cabinet very well yeah we're gonna drink this that's why we bought it this is the cabinet yes right here exactly exactly um so but when i quit drinking i don't know i just felt like over time all that went away that by the time i i actually got something you know like a tonight show or jfl something that was really cool i wasn't like i'm gonna show people i'm like i i feel okay about who i am and uh just i feel good about this and then that's why it's like now i i feel like i only say positive things about my hometown i'm not like you know screw screw my home i'm like no i'm like i'm happy to have grown up there and i love to go back and visit my friends and uh i only want to say good things about where i grew up it's funny because you seem weirder on stage than you are offstage well it's like a kind of usually if someone's weird on stage they're fucking crazy weird off well comedy makes me weird i i like weird comedy like you know like a a neil hamburgers i saw neil hamburgers at the poor house in charleston uh years ago i had no idea what i was seeing my friend took me and uh i was so blown away by that that i was like if he can do that then i can do anything with comedy you know what i mean yeah and i love it like the the neil hamburgers hot february night album is one of my favorites i love i'm like this i can't tell if the audience hates him or if they love him well it's the similar thing where neil hamburgers can't really bomb yes because he's bomb he's already bombing right right so you can either join him or not yes but he's gonna go and bomb yes and he doesn't think it's going good he doesn't you don't get a sense that he has any idea what's happening yes of course he does but right but but it doesn't matter what the audience does he's gonna do what he's gonna do yeah and and it's like so i like weird comedy like that i think that's fun and i am a weird guy but i you know i also feel like you know we're having a like a one-on-one conversation i just i'm like i don't know it's just not in me to be to get get real weird with it you know with with a one-on-one yeah like my i had this boss i used to work with and he he played football for the buffalo bills like in the 60s and he became he was my boss as the pesticide salesman before i became the boss and he was like a real when you murdered him and became yes yes and he became a real mentor for me and and he we used to have a lot of one-on-one conversations when i was in my early 20s and i was very uncomfortable but we would sit in his truck and he would smoke cigarettes and we would talk and i i talked to him about that and he goes well one-on-one you don't get to be a character you don't get to be the entertainer you're having real conversations with people when you're when you're in front of multiple people you can become you know the entertainer version of yourself yeah i i went somewhere this weekend and the god there was a guy who just kept saying like you don't seem funny and i was like i'm i know i don't but i can show you tape right right what do you want me to do because being funny in a conversation with a stranger is weird i can go for jokes but you're not you don't even know what i'm like normally so let's set up what i'm like normally and then we'll go we'll build out from there yeah and even like telling you the joke yeah that you already like yeah uh was very uncomfortable it's incredibly uncomfortable that's what's so that's what's so wonderful about it doesn't make people do it's just a copyright issue i mean i understand it's absolutely dreadful i mean i don't mind doing it sure i've done so much radio when i first started doing radio i used to go in would i would be like all right these are my setups and i would just have them hit me with the setups and i would just do the jokes but when you walk in and it's just one other guy and he's doing the setups it is like the most uncomfortable thing because whether he laughs or not it's like if he laughs it feels like he faked it if he doesn't laugh i'm bombing on the radio what if he says it's gonna be this thursday guys this thursday through sunday said one show sunday um all right so very good you're i like talking to your good man anything we didn't cover i don't think so i mean you know i think we talked about the special i'd love for people to go watch yeah it's very funny it was in the top 10 for over a week i think and yeah very exciting yeah and it's you know it's fun it's uh you know i would did it improve because you have a joke about web traffic about your website how much did the traffic go up it did go up quite a bit yeah it went up quite a bit what was the peak day uh i don't know i'd say there for about a week after it took about a week before my email would say web traffic is down today got it it would say up every day and then finally it was down but even when it was down it was like still like it's only down from what it was up i mean it's still up from the original numbers it has to be and yeah it's great i mean i got uh had a i had my weed joke uh about weed being too strong really went viral on you on facebook great and i feel like that's where all the old dudes are at yeah like yeah it is too strong on tiktok and instagram they're like you're weak you know it's not strong enough um all right buddy well you're you're so funny watch a special watch is a half hour was great and the hour is great thank you and uh dusty slay everybody we're having a good time


How did you guys get to the price point so what was that conversation like how did you decide cuz gum gum in general is pretty You know cheap, but how did you guys decide on the price point? I Think we kind of work backwards of like how much the product costs like Kent's was saying we spend so much time and resources Finding the best ingredients so like even the blue flakes.  Yeah, it's actually spirulina algae, so it's not artificial blue coloring We you know we wanted a natural blue colors the cinnamon's radish flake and beet juice to get the natural red color We use natural caffeine like Kent was saying the highest quality of B12 And so we looked at our product costs, and then we try to make it as competitive as anything else So we've got you know nine pieces of gum in a pack or 12 minutes and each piece is about half a cup of coffee If you do the math, it's you know like third like around 30 cents per piece per dose You know we wanted to be price sensitive and make it affordable for everybody So you can have a product that's accessible like in gum and mint, but if it's too expensive and no one can afford it Then we're not doing a good job or trying to like create this company for the right reasons and So for us, yeah, we just kind of work backwards and in terms of like what's the what's what can we afford to sell? The product that at you know at a price point where everybody can attain it I love that answer so many entrepreneurs overthink this I met the CEO of mixpanel and I was like, how did you guys arrive at your pricing? And he said I started at a dollar and then every time we sold it I just moved it up 10 cents until I got a no and I was like, oh so good so honest He's like Diego. There was no strategy here. This was just we're just I don't know what I'm doing Let's figure this out and so testing though. That's testing really smart testing That's the whole thing right? It's like stop thinking you know just start asking the market The market will tell you and you'll land on something. So that's probably the best answer Hey everyone, thanks for checking out that clip if you enjoyed it Be sure to hit the like button down below and if you're interested in hearing the full episode It's out right now on our YouTube channel We've had a lot of great guests come on this show before and we've got a lot of great guests coming up in the future So hit subscribe so that you don't miss a single episode and one final note We're always looking for new ideas and new companies feature on the show So if you know of someone or know of a company write us a comment down below letting us know who they are and what they do We'd be happy to have them on the show. Till then I'll just be here waiting for your comments. So See you later