Be a Lifelong Learner

Ever feel like its too late to go back to school or pick up a new skill, well think again. In todays episode, were diving into the best, inexpensive and free ways for adults to educate themselves from entrepreneurship to learning a new language. Weve got all the resources you need to kickstart your personal and professional growth. Whether its picking up a new hobby or advancing your skills, learning never stops and neither should you. I'm Joe and my lifelong learning pal over there, he's curt and we are dudes in progress. Hello Kurt.

Hey Joe.

What shaking, dude?

I am ready to learn.

All right. Yeah, I thought this would be a cool subject and we've broached on this subject before. We may have even covered it at some level. But what I did is I searched, searched the Internet and looked for inexpensive and free courses for adult education. I've used a couple of these and they're not ranked in any particular order. I thought it'd be good just to, just to see what's out there, see what's available to us for no cost or very, very cheap. And some of them are pretty impressive. Let me ask you, what's the most important thing you've learned in the past year?

Job I can mention things that you wouldn't have any idea what they are. How about, I've been learning some Amazon Web services, I'll keep it generic like that. We're doing a project at work that involves using, as they say, AWS for the first time and project is completely hosted there a lot of technical tools I'm learning and contributing to that project. So that has been probably the most important thing. That was a huge, it's a huge project for our company, very high visibility and got a large team of developers and project managers working on it. But yeah, that's the thing at work. And then recently I've been working on learning more about YouTube, how to create videos, how to edit videos, and that's been a fun adventure. So those are kind of the two things I would say between work and hobbies I've been learning this year.

Yeah, I'm glad you, I'm glad you threw in some personal stuff like YouTube and some of that other stuff. And I think I pigeonholed you a little bit by, by mentioning the past year because I can think of the years of our friendship that you've, you know, you've learned so much from making your podcast more efficient to promoting your podcast to, you've even learned, I'm not sure how natural this came to you, but you learned how to develop a community, and you learned that through some experts in the field and how to communicate with your community. And so, yeah, you've, you've, you've certainly done a lot of self education. Right. I have to.

I have to completely change my career, at least the technology side, that was kind of scary, but I had a lot of confidence after doing it once before. But it had been quite a few years. When you become an expert in one technology, it's so comfortable to be the go to person for that particular technology. And then as that was changing and going out of style, I started digging into the office 365, the Microsoft side of things. And that was tough, really feeling like I was starting from zero, but not really because I have the aptitude. A lot of the same skills are involved. That's what I found to be really interesting in that transition. But I can remember doing a lot of help desk work where I would be the guy on point for a couple hours. People walk up and ask questions and I'd have to answer them. And I did a lot of. Let me get back to you on that one.

Yeah. Whenever I'm instructing anybody, and if you happen to be involved in any of our coaching services, please close your ears. But many times when I'm instructing somebody, I just have to be a week ahead of them. Right. That's okay. And that's okay.

It is okay. And you got to be comfortable with that. It was, again, being someone who was the go to person in a particular technology for many, many years, let's say 15 years, and then completely changing and going to where you feel like kind of an idiot for. It's very humbling to get started. Almost back to square one. But again, it's not really square one because, and geez, you're going to go into some of these things, but the online things that are available to you. And I can even remember years ago when I was making a job change from one company to another. One thing that I was really confident in is even back then, back 1999, I remember exactly when that happened, and it was the online forums that were available to me and some of the people that were experts that shared their knowledge. And you could search for something, and I'm talking pretty niche kinds of topics. And by golly, you could find that answer pretty quickly at your fingertips. So that gave me a lot of confidence. And now with the AI tools that are coming out, it's, oh my gosh, it's incredible. I'm using it, Joe, every single day at work. And the speed at which you can get to the solutions you're looking for and troubleshooting and debugging things. Really amazing. I'm jealous of the new people coming into these technologies now.

I don't know how this episode will go, really, Kurt, or what shape it'll take. Part of me wants to explore some of these resources, and part of me just wants to talk about learning. We'll do a little bit of each and see where it goes.

Part of my job is really teaching people technology how to use different tools that we have and some of the tools that are part. I'll use office 365. That's what my philosophy and the fellow that I work with say, hey, we want you to try this. We don't want to just tell you and do it for you. We want you to put your hands on the keyboard, and you actually do it. And when you get frustrated, then come ask us a question. So you got this iterative process of, you go try something. Oh, I'm stuck. Come back and we'll answer a question. And we do a lot of that. It's one of the things I'm really proud of, what we do in my area with a couple of people that are really. It's a community based approach to helping people, but they're able to be really productive with these tools. And I've talked to other companies that don't do as good a job as we do.

It'll surprise those closest to me. But when I'm instructing or what I'm teaching or when I'm training, I'm extremely patient. And we will take as long as it is, need be, to go over the material, trial and error. Let's get out in the field and try this stuff. Let's go in the. Let's go get some real world experience. Let's come back and debrief and try it again. And try it again. And that works. That works. I'm. I'm a pretty successful trainer. I'm a pretty successful coach. There's a company called Basmo. They are a reading and book tracking service that helps users set and achieve reading goals. In a report that they did in 2023, they found that 88% of wealthy individuals devote at least 30 minutes daily to self education or self improvement reading.

Yeah, that's. That's a fantastic stat to give. I'm really excited about that, and that's definitely a goal of mine to do every day. I like that.

Blows me away.

I like that a lot.

And it's really important to note that they said in this study, that they eliminated news reading, newspaper reading, blogs, unless it was self education or self improvement. They eliminated all that and stuck to self education or self improvement reading. And 88% of wealthy individuals devote at least 30 minutes daily.

Yeah, I really believe it. I think if you do, in my line of work, it's absolutely essential that the speed that technology changes, you just cant. I mean, yeah, there are some old stuff still out there, and I guess you could rely on that. But, my gosh, it goes so fast. You really got to stay up to date with things that are happening all the time, and it just keeps getting faster.

Yeah. And, in fact, a study from psychology today indicated that people who continuously learn score on the flourishing index. Now, this flourishing index measures happiness, life satisfaction, meaning and purpose, and other aspects of well being. Uh, specifically, individuals who engage in lifelong learning activities report flourishing scrolls that are scores that are 20% to 30% higher than those who do not.

Yeah. Wow.

20% to 30% higher. That's. That's a significant gap.

I mean, I really like that flourishing index. That's a. I've never heard that before.

Yeah. Sounds made up, but I believe psychology today, I do. I read a lot of their stuff.

Happiness, life satisfaction, meaning, purpose. I think that is all true. It's really. So. I think it's very satisfying to learn something and then to apply it and gain some satisfaction of applying it, but maybe. And again, I like teaching it to others, and I get a little dopamine hit when I'm showing people how to do things that I've learned, especially when they're new, exciting, and if it really benefits their productivity and the work that they do, it's really satisfying.

You know, when I look back, Kurt, I think most of my self education comes from reading. Ever since I was a late teenager, young adult, personal development books. I got into personal development books very early in life. I remember seeing. It's interesting. I remember seeing a Tony Robbins commercial, and I went out and bought it. Wasn't awakened. The giant within, I think, was called unlimited power. Unlimited power by Tony Robbins. And I read that book, and that may have been one of my first self improvement books, but it's all been books. And over the past ten years or so, podcasts and, of course, YouTube. We will mention YouTube in this list as well. But recently, I've learned a lot from chat GPT. Chat can teach you all kinds of things. How to build stuff, how to make stuff. It'll teach you recipes. I use chat GPT to learn about Portugal and the things to find out things to visit in Portugal. Chat GPT is a tremendous educational resource. You can ask at anything and now all AI resources have access to the Internet, so it's just right there at your fingertips. So yeah, I podcast YouTube, books and now recently chat GPT. That's how I self educate myself.

Definitely going to the chat GPT has been my go to search engine for sure. It's, it's so incredible. I had an instance this during work today. I've been helping someone build an application and she's way down the road, she's doing great. And she just sends me a text message asking me a question. I knew the answer. I know I have it somewhere in one of the applications I wrote, but it's such a pain to go try to find and plug through word in a world, do I have that? And I knew the context of it. I mean, just with one sentence into chat GPT, well, it's really copilot, which is part of the bing, which is connected to chat GPT. But it gives me the answer, like right away I can almost be chatting with somebody and say, hey, 1 second. And that's how fast I can return the answer. Now, I usually fess up. That's where I got it from. But I've used, over the years I have, I can remember going to conferences, the technical conferences I used to really love, and I always felt that gave me an edge back at work from the expert techniques and people that I made connection with through the, through those personal meetings with, with those folks. The. It was then, back then it was blogs that I was reading. But now I've used all these, these free education resources. I'm using some of the ones that you mentioned here. LinkedIn was another one that my library, especially during COVID offered free resources at the library and LinkedIn was, it was one of them. And that has tons of courses if you really want to get into those courses. I've done, I've gone back to school, I've gone to, you know, with some of the best, I guess it's not really free, but pretty inexpensive. The community, I've gone to the community college courses, that was a great resource for programming for me. But yeah, I'm always open to even buying a course if I have to, which I did recently for YouTube.

LinkedIn didnt even make this list. But LinkedIn is a tremendous resource for education.

These resources have replaced a lot of really expensive courses that we used to do professionally, including some of the, taking the tests to get certified in some of the software that we use. You can get a lot of that through some of these resources. Its amazing whats available at your fingertips. I was talking, I did a podcast with one of my friends we call meet a geek and she was changing careers and she started doing a coding course and she told me the name of the free resource that she was doing and it was college level stuff and real intense. You can do it for free online and thats just simply amazing.

So first up on our list is a course as a service called Coursera. Coursera. Coursera, Coursera. And Coursera offers a wide variety of courses across various subjects, business, technology, personal development, a lot more than that. You can access courses from top universities like Stanford institutions, Yale, Google, IBM. You get that brand and that name behind it to use on your, on your resume. You can audit most courses free, no cost at all. And if you want a certification, you can pay for it. Costs typically around $39 to $80 or so per course. The quality of the video is really high. They have great lectures, readings, even assignments. The time commitment is probably anywhere from four to six weeks. So it's a really focused short period of time. When you think about an education, four to six weeks is nothing really. But that's, that's for a single course. I would really, I'd really check out Coursera if you want to continue your education. And it's very well rated. It's not fly by night, it's been around for a while. And the website is coursera.org. that's coursera.org. dot.

This is really along the lines of what I was talking about, getting certified in a technology especially. I remember Joe making this decision years ago. I was considering going back to graduate school to get an IT degree, graduate degree program. And then I also was looking at getting certified in a very niche piece of software and thinking about, okay, let's get the bottom line. Which one's going to pay better for me in the coming years? And all the time that I have to spend at night going to get my graduate degree. What if I just got really deep in this technology and could prove that I was really good at it? Guess which direction I don't have? I don't have a graduate degree. Just tell you that if you're in.

A career already working for a company and you want to brush up your skills in a certain subject, these are great services for exactly that. And I'll bet many times your company will pay for them. I've heard of this next one, edxhe. It feels like I've used it but I couldn't find any, anything history of edX. But edx also offers free courses from MIT, Harvard, Berkeley and a few other top universities. Science, engineering, humanities, business are all the subjects you can study, like coursera. You can access the course materials for free, but if you want a verified certificate, you need to pay a fee. Can range anywhere from $50 to $300 or so. Courses typically last between four to twelve weeks. So very, very similar to Coursera, interactive learning experiences with video lectures, quizzes, forums. And that's at edx.org. edx.org dot. And I like these because in both of these, both of these courses or both of these services, you do get that name, you do get MIT, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley. Now if that means something to you, then there you go. You have a, you're able to get a brand name education for fairly inexpensive, and it looks great on a resume, looks great on an offer letter, whatever it might be, looks great on your.

Annual review because these are things that really are part of my requirements for my job, to do these kinds of things and to show that I can absorb this stuff and use it in my day to day work. They'll pay for it if you're going to be using it, especially most companies if, yeah, you apply it during your day to day work.

This next one feels like kind of the grandfather of online education, Khan Academy. They provide free courses on subjects like math, science, economics, computer programming. They have courses for all ages and they offer self paced learning with progress tracking. You can expect structured lessons with videos, quizzes, practice exercises. You complete these courses at your own pace. I've really heard great reviews about Khan Academy and I don't know the cost to them, but it's relatively inexpensive. I do know that there are some costs to the courses at Khan Academy, but it's relatively inexpensive. And you can visit Khan [email protected] Khan academy.org dot. And then the one we all know, right, YouTube. We've mentioned YouTube a couple times here, and I know you've learned a lot from YouTube. I've learned a lot from YouTube. But you know YouTube, something is good for something more than I cat videos and political arguments. And YouTube offers a vast library of educational videos on virtually any topic you can think of. Any topic. There is so much free stuff on YouTube. You do have to separate the wheat from the chaff, right? You do have to sort through some of the junk that's there. But what do you use? Do you have a process that you use to pick certain videos?

I think you hit the nail right in the head in that you got to review some before you find that reputable channel or that person that you trust. In my, again, my professional life, there are Microsoft certified professionals. They call them MVP's. And I would not really look for answers other than people like that. There's a lot of garbage out there too that you're going to waste your time with. So if you find someone that you really trust, I mean these are things that you're really focused on getting, learning. Now if it's just like fixing your faucet, you might get a few different opinions. It might take a little while to get to the one that you're looking for. I mean, it's gonna be hard to find. You might find a go to person if you do that a lot. But when I was I'm doing my bathroom renovation, I have gone to all kinds of different resources and they're all, all over the place. But sooner or later I get to where I want to go with those. But for this professional development stuff, or again, the YouTube, how to be a youtuber stuff, I found a couple people that I really feel confident and trust in what they're teaching.

What I like about YouTube is you can find out just about anything and I it's pretty simple to find out who those reputable creators are. Just look for somebody that's been around for a while. Look for somebody that has some good reviews. Look for somebody that has quality video and quality audio and has a good learning pace to their, to their subject matter. Because if they take that much care into their production quality and how they're putting the course together, there's a pretty good, there's a pretty good chance that they've got some quality stuff on there. But the beautiful thing is it's completely free. So if you find out it's crap, just stop, right?

Yeah.

Unless you're right in the middle of replacing your toilet and realize that you've connected it wrong because he's in it. The YouTube creator is an idiot. But just do your due diligence, right? Find some. Find some good creators. But YouTube has, has not only that, like the how to stuff, there's a lot of how to stuff on, on YouTube and do it yourself, but there's also some really good children educational videos, there's some really good business type of videos and accounting videos and some introductory videos to many subjects. I like YouTube. And if you can set aside all the junk that's on there, all the pop culture junk and all the clickbait and all that other stuff and really find a couple good creators that you trust. You're doing something special with YouTube and it's completely free now. There's no certification, right? No formal certification. But still, if you want to know how to do something, it's probably right there on YouTube.

I like how some of those content creators are giving away a lot of good information, but they might have a course that goes deeper. And if it's now you've learned to trust them through the content they've been giving away for free, and then you might want to purchase something from them and get more specialize in that topic. And that's a great way to check them out.

Absolutely. Absolutely. There's also this service called Future [email protected]. spelled, I mean, it spelled exactly like it sounds. Futurelearn.com dot. Future learn offers free short courses from universities and cultural institutions on business, healthcare, history. You get free access to course material during the course run. You can upgrade it for extended access and certificates, typically ranging from forty bucks to one hundred bucks. Courses generally last between two weeks to a couple months. And they feature interactive learning with videos, lectures, articles, quizzes. It really sounds like a good service. I looked at all these just a little bit, but not enough to give a personal opinion. But these are all reputable places. So if you want to check out future learn, it's futurelearn.com. just like it's spelled, just like it sounds. Futurelearn.com. there's also a company called Open Learn by Open University. Open learn is very similar to these other courses. They do a variety of topics, healthcare, health, education, history, a lot of technology courses. They're designed for somebody that is, that really is self paced and you can study whenever it suits you. Really high quality educational materials, no registrations required. You just jump on there and go, no certification like some courses offer, but they do give you statements of participation and badges and things like that. And that's at open Openlearn. Open openlearn. Check it out. Now I know you've used this one and I've used this one as well. And I think this is a fantastic service that is reputable and easy to use and really has a, has really carved a niche in its, and it's self learning in the self learning industry. And that's udemy. You've used udemy, haven't you?

Yeah, I've bought courses off there and use them. I know, I remember buying one for doing podcast editing, but we have, I have my own subscription through work for professional technical courses. That's one of the services that my company pays for, for me to use. So, yes, and I find it is good for certification courses and really that have a very specific goal in mind to get you through a certification. I've noticed that they have improved on that thing, at least for the, that side of the things that you're trying to learn. So, yeah, it's a lot of great, real in depth stuff.

Yeah. Udemy is. They are, they're well established as a, as a, as a go to resource for personal development, entrepreneurship, coding, all sorts of, all sorts of courses. There's, there's both free and paid courses that are available. The paid courses range anywhere from ten to $200. You can get discounts all over the place for you. To me, I see them all the time. The nice thing about Udemy is once you've paid for it, you get lifetime access to your courses and they have what you would expect, high quality videos, lectures, quizzes, assignments. Course length can vary from just a few hours to several weeks. Check them out. Udome.com that's you. Dash udemy.com u dash e m y.com and like I said, I've used udemy before. You know what? I think one of the most important things that we as adults can learn, and it's definitely in today's age, if you're not learning a foreign language as you go into the workforce, you're doing yourself a disservice. In fact, I think you're putting yourself behind. Now, there are several services. There are apps out there. There's Babel, there's the one that my wife uses. I can't remember the name of it now, but Babel comes to mind. But Duolingo is what she uses. And they're good. They're okay. And I'm not sure it's more of a game than anything else. I'm not sure if you're really learning a language. There is a service called BBC language. It's for language learners. BBC languages is a fantastic resource from all the online reviews that I've seen. It provides free resources for learning multiple languages with audio, video and interactive lessons. There's no registration required and you can learn at your own pace. It's great for improving listening, speaking and reading and writing skills in a different language. The duration varies by language and learning goals, but you can find it at BBC co dot UK languages. So it's a UK based company and UK based service. BBC co dot UK languages. And I've heard, I read a lot about BBC languages, and I've heard a lot. The reviews are fantastic. If you couple BBC languages with this next service, I don't think you can lose if you're really trying to learn a foreign language. And that's a service called tandem. It's a free language exchange app that connects you with native speakers. It offers text, audio, video chat functionalities. You can practice languages in a practical, real world context with real people. You can gain cultural insights and real. And a real understanding of what that language is about. The basic version is free, all right. But of course, there's. There's a paid. And there's a premium version as well. I think it ranges anywhere from seven bucks to fifteen bucks, maybe a little higher. But it puts you in touch with a real human being, that you can engage the language and you can submerge yourself in that language with a real human being and talk to this real human being in the language you're trying to learn. So if you were to pair BBC languages with this, uh, with the service called tandem, man, I. This is a tremendous one two punch to learn a. Learn a new language.

I remember years ago, I bought tapes, cassette tapes, to learn German, and I don't think I did very well. These services are just so much better to immerse yourself in speaking with native speakers, like I said. Or you can do, like, what the guy in Shogun did and just sail a boat into, you know, China or Japan, and then you have to learn the language.

I tell you, there were some. There were some words that. And I can't remember a single one now, but two weeks of spending maybe an hour a day watching. Watching portuguese news, I started to pick up a little bit, right? And I started to understand when, you know, when they're saying, you know, they would say something like Donald Trump, and then they would say something after that, and you figure out kind of what they're saying, and you watch their tone and their emotion. They would say something about their local politics or some event that's happening there locally, and you can kind of pick up from watching their facial expression and their emotion behind it. And it was. It's really cool. So, of course, immersion is the. Is the best way, but I really. I'm really interested in these two services, BBC languages and tandem. I think this looks like a tremendous one two punch. To learn a foreign language, I'd have.

To have, like, a goal that I was going on a trip somewhere that I really want to use that language when I get there.

Right.

That would, like you did, going to.

Portugal yeah, that didn't work. And finally, and finally, I think the last service is something that I'm very interested in, and it's been around for a while. The SBA Learning center. SBA stands for the Small Business Administration Learning center. It's for aspiring entrepreneurs. The SBA learning center is really invaluable. It offers tremendous services. Free courses on entrepreneurship, business planning, financing, marketing. The courses are tailored for aspiring and current entrepreneurs, and they provide practical advice and strategies. Most courses are designed to be completed in a few hours, but you can find some that last longer than that as you dig deeper. But you can find interactive modules with quizzes, assessments. It really is a tremendous, a tremendous service offered by the United States government. SBa dot gov slash learning hyphen center. SBA dot gov learning Hyphen center. And this is something I might, I might dig deeper into as well. Tax dollars at work. I mean, I, I like my tax dollars going for something like this for entrepreneurship and teaching people, business planning and financing and marketing. The SBA learning center, I don't know.

Is this the one? Maybe this is a different one where they have retired people who teach these and are be your mentors.

That's called score.

Score.

And I don't know if it's still around or not, but it was through the SBA, the Small Business Administration, and score stood for senior corps of retired executives.

Oh, yeah.

Wow. I remembered that I participated in score a little bit, not as a, not as a retired executive, but I went and talked to a guy a little bit when I was in the publishing business about some thought that he had, and we met probably three or four times, and he was very helpful. So that was through the SBA. And I don't know if they still have it or not, but Score was senior corps of retired executives, and that was a tremendous service as well.

I think one of the things that all of these have in common is the fact you get a little bit of instruction, but then you have an exercise or you have a project that you're doing where you're doing the work, whatever that is. So as long as you get some education, but then put your hands on it or do the thing, that's what I think a lot of these adult learning programs do for sure, that make it engaging. First of all, in trial and error, like you said before, that's the way I've learned everything. I'm all self taught. My whole it career is self taught.

Me, too.

On the job.

Yeah, I'm completely self taught. And it's interesting when you talk to people who have a lot of ego invested in their high degrees. Now, my daughter has worked hard for her degree, and she's very humble. She hardly even tells people about her degrees and her education. But I'll tell a lot of people about her degrees in her education because I'm daggone proud of her. But I'll be honest with you. I've had people that in the past have reported to me that had significantly higher education than me. I don't have an MBA. I've had people report to me that had MBA and higher degrees than had an MBA and higher degrees than that. And they were always very disappointed when they found out that they had more education than me, but they were still reporting to me.

So I always had this problem that my education really came on the job. But as I learned, as I got older, a lot of people, especially in my generation, that didn't have a lot of computers when they were growing up, we didn't have that opportunity like there is today, where everyone had a PC and so.

Right.

There was no other way. A lot of us came from engineering or other backgrounds. But if you're a professional, I mean, we're in an economy that is just so dependent on learning. And any professional person, I don't. No matter what you're in, doctors, lawyers, accountants, you got to stay up with the latest things that are going on. So it's just. It's a requirement for any professional person in that area.

Well, the research shows that if you want to be a successful person, you have to be a lifelong learner. You know, if you want to be happy, you know, if you want to have some kind of. What was that? What did they call it? Let me look here. Flourishing. Flourishing index. Right? If you want to flourish in life, satisfaction, meaning, purpose, well being, you got to be a lifelong learner. So I hope these. These resources help. I think the ones I'm going to check out within the next month or so is this SBA learning center and BBC languages in tandem. I'm really interested in those. I'd like to learn a. I don't know if I'm in a place where I can learn a language fluently. Right. But I'd like to learn a new language. That would be kind of cool.

I think so, too. I always thought it was cool. I just haven't done it recently.

Yeah, I can cuss in Portuguese. I know that I won't do it here.

Yeah. Well, thanks for that, Joe. I do enjoy that topic. It's. And thank you for letting me know that there's an index, a flourishing index that I can aspire to that might something we.

That might be something that we explore a little more.

I should look that up. We could do a whole show on that. My win for the week is going to be. My wife surprised me. It wasn't my birthday, wasn't a holiday. I think it was kind of an expensive gift. On Sunday, she said, just out of the blue, hey, I got something for you, and you got to go to best buy if you want to pick it up.

Wow.

I, like, totally took me. Like, what. What's going on? But I guess she. She had some business money come in, and she spent it on me. And I will tell you what that is when I get to the resource tip or hack.

You son of a gun. You son of a gun. But it's all right.

It's pretty cool that she surprised me with an interesting gift that totally took me back. But I've been enjoying it since I got it on Sunday.

Well, okay, well, keep us in suspense, dude. My win for the week is I rest it this weekend. Yeah, I know that sounds like a strange win, but, man, last week's business travel, I went hard. I did a lot of driving, a lot of prep work. I didn't sleep very well in the hotel, and I came home absolutely exhausted. Exhausted.

Crabby, too.

And. Oh, I was a little crabby this Saturday. I know. And I was just exhausted.

Yeah, I could tell.

I went hard. This. I studied hard. Interesting. We're talking about learning. I studied hard for this presentation that I had on Thursday. Very big, very important presentation.

Yeah.

And it went well. I think we set the groundwork for what's going to be probably a six month, maybe a year process to. To win this business. But it went very well. But there was a lot of prep work, a lot of anxiety behind it. I didn't sleep very well, and I drove a lot. I just came home exhausted, and I got some really good rest this weekend. I did some stuff on Sunday, but I did almost nothing on Saturday. You and I met with. With Clay, of course. Uh, and I was a little. I was a little on the cranky side, but really, I'm going to call this rest, this restful weekend a big win for me.

Yeah, you got to do it. It's always surprised me when I did travel for business or even just for fun. How exhausting. I don't. I never understood it. Why that, you know, I'm used to physical labor, but why is just sitting around traveling so exhausting? I don't know, but it is. I can appreciate that for sure.

I don't know either, but boy, it is. It sure is. All right, drumroll.

On Christmas, I got the PlayStation five, which I wasn't so sure I would get into it. But Joe, I have been getting into PlayStation games. I've got a couple series that I really enjoy. One is the sniper Elite. I've gone through just about every version that they have and bought a extra content. I'm now doing Hitman is one my son. My son recommended to me, which I'm finding, finding fun. I like the shooter kind of games, the other kind of what's the Call of Duty games. I have a bunch of those, but. So she had bought this PlayStation Portal. It's a remote gaming. It's got a console, like an eight inch screen, but it looks like the PlayStation controller. And you got the same kind of knobs and everything, but it's got this big screen. You connect it, you turn on your PlayStation five, and then through Wi Fi it connects, and you can walk away. And I can go downstairs and hang out with my wife and the dog and play my game with my headphones on.

No kidding.

It's pretty cool technology. And I can't believe it's really got the same control features that the normal control does. But it's got this big eight inch wide screen. Beautiful screen. It's working pretty good. And when I'm done with you tonight, I'm gonna go down there and play a mission of Hitman. Wow.

No, I'm. I'm tempted to go get one myself, dude.

So it's about $200 for this thing. So I was like, wow.

So does this, does, is this a standalone product or is that, does that go with.

No, it has, yeah, it does connect. So you really have to log into your PlayStation, get the game started, as much as I know, and I think you can, you can set your game to sleep mode up in your. It's up in my bed, my office here, and then I can walk anywhere around the house as long as I'm connected to the Wi Fi. So I'm remotely playing it through this. Yeah, PlayStation portal.

Awesome. What fun, man. You gotta have fun, right? I tell you, wife for that one. That's awesome.

I'm having fun with it.

Yeah.

Now I don't have to. I know you don't like to leave your wife all alone downstairs when you're up in your office. So you could play your PlayStation Portal connected to your PlayStation five with the place. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

You never know. I might just. I might just get one. I was never a gamer growing up. I never played video games. I had an Atari, but I was never into gaming. Like. Like many people of my generation, or maybe a little younger, was into gaming. Just wasn't. Wasn't really my thing. Like I said, I had an Atari and those simple games, but that was about it.

I played with the kids when they had their games. I tried to. That was fun. It was a family thing, right, to play with the kids and do some games, and that was fun when they were growing up, and I hadn't done it for years. I don't know. I had some games. I had an old PlayStation four that my kids left for me, and that broke down, and I had some. I had some Sony points from a credit card that I. And I got paid the rest for it and got. Got it for Christmas. So I'm shocked. I'm actually really enjoying it. They're so incredible. The. The video play is just amazing these days. So as long as I get a good game, I enjoy. Yeah. I can get addicted to it.

Well, have fun, dude. Have fun. My resource is a movie called the Peanut Butter Falcon. It's really a. It's a neat film, Kurt, if you've not seen it, I really invite you to see it. Have you seen it?

So I saw this on your notes, and I've seen it. I can remember. I may have mentioned it to you. I have this feeling I was okay. And you got to remind me what it's about, because I'm forgetting the subject of it.

Well, it stars Shia Labeouf, Dakota Johnson, and this young man with down syndrome, Zach gots again.

Yes.

And it's really. It's just a neat movie, man. This. This. Zach dreams of becoming a pro wrestler, a professional wrestler, and they escape. He escapes from a nursing home, pursue being a professional wrestler, and he. He hooks up with. With Tyler. Tyler's played by Shia LaBeouf. Tyler's this, you know, this small town, the small time kind of criminal.

Rough kid.

Yeah, young outlaw, criminal, whatever.

Yeah.

And they go through this journey, you know, in North Carolina, and this unexpected friendship and colorful characters along the way. It's just really a neat movie.

It's a little love story in there, too.

Yeah. I'm not going to give it away, but it's. Yeah, it's got Shia LaBeouf and Dakota Johnson. It's a neat movie, man.

I did tell you about this because when I saw it, the wrestling piece made me think of you. The kid wants to be a professional wrestler, and there's a very specific wrestler I think he's trying to go see. Yeah, I agree with you. It's a great movie. I love that movie.

Check it out, man. It's a neat movie. It'll just make you feel good. The peanut butter Falcon. Let's wrap up with our quotes, buddy.

Tell me and I forget. Teach me. I may remember. Involve me and I learn. Our old pal Ben Franklin.

That's your man right there.

When I saw Benjamin Franklin.

This is a great quote. I love this, man. And I think you may have used this in the past, and I use it as many times as you want. But I really like this quote because this is how I learn.

Right.

I learn by being involved. You might remember something, right? I might remember something that somebody has taught me. But if I really want to learn it, get me engaged, get me involved. And I think you're the same way.

I would add one more thing. Go teach it to somebody. Then you'll really learn it.

Yep. I remember a book I read long time ago. It's one of those classic personal development, business development books called the Seven Habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey. And he said the same thing. He said, I think he put, like some kind of time period on it, like within a week. Go teach it to somebody else.

Sure.

If you've learned something, go teach it to somebody else.

They'll ask you a question that you don't know.

Yep.

Dive in deeper.

I love it.

Yeah. What's your quote?

My quote comes from Henry Ford. Henry Ford is, of course, the, the, I wouldn't say the creator, but he really brought it into mainstream manufacturing of the assembly line and cars, didn't he? Yeah.

Yeah.

Of course. Yeah. And, and I remember him saying, this isn't the quote, but he said, you can have it in any color you want as long as it's black, which is awesome. Right. But he, he says he know, he has his own, his own twist on, on learning. And I like what he says here. Anyone who stops learning is old. Think about that. Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.

I think that's so true and so encouraging that. Secondly, I think it's so true. You definitely feel younger if you keep learning stuff.

I am a curious person. I like figuring stuff out and what makes stuff tick and why things are the way they are. And I love that I've latched onto chat GPT, an emerging technology. I love that I'm not too old to learn some of the new ways of doing stuff in the world we live in today. And I'm a very curious person. It does kind of keep me young at heart. I feel like I'm. My kids will tell me, dad, you certainly don't act your age. And I don't know if that's a compliment or insult, but it's slowly becoming a compliment. Right? But I'm a curious person, and I think you are too curt. And this really is the heart of it all. Anyone who stops learning is old, whether it's 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.

It's so true. I can remember in my twenties, I was mentored a little bit by a fellow who was getting ready to retire. He was having some health issues to boot, but he had taught himself a bunch of computer programming, things that we use in our business, and I wanted to learn that job. That's how my it career started, by picking up his old job, learning what he did, all the documentation he did. And I was really fascinated watching him work and seeing the things that he built. And, of course, when I was 20, I thought he was old when he was in his early sixties. But I was pretty impressed that he was so motivated to do that kind of work when there were so many people who just didn't care of doing anything but what they had to do to get by.

Yeah. Well, I hope these resources were helpful. I love being a lifelong learner, and you are a lifelong learner, Kurt. So, as we wrap up, remember our website is dudesinprogress.com. dudesinprogress.com. Our email address is [email protected]. there you can reach us about the show, anything about the show. If you want to hear about a subject, a particular subject that you want us to talk about, we'll certainly consider that and maybe even have you on the show. That would be cool. We've had. We've done a few of those. But if you want to reach out to us dudes at dudes in progress.com, remember, especially when it comes to learning, you don't have to be perfect, right? You don't have to be perfect. Just keep moving in the right direction, because progress is better than perfection. Just keep moving forward.

You've inspired me, Joe. I love learning. So I'm gonna keep learning some new things into this new week. Thanks.

I wonder if BBC languages. Languages. Teach us Swahili. I think I'm gonna go there, man, that'd be awesome.

You could share some of your skills next week.

We'll see. See it, buddy?