On Our Best Behavior
On Our Best Behavior is a heartwarming podcast where Mom, Kelli and 15-year-old son, Maccoy delve into the complexities of school, life's struggles, highs and lows, and various challenges. With a blend of humor and sincerity, they navigate through these topics while sharing their own experiences and insights. Their conversations are not only relatable but also enlightening, offering listeners a fresh perspective on everyday issues. Alongside their engaging discussions, they welcome intriguing guests, adding a dynamic element to each episode. Tune in to join this duo on their journey of growth, learning, and discovery.
On Our Best Behavior
Donnie Rust, The Lost Executive
Curious about how remote work is reshaping the future of young professionals? Join us for an inspiring discussion with Donnie Rust, the creative force behind Lost Executive LTD. A former travel journalist and stand-up comedian, Donnie's rich career journey from South Africa to Scotland offers a captivating backdrop as we uncover the ways technology has opened up new frontiers for work and travel. From cultural contrasts between the United States and Europe to the opportunities within different environments, Donnie shares his profound insights into embracing these changes.
Technology's rapid evolution has undeniably transformed our lives. As we journey from the era of dial-up internet and physical media to the modern age of cloud storage and AI, the shift to remote work is more tangible than ever. We engage in a thoughtful exploration of the societal impact, weighing the benefits of improved work-life balance against the challenges of reduced social interaction. The conversation circles back to our innate need for community and face-to-face communication, emphasizing a crucial balance between technological trends and human connections.
Reminiscing on childhood dreams and career paths, we reflect on how technology has altered the landscape of opportunity. With narratives of personal setbacks and triumphs, we stress the importance of aligning one's passions with career pursuits for genuine fulfillment. Donnie Rust brings additional wisdom on the art of networking and cultivating an online presence, making it easier for listeners to connect with him and others in this digital era. Tune in to foster a sense of connection and perhaps even find inspiration for your career journey.
Thank you for listening to another episode of On Our Best Behavior. Today I have a very special guest. His name is Donnie Rust. He is the creative director for the Lost Executive LTD. Author, former digital nomad travel journalist and a long time ago stand-up comedian. He is the key writer for travel and business magazine, the Logbook. Welcome to the podcast, donnie.
Speaker 2:Hi Kelly, Thanks so much for having me on here.
Speaker 1:It's very exciting. All of us American girls are just going to blush over your accent.
Speaker 2:Out of curiosity, what accent do you think I have?
Speaker 1:Well, you're from Scotland, so Irish.
Speaker 2:Scotland Scottish. I live in Scotland. I'm actually South African.
Speaker 1:Oh, really yeah.
Speaker 2:I've got a very odd accent, that's fun. Yeah, I suppose, but it is a bit of a mix, so I was just curious whether or not you could pin it down.
Speaker 1:What made you leave South Africa for Scotland?
Speaker 2:Oh well, I lived there my whole life with my family. We immigrated when I was about 19. I had the opportunity to stay in South Africa, but I thought I wanted to come and have an adventure. So we moved over to Norwich in England to start with, which is not a great place for adventures when you're used to safaris and camping outside and all the various joys of South Africa.
Speaker 1:Well, that's interesting. And then you know you do a lot with travel now. So who would have thought?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, travel has always been a big part of everything that I've done. I do I'm one of those people who gets very edgy if I don't get to travel frequently, if I don't have a new surroundings and new areas. And so, yeah, I've been doing a lot of traveling, but that was actually the first time I'd ever left the, I ever left Southern Africa when I immigrated over to the UK and it was a match, massive culture shock. You tend to grow up. When you grow up in countries like South Africa, you do have a certain idea of what another land is going to be like. Like. We came to UK and we expected that everyone in Scotland was going to sound like Mel Gibson from Braveheart and everyone in England was going to sound like Shia Khan from the Jungle Book, and that was not the case. Have you ever been to UK?
Speaker 1:No, I've really not been out of the country other than to like Mexico and the Caribbean. Okay.
Speaker 2:I mean, the States are huge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I used to feel like I wanted to see the whole entire world, but then I realized, like how much the United States has to offer that a lot of people that live here don't even experience, because we're we look to the bigger picture, where you forget what's maybe just in your backyard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I agree with that entirely. I was when I left South Africa. It was only when I left that I realized how much of it I hadn't explored and discovered. And also I mean America. Everyone talks about the United States as being a single country and I've never been there. But I have spoken to many people you have and from what they've said, united States is not a single country. It is 50 odd different countries kind of stuck together, and I feel like that for Europe.
Speaker 1:Right, you guys have all these countries, but that's kind of laid out like how the United States has states.
Speaker 2:Yeah, europe is a mixture of many different countries, but even those countries do kind of follow the suit of America. Spain, for example. If you've never been there, you just think Spain, spanish, one country. But I spent a bit of time in Spain and it's like it is a few different, completely different countries crammed in together underneath one title and they have different cultures and different foods that they like. The landscape, um, the landscape is completely different, which obviously does have an effect on the culture and history of the place. Um, you just get lost there, because spain is as close to like being in the setting of game of thrones or or like a high fantasy kind of, um kind of background, because it's just a beautiful. Europe is like that, it's just so old and so much history. It's a wonderful place. I would definitely recommend that you visit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely want to, for sure, all right. So, donnie, let's talk about what you do. The world has changed so much. When I was a kid, nobody worked remote. That was unheard of. And now the world has changed professionally, with such an increase in remote jobs. Tell us about that and tell us how young professionals entering into this. It's completely different than, like I said, when we were kids.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, so, like you said, there are two parts to that. So the first part is yeah, I think the technology available to do the general office work has advanced and developed hugely. If you think back 10 years ago, 15 years ago, if you wanted to have a reliable computer or a reliable work, you had to go into the office. So that was the thing you went to the office and you had your desk and you did your work from there. I was in publishing in several different magazines in the past that were entirely office-based. We still traveled and we still went places, but it was very much a case of you traveled and then you returned, and I think there's a lot of tradition in that as well.
Speaker 2:There have always been digital nomads, essentially because you have travel journalists, you had on-site journalists, so there was always that opportunity to travel and work, but you needed to find a company that was willing to do that and willing to go through the trouble of the extra, because you'd have to fax, you'd have to use fax mail. There was a lot of extra effort to support your employees or your staff or your freelancers that were traveling, whereas today, the same technology that companies use to run payrolls and HR systems is all online. It's all on the cloud and there are people who work for big companies that do big jobs that would never have been considered as a remote job previously, which now is just as easy to do at home as is in the office. Also, covid made a big difference to that, because that made a lot of companies aware of how easy it is to get people working remotely from home. Now, lost Executive we launched ourselves in 2017, and our entire company is entirely staffed by digital nomads, so all of the key components of our business are working remotely or from wherever. Some of them are permanent travelers.
Speaker 2:I myself was a digital nomad for about three years. I basically just spent my time Airbnb hopping through Europe while I was working with a magazine and building up quite happily. And then lockdown happened, covid happened and around the world, people realized well, this is actually quite possible. And after working from home for sometimes up to a year, year and a half, people were quite happy to work from home and were able to prove and demonstrate that they could do their job perfectly well from home, and they had a real legitimate reason to say well, if I can work from home, why can't I work from another location. Why can't I work from wherever I happen to be?
Speaker 2:And that's, I think, is how things are moving, because it does give people the opportunity to combine travel with work, which I think is quite important. If you, it is an opportunity that few adults, especially in, like the older millennials and generation gen x and whatnot it is a foreign concept to them because you traveled and then you worked. But if you combine the two, you can travel, be wherever you are, get your job done and then you're in a location so you can enjoy your life. So it is a very good balance for a lifestyle. It's changed for. And to get your second point, um, in terms terms of how this is going to be different for youngsters, that was the question, how it's going to be different for the younger generation in terms of the workplace when we went into the workforce, how it's going to be different from them versus what it was like for us.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I chose a, really bad time to take a sip of my drink there. Sorry, sorry, I chose a really bad time to take a sip of my drink there.
Speaker 2:Sorry. Yeah, I think one of the things that it's definitely going to be noticing is that people coming into the workforce now are expecting to get that balance of lifestyle. They're expecting that because they don't see a reason why they can't. I don't think it's a case of them feeling entitled or privileged or anything. It's just them seeing what is possible with the technology, what is easy with the technology, and it just makes sense If you think about it.
Speaker 2:Working from home means you don't have to worry about a daily commute, so you're not going to be late. There are some exceptions, obviously, if you're working in manufacturing or the construction industry. There's loads of industries which aren't affected by this at all, but a number of the industries you can remote in so you don't have to commute, so there's no worry about there being any lateness. Punctuality is better. There's also the lack of a car, the lower carbon footprint because you're not doing the daily commute. It's no longer a case of taking public transport instead of a car. Now it's a case of well, why don't I just work from home and just cut that out entirely, and that opens up the opportunities of being well. If I can work from home, why can't my home be anywhere in the world.
Speaker 2:Now there are some sticking points currently with regards to HR and the legal framework to support employees, whether you're in America or UK or Europe, wherever you happen to be. If you're working for a UK company, for example, the employment laws will be different for any of your employees. If they decide to move to Europe or to America, then you have to kind of make extra provisions for them because they're leaving the country. They're not governed by the same laws and vice versa. So that's a sticking point at the moment, but it's one of the only ones, that kind of the only real sticking point there is.
Speaker 2:So youngsters coming into the workplace are going to be finding that there are businesses already sorting that problem which is going to be ironing that out. So they're expecting to be able to travel or at least work from home and have that home wherever they want to be. There are some exceptions, like I said, and also I do think that there is a balance to be found between working completely remotely and still having the social aspect that you can get from an office, aspect that you can get from an office which for the last decade and a half, two decades, there have been businesses that have built up hospitality, businesses that are entirely focused on just creating a social environment for digital nomads to work from, which I think is a great thing and very useful, and that's definitely going to be seen. We're going to be seeing more of that and more usage of that in the future, I reckon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean when I was a kid the internet just came out when I was in junior high maybe, and I remember we'd go to my grandpa's office just so we could get on. I guess I don't even know the timeline, but whatever, A good 20 years for sure Like you had to use dial up and you had to go to the library or you had to go to a business to use the internet, and now you can use it in the car, on the airplane, anywhere in the world. That's mind-blowing to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and technology doesn't have to necessarily develop in terms of the hardware, it's just the usage of the software that matters. Like if you think about even just 10 years ago. So it's 2004 now almost 2005,. Think 2015. In 2015, you know, people are still using cds for their games, people still using dvds.
Speaker 2:Um iphones yeah, music was was, uh, you know, ipods and, uh, mp3 players. I don't know if I don't know if that was used that late. Um, but you know it was a. It was a day people still knew what cassette tapes were and VHSs, and 10 years is all that's taken for that to completely change. If you think about it, if you take it a step further, consider the changes that have happened with the likes of ChatGPT over the last year and a half and how much of an effect that's had on things.
Speaker 2:And you know, cloud, the fact that we don't use, we don't have any storage devices anymore. Thumb drives are. They're still useful, but they're not used. As often CDs are defunct. Nobody uses CDs anymore. Cassette tapes, videos, vhs.
Speaker 2:I asked my boy the other day. I was like well, you know, do you know what a VHS is? He went no, is that something you catch? I was like no, no, it's not. Which led into a very awkward conversation with my wife, which was like yeah, okay, never mind. But the technology continues to develop, but also the usage of it, and with that comes different expectations of it. It's just the world is changing Also. The jobs are changing as well. Artificial intelligence is going to change many industries, and, I think, largely for the better, which is going to make working from home so much easier, and that's going to, once we get used to it, once it becomes more common, that will have a beneficial effect on people's lifestyles, because we'll be managing you know managing the balance between hard work and lifestyle, because you can save so many hours during the day, which is more time to spend with your family and more time to focus on, you know, self-development. Not to say that everyone does, but if you have the opportunity.
Speaker 2:At least that's something we didn't have 20 years ago.
Speaker 1:And that work-life balance is huge for mental health, which is such a big crisis right now.
Speaker 2:I do think the mental health crisis I think that's what I mean. I think there's a balance between it, because there's a good side and a bad side to being able to work remotely that social aspect that we talked about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, If you think about during lockdown and COVID, worldwide people were able to do their jobs from home Cool, but they were lonely and loneliness is something that will you know. I think loneliness and disconnection from that social aspect of it is so devastatingly bad for you on a not just on a you know people talk about as if you know it's affecting you in your, in your mind, and as if that's some kind of esoteric, flim, flamsy, cloudy thing that kind of exists. But no, it's actually. It affects the brain. Um, I don't know what research it is, I don't know, I don't know which document, but I did read somewhere that there were signs that long-term deprivation of social interaction will actually smooth out the brain. I don't know much about the actual research paper myself. I don't even know if it was done on animals or on people, but I just found that interesting. That actually has a physical effect on us. So the social aspect is very important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it is too, because when you talk to other people and you learn about their experiences or how they did something, that's just how we learn so much more, don't you think? When you spend time with somebody or you watch, you know you have mentors in life and people that you look up to. We learn so much from other people.
Speaker 2:And also we learn things from the way we portray other people and the way we see them, because the other problem is that it's not a problem. But being alone is one thing. Video calling, that's good, but speaking to someone face-to-face is so much better because you pick up on so many things that are intuitively understood when you're speaking to someone face-to-face are they looking, what are their hands doing? You know even things like how they smell and all these things. When you're talking to someone and make an eye contact with them, it affects us as a person because we are pack animals, we are herd animals. You know, humans have spent so many thousands of years evolving to work best as a group. We're group creatures. So when we are in a group we get all those good and positive hormones and chemicals rushing through our brains that just make our lives so much better, and no one wants to be lonely. And also, being alone doesn't mean you're lonely, but you still need that social interaction somewhere.
Speaker 1:And you can still be lonely when you're not alone. That's just kind of how that works, a full circle thing. But even back in the caveman days the caveman sought a mate to build a family and to build a community. So that's gone back for ages ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the problem is that today we think that what is trendy can replace what is what is. You know, there's like I don't know if it's still the case now, but there was a period where, like, being a lone wolf was really especially for men. Being a lone wolf is what you need. You don't need anyone else, and I was like that's going backwards. No, Especially from a man's point of view, you need to have a purpose, you need to have, you know, a social element. You need someone that you're willing to fight for. You need a family, essentially, and whether that's a family that you've created yourself or you found, you need it. I think that's. I think it's good that that's kind of coming into the foreground Again. People are talking about that more as well and kind of get into the fact that, yeah, if it's worked for thousands and thousands of years, at least parts of it must be valuable, it must be worthwhile.
Speaker 1:I feel too like like we were talking about the young kids going into the workforce and how things are different. I wonder what my life, what road I would have taken if I was in high school now, with the different opportunities that are available. I just feel like the kids today. They just, like you said, like it's not. Do you want to do this or this. It's not so black and white. There's such a broad spectrum of things that you can do to earn money and make a living wealth of human history.
Speaker 2:Everything that humanity has ever learned and ever known, as far as we can tell in history, is all available to us on our phones, which I think is that's Star Trek level kind of technology.
Speaker 2:That's the kind of stuff that when I was a kid, that was like if someone said to me yeah, you'll be able to access everything from a handheld device that you can keep in your phone and charge once a night and you'll be able to pay for it affordably each month. I'd be like BS. That's not true. Beam me up, scotty. No ways. What else are you going to give me? A lightsaber teleportation.
Speaker 1:I remember watching like Pee Wee's Playhouse when I was a kid and he had like his own booth where he could see who he was talking to. And I remember my friend and I were like that wouldn't be so cool if you could see who you were talking to? And now. Facetime. It's a thing, and it has been for a while Exactly. I never saw that coming as a kid.
Speaker 2:No, not at all, but it is. You know, the problem that we have with that is that a kid growing up today can be Also. The other thing is that you get so many influencers. You know, we get so many different people who are telling you to listen to what they're saying. People saying this is what you should do, and this is what you should do, and this is what you should do.
Speaker 2:When I was a kid, you had a limited selection of role models available to you that you actively had to go and find you had to listen to the radio you had to watch TV actively had to go and find you know um, if I listen to the radio you had to watch TV.
Speaker 1:You had to read magazines.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you wanted to go and get a movie you had to go and select one from the, from the, from the, from blockbusters and bring it home and watch it. So you very much were kind of in control of what you were doing to a limited degree that you know. That limitation meant that you could delve into it quite deeply.
Speaker 2:I was fascinated with martial arts when I was a kid, like it was everything to me, and so you know, the movies I watched were with jean-claude rendam, stephen seagal, you know, uh, bruce willis, although he didn't do martial arts, bruce lee, jackie chan, all that. Jet Li, donnie Yen. I remember when On Buck came out with Tony Jai, the Muay Thai guy, and it just blew my mind, but it was so much easier because you had to go and select that. So you said, okay, I like martial arts, this is what I'm going to select and I'll dial into everything and every aspect of it. I will go and find it and find the kind of role models that I want. It's my activity. I'm pulling that in. If I'd been interested in rugby or football or acting, I would have done the same thing. But today, on your phone, doom scrolling, every second person is telling you no, this is the right thing to do, this is the right thing to do, do this, do that, don't do this, and you think, okay. So I had one or two role models when I was growing up.
Speaker 2:Stepsign now has dozens, you know, or dozens, potentially hundreds, you know, and if you're an impressionable person, that's it. You've got so many different people telling you what you need to be doing, and it can get confusing, and so that does mean that you've got thousands of potential opportunities that you could look into, and what you really need is someone to tell you listen, you're not going to do that, you're not suited for that. You need to focus on this. This is your talent, this is your one talent. Focus on that, hold that, develop that, Ignore everything else. I think that could actually be quite useful. I don't know how we would manage that.
Speaker 1:I almost feel like too, like when kids have everything at their fingertips, they take it for granted. So, like you said, I was the same way when I was younger, like, oh I you know, there were certain movies I liked and there were certain singers that I liked, and I would want to read everything about them and find every picture I could and and make collages for my wall. And now, like my, my son, everything's just so easy and you don't have to really put in that work and the effort that we did, and so I feel like that's how it works against the youth.
Speaker 2:It does. It does, which is one of the things we have to learn how to manage, and it's down to the parents, I think, to figure out how to kind of manage that, to take the high road not the high road, but almost a hard line approach to it, because we do have the wealth of information at our fingertips, but in the 90s and in the early thousands we still did. We just had to go look for it a little bit more. The internet changed a lot of stuff. I remember when you know if you wanted to find something you had to go look for it a little bit more. The internet changed a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2:I remember when you know if you wanted to find something you had to go read the encyclopedia yeah which was, you know, that was always a bit of a okay, this, this is a bit of a task. I'm going to find this, I'm going to find this out now. Or you had to go to the library, you know you had to understand the dewey system. Uh, and now it is all available on the hands, but there are still efforts in terms of finding the right information, because there's a lot of wrong information out there.
Speaker 1:And people believe whatever they read or see or want to, and then that's a struggle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they read the titles and then that's what they assume. Or they hear a podcaster or a YouTube star or influencer say something like okay, I like them, and in this ocean of noise I like them, so I'll listen to what they have to say. That's just human nature, whereas I think it's down to once the adults learn how to properly navigate the internet. We can teach those lessons to the generation that's entering into it, like my stepson's 10, so he hasn't got a phone yet, he doesn't have an iPhone yet, and he's got that. If he wants to learn something, he has to ask a question, he has to go and find the information. If we can keep that going, then he'll learn. Okay, I've got the access to the internet. How do I find the correct information, instead of just finding the fastest answer, because the fastest?
Speaker 1:answer is not always true. I don't care how you get the answer, but get the answer on your own. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And if you get it quickly, make sure it's the correct one. So maybe what we need to start teaching our kids is you know, this is how you find a range of information, a range of answers, but this is how you fact check them, this is how you make sure that they are correct. Because if you support the wrong, if you support a lie that makes you involved in the lie, you know if it's fake news, it's a lie, it's a story, it's not true. So if you're supporting that, it means that you're supporting that lie, whereas if you actively pursue the truth, that is always a noble pursuit, whether it means that you win or lose or whatever the reason is.
Speaker 1:Pursuing the truth is always important, always valuable, and you want to be that person, because if people start to realize that you are giving them false information, then they're going to lose hope and belief in you, and you don't want that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't want to be the person. You know there are different levels of it. Politicians, obviously, you know, at that kind of level you have to always have your facts correct. Journalists, we have to have your facts correct ideally, but on lower levels it's on a friend to friend basis. If you're just the person who's always been taken advantage of and always fallen into this fake news, people just don't trust you anymore. They're like well, you can't tell a difference, so why are we? We're not going to have the conversations with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're not going to have those conversations with you where we actually want to debate something, because your, your, your information is rubbish. You believe it but it's not true and I think I think that's something that we can. You know, it's a small step that we can take in terms of it, because I do think there's a lot of people are not complacent but they're like oh, what are we going to do? No one taught us how to navigate this or how we're going to teach our kids. I said, well, it's time for you to try. It's just time for you to try it. Just start with, like you know, doom scroll and just you know how about we just take it small steps. Just listen, okay, how long we've been doom scrolling. I've been doing scroll for like 20 minutes. Brilliant, stop that now and go outside yeah you see the green stuff.
Speaker 1:You see the green stuff yeah, go stand in that grass today, yeah it's like yeah, I mean I remember like I was.
Speaker 2:I was when I was, when I was uh, when I was 10, we used to go outside and it wasn't a case that we'd come home when the uh, when the lights, when the streetlights went on. That's the whole thing. Yeah, we used to go home with a streetlights come Now, we used to get home when we were too cold and hungry to stay outside anymore. You know, kind of rock up here in our pants. We didn't have mud on our trousers, like we'd lost half the trousers and you know we only had like one shoe left. We had another shoe that we picked up along the way and you know we had more scars For those random one shoes, you see, yeah, exactly you think where's the other person, where's that person?
Speaker 2:I don't know, but he lost a shoe. It's fine. He probably has mine Off we go. It's interesting because I do still think that happens. I think there is a sorry, I am doing a lot, I've just been talking constantly. No, that's great.
Speaker 1:You're making it easy for me.
Speaker 2:I do think that there is less to worry about than people sometimes talk about, because there is children. They do want to go outside and play. They want that. If a child's like playing a video game, and then you're okay, listen, I'm going to go to the park. You know, especially when they're young, they're like, hey, no, yeah, I'd love to go outside. It's, it's an adventure, I'll do it. But I think sometimes what is that they see adults not doing that themselves?
Speaker 2:right and if, if grown-ups are the ones who are going listen, I'm going outside or I'm going for a walk, do you want to come with me? And they're like, yeah, okay, I'll come with you. And they're like, okay, this is brilliant and I think, but it does fall down to the parents. We don't need to know the answers. We don't have to know the answers, we just have to lead by example.
Speaker 1:Exactly that is my. I love that.
Speaker 2:Just invite them.
Speaker 1:Just invite them to join us, and we are their biggest influencers, right Like if you're in their life forever, or since they don't remember, then you're the one showing them what they want or what they don't want the one showing them what they want or what they don't want.
Speaker 2:I mean, how many times when you were a kid did you not do something because you were afraid to ask permission to do it, even something small, like you want to make yourself a sandwich or anything, any small, independent thing. And you think well, I didn't ask because I was afraid to ask permission, because I'd never seen anyone else do it. But if you see mom or dad do something, you say okay, cool, can I just do that as well, and if you'll do it, it kind of opens up the door, and I think that's a lot of it.
Speaker 2:You know, the world is so big and so huge and if it's not your mom and dad who are opening the doors for you to kind of lead you through it, you'll be just opening up doors wherever you can and then be like I don't know which door to go through, whereas you know I'm still quite new. I'm new to podcasts, I'm especially new to being a parent, but from what I can see so far is largely and what I saw from my parents, it's largely about just following their example. You know, I do think there's a lot of hope. I think there's a few things that we need to get sorted ourselves, but I don't think it's as bad as what people sometimes make it out to be, which I just realized. I don't know why I got into that topic. I was kind of going a little bit on the deeper side of things and we were actually just talking about career paths.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, that's the thing. It's a deep-rooted thing of where you end up in your career and how you find that path. We were talking before we started recording too. Like Donnie, what did you want to be when you grew up and how did you end up on this path?
Speaker 2:comparatively, yeah, firstly I wanted to be a paleontologist, like Alan Grant from Jurassic Park.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yes, absolutely Loved dinosaurs, always have done Like any red-blooded South African loved dinosaurs. Then I wanted to be a space cowboy, which I can't really ride a horse and I'm never going into space. I don't like to fly. But what I actually always wanted to be was a writer. I've always wanted to be a writer. I wrote my first book when I was nine. Um, I was 120 pages. I wrote it on on a computer. Yeah, just talk about old technology. I wrote it on dos yeah it was saved.
Speaker 2:It was saved on 17 stiffy discs and so I remember we sent it off to the editor and they're like oh, this is brilliant, can you send us a fresh copy? Make these few changes, make a fresh copy. And I didn't know what I was doing and I think I crashed the computer and I lost it all. But I've always wanted to be a writer and I've had different jobs and whatnot, but I kind of stumbled into publishing with working with a magazine in about 2008. And it's just been what I've done ever since, and I'm very pleased to say that I do. Now. My job is to write articles. I write articles on businesses and CEOs. I get to speak to some incredible people. I've written several books that have been published. Those are not as successful as I'd like them to be, which is often something that a novelist has to realize for all your effort, published as a really big accomplishment it is.
Speaker 2:It sounds big, but you kind of get it like brilliant, can I retire now? And they're like no chance. They're like no, no, you do not want to retire. Um, but I I got into it because I wanted to do it and I've always. One thing about me is I've always had that get up and go a bit of an energetic kind of okay, I'll just do it. And while I do make a little bit of planning, I don't get bogged down in the details. I'm like, okay, this is what I'm going to do, I do it, I just do it.
Speaker 1:Figure that other stuff out as you go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, which sounds very cool, but it's like you know, it's kind of like running on an open field before you've kind of checked out where the holes are and you kind of find out, you face plant a few times but as long as you keep the momentum going yeah you know you get to the other side and you're like, oh God, and you think there's a road right there.
Speaker 2:Why didn't I just take the road? If I just walked 20 meters up, there's a road there. So, like I've always wanted to be a writer and so I just got into it and I honestly think largely what I do is just that this that's what I want to do, especially when I was young Anyone I spoke with am I like when I was a teenager, when I was in my twenties, they're like, what do you want to do? I was like I really want to. I want to write, I want to write articles. I want to be a journalist, I want to. I want to write novels, write books, and that kind of earnest, earnest honesty and just being kind of knowing what I want and being luckily knowing what I've went from a young age and moving that forward has always been really it's always paid off for me, because I think people like, okay, you want to be a writer, brilliant, and then they'll go off and they won't think anything of it and then, by chance, someone somewhere will be like, actually, that's, that'd be perfect for this guy. I know this guy. He's really keen on writing and they make an introduction or they say well, why don't you contact so and so I know so and so that works for a magazine. Okay, do that.
Speaker 2:With the internet. Now it can be easier if you know what you want to do. If you decide, fine, I want to get into writing in terms of journalism or blogging or whatever it is. All you have to do is with ChatGP. It makes it even easier to find this thing online.
Speaker 2:You just say can you give me a list of a thousand magazines worldwide that might be looking for writers? You got your list. You go, okay, cool. Then you go to Google and you get a mass mail and you go just send an email to a thousand people saying I'm a writer, let me write for you. You know I will pay me whatever you like, I'll just write for you.
Speaker 2:And all I ask is that you put my name on an article in your magazine or on your website and then it starts to grow. And then people like, okay, yeah, great, let's do it, or you need to improve, you need to change this, you need to do this. Okay, fine, you can adapt and you can grow when you've got that interchange, that kind of feedback of it, whether it's good or bad, you can say, okay, great, this is how I work, this is how I sharpen my skills, and it's like that. With anything, absolutely anything. If you want to be a I don't know an accountant, or you want to work in technology, you want to work in engineering, you have to have that core interest.
Speaker 1:So the best way to find out If you can figure out what you're passionate about and make that into a career, you're going to be a lot happier.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and also what you're passionate about can often be channeled into a certain thing, but if you break it down, there's often different areas Like writing. What I like about writing is I get to talk to people, I get to think laterally, I get to look at things from a different perspective, I get to research stuff, have an excuse to really deep dive and research things, travel and see yeah.
Speaker 2:I get an excuse for all this stuff. There are different industries that I could have been very satisfied in, and there was a business person I wish I could remember the name because of such a great quote. It wasn't a quote, but he said that you don't need passion to have a career, you need to have a trade. You need to know what you're good at. And his words were there are loads of accountants who are multi-millionaires, who are passionate about painting, but because they were good with numbers as well and they were able to get into that trade, they had the success there and they built a career on that. You don't have to follow your passions for your career, but you need to know what you're passionate about. So if you're good with numbers, you've got to use that, because that's an advantage. If you're good with numbers, you've got to use that, because that's an advantage. If you're good with words, you've got to use that.
Speaker 1:I'm good with writing. It usually comes easy to you.
Speaker 2:Exactly so then you're not so stressed out or have to work with my hands. Not necessarily, because what makes you good with your hands is more than just your limbs. It's the way your brain works. It's a way that you could visualize things, conceptualize things. You may be very good at architecture, you may be very good at teaching. You know there's that guidance again, how we get guidance from our elders to say, okay, well, you'd be perfect for these kind of roles.
Speaker 2:These roles are the ones that are making the money and where you get the most success from. If you get more success, the more success you get, the more encouraged you'll be to do better at something and you'll grow and grow and grow and you'll develop it. And then, if you're successful, whatever it may not be the most glamorous position, but success is power, success is confidence, success is purpose. Feeling successful is very important, very important, and I would rather be a. I would rather be successful at something that's boring that'd be the best at something that no one appreciates and you know I'm off by myself A long way, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:And there is again, because there's a trendy thing online of people say, oh, you got to follow, follow what you're passionate about and follow this almost at the complete exclusion of absolutely everything else. But I think that is a dangerous thing to teach people because it's a balance. Again, it's a balance. Everyone who I know of who's had phenomenal success in one thing built that up while they were doing something else.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite writers, terry pratchett. Um, he, I don't know if you know him, he's a british writer, he's a fantasist. He's written some incredible work, um, and he's just loved in the uk, loved worldwide, but in the uk he's just. Everyone knows him and he worked a run of jobs. He was a pr agent for a nuclear power plant for many years and he was working on his books on the sidelines, you know, and it was took a long time for him to build it up, but he got his success and he was able to do it full time.
Speaker 2:And it's the same with with me and writing on a much smaller, on a much smaller scale. Um, there were times when writing was not making the money I needed to do, and so I just got any job I possibly could, and some of those jobs I was pretty good at, and so I was, I was able to, I got promoted and I got up and I was like, oh, this is fantastic. I feel, you know, I've, I'm feeling that success, I'm going that. You know those that dopamine rush. It's good. Um, and then that led on to the other passions of writing and and this is where I found it. So I think there's a balance to be said Follow your passions but, at the same time, make sure that you have something that you're good at, that you can leverage to make revenue, to make money, to make something of yourself, because you need to have a backup plan.
Speaker 1:Donnie is there anything else that you want to share?
Speaker 2:I think I've just been speaking so much. I'm so sorry. I think I've just kind of like railroaded you. I must have had a lot of sugar for dinner.
Speaker 1:Well, it is six hours later where you are than where I am, so I just had lunch and you're already probably getting ready for bed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've had far too much caffeine to go to bed now. But it has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I've really enjoyed. I've really enjoyed the our our our chance to chat here.
Speaker 1:So where can we find you?
Speaker 2:Okay, so, um, I am online. I'm on all the major platforms um X, instagram, facebook, linkedin. Donnie Rust uh, the Lost Executive, it's Executive. That's our publishing house. That can be found at thelostexecutivecom and our magazine, the Logbook can also be found on that website. And, yeah, it's as simple as that to get hold of me All right.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We enjoyed having you and now we're best friends. But now I have a international best friend I love it, kelly. Thank you so much all right, donnie have a good night you too, cheers now.
