#88 - What Excites Me Most About Turning 30 (MY THOUGHTS)

The swirly whirly world of turning 30 after a decade long adventure of the school of hard knocks 20's. In my twenties I got my first speeding ticket, I learned how to burgers with oats in them, and I climbed a mountain in New Mexico. 

There's a lot on my mind before I turn 30 - and there's a lot to look back on in my twenties. ENJOY!

Email me at talktopeoplepodcast@gmail.com

Read my blog about turning 30:

https://www.talktopeoplepodcast.com/blog/three-things-everyone-should-do-in-their-thirties/

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Transcript

Welcome to the Talk to People Podcast.

My name is Chris Miller, and I will be your host today.

I've recorded 87 episodes of the Talk to People Podcast, which makes this the 88th episode.

If this is your first time listening, I'm so happy you're here.

If it's your 88th time listening, again, I am delighted that you are here.

It has been six weeks since I have hopped on a microphone and in front of a camera to record an episode of the Talk to People Podcast, and I've missed it.

Frankly, I've had a hard time recording this podcast because I feel like I have writer's block.

I have not felt inspired.

I have not felt creative.

I have felt so much perfectionism to where anything I try to create, I feel like it's not good enough.

I feel like I need to be much more of an expert and that these episodes need to be a lot more targeted.

But that resulted in me going six weeks without posting a podcast episode.

So with shovel in hand, I am ready to dig myself out of this hole.

I've decided the only way for me to get back to creating is to one, lower my standards, not be such a perfectionist, and two, just start talking.

Get on the microphone, get in front of the camera, and let your mouth run.

Let it run, let it run, let it run.

Hopefully it's not verbal diarrhea.

Hopefully it can be a little impactful.

But if not, that's okay.

I hope you've enjoyed listening to this podcast.

If this is your first time listening, I know that's a long intro, but I want to talk to you about something you may relate to here, depending on how old you are.

You've either been there, or you're going to be there soon.

And that is that I'm about to turn 30.

In about four weeks, I will be crossing the bridge from the 20s, twirling, two-stepping temple to the 30s, thriving, throwing footballs, Thursdays.

I will be 30, the big 3-0.

I have been thinking about this a lot, so much so that my Toastmasters speech last week, if you've never heard of Toastmasters, look into it.

It's an international organization with chapters all around the world.

There's a chapter near you, more than likely, that focuses on leadership and communication.

And my speech was three things I hope to learn in my 30s.

It was a really good speech.

I would wish I recorded it.

That way, I could have just posted it on my podcast.

Ooh, I'm gonna have to do that one day, publish one of my Toastmasters speeches.

And then you all can see me and give me feedback.

You can see whether or not I really walk the walk when it comes to the communication stuff.

But I talked about three things I'd like to learn in my 30s.

And I wanted with you to share those three things.

And I also wanted to talk a little about highlights of my 20s.

20s, there's that book called Defining Decade by Meg J.

It was a book that whenever I had just met Annie, we were at a baseball game together, Winston Salem Dash.

And she told me, you need to read the book Defining Decade.

And I thought she was funny, smart, and cute, so I definitely read the book.

And then I told her, hey, I read the book, and she was so impressed.

That gave me enough credit to be able to enter in some conversations with her and ultimately invite her to a basketball game where everybody else bailed out of, and she was the only one who stuck with it.

And it ended up just being me and her, her and I, our first unofficial date, that basketball game.

And we started going to a lot more basketball games.

So thank you to the Wake Forest basketball team for giving Annie and I the place to get to know one another.

But she told me, you need to read The Defining Decade.

And this book is all about your 20s.

In the book, the thesis is that your 20s is the defining decade.

It's going to be the thing that sets you up for the rest of your life.

I agree that it's an important decade, but she begins to say how the world's changing, and 20s is almost like extended adolescence, because we're still learning so much in our 20s.

And I feel like I have so much to learn in my 30s.

But in my 20s, I got my first speeding ticket.

Unfortunately, that was when I was 29 or 28.

So at the end of my 20s, I almost got out of my 20s without a speeding ticket.

I don't speed that often.

I learned how to grill.

I learned how to grill burgers with oats in them.

I learned how to grill chicken, asparagus.

I learned how to grill bacon.

I learned how to grill a lot of things.

And that increased my self-efficacy.

It made me feel like I could provide.

We purchased a grill.

I learned how to exchange a propane tank.

I drove to the wrong propane place, and I had to be educated on how exactly it all worked.

In my 20s, I avoided fist fights.

I didn't get into a single fist fight in my 20s, which I'm really grateful for.

I do have this kind of fantasy of being a really good fighter, of being a protector, being able to beat up the bully.

Truthfully, though, I'm nervous to fight and box.

I feel like my nose is too big for that.

I feel like it's too big of a target.

Someone could punch me in the nose easily, and I would just start crying.

I crashed my car in my 20s.

I was able to drive away, but my 2002 Chevy Blazer started spinning on the highway while I was driving to North Carolina, and I went into oncoming traffic and hit a vehicle that was on the shoulder.

I invested in a crypto startup, and I lost money.

I actually invested half of our emergency fund, so big brain move for Chris there.

I went offense, defense against a bat.

We had bats in our house, and I had to figure out how to deal with that.

I was not front line there.

We worked with the pest control company, but I had never worked with a bat.

So there's a lot of goofy, funny things in my 20s that I've been involved in, but I really enjoyed my 20s.

And if I were to go back to my 20-year-old self, and my 20-year-old self says, hey, future Chris, 30-year-old Chris, do you have any advice for me?

I would tell myself to be more confident, be more confident in who I am.

I felt imposter syndrome.

I remember whenever I was 21 or 22, my senior year of college, an award ceremony, and they awarded me with all these nice awards.

The top central man, the top man of the university.

And I remember feeling incredibly grateful going back to my room and praying down on my knees, just like, thank you, Lord, for such an awesome time at this university.

But feeling like an imposter, like, oh man, there's these people in these fraternities who are a lot more successful than me.

There's people who are making more money than me.

They have higher prospects than me.

I didn't know what I was going to do outside of school.

So I just kept going to school and I went to grad school.

But I would tell myself to be more confident because I was being recognized for those awards, mainly because I valued other people and I talked to them a lot.

And that indirectly put me in positions to where I was able to keep doing that, but people were able to notice that because it feels good whenever people talk to you and ask you questions.

I need to be more confident, even now today, with the business or with my job or with this podcast.

I need to keep breathing life into it.

So I'd tell myself that in my 20s.

I got married in my 20s.

I met Annie, who is such an incredible person, and talk about a blessing, being able to live life with someone that makes you laugh, makes you smile, makes you proud, makes you excited.

What a game changer.

And my main, hmm, how can I say this?

You know how whenever you start dating, you have a list of non-negotiables, and you have a checklist of things you want them to be like.

You could look at it from the angle of, I want it to be a brunette with brown eyes, and I want her to have all of the skin, and I want her to have a really cute laugh, or a smile that makes me smile, right?

Like, you could talk about the appearance, or you could talk about the personality, or the work ethic.

I just wanted someone that would make my family better.

Someone who I knew was going to be, like, if we were to look at the level of quality of the people in my life, was going to be a net positive.

And my wife definitely was that, simultaneously checking all the other boxes.

The brown hair and the brown eyes.

That is, that's my preference.

So, shout out to her for being that, and for being all the million of other things.

So, I met an incredible woman, and I got to marry her.

Biggest, best thing I've done in my 20s, was finding and marrying my wife.

Shout out to her, right?

I'm working on a podcast with Annie, and we will be producing some episodes soon.

I'm very excited to tell you about that, but I'm not quite ready to tell you.

Whenever I graduated graduate school, at Wake Forest, I had this big fancy degree, and I was teaching public speaking to these kids who were getting these jobs.

So my students were graduating, getting these six-figure jobs, or getting nice five-figure jobs, or just going and not having to work, because they didn't need to work, because they weren't worried about money.

And I remember feeling like, okay, I was teaching them, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be set.

I have a lot of prospects.

I had the hardest time finding a job, the hardest time finding a job, to the point to where I found myself working at a call center, having to ask for permission to go to the restroom.

And that was demoralizing, working at a call center and answering calls all day, people being upset about something happening, people being upset about something happening.

People that...

I remember my first week I was at this job, I sit down at my cubicle, and the guy that I was across the wall from me, the cubicle wall, the three-feet privacy wall, he stood up, and whenever you stand up, there goes your privacy, right?

He could just see right into my cubicle.

He stood up and he said, Hey, bro, if there's anything you need, let me know.

Like, I'm here to help you out.

And I was like, okay, cool.

Do you know how to set up my phone?

I don't know how to set up my phone to get calls or take voicemails.

And he goes, oh, yeah, man, I can't help you there.

I haven't taken any calls.

And I was like, okay.

I was like, how long have you been working here?

And he's like, three months.

I was like, okay.

So you don't know how to set up your phone.

You've been working here for three months.

Then I was like, well, what about the email?

Do you know how to get the email set up to where I can get on these lists?

And he's like, oh yeah, I haven't entered any of those lists.

So I'm thinking, no wonder you want to help people out.

You have no idea what you're doing.

So that's a good way to fill your time.

I also remember he said he had been dating his girlfriend for a long time.

And I was like, oh, are y'all gonna get engaged soon?

And he said, yeah, I'm thinking six to 12 months.

And whenever I heard that, I kind of told myself, I don't know whether or not you all will be getting engaged in six to 12 months.

I may be wrong, and I was making an assumption, but it just didn't seem like he actually had plans to propose in six to 12 months.

One of those things.

I found myself working in a call center.

Wow.

And it's not a joke whenever I say I had to ask permission to go to the restroom.

I had to message my manager who was sitting like four cubicles away from me, and she would tell me, not right now, the queue is full.

And then you would just have to wait, right?

Like, so crazy and so wild for someone in a worse position than me who maybe had something going on medically, or they just weren't feeling well and they needed to leave to the restroom.

And I was one of the standout leaders.

That's what they called me.

So they're like, oh, you can do training, and you can be a part of interviews, which was fun.

But I wasn't enjoying it.

So whenever Annie, who became my fiancee, got the opportunity to move to Lawrence, Kansas for a fellowship, I said, I am leaving this job behind, and I am chasing the girl.

I am going on an adventure.

And I was so excited.

So we packed our bags, and we moved during the middle of COVID with Zach Harris and Lainey, driving the Penske truck through the switchback mountains of North Carolina and Virginia.

As we're leaving North Carolina, my car dies.

In Fancy Gap, Virginia, I go to a mechanic, this mechanic with nobody there.

We roll up, we walk in there, we're trying to see him.

He diagnoses my car, says, my wheel axle is about to break.

Basically, my whole entire wheel would fall off in the mountains while I'm going downhill.

My car was screeching whenever I was holding it down on the brake, trying to slow down.

So we left the car there.

I called AAA and I told them to tow it back to North Carolina.

I never saw the car again.

Shout out to Zach for taking care of that for me.

But it was a crazy trip, and it was the start of this new adventure in Kansas.

And I tried to build my own company in Kansas.

I wanted to create an e-commerce company.

Shout out to my wife.

So I've already talked about Annie a pretty decent amount.

She believed in me so much that she invested in this software program for me to use to be able to build this business.

It was an e-commerce business and get back end analytics of Amazon.

I didn't succeed.

I didn't have enough money.

COVID happened.

Supply chain costs went through the roof.

My startup capital couldn't even cover the first transaction, but I did my best, and I created logos, and I did research.

I interacted with the suppliers.

I had phone calls with them.

I got sample products created.

I had a whole entire website listing.

There was so much that I had done.

I just couldn't make that final push of purchasing inventory.

And when you can't purchase inventory, then you can't sell anything.

So I kind of hung it up.

But during that, I had virtual jobs.

I had a job with WordVice, which is a big editing company based in South Korea, where they would send me papers and I would edit them.

And I would have to log my hours and they'd pay me.

I remember when Annie and I, this was, I think we were engaged, we went on a trip in Wisconsin to a cabin.

And while I was there, I was editing papers.

At the same time, I worked with Arizona State University as a virtual grader.

So I found myself graduating school, needing money, and I just kept grading people's papers.

They paid me 20 bucks an hour.

I think I got 10 hours a week or 20 hours a week, something like that.

I remember they would give me jobs, and these jobs were supposed to fulfill the 20 hours, and I would just try and blitz through them.

It would take me five hours of work, but I'd get 20 hours of pay.

So that was a pretty sweet gig for the moment, but I didn't get any face-to-face interaction.

And I got an offer to work for a big health care IT company, the biggest in the area, and they gave me, what, 75 grand.

They said, go at them, have fun.

Initially, it sounded like a good gig, until each plane ticket on another plane ticket on another plane ticket.

I was traveling.

I was gone way too far.

I started dealing with depression in these hotel rooms.

It got so bad that I would have to switch hotel rooms because I'd walk in the door, and I would see the same dresser.

I'd see the same TV, the same hotel room.

And I felt down because I didn't have community, and I wasn't around my fiancée or my wife, depending on which time point we're in.

I wasn't able to see the new Golden Retriever I got.

I wasn't exercising.

I was eating unhealthy because I was always on the road.

My stress level was high.

I did not feel like I had a lot of agency in my job because I didn't really know what I was doing because there was no onboarding or training.

It wasn't a fun time.

But it gave me money, and I think it was impressive to a lot of people.

And I got to tell them that I worked and my client was the DOD, the Department of Defense.

So there was a lot of repute there.

But my life was sucking.

So whenever I had the conversation with Annie and I said, hey, I know I don't have another job lined up, but I feel like everything we're missing from this job is not worth it compared to what we're getting.

And I think my quality of life would be higher if I left.

And she blessed that.

And she said, I'm fully behind what you got going on.

And if that's what you want to do, then let's do it.

And I started talking to management on my job, and we started looking at a sales job that I could transition into.

Everything was going blisteringly well.

We had great interviews.

I met with the VP.

She was also from Oklahoma.

We hit it off so well.

And then in one of the biggest record-setting transactions in corporate America, the company that I was working at was acquired by the third largest tech firm in the world.

And they said there's an organizational freeze for six months.

No one can move to a different job.

And during that time, I was approached to go to a different city for a long amount of time, and I wouldn't be able to go home.

And the combination of those three things, I had to stay in my job, I had to go to a different city, and I couldn't move to the sales job that I was excited about, culminated into me putting in my two weeks.

And I remember my manager there was incredible.

Tracy Green, I had her on the podcast.

I love Tracy Green.

Shout out to Tracy.

But the work was hard.

So it's crazy how important it is to have good people there, because having someone as sweet as Tracy could offset mildly to semi-sucky jobs.

But whenever the job is just bad, you're like, okay, I gotta get out of here.

And I left and I started the podcast.

I drove to Oklahoma with a friend, with Braxton.

We walked in the stranger's house, and he had beer bottles and liquor bottles, chip bags, everything everywhere.

And he said, oh, hey, sorry, I haven't cleaned up.

I had a party four days ago.

And I'm thinking, brother, it's been four days.

But he had podcast equipment, and he sold it to me at a good rate.

And I sat at my table in my kitchen for about two months trying to learn how to record a podcast without there being a fuzz.

So if you're listening to this podcast and there's no fuzz in it, that took some time.

That's what we call sweat equity, investment.

And after two months, I figured it out and I started recording podcasts.

My first podcast, I recorded three times.

And the third take, I said, let's roll with it.

And the trailer got featured on Apple Podcast's home page.

And people started listening to it from all around the world.

I have never gotten more listens on a podcast than my first ever episode.

That was a trip.

That's an experience.

You think you're gonna be the next Slow Rogan.

Joe Rogan.

He's crushing it.

I have nothing against him by saying Slow Rogan.

That's not a dig.

But you think you're gonna be the next huge thing, and then you never...

It goes downhill from there.

But it didn't really go downhill from there.

That was just how getting on Apple Podcasts changed things.

But I start enjoying the podcast and loving it and having a lot of fun.

But in the back of my mind, I still felt like a deadbeat.

I felt like I wasn't fulfilling my potential because I didn't have a job and I wasn't bringing money to the table.

And shout out to my wife during this.

I had saved up some money for my last job.

But at some point, you know you're losing a lot of provision potential because even if you save money up, they say cash is queen, but cash flow is king, and you're missing out on a lot of cash flow.

And it took me a very long time to find a job.

I got rejected, I think, eight or nine times.

And I would say 75% of those, I got all of the interviews.

So I'm a great interview.

I just wasn't enough to make it across that line and get the job offer.

But after a while, I just kind of relaxed about it.

I started producing podcasts for other people, and that changed my mindset a little bit.

It reminded me that I could go out there and create capital.

Like I could actually, rather than someone having to pay me, I could go out there and fulfill a need, write a contract, get that contract signed, and then get X amount of money deposited into my bank account.

It didn't need to be a W2, sign the dotted line, I work for you and I punch the clock.

And that gave me a lot of self-efficacy.

And I spent a lot of time, and I got to the point to where, I mean, I'm still technically there.

I'm a business owner now.

I'm adjusting my business model a lot to try and meet the demands and the lifestyle I currently have.

But it gave me a lot of self-efficacy, and I was able to sign the five-figure deals and get these big lump sums in my bank account.

Yet I found myself lonely.

I didn't get a lot of social interaction.

And I have a podcast about social connection.

And what I've learned is that one of the worst feelings is dissonance whenever you feel different than how you expect to feel.

And I was talking a lot about the importance of talking to people in public, but in private, I wasn't socially fulfilled.

I felt a lack there.

I knew something needed to change.

So whenever I found this job at KU, which is the bastion of social presence in my city, I said, I got to go for it.

And it worked out.

And now I get to work with people every single day.

I get to meet with them one on one.

I have an incredible team.

I get to be a part of all these different events.

People are giving me the microphone to speak.

I get to travel and meet with people and encourage them and advise them.

And I'm learning while I'm earning.

I get to learn about business and how to be a better entrepreneur as I'm being paid to advise people on that.

So it is such a great fit, and I'm so happy for that job.

And I think learning that job has taken a lot of mental bandwidth to where it's given me a little break from the podcast, and it's helped me recognize that I missed the podcast.

So it's been a trip, but I'm here.

I created a soccer pick up group called Morning Soccer Pick Up in my 20s, and now it's grown on average to about 20 people every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 5:45 a.m.

20 great people.

We have younger people, older people.

We have people of all different jobs, all different nationalities, all different personalities.

It's one of the things I'm proudest of, because I don't have to wonder about the impact.

People tell me, thank you so much for organizing this.

I love this game, and it gives me an opportunity to play the game.

People tell me I am much healthier than I've ever been.

I feel a lot less lonely, and that's really exciting for me.

I tried alcohol for the first time in my 20s.

I've never been drunk, but there was one time where I was trying vodka and tonic, like seltzer water, with lemon and lime.

And I remember walking down the staircase and kind of feeling like my equilibrium was a little bit off.

So I was like, okay, I get the gist of this.

Like I get the tipsiness.

I didn't really take it on.

I never really picked alcohol up.

For a couple of years, I would just consider myself a social drinker, even though I never really drank.

And then I just decided like, hey, let's just make it easy.

So now I don't drink alcohol.

But I tried it whenever I turned about 23, I think.

When I turned 21, I had tried coffee for my first time.

I remember telling the barista, hey, I just turned 21, so I'm going to have my first drink.

And the barista was like, oh, okay, okay, yeah, your first drink, yeah, yeah.

Well, do you want a shot of espresso?

If it's your first drink, you should probably get a caramel macchiato since it's not too bitter.

It's going to be more sweet.

I was like, yeah, let's do both of them.

So I got a caramel macchiato and a shot of espresso.

And I put my lips to that espresso and I pulled the cup away so quickly.

It was so bitter.

I could not fathom drinking that.

And then a friend of mine took it and tossed it back real quick.

One gulp.

Wow.

And all of you listening to this who drink espresso, who drink Americanos, you all are a different breed.

But I told my boss whenever I was turning 21, that day she said, do you have any plans for tonight?

And I said, oh yeah, I'm going to have my first drink of coffee.

And she was like, oh coffee.

Yeah.

Well, I hope you don't drink too much coffee to where you don't show up to work tomorrow.

And be careful with how much coffee you drink.

What she didn't realize was I had never drank coffee before.

This was my first drink of coffee.

She thought I was using it as a filling for alcohol.

I wasn't.

I chose not to drink coffee.

That way I could have a forbidden drink when I turned 21 rather than having to drink alcohol.

Because I saw how people abused alcohol, and I did not want to be involved in that.

Later on, I realized that I was avoiding alcohol out of fear, and I didn't want that to be the case.

Hence why I tried it, and I tried a whole bunch of the different drinks, and I just wasn't the biggest fan.

I interviewed an Olympic gold medalist whenever I was in my 20s.

I interviewed the president of my university, my first university.

Then I interviewed the president of my other university, the highest paid president in the country at the time.

I remember interviewing the man that was the namesake Mr.

Wake Forest, who was really cool.

I interviewed someone who was brilliant from Princeton and from Harvard, and interviewed pastors, and door-to-door vacuum salesmen, and professional TikTokers, and a lot of different people I got to talk to.

I went to my hometown, and I interviewed the mayor.

That was a lot of fun.

I love talking to people, so I just put the gas, pressed the gas, and I got to talk to more people.

In my 20s, I almost hit 200 pounds body weight.

First time I had ever felt like I needed to lose weight.

I benched about 200 pounds, I'm saying about, I think it was like 195.

I ran a half marathon and failed.

I had to quit.

Mile 11.

I went viral on TikTok.

I got a lot of hate comments on YouTube.

Hmm, what else?

I went on dates, and then I met my wife.

Praise God.

I started investing in a Roth IRA and a Roth 401k.

I'll be happy when I'm 65.

I got several new nieces and nephews, all of which I'm so grateful for.

I bought a 75-inch TV during Black Friday, and I had to return it because I didn't realize how big 75 inches were.

I put it in my car to return it, and I had Sonny with me.

And the thing was so big that I kept having to push his chair up, and by the time it fit, he was like squished in there, which was really funny.

And what's this say?

I became overweight.

I already talked about that.

There's a lot of stuff that I've done in my 20s, and I'm really grateful for it, and I have three weeks left.

I'm sure I wish I would have done more in my 20s, but I don't know how much I actually agree with that.

I recognize sometimes we don't really get...

It's not up to us oftentimes how much we accomplish, because sometimes we're dealt with a bad hand of cards.

Sometimes we get sick.

Sometimes there's a disaster.

Sometimes we spend months of our lives just responding or trying to get back to where we were.

So when you look at it that way, I'm very grateful for my 20s.

So what are a few things I want to do in my 30s?

Well, I journaled a lot in my 20s, and lately I've been going back and reading that journal.

And something I always focused on was my sleep.

I would complain about my sleep, and I'd be wishing for more sleep.

So in my 30s, I would like to prioritize sleep.

I recognize that I may have even more reasons why sleep may become more difficult in my 30s, but I want to be actively thinking about sleep.

I want to reflect more in my 30s about how to spend my time.

I can feel a lot of pressure and feel dissonance or feel conflict.

Do I spend more time working on the podcast or working on my job or spend it with my family or spend it exercising or spend it on my hobbies or spend it outside?

And I want to reflect on that more.

I would like to have maybe more clear conviction when it comes to that, more inspiration, be more excited about spending my time in certain ways rather than feeling bad that I didn't spend it another way.

Another thing I'd like to do in my 30s is something I will tell you about soon, but I can't tell you about now.

But it's something I'm thinking a lot about, and hopefully on the podcast, we'll talk about it.

I've talked a lot.

I talked for 35 minutes.

I've been having a hard time talking on the podcast, and this episode served as a chance for me just to get rolling.

I am predicting myself to do a few more of these solo episodes, where I'm talking on the podcast to the camera.

If you're interested in that, please tune in.

If you don't like that style, I'll have some conversation soon, and I'll see you then.

But I just need to get myself going.

This podcast is really important to me, and I've really loved doing it.

And I'm really grateful for all of you listening, and I'm not letting it go.

I'm picking it back up.

So, if that takes me talking on the microphone and looking at the camera, so be it.

So, I hope you enjoyed traveling with me through my 20s and having a bit of a sneak peek into my 30s.

Remember that life is better when you talk to people, and I will see you next time.