David Bash, Podcaster, Speaker, Entrepreneur

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The people listening didn't see me when I got here, but you saw me and I was stressing about the interview. I stress about everything.

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Welcome to another episode of Chewing the Fat. I'm your host, Big Robb. Thank you so much for tuning in, downloading, following the podcast. I certainly do appreciate that. Thanks to the folks that reached out to me and said they heard me on Pandora. That was cool, I didn't even know we were on Pandora. So that was awesome. Also, on all of the platforms, apparently, somebody said they heard me on, what is it, Audible a couple of weeks ago. So that's pretty cool. So thank you for, one and all, for listening. I certainly do appreciate that. And thank you for the folks that have bought me coffee,

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on chewongthefatbr.com and also just written reviews and rated the podcast on the platform you're listening to. So I really do appreciate that. I'm excited about my guest that is in studio today. We talked to his partner probably almost exactly a year ago to the time that this is airing. He is half of the Drop the Dis duo. He is very engaged in the YPA and Beautify Augusta. He is smart as a whip with some numbers

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Please welcome David Bash. Rob, I'm excited to be here. This is a cool experience for me, man. Thank you, thank you for being here. So you tell me this is your first time ever being like mano a mano on a podcast. Yeah, like long form interviewed. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I've been on like, it's funny, like I've done like a couple morning show kind of things. I've done some afternoon shows. I've done some live shows. I've been on a podcast, but I've never actually like sat down and talked about my life.

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I feel like that's 100% different. So I'm really interested to see what happens. That's awesome. Well, and I appreciate you saying yes to my invitation to come in and talk. I felt like I owed it to you guys, seeing as I did talk to Chris, like I said, about a year ago and had him on. So I wanted to get the other half of the dynamic duo here in the studio. Now for you, are you from Augusta? You from the Augusta area? So I'm like mostly from Augusta.

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I've lived here like my whole life, but I was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana Oh nice, and the reason that that's relevant is that while I didn't live there long My parents did hmm and my dad especially even though funny. They're both from up north My dad's from Ohio my mom's from Canada. So there's no like like people say I look like I'm Cajun I'm like that's cool, but there's 0% chance that I am But while we were there while my parents were there really

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And so there's a lot of things that I take like my football teams are down there I love that part of the culture the food there is awesome It really influences how I cook my food so but I've lived in Augusta most of my life Yeah, so so so you moved here probably around when it's like five years old something. Oh, yeah for most most I started public school in Augusta Oh, that's that's awesome school system in Baton Rouge in the mid 90s was not what we not what we wanted it to be

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So how did you pick Augusta from Baton Rouge? So at that time, my parents were both medical. And so I guess what my dad did, because we're like this in my family, is he researched all of the places that had these medical hubs, and all of the school systems in those places, and the cost of living. And he found Evans, Georgia, Columbia County. So we lived in Woodbridge for like five or six years

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growing up. Yeah, so we landed straight in Columbia County. That's pretty interesting that he would, you know, do all of that kind of like calculations and maths and breakdowns and stuff like that because I know that's that's also kind of a passion of yours too, like numbers. It's more like a habit than a passion. It's like you can't not do it. Yeah, it's like what else would I do other than try to like calculate how this is gonna go. That's all it sounds like you got it

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When you were here, I mean, I got introduced to you through Drop the Dis. I'd been listening to the podcast. I'd heard the name, you know, Drop Disgusta, all of that prior to the podcast, I think, prior to even hearing the podcast. And I love the fact that you love the town enough that you're like, it gets a bad rap.

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Augusta it just we need to get rid of that because Augusta has so much potential and and it and it absolutely does Where did that kind of passion for this hometown come from the crazy thing is like I wouldn't have described myself when we started the show as particularly passionate about the Augusta area like more than anybody else The original goal of the show which I we still we still I think have

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this goal was to do what we could to improve Augusta more than anything else. Because what we saw, and we specifically saw this in Stillwater Taproom, and you probably have heard part of the story from Chris, so I won't like super dive into it. But what we basically realized, Chris and I just sitting around hanging out talking about things, is that there was like a great market in Augusta. There was great groups of people in Augusta. Lots of people like to do stuff.

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there was nothing to do, but those same people didn't know what there was to do. And so we saw this situation and our solution to that was there must be a local show that talks about this, that somebody could, that we could listen to really, selfishly like that we could listen to and then we could go talk about the things on the show and figure, use those to figure out ideas of things we could do for Augusta. And so we basically gave ourselves homework one day after pint night to go find the best podcast

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without Augusta promoting Augusta, and we couldn't find one. Wow. And so with my red iPhone 7, which I still have, we just started having conversations with people about things that really we didn't know about, but we wanted to know about. And so, you know, which is funny because when we talk to fast forwarding, and we'll probably come back to this, but when we talk to clients now and we're producing their shows for them, the biggest question is who is your show for?

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and can you specifically name what we call an avatar that would listen to your program, literally find a real person and use that person as an example. And our original avatars were the two of us. And I think sometimes the best businesses, or in this case, it's not a business, it does not make us any money, but the best podcast that we could have done was just something that we wanted, that we were looking for ourselves. Yeah, yeah, I mean, that kind of goes along that old adage, be the change you want to see

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You saw a hole and you're like, well, if nobody else is gonna fill that hole, I'll fill that hole. 100%. Yeah, that's very similar as to why I started this podcast. I dealt with and still deal with depression and anxiety and things like that and feeling alone in it, I feel like I'm the only one. And I found that having conversations with people are like, oh, I deal with that too, oh, I deal with that too.

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finding that commonality, I was like, people don't realize that other people are dealing with this. So if I can have these conversations with anybody, and it's like this is not a quote unquote celebrity podcast where, you know, it's great when I talk to people that are of some stature and things like that, but. Hey, if that's some cool guest, don't sell yourself short. Oh no, no, every guest I have, I have been so appreciative of every guest that I've had on the show. And that's the thing, it's like,

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And I think that's that's part of the magic because those people that you see in the checkout line at the grocery store They're dealing with the same stuff you do you know your kids teacher. They're dealing with the same stuff that you do It's it's it's everybody and and again that was the hole that I saw that I didn't find anything For me that that kind of fit this format, so I was like well. I guess if nobody else is going to do it I'm going to do it so so I applaud you for

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initiative, you know, hey, let's make a podcast for ourselves. And that started back when? 2019. 2019. Okay. So it's now three years. Fast forward from that. The podcast is still going. I still get all of the notifications when the new episodes drop and I follow, so I get the notification. That's important. If you, if you, if you listen to a podcast and you don't follow it, you don't get the notification that a new episode has dropped. So please follow your favorite podcasts.

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listening now hit subscribe real quick. Subscribe to drop the dis and I'll such you in a fat. There you go. That's that there you go. So a lot has changed well in the world in the world you know a lot of change is changing the world since 2019 but a lot has changed in your world as well as far as what drop the dis is and has become and what you are doing so what are you doing now? So like

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So in 2019, I was working with a company, and I bring this up because I got a lot of experience of knowing what it's like to be in a small company. And I left that company in the beginning of 2020. Funny enough, the beginning of 2020 is also when Chris and I moved into our first studio space for Drop the Dis. And we had always had a joke because one thing I learned

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small business is that if you're gonna make sponsorship dollars, which we needed dollars to pay for all of the things we were doing, we were like, our goal with this show is not to lose money. That's always been the goal day one. Net zero business. If you're net zero, you're good. If you're mission-oriented at least. Which comes up in a minute. So we made a joke when we filed our LLC that we had filed Augusta Podcasts LLC and that way if we had ever changed

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be confusing and the other part of the joke was if we were ever to get a studio we could open up a rental space for other people to be creators because our whole mission was create this show and then have other people do what we're doing because we didn't want to be the sole source of information about Augusta because I mean just being perfectly

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35 we we can't speak for everybody right right we can't do it I mean we can't speak for the older generations we can't speak for the people that haven't lived in the places that we so we try our best but really the goal is for other people to start doing that so we moved into our space funny enough March of 2020 oh wow we did not plan that if we did I would be a lot richer than I am now but we

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up and then of course we went on zoom for six months right we made a few investments we did lose money on that but just an air purification system sanitizing stuff furniture that kind of stuff filled the space and in late 2020 early 2021 we kind of launched this if you need a studio space we have a studio space for you business but we had no idea what we were doing and that was a

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Gotcha. And so we knew that we didn't have the resources to really give Augusta a studio that people would want to come and use and So that was something we were struggling with trying to solve because we you know We're just doing what we could and I mean because it's different when you're setting up for your own podcast, right? You don't have as high standards. Yeah, you're like I mean literally we're sitting in this junkie room

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that I've brought you into that I call my studio. That sounds so good. But that's the thing. It's the magic behind the microphone. But when other people are pulling back behind the curtain, you want to make sure that it looks nice. You want to make sure that when they leave, they're like, man, I went to so-and-so and I had a great experience at Augusta Podcasts and recorded my show and it was great. And I had a cooler and the whole nine. You know what I mean? But for you, when it's just your podcast,

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what I can with what I have to make it happen. And that was down in the AU building, right? That's in the AU building on the 12th floor where you, I believe, interviewed with us when we talked about Black Cat Picture Festival, or Film Festival. That's right. Which is very cool, and I hope we get into that. But basically, you know, and then simultaneously to us kind of trying to figure out what to do at the studio,

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about people wanting help with the aspects of their podcast that aren't studio related like editing and planning your content and all of this stuff. And so we kind of started building this small production company and again we didn't really have the resources to grow so we made a strategic partnership in early early 2021 with a business, Alice in South across the street

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not Augusta's first professional podcast studio because there are other ones and they debatably could be better than ours but the first open access one that anybody could use no questions asked you didn't have to be a student at a university you didn't have to be a member somewhere you know there's there is no barriers to entry and so we kind of built this business called get up

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really a production company that has, so we've taken this mission of building up Augusta, doing what we can, putting Augusta on the map, helping inspire creatives, and we've taken a look at this putting Augusta on the map. And one thing that really puts cities on a map is innovation and business. And so our goal was to make Augusta a place where this became like a hub in our region,

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like Charlotte, Miami, cities in our region that have so much more advanced the ideas of what creating stuff is like and how businesses reach people and how people reach each other and and we've seen what we kind of see as a lot of the future of how people are gonna do a lot of this and we said well Augusta is this

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like, let's get on the map for this. And so that was kind of this. So now we're working with a studio in LA right now. We have clients in Miami. We've worked with a client in Utah. We have clients in South Carolina. So we do, we're really trying to grow this cool company in downtown Augusta and build this cool kind of headquarters. Yeah. Yeah. And that's awesome. Of course, with the name Get Up Productions,

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homage to James Brown, you know. Funny story. I hate, so the artist that designed the logo for Get Up Productions, his name's Ron, he works with Alice in South, have to give him credit because he's really talented, used the exact same colors on the James Brown Get Up album in our logo. Oh nice, nice. It's a little Easter egg for you. A little tiny Easter egg. That's awesome.

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that renaming, you know, you're paying homage to your hometown. But also it makes it a globally accessible name as well. Because you know, Augusta podcasts, that's not going to fly very well in Los Angeles or Miami. Or even you guys opened up a smaller hub studio in Aiken. That's right. And we all know that Aikenites do not like to be associated with Augusta. Nope, that is called Aiken podcast studio. Exactly. You know?

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people and golf people and they don't they may move in the same circles but they are not the same people. There's not enough polo players. That's right. So I think that's amazing that you guys continue to to push forward that and I mean of course your studios are amazing down there the way you have them you have the lounge studio which that's the one that's still in the AU building. Yep and we just renovated it for the first time in two years it was so freaking exciting to do. That's awesome and then you have the

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ones that are kind of on the backside, I guess that'd be the home studios there at the backside of Allison. Yeah, so that's, we call it the professional podcast studio. So that's the one with the big screens and all the nice microphones and the guy behind the wall and all that stuff. That's awesome. So if you ever wanted to start a podcast, or even if you just need to record something, and you want a real cool looking place, if David and Get Up Productions a call, we'll make sure we put the numbers

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that stuff in the show notes. So having done that, how does that make you now feel when you look back at your original mission statement of, I just want to find out more about this town? Yeah. You know? So it's insane. I mean, it's like, it's really insane. Like, I mean, taking a look at our day one goal was not to lose money, right?

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We've accomplished that. We've gotten to the point where, you know, we feel good about being on solid ground. I see what you did there. We feel good. Hey. We feel good about that though. And then really, so I kind of hinted at this earlier. So we have created the coolest situation for ourselves as we possibly could. And that this is the reason.

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The idea is to grow Augusta. And I really feel like we have kind of gained extra missions along the way, like increasing the accessibility of people that are like President Kiel of Augusta University, like an inaccessible person just by real life. It's hard to get in front of people like that. Having an hour long conversation with him, getting to show people his sense of humor, bringing on politicians to be able to talk about

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why something is happening or what is happening and who's messing up and you know what we can do to fix things. It's just like I feel like you hear so much a lot of the time from people of pointing out what's wrong and I'm never gonna say that nothing is wrong. There's always things we can fix. I could name a lot of them right now. But I also think it's more important to be like results oriented

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Like figuring out how to solve the problem rather than just talk like just talking about problems is so annoying to me Mm-hmm, it stresses me out. I'll sit there and talk to solutions all day talking about solutions all day and So it's given us this cool opportunity where we have this business now that we can use we can we can make money We can grow staff we can grow this influence that we that we are trying to figure out a way to grow a drop-the-diss But we realized it wasn't the right

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It wasn't the right vehicle. Yeah. Yeah, and now drop the discs And just be only mission and it can just only be what we want it and we can only worry We never have to charge people for coming on We never have to like we have charged people people can rent an episode we offer that for somebody that has a message But if we're reaching out to somebody or somebody's reaching out to us to be a guest We're not charging them to promote anything. Yeah, I know there's a lot of shows that do that I understand why

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But we just don't have to. And it's so freeing to not have to worry about money and to only be able to focus on bringing on cool people. Yeah, and I mean, that definitely, I can see how that would relieve some pressure for being able to stay true to your mission. And then this separate other thing with Get Up Productions is now it's literal separate other thing that does this money making and all this other stuff. And now you've kind of taken the thing that started it and are able to stay true to it.

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underneath the umbrella of the getup productions. And it's a show that's produced by getup productions as opposed to the other way. We pay ourselves as a client. So we're not even, there's no, we have our own LLC, we have our own bank account. So literally everything that we do for Drop the Disc, the charity concerts that we do, that money doesn't even touch our business account. We just get it and move it straight to charity. So it's just so freeing to have that structure.

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you're kind of like two people. You know, like I'm my producer, but I'm also my host. And I get mad at my host as I'm producing sometimes, and I feel bad for my producer as I'm hosting sometimes. But those are different people, and that's so freeing. Yeah, yeah, no, that's awesome. So were you always, like, did you always have that kind of, were you always that kind of mission-oriented growing up and in school and things like that, or? It's hard to honestly even answer that question for me.

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I feel like a lot of my time has been kind of me finding myself, like finding my identity. I think that's something that it took a long, long time for me to find. But honestly, in school, I mean, you know, most of my life was school. I won't say that I was consciously mission oriented.

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very important to me and it was something that I mean just to be honest like so when I was in school when I was in college I was really involved in my fraternity and obviously that has weird connotation for different people for me the connotation was joining a group of people who I can learn leadership with on this high level because it's a smaller school you know at a Augusta University

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maybe 40 members being the maximum you would have as opposed to like a UGA where you don't even know most of the people in your organization generally speaking. And so it's this it's this really tight-knit network and I got to practice so many leadership skills recruiting, leading as president, being vice president, secretary, risk management, managing new members. It was just an

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Opportunity that I think has shaped a lot of things that I do now So like you mentioned like at the very beginning young professionals of Augusta YPA One of the main reasons I volunteer on the board for YPA is because I see it as being very similar to my college Experience for a lot of young adults that didn't get to have that experience Or maybe that did and it wasn't a good one, right? That's that's a real thing for a lot of people But I see it as this opportunity for all of these people

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to gain this leadership aspect that they may never have had the opportunity to gain. And keeping organizations like that around for people is so important to me. And so I think there is kind of some connecting, it's like that meme with Charlie from That's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and he's got all the red strings attaching. I think there are red strings. And you just have to figure out that heart that they're connected to, that main thing

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all of those. Right, I couldn't tell you what that thing is, honestly. I just think it's just wanting other people to be able to have the good experiences I've had. Yeah, I mean that's very, I mean that's, that's very, what do you want to call it, altruistic, empathetic. It's you know, you had, you had, like you said, good experiences. You want other people to experience that as well, to have that opportunity to experience it. I've had a lot of bad experiences and I feel like, you know, when you have those, you want, you want to push people away from that. Right, you want people to avoid it. Yeah, yeah.

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If I can get you to avoid my mistakes, you're two years ahead of me easily. Right. Right. And maybe that'll come back to me, maybe it won't. Yeah. That's awesome. So what did you major in in school then, aside from the fraternity? What did you major in? So I started as a political science major and I went to business for a year or so.

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classes ironically enough and I ended up changing my major back to political science. So what I ended up with was this amalgamation of a bachelor's in political science, a concentration legal studies because I've always loved the law and a minor in business because I took enough business classes to get a minor. Wow. Wow. And I hated it. And honestly, I think I do more things in my business today that I learned from political

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It's like I've never once had to figure out which side of a spreadsheet was credit or debit Yeah, but I have to figure out the human spirit every single day. Yeah, it's a weird way to think about it. That's awesome though That's awesome Yeah, and and and that just I think that just Ties more into what you're saying in your in your mission statement and what you're wanting to do with We drop the discs and get up productions and all like that. I just think that's amazing

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Outside of those things. What do you what do you got going on? What do you what do you do? What do you do for for fun? It's funny. I've been trying to answer that question for myself recently I Like you know I just listened actually Brandon Dawson's episode of your show earlier today. I love Brandon I was like man. I'm gonna give the same answers as him if I'm not careful, but I do love gaming. Yeah, I have Six or seven consoles I won't go into the details

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that big of a gamer, but I clearly love gaming. I love sports games. I love playing games with other people, but not like Call of Duty other people, like two or three other people. Gotcha, gotcha. You know, contests of battles of skill, that kind of stuff. So I love video games. I play pickup basketball a lot, which is awesome and very unexpected if people know what I look like. And I,

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I do like to read I like to read I love stories So I like to read and and what I mean, I have a lot of shows I love Like I'm reading Game of Thrones right now and I'm watching it simultaneously to note the differences even though I've already seen it Yeah, yeah, but that kind of you know that kind of honestly though. I Don't spend a lot of time doing those things. I spend a lot of time thinking about

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my professional development. I'm actually studying to take the LSAT right now. So that's taking a lot of time. I just graduated with my master's about four or five months ago and so I love learning and it's not a hobby that you can easily do learn, but I love the action of learning. Yeah, discovering something new. So what do you see yourself in five years?

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me that question. Oh I'm sorry. No, no, no. I can expand or subtract from the number of years and you see yourself in five minutes. Five, oh man. Five is a tough amount of years because even if I went to law school I wouldn't be there anymore. Yeah. So I mean my goal, I'm not going to directly answer your question but I'm going to indirectly answer your question. So my goal is to go to law school within the next year. Okay. I'm currently testing the

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with some realistic backups. Okay. But. So I take it you're shooting for Harvard? It's on the list. You know, it's on the list. I'm not ruling anything out till I get my LSAT score back. Then we'll make some strategic adjustments. Okay. I think you have to have like a 99th percentile LSAT score to get in there. So I'm not confident, but. You never know. We'll see what happens. Exactly. But in five years, so that would be after finishing school,

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would like to do is take my experience in business, which I've had great experiences and terrible experiences, all within like the last five years, which is kind of funny, but a lot of experience in business. And there's some things that I feel like I'm really good at. I'm not good at everything and I feel like the people that work with me know that I will straight-up tell them I'm not good at this, you need to do it, or it's not gonna

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when you're a business leader, that's so hard to do, even if you're large, it's still so hard to do that. So what I wanna do is take what I've learned through my master's, through my degrees, through my law degree, and then in my kind of, I consider myself to have like a streets MBA. Like I've run enough businesses for enough years, I could probably go get my MBA relatively easily. And so I wanna take that,

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And then use it to help people grow their businesses the right way Oh, and those may be nonprofits those may be businesses because I really do have a passion for nonprofits But I just want to be able to take that and use it Educating people is something I really like to do and I just want to kind of do that on bigger and bigger and bigger Scales as large as I can yeah, that's awesome I mean again ties back into that that

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seem to have of wanting to help other people, wanting to, I mean you wanted to help the city of Augusta with this podcast, you wanted to, you have a heart for helping and everything that you do seems to point in that direction. And I think that's great. I think that's amazing. You said you like to play games and things like that, but if you were to think about it right now, what is just truly bringing you joy?

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I think honestly the stuff I do that genuinely brings me the most joy is the nonprofits that I'm involved in. So I'm involved in Young Professionals of Augusta, I'm their social chair. So I get a lot of, I get like a two-sided joy out of that because I know all the events are going to be good. And so I get to like, you know, but doing that, I don't love the day to day of my job,

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employee on our team and I haven't given him credit yet, but his name is Charles and he is fantastic. And one of my favorite things that I do is working with him to figure out how to grow the both of us together. Like that's so cool. You know, so that YPA, this Beautify Augusta nonprofit, you know, I don't think that there's a lot going on with it quite yet. There is a lot going on with it,

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to do quite yet. So just kind of being involved in seeing that is cool. But, and honestly, like they're doing such great things. Like I'm downplaying it right now. They're like, there's about to be a bunch of murals downtown because of them. But honestly, one of the things that I'm doing right now that brings me a lot of joy is I've spent a lot of time recently working with the fraternity that I was in as their alumni board president and their housing board president.

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and helping them create sustainable procedures. Like I like to take things that I learned and then bring them to, so one thing I learned in business is creating sustainable procedures. Doesn't mean I'm good at it, it just means I know about it. And I'm taking that experience to them and saying, hey, this is what I've seen, this is what I know from being a member, and this is what I know can elevate you guys. And I'm not saying I'm the one to implement it, but I wanna bring that

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conversation happen and get so I mean just in the last year and a half or the last two years we were able to move them into an official house we're able to make a long-term plan to purchase the house like I know that for the average person they probably don't care about what the fraternity next door is doing but it's it's cool to see these guys come in and develop over the years and change from college freshmen into adults by the time they're graduating and then they become

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alumni group and then they can give back again and it's really cool to feed that cycle and so anything anything involving doing something like that I also as a side note it's totally unrelated but it's worth mentioning if I can ever go to a concert I love that kind of stuff in fact after this interview I'm going straight to a concert at grants keys okay okay which concert is it it's a jazz night very excited nice is that gonna be Brownstown gritty they're the

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And there's this trio coming in, I don't know their name, but everybody has posted that they're fantastic. Well, you'll have to give me the report on it. I'll do that. I'm pretty sure that's gonna be amazing. Is Jazz like a big, you a big Jazz fan? You know, or is it you're a big supporting Granskys fan? I do love what Granskys doing. I think that's a big deal. I haven't loved a lot of the shows he's brought just because I'm not like a metal or electronic music person.

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There's a great community of those people. I'm just not in it. I do love what Gransky's doing though. I think it's fantastic, especially to have like all ages venues, which is like the big hot button issue in Augusta local music right now. And I wouldn't say I'm like an absolute lover of jazz either. I really like jazz. I think it's really cool. I've started getting into red wine recently, which probably means I'll get more into jazz soon too. But I do love the atmosphere

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of concerts that have, I mean, I don't even really like country music, but I could go to a country concert and have fun. Like it's, I'm very extroverted. I've started to learn recently, like I didn't know what that meant for a long time, but, cause what I noticed is I would leave rooms with a lot of people and I would get really tired immediately and what I thought is I'm being drained by all these people, but I think what I've realized is I was only being held up by all these people. And now, now that I'm alone, the energy is gone.

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people, high energy situations, having fun. I mean, I think that's what it's all about. That would be the reason I'm going.

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David, this is our second segment of the show. This is where we dive a little bit more into you, get a little deeper into mental health. As I mentioned earlier, the reason I started this podcast, because I deal with those days of anxiety and depression. Sometimes you just don't feel like getting out of bed. You don't know why. And I think everybody has those days. And it's good for us to know that we're not alone in that. So for you, how do you keep the darkness at bay?

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the key question and I've honestly struggled a lot in how I was going to answer this, but I think there's two things that I really intentionally, purposefully try to practice. One is if you can't control something, don't obsess over it. Because I mean, the people listening didn't see me when I got here, but you saw me and

37:59
about the interview, I stress about everything. It's not something that I want to do, but also every time I do it, I kind of feel like I'm able to like, it enables me to work harder and get stuff done. But if you take that energy and give it to something that you can't do anything about, then you're kind of just setting yourself up to kind of cycle down. And for me, I have a high tendency to do things like that. So being able to self-talk,

38:29
kind of be like hey Before you freak out What could you actually have done differently or what could you do differently if the answer is nothing? Then I try my best to move on I mean I think that's Such an important thing. It's not easy though. Like I'm probably making it sound easier than it is not easy and The second would be

38:59
The second would be, and this has always been really hard for me my whole life until really probably the last five years or so, and then even still off and on, is not paying attention to what other people think and are saying and just again, what can I do? You know, these things are connected. What can I do?

39:29
improved my situation? Did I do everything that I could? Did I represent myself appropriately? If I can answer yes to those questions and I'm still getting negative backlash from somebody, I mean, for me especially, I think being extroverted and being affected by other people's emotions, like it's easy to be in a negative situation with a negative person and then kind

39:59
to turn that into like a mindset that really like, you get trapped in it. Like it's really hard to get out of that trap. And I mean, I would say almost my whole life, I've been a people pleaser. I mean, I'm a people pleaser to this day. I don't like walking in doors before people. I make myself do things like that. Cause I know it's weird to always like wait for other, but I've always been a people pleaser. And especially in high school and middle school, when you're kind of like figuring yourself out, like I realize now

40:29
was such a big thing for me and I realized looking back at college and kind of again talking about the experiences that I've had

40:40
The times when I've been able to be happy versus the times when I've truly probably not been happy are times when I can separate myself from being subservient to what other people think about what I need to be doing or what I'm doing. And that doesn't always mean you make the right decisions because sometimes people are there for a reason, but I think you have to be able to live with yourself no matter what. No matter if the other people are with you or not.

41:10
I truly believe it's easier for other people to be receptive of you, and I think I found this. It's easier for other people to be receptive of you, supportive of you, have love for you, if you feel those ways about yourself. And if you don't, I think it leaks into how you communicate with people in a way that maybe doesn't show up at first, but over the long term, you don't wanna be the negative member of the group. You don't wanna be having that influence

41:40
on other people. So I just think, I think those two things that really touch each other a lot, I think that would be my foundation. Yeah. And I agree with what you say there. And the way that you talk to yourself when it's just you can have a lot of effect on how other people perceive you. I do a lot of self-deprecation.

42:10
people that are funny a lot of time they you know, it's easier to make fun of myself than it makes fun of somebody else and and Sometimes you know when other people start getting on that bandwagon It's like oh crap now hurt now it hurts, you know what I mean? So you have to be very careful How you speak to yourself and you know above all else speak to yourself with kindness and be able to love yourself and and speak love to yourself because then

42:40
Translate into how other people see you and communicate with you and talk with you and be around you and feel that energy, you know Because I think you do give off a better more positive energy when you Speak kindness to yourself. Yeah, when you speak negatively, I mean here's something I would tell people to that struggle with that is if Somebody else made the mistake that you made How would you let them off the hook or would you hold a grudge against them for it?

43:10
The answer is you would let them off the hook, then you need to let yourself off the hook because guess what? They've already forgotten about it. If you would let them off the hook and they're your friend the same way, or you know, then they're going to do, they're going to afford the same to you. And you always have to remember that you're going to think of yourself more than anybody else thinks of you. So you can have a moment that you're like, man, I just killed my career or, you know, my relationship is dead now because of this thing I did.

43:40
These guys are never gonna wanna hang out with me again, or these people didn't like me. It could be any level of that. And there's usually a high, high, high chance that they have already let go of what you've done, forgiven you, and they're not even thinking about it next time they see you. They're only thinking about it, like you were saying, self-deprecating, when you bring it up. And then you give them a reason to think about it. And so I think that's a big thing.

44:12
When you're in those times, and you're talking about that you can, being an extrovert, I'm that ambivert kind of person. I'm kind of more right on the line, where yes, I can get energy from being in large groups, but also I need my alone time where nobody, just let me be on there. When you're in those times, like you said, when you just leave that and you feel like

44:42
the group anymore. What do you do to combat some of that now? That's hard. I mean, it's especially hard because so honestly, I had a girlfriend for the last four years. We broke up very recently. We lived together for three years and so being alone now is more so than it has been for three years.

45:12
which so I might not answer this question the same way I would at a different time in my life, but for now it's being alone is even more of a sensitive issue for me because I notice it so much more. And so honestly, one of my biggest coping mechanisms is being productive. And that

45:42
prepping and cooking this like really in-depth dinner. It's just doing something that I can feel good about, seeing a good product. I mean, even if it's me, even if it's me getting on a video game and just being really good at it, and then kind of sitting back for a minute. So I think that like creating, doing something that I can feel good about is what helps me in a moment like that.

46:12
to focus, you know, just being able to put your mind on something else so that you're not thinking about that, that I'm here by myself or whatever. That's the worst thing you can do. Yeah, and being able to pour yourself into whatever meal it is that you're making or playing the game and just getting lost in the moment and being able to focus on that moment, you know, if you're a painter being able to paint or, you know, a woodcarver, a potter or whatever, you know, being able to focus on something else and making something else really

46:42
helps you to one, feel better about yourself because you're like, man, I made that. You know what I mean? So again, that self-talk, that man, I made that, that was amazing, or I killed that level on that game or whatever it was. Sending yourself up for wins too, I mean that's a big part of it too. Yeah, I think that's key. You have something like that that you do? Yeah, yeah, I mean sometimes it's editing a podcast. You know what I mean? I feel you. It's like, because that's not necessarily work

47:12
for me, but it's like going in and doing that and being able, because it does take focus, to do that. But also even just reaching out to friends. Whether it be like, just calling somebody, texting someone, having a conversation to say, hey, this is going on, do you have a moment, can we talk, let's go grab a coffee, or let's, whatever. I think having those people that are in that speed dial, that favorite section on your phone

47:42
can hit up real quick if you need them is very important as well. That is something that I haven't mentioned but that I should is that I feel like I have a really good support system. And so I do have some people like that as well that, you know, if I'm sitting around and I'm like, man, I'm just spiraling and being negative right now, I just need somebody just talk shit to me at least, like do something. Either be a hype man or something.

48:12
You know just just do you know and and I think that's that's a lot that I feel like people underrate Just as they overrate the negative that people remember about them I think people underrate the positive impacts that they have on people I mean people somebody can say one thing and it make your whole day and They can say one thing and ruin your day But if it's if it's something that's like negative to them, you're not even gonna remember it an hour later So you you have I feel like a lot of people think they?

48:42
have a lot more to lose by like reaching out and kind of being kind to people and you know it's kind of cheesy too to talk about but people feel like they have a lot to lose with that of seeming vulnerable or anything nobody's gonna remember that the only thing they're gonna remember is that you thought about them and that you reached out

49:05
All right, David, this is the third segment of the show. It's time now for the fast five, fast five. It's time now for the fast five. Okay, I said I was actually nervous about the last part. I feel like this is actually the like, what? This is the part. Why do people always say they're nervous about the fast five? It's so easy. It's just random questions that you just answer. First thing off, top of your head, no wrong answers. I don't understand why people think it's so difficult. See, but you've heard me over the last like,

49:35
Like super analyze and overthink everything so this is actually one of my weaknesses. This is like a terror No, right. This is nightmare fuel well nightmare fuel Well the fast five is powered by pod decks It's an app created by my friend Travis Brown available on any of your app platforms that you can get he also has physical decks Which are really cool is he created for podcasters, but anybody can use them if you ever need like icebreaker questions I suggest you go get a pack of pod decks

50:05
and you can just ask people some weird questions. Next time you gotta talk before YPA or something like that. You can do a what the heck question or something like that. But. We oughta do a networking event with these. That would be cool. We should do that. As a matter of fact, if you go to chewingthefatbr.com slash pod decks and use the promo code chew, you can actually get 10% off your physical decks. But I am gonna use the app. And like I said, no wrong answers. You ready for this one? Always wrong answers. There's no wrong answers.

50:35
So therefore they are always right. You ready? Here we go. Question number one.

50:42
You can choose anyone in the world to become friends with. Who would you choose? Oh man, what a crazy question. I think it would have to be... Alright, I'm between two people right now. Okay. And they're very different people. Give it to me. And so I would probably say, and this kind of just shows how I think, I guess, but either, probably either Barack Obama or Elon Musk, both of whom I want to know

51:12
how and why they think. I feel like you could learn so much by talking to even different things. Yeah, oh yeah. Very different things. Different subject matter altogether. But I feel like both of those, I'm big on large applicable life lessons. I feel like you can find that anywhere, even in the small details. And I feel like both of those, you'd come away with a lot. Oh yeah, yeah, that's good. That's a good, see? You came up with two answers. I asked for one, you came up with two. See, you are worrying for no reason, and they were great answers.

51:42
But question number two

51:47
What is your best childhood memory? Oh, man. My best childhood memory. How do we define childhood? Like, well, I mean, I know that was only like a couple of months ago for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whippersnapper. Like 10 years ago. I mean, whatever you consider your childhood, it could be a magical Christmas morning, it could be a great birthday. It could be, you know, a trip you took with your family or such, just whatever. It just, your best childhood memory. I have, okay. I'm going to do two.

52:17
Because my parents were divorced early, and I want to do one for each side of the family. Very respectable. And so one of them is pushing it. So I'll start with the one that's definitely a childhood. One of my favorite childhood memories on my mom's side of the family is all of our families in Canada. And we used to do these family reunions all the time. I remember two of them. And it's hilarious because our family, middle of Canada,

52:47
Saskatchewan if you know where that is it's the very middle of Canada. It's very cold and very tundra Okay, that's where we would do a lot of our stuff and We have this yacht this family yacht. Mm-hmm in Regina, Saskatchewan, okay, and for like four months out of the year, there's water So we went up there one summer and we're on the yacht meeting all the cousins and all that kind of stuff So I met everybody then fast

53:17
forward to the same place same summer or different many years later but same same place Regina Saskatchewan all the cousins are getting back together for my uncle's 60th birthday and my most hilarious memory which is what I'm calling my favorite just because it's hilarious is in I was 18 and in Canada the drinking age is 18 so we're having this big party for my uncle's 60th birthday and all the cousins are downstairs in the basement doing shots

53:47
and I'm like, oh crap. She knows I'm drinking, but like, you know, she doesn't know that I'm doing lines of shots. Like there's levels to this. So I'm like, I'm a little tipsy. So I'm like, do you want a shot? She comes down, hell yeah! Pours these two whiskey shots. She takes hers before I even finished lifting mine up to do a toast, walks right back upstairs. It was the coolest thing ever. I doubt she remembers it, but it was hilarious.

54:17
drinking with the family thing. I learned so much about so many people. That was a fun experience. That sounds almost surreal though, for that to have just happened. Sounds like a sitcom. It does. You were expecting her to say, no, what are you doing? And she was like, hell yeah. And it's like, fling it back. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yup. Have you had any other shots with your mom recently or anything? She doesn't do as many shots anymore. Although I could probably get her to be perfect.

54:47
is going to El Rey, local Mexican place, and she wants to try Margarita Tower. Nice. So that might be the next step in that journey. Okay. And my dad's memories are a lot more simple. He likes things to be simple and so, you know, I just like recently, but long enough ago where I think I can count it, we got all of our siblings together. They're two sisters and myself, Jennifer and Taylor.

55:17
say that. And what a fam. Right. I mean, like, I'm not going to disrespect you guys. I'm sorry. But you know, they both go to different colleges. In fact, one of my and or and the time I think my youngest sister was still in high school. So we didn't see each other a lot. We all had a beach trip together. First time we had done that in a long time. On the way back, my dad's talking about this is the best Father's Day weekend ever. And you know, it's the small things, right?

55:47
That was a special moment. That's awesome. That's awesome. Those are great memories. Those are great memories. Alright, question number three.

55:57
Is there any local dish or food product from where you grew up that you miss? Oh man, okay. So this actually was asked to another guest while I was listening and prepping for this show. I was like, man, I hope he asked me that, but there's no way he would. There you go. One of the cool, so a couple things. Uh, Boudin. Ooh, I love Boudin. Boudin, Incredible, crawfish Boudin specifically. I mean, wow. Yeah. Uh, actual Louisiana crawfish. So like, I can't say that the crawfish here is, you know,

56:27
Not the live crawfish, I guess is what I would say. And raising canes. Oh wow, you liked raising canes. Love raising canes. You know, they had them here for a very short amount of time. I used to go all the time. Wow. I was a big fan. I didn't even realize, was that a Louisiana restaurant-ish chain thing? I believe they're out of Baton Rouge. Okay. They're actually, they at least at one point were the official chicken of the New Orleans Saints. So they're very,

56:57
I found that area. They're big in Alabama, Louisiana Those those states found one in Denver. It wasn't the same wasn't the same. Oh interesting. It wasn't the love I Guess I guess being in the certain area you you get you get that that's like more love Yeah, that's what it is. Have you ever been to Baton Rouge? I have friends that are in Baton Rouge that work in radio about I've never been down there been in New Orleans, but I've not been to Baton Rouge Baton Rouge is such a cool place because

57:27
New Orleans 30 40 minutes like I think an hour a little bit but not long I mean not too far um the coolest thing though about Baton Rouge and I just have this memory that sticks out to me of going there and I'm sorry I'm interrupting the next question but a lot of times when you go to like a bad gas you know like a like a hood gas station kind of thing you're walking around and you're like I'm not gonna talk to anybody I'm gonna keep my head down I'm gonna pay for my stuff I'm gonna leave so my mom and I were in Baton Rouge and and it was my

57:57
and we had gotten lost and we ended up at one of these areas and we're parking and I was thinking I was getting a snack or something. I was like, man, this looks like a cool place to get a snack. And walking up, she's getting gas. There's a couple of cars parked out front. They're blasting music. They're dancing. Everybody's happy. I'm walking up, people are like, hey, little man, what's up? Like it's just such a cool like culture. I feel like people are so nice.

58:27
but I feel like people in Baton Rouge are so nice. That's awesome. I'll have to ask my friend Sam if that's the truth. Please confirm. I will confirm with Sam. I mean, I take your word for it, but I will call Sam as well. All right, question number four.

58:44
Name one thing on your bucket list. Ooh, man, okay. I have a lot of bucket list items, actually, so. Only need the one. I'll give you... Are you gonna give me two? Right, well, you already know I wanna go to law school, so I would say one of my bucket list items is to travel the world. Oh, wow. See, as much of the world as I physically can. Like hit every continent or? As much as possible. I mean, every major city. Oh, wow. If, like, if the stars aligned, it would be like my ideal world.

59:14
That's awesome. Yeah, you know like me. I'm like, oh I want to go to Ireland, you know, I just want to tour Ireland of Irish roots So I want to want to do that you'd like I want to hit the whole world Which I mean I think that's that's a great thing to have on a bucket list because then it's like there's always someplace I'll be going there's always somewhere else. There's always like oh well, I did Ireland Okay, now I'm gonna do all of Germany or I want to do all of whatever You know, that's that's amazing and cultures are so cool Like you can go to one city in Ireland and have this totally different experience than another city

59:44
So I really feel like if you really want to like experience cultures, you have to like United States, Georgia, for example, go to Atlanta, then go to Augusta, then go to Valdosta. Tell me you went to the same you were in the same state the whole time. Yeah. Or or, you know, you go down into Savannah, you know, in Savannah and you go to Rome on the other. Those are completely literally opposites, but like, yeah, totally different areas. That's one of the things is we went down to this several years ago to the boys to

01:00:14
Callaway Gardens down in South Georgia. And there are mountains. I didn't know there were mountains down in South Georgia at all. I mean, I lived here all my life, and I was like, where did these mountains come from? And they're like, oh, it's just on the end of the thing. And I was like, well, that's so cool. But it's, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think to truly appreciate a culture, go back to your previous question, you gotta have some food. Oh, 100%. You gotta have food from the places that you're in, because there's always gonna be that thing that helps to define that area,

01:00:44
nationwide, whatever, countrywide. But zip code wide. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it's, I think that's one way that we also become closer as people when we can experience what each other is eating and what, you know, what we, how we dine together. What better shared experiences there than food? Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing. All right, hey, question number five.

01:01:11
What was the first car you ever owned? 1997 Toyota Avalon XLE. That's a truck, right? Car. Car. It was basically- Avalon sounds like it should be a truck. It's like an upscale. Oh yeah, I'm thinking like Avalanche. Yeah. Yes, that's the nice, nice. It was basically, cause Toyota and Lexus, same thing. It was basically like a medium and Lexus, but it was a Toyota, so it was way cheaper to maintain. Right, right, right.

01:01:41
How long did you have the car? I had it until I graduated high school. And if I'm being honest, we sold it. We got a Dodge Avenger, ended up selling that. I have a Camry. That Avalon is probably my favorite car I've ever had. I'm so sad we sold it. It has everything, it had everything. I was gonna say, what made it? Was it the memories that you made with the car or was it the features that it had? No, I mean, so I, no, I won't tell that story. I won't tell that story. But I have a lot of memories in that car,

01:02:11
wouldn't be the reason. The reason would really be it had everything that you would, it had leather seats, it had a sunroof, it had a six-cylinder engine, it had a turbo button on it. I'm not saying it was a turbo car, but it had a turbo button. It had a button, it said turbo. I mean, what else do you want in a car? That's awesome. That's awesome. That's much better than my first car, although my first car was a Toyota as well. It was a Toyota Corolla

01:02:41
with like blue pleather interior. I think it was a 81. That could be in a museum now. Oh, I could be in a museum now. It had an AM FM radio with only one speaker and the speaker was like underneath the drive. It didn't have wires run for the radio to be anywhere else. It literally, that's how they made it with one speaker. It was, but I drove the hell out of that car. I bet. And because it was like a station wagon, I became the guy that gave everybody rides at school too.

01:03:11
Come pick me up, come pick me up. And so, I mean, I had a car full of people, but yeah, I drove the hell out of that thing, but it was a good car. I love the visual of the Toyota Corolla hatchback station wagon. Yeah. I love that. And it was white. It literally looked like a piece of rice on wheels. It was, but it was- With the blue interior. With the blue pleather interior. Yeah, it was great. It was great. I think I literally drove the wheels off of it, and that's why we had to get rid of it, is because it just, I just drove it into the ground.

01:03:41
And they, my wife still says I'm really hard on vehicles and stuff, but I have another Toyota. So they last forever. They really they really are great cars. And this is not this is not sponsored just so you know, it's not sponsored by Toyota. But well, David, that was that was our fifth question. That's our Fast Five. And that is the show. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. This was awesome. I probably took too long. I know I'm long winded. No, no, no, I'm glad you accepted the invitation.

01:04:11
you enjoyed your time. I loved it. That's awesome. If people want to keep up with you, what's the best way they can do that? Okay, so if you want to see like the Polish side, David underscore bash on Instagram, I post probably quarterly would be a good description. So you only get the highlights. There you go. If you want to hear a read a lot about sports and occasionally about politics, I apologize, but my Twitter is dr underscore bash man. Okay.

01:04:41
That's pretty much where I live. If you want to find our company, it's getupproductions.com. If you want to find Drop the Dis podcast, it's D-R-O-P-D-I-S. No, D-R-O-P-T-H-E-D-I-S on any streaming platform. There's no spaces. I don't know why we did that, but it's our thing now. So it's like typing a hashtag. Exactly, exactly. And we're on social media as well. I drop the disc podcast, I get up productions, all that crap. You can, Instagram is where we're at.

01:05:11
we mostly live. Yeah, yeah. And I'll make sure that I put all those links in the show notes so that people can find you. They can find your podcast. Again, thank you for letting me be on your podcast before when we were talking about Black Cat Picture Show Film Festival. That is such a cool thing that like people don't know about Augusta is that there's a film festival here. Yeah, and we're going into year nine International Film Festival. We're going into year nine in twenty twenty three. Year 10, you got to let me help you plan the party, though, because that's got to be a blowout. Yeah.

01:05:41
We're already talking about like graphics and parties and all this other stuff for our 10th anniversary. So yeah, I definitely will make sure that you stay involved in that. Again, David, it's been a pleasure talking to you. I appreciate you and everything that you're doing for Augusta with all that you have going on. And I appreciate your friendship. And again, thank you so much for being here. This was so cool. I love this show now. Thank you, Rob. Now, you love it now. I actually started loving it before my,

01:06:11
when I started the binge, because I listened when Chris came on, and I was like, okay, cool, this is cool. And then I started binging when you reached out to me, and I was like, I need to really know this show. So I now am a massive fan. Well, I appreciate you. And if you would like to support this podcast, I would appreciate it if you bought me a coffee at ChewingTheFatBR.com. But until next time, I look forward to when we have a chance to sit a spell and chew the fat.