 Hello, I'm your host Alex Freberg and this is the Alex the Analyst Show. Thank you so much for joining me today. We are going to be discussing the great resignation all the way leading up to current day where we're having a lot of layoffs. We're seeing a lot of hiring freezes with all these companies. And I'll go into a lot of specifics, a lot of statistics on this, things that I researched and found as well as my own personal take on it. And then I'm going to talk a little bit about what's next. What do I see happening in the short term, the long term future, as well as, you know, what's going to happen with this economy? Because it's been really crazy for these past two years. Ever since the pandemic started, it's just been insane. There's been a lot of things that have led up to what is currently going on. And so we're going to kind of go back in time to spring of 2021. We're going to kind of reset for a little bit and just see the events play out and how we got to where we are. And it's going to be really interesting. I'm I'm genuinely I've been wanting to talk about this for maybe about a month. But, you know, other things got in the way. So here we are. So let's go back, right? Because layoffs and a downturn in the economy, they don't just happen. There were a lot of things that led up to it. So let's kind of rewind and for all my international people out there. I'm mostly talking about the United States, but I know for a fact that this is happening in other countries as well. So, you know, what I'm talking about is mostly for the United States, but I'm sure it's impacting you as well. So the great resignation is is I love the name of it first off because it just there's more people residing, looking for jobs than ever before. Or there were back in mid to late 2021, and it's all started around around May. And it's interesting because right around then is when I started looking for another job as well. I started and you guys probably saw my videos where I was applying places like PwC and I eventually got the job that I have now. So it's really interesting. I was kind of I didn't resign. I didn't quit my job, but I was part of that. I was part of that looking for another job. One of the most interesting statistics. I'm going to start off right off the bat with one of these is that roughly forty four percent of all of Americans who held a job were looking for another job. That is frankly from what I've seen and researched online is insanely high. It's usually sits like a like 20 percent, 25 percent, 44 percent is like double. And there were a lot of different things that cause that basically. So let's look into a few of these things, a few of these things that cause this great resignation. Some of these things include a toxic corporate work culture, job insecurity and reorganization, high levels of innovation, failure to recognize performance, poor response to COVID-19, better work life balance, higher pay, a long held desire to explore a new career path and care for children or elderly relatives during the pandemic. There I just threw a lot of things at you. This is the list that I found I thought was really accurate because a lot of those things hit home with me, which is what I was looking for. One of the biggest things was pay during 2021. And in especially today, we were seeing increased pay across the board. People were demanding at large companies like Amazon and other places, $15 an hour because of inflation, because things were becoming more expensive. Housing was becoming more expensive. So all these all these things were getting more expensive, right? And so if you're just making $10 an hour, it's not really cutting it anymore. And so as that that baseline starts to creep up higher and higher and higher in some companies, even going as high as like $20 per hour for all of their staff, which I think still the federal minimum for almost all states, at least in the United States, is like $7 and 25 cents for a lot of states or $8 in some states, it's like crazy low. So this is like double. So I think the biggest primary factor for this great resignation is pay. It's money. And we'll talk about that a little bit more later, because that is one of the main things. One of the other biggest things is this is remote work, which it was obviously something before the great resignation, right? Again, I'm going to keep saying that because I love how that I love that sounds the great resignation. It's just great. Just fantastic. Might be able to hear my dogs in the background. They're barking at our neighbor's dogs. It's really interesting that before we were seeing people wanting to because in 2020 was kind of when the pandemic really hit took over. Everyone was just working from home. People were losing jobs. And then in 2021, people felt more empowered. There was this very large kind of push of everyone who's basically like, we're not going back to work. All these companies are trying to get us back into the into the office. And people were pushing back like crazy. I mean, you saw this across the board. Companies like Apple were losing top engineers, sea level executives, because they were like, if you make me go back to that office, I quit. I just I will. And this wasn't just for these people who demand high pay. This is for everybody. That was me included. I did the exact same thing. When they trust my company and I do not represent my company in any way, when my company said, hey, it's time to go back to the office. I told my boss, hey, look, I get it. You want me back in the office, but I've really become accustomed and really like this remote life. And if you try to make me go back in the office, I am going to quit. And my boss was really chill about that because she had been working remote for like 15 years. So she was like, I'm going to fight for you. Absolutely. I get it. You know, I'll see what I can do. And I eventually was able to work remote full time. They had no problem with it. But they did want us back in the office and they were originally we're going to be like, no, you have to go in the office. And then as things progressed and people started fighting back, they really like pushed back. That's what a lot of companies did. But some companies decided not to do that. They fought back and said, you're going to be in person or you're not going to work here anymore. And people were furious. Like, that's what caused a lot of this resentment towards these company cultures that were basically saying you need to work in person. So there were a lot of people who left companies entirely just because of that. So first thing is pay. Things are getting more expensive. The second thing is remote work and people are companies are trying to force you back into the office when people don't want to go back. There is a lot of people who do want to go back, but there's a lot of people who don't want to go back, including myself. So that was a that was a really good one. I also think that and this was one this is the real those nine that I just read. This is one that I think I companies don't I don't think handled the best way is that when you're working remote, I can take care of my kids. I can take care of my parents if they were older. I have employees who are taking care of parents who need to work remote. And I don't think a lot of companies really took that super seriously. That to me was the biggest one, especially for women. Shout out to all my women out there. Who are caretakers and are trying to work at the same time who need to balance all of those things. I mean, I'm a husband. I had to balance those things, right? I had to do that as well. Honestly, it is just something that companies have not, especially in the US, have not really ever done well or handled well. They just happened. They don't they just are like, that's your problem to deal with. And people were just fed up with it. They're just like, look, I need to do this for the health and safety of my child. So that was another huge one that I think was like really, really hit home. So those are some of the factors that are starting to lead up and starting to cause this great resignation. Now, let's look at some of the statistics around what happened when that train started rolling. It started right around May of 2021. In all of 2021 in the US, 48 million people quit their jobs. And that's compared to around thirty three million in previous years as an average. So that's significantly higher. Thirty three million versus 48 million just quitting their jobs. Then we have thirty four or sorry, let me look at this other one. Ninety four of American retailers are experiencing issues with managing job vacancies. We are having every almost every company was having issues keeping people hired, keeping people in, which was really interesting because all these companies were having issues with keeping their people happy because pay they needed to keep up with pay and most weren't. Then people were like, if you made me go back in the office, I'm leaving. And then they left and they did it. And they lost thousands of people. All these companies across the board were just losing thousands and thousands of people, 48 million in 2021. So now they're having like backpedal like higher like crazy. So this is like that is kind of a catalyst to get to where we're at in current day in June of 2022. That was a huge catalyst that that piece right there, which is there's a lot of job vacancies, a lot of them. This one's interesting. I saw this and I thought it was interesting. It says roughly 52 percent of millennial and Gen Z workers were likely to consider changing companies this year, which is in 2022 now. And I think that's fairly accurate. That's a pretty, I mean, I don't want to say it's only Gen Z years and millennials, but, you know, a lot of people, that's that's over half of the younger workforce wanting to change jobs due to pay or better opportunities or what else? I mean, if you're a company out there and you're seeing this, there's a problem. And then 41 percent of the global workforce in 2022. I was earlier, I was talking 44 percent in 2021. 41 percent in 2022 are looking to are considering quitting their jobs. High numbers just across the board. People are there's just a lot of uncertainty, a lot of resentment towards companies for how they treat it and how they are treating their employees. Now, how people are really gaining kind of more of a self respect in a professional way. And they're like, you can't really treat me like that anymore. Like there's a huge shift towards employees being empowered to basically say, like, screw you, I'm doing what I want, which I'm a huge fan for. I am always I say the same things that people work on my team. I'm like, I was like, if they try to make you go back in person, I was like, I will fight them tooth and nail and it's not going to happen. Not on my watch, not as long as I'm here. Like I just I'm like, I'm like a power to the people kind of guy. So I like seeing these things because. I have seen how it's been in the past. And this is just a much, this is much better in certain ways. So that is that is kind of what the great resignation what what has happened in is honestly somewhat still going on because there's a lot of uncertainty. Now. The great resignation is started. But at the end of 2020 or at the end of 2021 and into 2022, we have seen a massive amount of hiring across the board as well. As many people are quitting, they're hiring. They're trying to hire just as fast. Now I'm going to stick mostly to tech industries that has happened in my company as well, like health care and finance, finance, like banking and stuff. This happened across the board, but I'm going to kind of mostly stick towards tech. So I'm going to I'm going to kind of skip ahead and then I'm going to come back. Excuse me. Give me one second. These are companies that had hiring freezes and layoffs just this month or just last month in May of 2022. Exactly one year after the great resignation in May of 2021. So exactly one year after we're starting to see these layoffs. Now, here's some of the companies that are having layoffs. Metta, Salesforce, Carvan and Netflix, Robin Hood, PayPal, Microsoft, Uber, Lyft, Coinbase, I'm sure you've seen a lot of these on LinkedIn in the news. And a lot of people are asking what on earth is going on? What is happening? I'm applying for jobs. Is this going to affect me? All great questions. And I'm going to answer those later on because I want to go back now. To late 2021, which is we were seeing this huge dynamic shift in how people conducted business and how people wanted to be treated and where they wanted to work. So a lot of vacancies available. And so again, huge costs of living rises even today, even on June 6th while I'm recording this inflation is absolutely a nightmare. Over the whole world, but in the US, it's I know because I live here, it's terrible. Like milk is more expensive. Gas is crazy expensive. Housing is becoming extremely expensive. It's always been expensive. And people are like, I need to get paid more. So all these companies started saying, hey, we need to get top talent if we just offer more. And I know for a fact that a bunch of people are quitting meta because of cultural issues, all this metaverse stuff. They want people back in the office and they're quitting. We're going to take that talent. We're going to be charged a premium and we know that. But we're willing to do it for this top talent because it's going to be an investment in the future. And so all these top tech companies are just gobbling up employees as quickly as they can. For example, Coinbase at the beginning of 2021 had 1700 employees and by the time they had layoffs this year, a month ago, they had over 4000 employees. So in one year in the span of just a little over a year, they almost tripled their workforce, which they're a growing company. They just had a huge IPO and they're they're growing not a startup anymore, but they're a very large growing company. They need those employees. But tripling your employee count in in a year is pretty insane. And they weren't paying a low amount. They're they're they're competing with other tech top tech companies. And so that's that's where all this really starts to spiral because people, all these companies I just mentioned, Meta, Salesforce, Netflix, PayPal, Uber, Lyft, Coinbase are all hiring like crazy. They're basically it's a free for all for who can pay the most for this top talent. And this isn't just in Silicon Valley or New York. It is across the world, really. And in the US, I saw it people every day on my LinkedIn feed. Just I got a job at Tesla. I got a job at and Tesla isn't on the list. I'm going to add it really quick because they are somebody I was going to talk about a little bit. So they start hiring like crazy. That's basically what I'm getting at. And they start hiring and they're hiring and they're hiring and they're hiring. And then we have an economic downturn due to a war that. Honestly, looking back, we should have seen coming, but something that we were hoping wasn't going to happen, which caused a huge economic downturn at the beginning of 2022. And this war really impacted everybody across the board and I mean, just Putin screwed everybody over from being honest. He screwed his own people over. He's screwed over the entire world. I mean, he's like he's like the number one villain of the world right now. If I'm and that's just me being completely like, I don't know the guy, but he's he's the worst, right? So we have all these other factors. And then we have a small economic downturn. Small is relative, but we have an economic downturn. And it's not great. It causes inflation to rise, food or we're worried about food scarcity. Gasoline because Russian controls a lot of gasoline. That's an issue. Breadbasket, the world is compromised and people are concerned. And when people are worried and there's fear and there's all these things, the stocks are going to plummet. And that's what happened. And companies lost billions. I mean, meta literally lost 250 billion in one day, which was the largest stock market loss ever for any company in the world. I mean, it was it was insane. Just to read that that 250 billion dollars could be wiped out in a day for a company. And all these companies had to start really re-evaluating things. So like, man, this is an issue. And I don't think we can sustain ourselves as things continue because they had been trying to sustain themselves for the past several months when the war started back in. March, February, I can't remember the exact date. I didn't write down. I apologize. Give me one second. I'm starting to get heated. I started to like really get animated. So my mouth gets drier, quicker. So all these factors are starting to happen and all these companies start to realize that this is going to last a long time. And because of this economic downturn, consumer behaviors are changing, our stock market has changed or our stock price has changed. We need to reevaluate where we're sitting. And so every company, all these big tech companies are looking in. We're in saying, where can we cut costs? And where is the number one cost cutter for almost every company? It's employees, because that's usually the biggest expense for any company. And they're like, well, we just hired 3,000 people. And we only need 2,000. So there you go. I mean, that's where we're at. And so I wouldn't say. Actually, let me let me finish what I'm saying. And then I'm going to. Go off on a tangent for a second. Or not, it's not even a tangent. But companies are starting to really forced to do this and they didn't want to. They just want to keep expanding, keep growing, keep hitting all these. Metrics that they wanted to hit to make their stockholders happy and keep their companies healthy and make them look good. And when that tanked, people got scared. And so that's why all these people are getting fired. That's why all these people are getting let go. That's why we're seeing all these hiring freezes. And honestly, a hiring freezes is way better than a bunch of people getting let go. But, you know, what can you do? You hired a thousand extra people. You cannot afford those thousand extra people. Given where your company is now evaluated in your current stock price and your current market, your current metrics for the next year based on all the current data and I am fully. I think that following and trusting the data that you're seeing in front of you is a good thing. And so they're and so I feel bad for saying that because a lot of people are losing their jobs right now. Thousands, every single day you see it everywhere. You're like, hey, I work at Tesla. I just lost my job. I just have my offer rescinded. I can't. I no longer have my job at Tesla. Tesla was the biggest one that I saw. But there were so many other companies. I don't know why it's always it's always Tesla, right? Gosh, I got this itch. It's always Tesla. Why does it have to be Tesla? So many other companies were doing it. But then Tesla Elon Musk makes one announcement and then it's a huge uproar. All these other companies were doing it. Meadow was doing it. Robin Hood, Netflix, they were having hiring freezes and offer and rescinding offers. And it was so it perceivably slow. Then Tesla didn't start. People started freaking out. That was my perception as well as a lot of other people because that's all that I was reading on the in different articles that Tesla, you know, it was Tesla's fault. I blame Tesla as well. No, I really don't. So Tesla basically announced, hey, we're not going to be hiring anybody. Also, we're taking back offers that we put out out there. Coinbase did the exact same thing. Coinbase was another big one. Coinbase and Tesla. And then Tesla also, when I say Tesla, I mean Elon Musk, also said, if you don't want to come back to the office, then you can you're we're going to assume that you quit. Which is another basically a sneaky way of saying, we need to fire a lot of people. And I think everybody and everybody saw right through that. It was not like, hey, I know Elon Musk is not he's very smart, extremely smart. But everybody saw through that one and he thought he was being a little bit sneaky on that because he said, if you don't come back into work in person, because that's where people get the real work done, you come don't come back, you're fired. That was basically his way of saying, we're not doing remote work anymore. We need to lean ourselves out a little bit to survive this economic downturn. But I don't want to go out and right fire anybody because I'm worried about our stock price. That's how I read into it. That's how a lot of people read into it. Take that for what you want. So let me read one thing. Which is basically what I've reiterated, but it is from an actual article and they can probably say a little bit more eloquently than I can. Says, the news comes after tech companies hired aggressively and competed fiercely for talent in late 2020 and 2021 as they were buoyed by low interest rates and surging stock prices. The money has since largely stopped flowing with the tech savvy NASDAQ composite index down 23.2% this year in venture capital funding drying up. So this huge ecosystem of funneling money and money churning and revenue and all these processes by venture capitalists and these companies creating products and hiring people came to a halt, came to just an abrupt stop. And that's what we're seeing play out as we speak. And I am sure that this is not the last company that we're gonna see do this. It'll be more in the news of companies having hiring freezes, which is probably the best case scenario for a lot of these companies that hired aggressively, like they said in these past years, especially last year in 2021. So all that to say is it was kind of a perfect storm. I mean, COVID itself was terrible and screwed over a lot, millions and millions and millions of people as well as killed a lot of people. Then the war happened, which I don't think anyone was hoping for. And that really tossed a wrench into this whole conundrum that was already going on and just made things worse, just exacerbated all the issues that we were already having and trying to get past. And coupled with interest rates going through the roof. I mean, it's just terrible, just terrible. That's where we're at. So with all of that going on, where does that leave us? What do I see in the future? What have I been reading about about how things are gonna be looking in the future? Well, everything that I've been seeing as well as my own thoughts on the subject is that, and I mostly agree with them because this is not my forte, I'm just some random data guy talking about it. How I see this going is it's gonna continue probably on a much smaller scale, hopefully, for probably another year, six months to a year at least. Going into the next year, it'll be hopefully a little bit better, but companies are gonna be paying for this for a little while. And I hope I'm not right. But again, I researched this a ton for this video. Everything that I was seeing, all these economists, Wall Street, New York Times, venture capitalists who are in the industry are saying the exact same thing. They're just like, we have to take a step back and reevaluate things and that takes a while. It doesn't happen overnight, that takes months. And these companies don't just restart hiring freezes after a month, it just doesn't happen. It's usually several, it can be several months. They'll start slowly opening it back up into certain departments where they need more hiring than others. So if you're out there right now, though, and here's the good takeaway from all of this, and let me find this right here. In the news, you hear about it a lot and it looks very scary, but here's the positive spin on all of this. Recent Gartner research shows that 4% of US companies have started laying off employees, while 7% have frozen hiring and 15% have started slowing down hiring. And that's from Gartner. And they're a pretty reputable source. So, you see this in the news and it's scary. It's like, okay, what's happening? It's just gonna be more wide scale. It's only 4% who are laying off employees. And the 4% are mostly the huge, extremely large tech companies who bought too much and had too much hype around XYZ. It just, it is. Those types of companies, that's what they do. They grow at all costs. And that really, really hurt them. Most companies, 96% of the companies didn't do that. That's probably not true because 7% have hiring freezes. 15% are slowing down hiring. Let's just say 15% of all companies are in that bucket, right? That means 85% of companies are still going about business as normal. They planned accordingly. They're hiring as normal. Is there a lot to worry about? For most people who aren't looking to get into the tech industry at this very moment, which I know a lot are, but if you're just looking for an entry level position at different companies, that's not gonna really affect you that much. It really isn't. It's really when you are like mid-level senior level, you're already in that tech space where it's really gonna affect you because once you're in that certain salary bracket, you're in that space of being either with tech, social media, et cetera, then it makes it a lot more difficult because you have this huge over flux or influx of potential people who are trying to get hired, right? And that makes it a lot more difficult to land a job. So for all those employees who are in that ecosystem for these companies who are trying to get hired, it's gonna be 10 times harder to get a job. It's gonna be much, much, much more competitive, but for the average person, for the layman like you and me, I don't think we're gonna see that big of difference than we have seen for the past two years, which again has already been slightly difficult. It's been more challenging to get a job because a lot of people are entering the analytic space, the data space, trying to get remote work and the salaries are great. It's very appetizing for people to try to get in. And that's where a lot of people, like you maybe, you're trying to get in, it's already made it more difficult, right? But I don't think it's gonna be any more difficult than it is, than it has been for the past two years. I don't think it's gonna get more difficult for you. So that's what I got. Just really, really interesting. I mean, the whole world has just been basically on fire for the past like two and a half years and we're all just trying to survive. Myself included in different ways, similar and different, just because of family dynamics or job or whatever. It's been tough. So if you've been braving that storm like I have, trying to fight for yourself to work remote, get a better salary, get a better job, more power to you, I wish you the best of luck. The great resignation, these layoffs, it's all, something we'll read about in the history books in the future. We're living through historic times. We really are. We're living through one of the strangest economic times that hopefully we'll see in the next, in my generation. I don't know. You never know what's gonna happen in the future, but I can guarantee you this is nothing like we've ever seen before. So, you know, be safe, be smart and let's go to the next part of the show which is the sponsor for this video, which is all of you. I am super appreciative to, appreciative of the community that is the Alex the Analyst channel or whatever you wanna say. You guys are honestly the best for everything. You guys are like the best audience. I mean, no other channel really has it, I feel like, and this is just my personal opinion, has a community like ours. And so I just wanna say thank you for supporting the show by just watching, if you're watching all the way through, you're one of those people. So, for supporting the show, watching my videos, learning, commenting, all those things mean the world. And if you want to support the channel financially, you can head over to Patreon, I'll have a link in the description where you can just give me like five bucks a month to keep doing this type of stuff. And it allows me to buy equipment and lights and background stuff, which I literally bought everything you see in the background from Patreon money. And so, just super appreciative, you guys are making this channel better every month of the year. So, super appreciative. If you wanna do that, you can, I really do appreciate it. Yeah, that's it. All right, so on to the very, things I like to put at the very end. And the people who usually watch till this long are usually like my core people, my main fans, I don't know, I don't like the word fans, but my main community, which is we have our question of the week and then our vegetable of the week, which I say vegetable of the week, but it's been like two months since I've done my last episode of this. So, yeah, it's like vegetable of two months. But a question of the week comes from Latina Valensilio, Valensilo, I can't pronounce her name, but she has been commenting a ton on this channel. She's been going like binge of this channel, so she might be watching this right now. So I've seen like 20 other of her comments and questions, but she says, what if I have the skills, but no degree, could I still get a job? I've answered similar questions to this in the past, but we're in a really strange space. The degree is not necessary, but a degree does help. So when I talk to people like this or when I mentor people who are in this exact position, they have all the skills, they know what they know, but they don't have a degree. They don't even, they don't have an associates, they probably just have a high school diploma, but they may not have a bachelor's, a master's, a PhD. So let's say she only has a high school degree, which is what I'm guessing is what she's asking. If we only have a high school degree, we don't have a upper, a higher education from that. Can I get a job? The answer is yes. I've worked with several people who have gotten a job. It is just more difficult and marketing yourself and making connections is actually far more important than it, not far more important. It's just, it's more important for you because you do not have a bachelor's degree to kind of boost yourself. When you have a bachelor's degree, you automatically meet a minimum requirement for a lot of jobs. So if you don't, what you need to do is really be really good at marketing, which is creating a personal brand, making your presence known on LinkedIn, creating a website, creating a YouTube channel. It can help you land jobs. I am not trying to brag or at this moment, this is for educational purposes only. In the past month, I have received two unsolicited job offers. Now that's at like the managerial level. But if you create a personal brand at your level, the data analyst level, entry level analyst level, and you create a personal brand, people will seek you out. That doesn't happen overnight, but I've seen people do it in six months where they create this personal brand, they make themselves known and people start reaching out to them because they're like, hey, I really like your content. I really like what you're posting on Medium or I like what you're posting on LinkedIn. It doesn't have to be a YouTube channel, but people will reach out to you. That is 100% a fact and is happening more and more and I see more people creating channels like mine for that exact reason. It's for marketing, it's for creating a personal brand where you can say, hey, this is what I've done, this is what I know. And when people learn from that, they can recommend you for positions, they can, if they're hiring, they're like, wait, I like this person, I like their personality, I like the content that they're putting out, it's very close to what we need. Let me reach out to this person. I say all that to say is I have seen it firsthand and I'm seeing it for people from much smaller channels, just like a few thousand subscribers and they're posting consistently and they're posting on the similar type of content, they are getting reached out to you. And it's just fascinating. It's a totally different ecosystem. So if you really wanna put yourself out there, that is a great way to do it. But YouTube can be a little bit more difficult than something like LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn is a little bit easier because you're just posting text. It's a little bit easier. So all that to say, it's absolutely possible. It just comes down to who you are, how hard you fight for it, a little bit of luck, 15, 20% luck. So yeah, absolutely possible. To answer your question in a very long way and pat myself on the back a little bit there. Yeah, y'all knew I threw that in there for me. I lied, that was 100% just to strike my ego. Now we are at my favorite parts of the entire video if I'm being completely frank. It's the vegetable of the week. I have covered so many vegetables. So many vegetables I think most people know about. Bakchoy might be the only one that some people have not heard of. Covered almost everything though. This is a really interesting one because I think it's really polarizing vegetable slash most people don't know if they know it's a vegetable. The vegetable of the week is horseradish. If you don't know what horseradish is, look it up. Because it's really, I mean, you've probably all heard of horseradish. I just don't think most people know it's even a vegetable. They just like, it's like a product because that was me a couple of years ago. Anyways, horseradish is this very bitter tasting horseradish sauce is what I'm referring to. This is very bitter tasting. I can't even explain it, but it's a sauce and it goes on different meats and different stuff. I personally like it. I don't think most people do though. That's just my opinion, but try for yourself. See what you think. Be different than the rest. Try it before you judge it. Might just be your favorite vegetable, knowingly your favorite vegetable ever. But it's like, I think it's like fermented. I'm Googling this. We're at the end of the video. I mean, you don't have to stay. I'm just Googling things down. Googling what is horseradish is horseradish. I'm Googling this to be more specific because I'm sure a lot of people are, okay. All right, I'm bringing you over here. Horseradish is a perennial plant of the family Rasekia. It's a root vegetable cultivated and used worldwide. It's a spice and it's a condiment. That gave me no information. Same family as mustard and wasabi. That explains it, man. Mustard and wasabi are like really strong like hitcha in the mouth kind of flavors. It's a cousin of broccoli cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. All previous vegetables of the weeks, I will say. Anyways, that gave me no information. I actually know less than I did before. But there's, you know, it's horseradish sauce. You should try it out. Yeah, that's the end of the video. I've been making it a thing where at the end, I just keep talking. I don't have anything planned. I promise you my notes are done. That is the horseradish is the last word of my notes and now I'm talking to you. And what that means to me is it means that I have someone out there listening who is connecting with me on a deeper level than everyone else because everyone else who is not here in this moment, who is not hearing this hopefully ASMR like voice speaking to them. They're not hearing this experience. I'm gonna get closer to the mic. They're not hearing and feeling this experience. I'm looking at myself to make sure I look as creepy as possible. They don't understand what we as a collective, as a one, as a unit understand. Which is this is where we really connect. You and I. I'm talking to you. So I really appreciate you listening. I would actually probably say the most of the people listening to this at this moment are people who forgot or can't cancel out right now. They're like driving or at work or something and they can't flip to the tab or open their phone to exit out. And so now they're just like, what is this guy talking about? So I get it. I'm sorry. I forgot totally forgot to say and this is not a connecting thing. I gave away like 20 of these mugs a couple of weeks ago and the people sent me video or they post like pictures online on like LinkedIn or anything. It was probably one of the happiest moments of the my merch journey, which is very small. I don't push it at all because that's not what I do. But you know, people like having this besides me like smiling with it and like really enjoying it made me extremely happy. I plan on doing a lot more giveaways this next year because I just want people to have it. I don't care if they pay for it or not. I'm just gonna give it away. I really don't. But I do appreciate the people who do purchase it. What's been going on in my life? If you don't follow me, I should have given myself a shout out for this. If you don't follow me on Instagram or Twitter, I've been really active on those. Instagram I was gonna say specifically because today my son, he's three years old. He's almost three and a half years old. And he went to his first camp today at my dad's school. My dad's a headmaster of a school and they had a summer camp and it went down to three years old. We put him in there. And it was just, I was tearing up all morning. I'm tearing up now just thinking about it. That was the cutest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. And he was just so excited. He just wanted to be a big kid like his big sister. He was just so excited to go to school and go to camp and see grandpa. That is, those are the moments that I live for. Those are the moments that I will never, ever forget. Like I just, I won't. And I didn't get to drop him off but I got to hug him and say goodbye to him and he was just like, I'm gonna make friends. I'm gonna be a good boy. And it just, I was like tearing up. It was so pure and innocent and childlike. I just wish the world was more like that. I wish the world was more like my three-year-old son getting to go to camp. We just live in a much better world. And so I got to pick him up from the camp. And when I picked him up, the teacher was like, he did amazing. He is so good, he's such a good kid. And my son like ran up to me and gave me a hug and he has a little mat mat in his backpack which is just adorable. And he's like, I had the best time. Can I come back tomorrow? I'm telling you like guys, I don't cry a lot. I don't get very emotional, but that made me emotional. I was like, my goodness, I just wish it would stay like this forever. I do when I don't. That's a little tidbit of insight into my life right now. I'm just an emotional wreck because literally 12 hours ago, I was dropping him off at this camp and he's just the cutest kid I've ever seen in my life. And I still have one that's gonna be going through that and she's two, she'll be going through that next year. So yeah, just parent stuff. If you don't have kids, you may not, I'm sure you may have cousins or nephews or nieces or something where you can understand that. It's just pure unfiltered joy. It is very rare in this world. And I hope that everyone can experience something like that in their life. That is, and I mentioned this in a LinkedIn post and a Twitter post, not on Instagram. A different content for each platform is why you gotta follow me on all of them. But I mentioned, I was just like, money, the more money I make, the more money I make, the less I care about it. It's just that paradox of you fight so hard to make money and then once you have it, it's just like not important and it's 100% happening to me. I now make a very good salary and it pays for everything that I need. And it has become, I would get rid of it in an instant if it meant putting my family first. I mean that wholeheartedly and I've talked to my wife about this. I was like, listen, if my work ever somehow became more important than my family, I was like, you tell me and I will quit. I say that in the moment, maybe it's a different scenario in the future, but in my heart of hearts, I know that that is a fact. I just, family's been so incredibly important to me in the past. I mean, ever since I got married, of course, but this past year when I moved closer to my family in South Carolina, they've just become that much more important. And so, I don't know where you are in your journey. You may be where I'm at, where it's like money is not what it used to mean. Now I look at money as, money is great. I need it. I have to have it, but it is definitely not something that I'm actively chasing anymore. It wasn't like an idol. I wasn't like more money than the better person I am. It was just like, I wanna really provide for my family, make it, make them happy, give them everything they need. I've done that. And now I look at money as like, you know, it's a byproduct of me working. It's great. I'm glad to have it, but anything happens to my family. My work is bottom of the barrel. I will take off a month of work and if you wanna fire me, great. If I had a medical emergency and my wife was in the hospital, I will straight up quit. Or I will straight up not show up to work if you wanna fire me, great. That is just, this is not as high a priority. And priorities changes you get older. And when you're young, say young, I'm still pretty young, but when you're young and you're chasing after the dream, which has been me, you know, that is like one of the driving factors. And now that's not my driving factor. Anyways, you've heard way too much about my family, way too much about, yeah, you've heard way too much about my family. It's all I've been talking about. I just been in my feels today, guys. I just been in all of my feels today. So I hope this isn't like the most sad ending to an episode ever. But I just need somebody to vent to. I talked to my wife about this stuff, but I need another outlet to vent about my emotions and my feelings, right? If not you, who? You guys are my community. So yeah, I hope that's okay. I'm sure some people will listen to the end. But you know, that's all I got. That's all that's been happening. That's been the biggest thing and it just happened today. The biggest thing that's happened in a while and it's just, I don't know, it makes you reevaluate like your whole life. It's just a different level of happiness, having kids for me, for me personally. It's been a different level of happiness and joy and like pureness from children. It's been also the most challenging thing ever. Oh my gosh, my kids are so difficult sometimes. It's just so challenging. But then they have these moments where it just makes all of that disappear, makes it all worth it. Now again, I'm rambling about my kids and my family. All I have to say is I love my family. They are the most important thing to me on this material earth. Yeah, so I guess I'll wrap it up. I appreciate you. I do care about you. Message me on Twitter, LinkedIn. Hit me up, ask me questions. Tell me your emotional story so I can connect with you on a deeper level. I hope that my ASMR bit was not weird. I don't watch ASMR, so I don't know if that's a weird thing to do. I just know what it is. I hope it was not, I hope it wasn't weird. That's all I have to say. All right guys, I'm signing off because again, it's getting weird. But thank you again for your time, for watching. I hope this was interesting. I found it very fascinating when I was doing my research. It's absolutely fascinating how things have been going the past two years. Just insane, absolutely insane. All right guys, I'm headed out. I will see you in the next video. Goodbye.