6 | Dr. Bobby Safranski, Part 2: Lost Arts, Fatherhood Hacks and Why Every Kid Needs Dirt Under Their Nails

In a continuation of the conversation, Ryan and Dr. Bobby Safranski share honest insights on parenting, legacy and living well in today’s world. From Bobby’s tradition of writing monthly notebook letters to his son, to Ryan’s mission to preserve family stories and revive lost arts, this episode explores how everyday choices shape family — and community — legacy.

Together, they discuss the challenges of screen time, the revival of hands-on trades and the importance of teaching kids through example rather than just words. Vulnerability is at the heart of their conversation: both men open up about mental health, fatherhood and building supportive networks in the face of personal and systemic struggles.

Highlights:

• Bobby’s “legacy notebooks” — preserving real life, beyond the screen
• The role of YouTube as both a teaching tool and a pitfall for families
• Lost arts: canning, cobbling and the value of hands-on skills
• Why it matters to let kids simply be kids — even if it means bending the rules
• Mental health and fatherhood, and how honest conversations can protect what matters most

Thought-provoking Quotes:

“I want a book full of all the knowledge we were just talking about so that my son and grandkids know, like, hey, yeah, that works for heartburn. Go get that.” — Bobby Safranski

“It’s tangible. It’s real. It’s not just here and gone.” — Ryan Armstrong

“Let them be a kid. I don’t want him to be stressed. I want him to be happy.” — Bobby Safranski

Resources:

• Florida Farm List
• Georgia Grown
• Fresh from Florida
• Community Cannery Locations
• Florida Young Farmer and Rancher Resources
• Farm Bureau Young Farmers and Ranchers

Questions or guest ideas?
Email farmstrongpodcast@gmail.com

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Work hard. Be honest. Speak proudly.

Transcript

Dr. Bobby Safranski [00:00:01]:
I started to write like my son notes nice in a notebook. So I bought a bunch of these notebooks. They're around here somewhere.

Ryan Armstrong [00:00:10]:
What an idea. I love it.

Bobby Safranski [00:00:12]:
Yeah, man. So I, I skipped. The first one I wrote wrote was at seven months and then I did eight months. The last one I wrote, I gotta, I actually kind of have to finish the thought, but I started like September of September 15th. So I've been like putting the date how old he was a year, three months, a year, four months, year five months. And just kind of like letting him know all that's going on at that time.

Ryan Armstrong [00:00:44]:
Few things connect people faster than food. For me, it's the stories of the people behind the food that hit deepest their family legacies, how they made it through the tough times and how they celebrate the good times. I'm Ryan Armstrong and this podcast will give you a face behind the Food. It uncovers the honest and proud stories of the fascinating yet little known sectors of the agriculture industry. Welcome to Farm Strong. Something that I think about a lot in this day and time is being a parent. Right like you. This is, tell me how you feel about this. But I just, I'm really. It can be a, you know, a blessing and a curse like most things, but the ability to. I'll use my example. Me and my son can come and sit down after we eat dinner and like say, you know, you know, we already read or we did our activity or whatever we wanted to do and I'm trying to wind them down and we want to watch, watch YouTube. It's kind of our generations kind of thing versus late night, you know, news or whatever. And I turn on. I realized, like, it kind of clicked one time I was like, I can, I could put on whatever I want for my son to consume that and help mold him and give him the tools or things that he can use in his life. And I think that that's something that kind of gets overlooked. Yeah, it does have a bad side to it. But I also think that people should really try to take, take that in and see how they can use it as, as a plus. Not that they should sit down and watch TV all the time. They need to go outside and, and get dirt in their mouth and, and under their fingernails and all that kind of stuff. But at the same time, like we watched on, you know, Chef Jean Paul Bourgeois, I don't know if you ever heard of him, but like the duck camp dinners, dudes, like, my kid is pumped up, man. He's like, he's like, he's about it, right? Like, and it's teaching him to cook, and it's teaching him how to talk to people. And it's just like, yeah, I don't know. I just want to hear your thoughts on that. Like, you know, having a. Having a son also. So.

Bobby Safranski [00:02:47]:
We. It's. It's an evil and a necessary evil, right? But it's like anything. I like sweets. Okay. Yeah, I do. I have a sweet tooth, and my wife knows it. And she'll get the Trader Joe's cookies and the little peanut butter cups. They're dark chocolate peanut butter cups, buddy.

Ryan Armstrong [00:03:12]:
Don't get them, okay?

Bobby Safranski [00:03:14]:
Right. Yeah, and I'll eat them, and I'll eat the heck out of them. Where'd they go? I was like, well, they're on the shelf to be eaten. I ate them, right? This it. It. They're okay in moderation, right? If you're working out, you're sticking to a diet, give yourself a day, have something sweet, but don't eat a whole chocolate cake kind of deal. It's the same thing for social media and YouTube, right? YouTube. I think I read one. One. Oh, I don't know, a couple years ago, something of how many hours of video get uploaded to YouTube every day? It's an inconsumable amount of videos, right? But you can also use that as a tool, just like you said. So what direction are you going in life? What are your hobbies? I like to hunt. I'd like to fish more. I'd love to learn how to fly fish.

Ryan Armstrong [00:04:06]:
That's right.

Bobby Safranski [00:04:07]:
I'd also like how to. I'd also love to woodwork. I'd like to restore a classic car. All of those things I have done at some point in my life that I know that I like that I want to learn how to tie more knots, right? Fishing knots. Rope knots. I want to learn how to braid AM steel. So when I'm sitting in a tree, I can tie my own knots. And I can have something in my saddle. So my bridge is fixed, whatever, in my saddle for hunting. I can look all of that stuff up on YouTube. And it's applicable because it's to my hobbies. So I say all that to say, what do you want your kid to learn from this? What do you want your kid to consume? I'm not saying use it as, like, as a way to mold your kid, but find out what your kid likes. I was listening through a podcast of a guy that I used to work with at the TV station in college, and he's. I'LL get the name of it for you. But it's a Catholic men's group. They meet, they talk, and they were, they were doing their post summer kids just went back to school talk and they went off to camp. And he said, yeah, your kids went off to camp. But basically mine, we watched everything freshwater fishing related, my son is into now. I didn't even know what a whopper plopper was until he started getting on, on there. And he said there's a whole freshwater fishing lingo that he's learning. And all I could think about was like, that's the equivalent of a kid joining travel Travel team baseball there.

Ryan Armstrong [00:05:44]:
Yeah, right.

Bobby Safranski [00:05:45]:
Yeah, right. The kid's got all the safety equipment, he's running around, he knows what's cool, what all the kids are doing, all the gloves. It's just the kid likes to fish, you don't like to play baseball. So they. Here's the YouTube. We watch fishing videos. We're both better fishermen because of it. And my kids outside, so you could use that.

Ryan Armstrong [00:06:07]:
Right.

Bobby Safranski [00:06:07]:
But you also got to get them outside.

Ryan Armstrong [00:06:09]:
Absolutely.

Bobby Safranski [00:06:10]:
You don't want them sitting in front of a screen. You know, there's kids that are learning all these tick tock videos. Literally something that I've learned for my nephew who watches YouTube, but he also goes to. I forget what grade he's in, but elementary school. And there's this thing, it's an AI generated cartoon. It's called Brain Rot. Literally called Brain Rot. Wow. And these characters have weird names. But if, if you look at it from a business perspective, it's like, why didn't I do that? Because there's getting hundreds of millions of views from these kids and it's generating revenue from that. Right. So it's like, that's a good idea. But let's be productive about it so that there's not like this meatball with feet running around or this stick that has a weird name. They could be doing productive things. I just don't think that's productive. And it just literally rot your brain. So that was a long winded way of saying YouTube can be great used properly. Yeah. I mean, I want to restore a 69 Chevelle SS.

Ryan Armstrong [00:07:24]:
Do what? Now I'm out of restore.

Bobby Safranski [00:07:25]:
I want a 69 Chevelle SS with a 396 big boy.

Ryan Armstrong [00:07:28]:
Is that your goat? That's, that's your main. That's it.

Bobby Safranski [00:07:31]:
I, I, no, definitely not my only one.

Ryan Armstrong [00:07:35]:
Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:07:35]:
I mean, my first car was a 79 Camaro that I rebuilt with my dad. Right. We started building it when I was 14. We got it for like 100 bucks. We put two cars into one. And that was my first car when I turned 16. So heck, yeah, I'd love to do that with my son, you know.

Ryan Armstrong [00:07:50]:
Oh, dude. Yeah, that is, that is one of my. I want to do that so bad with my son. Like, you know, get him like a 70s, late 70s Silverado or 70s, late 70s Ford. Restore that baby, let him drive it to school. Yeah, I mean, I probably learned as, as much as he learned, you know, for storing that thing.

Bobby Safranski [00:08:12]:
You know, I, I have this, this prevailing thought amongst others on my hour to drive to work is that, you know, I met my wife when. In 20. In 2020. Right. So almost five years ago. And she. That's when she met me. So she's only, she only knows from that point forward. She doesn't know.

Ryan Armstrong [00:08:34]:
Yeah, as.

Bobby Safranski [00:08:35]:
She only knows about this much from as back. Right. Right before I met her.

Ryan Armstrong [00:08:40]:
And.

Bobby Safranski [00:08:44]:
When, when she gets these ideas or like, for example, we were building our nursery for our kid, she's like, how are we ever going to do this? I'm like, well, what do you want done? Okay, I got to move the chair rail. I got to mud it. I ended up having to skim coat drywall.

Ryan Armstrong [00:08:59]:
Oh, no.

Bobby Safranski [00:09:00]:
And I had never done that before. Thanks to YouTube. Thanks to YouTube. I had figured it out and I will never do it again. So part of, part of that is learning what you can and can't do.

Ryan Armstrong [00:09:13]:
That's right.

Bobby Safranski [00:09:14]:
And your skill set. I'm sure I could if I practiced it, but I really don't want to practice.

Ryan Armstrong [00:09:18]:
That's hard stuff. That's.

Bobby Safranski [00:09:19]:
But she did not know the capability. Right. And it's a blessing and a curse. Right. Like, I know what I could do. I know that in chiropractic school I worked on cars with people to make money to help save, save my classmates money. Like, oh, yeah, I could do that my driveway. Just buy that, that, that and give me a couple hundred bucks. Me and Chris will do it. We'll have it done Saturday. Okay. You know, but I ended up doing the drywall, the chair, the chair rails. And then it was supposed to be peel and stick wallpaper, but my father in law came over to help me and I was like, no, I think I can get it. It's just peel and stick. And it wasn't peel and stick. So we ended up having to dunk it, put it on the wall, scrape it, get the bubbles out. The glue was everywhere, but it was Fun. And she didn't know that I could, we could do all those things because she hadn't, you know, that was before her.

Ryan Armstrong [00:10:17]:
Right.

Bobby Safranski [00:10:18]:
So it was, it's just a prevailing thought that I have of like, how does, how can I, how can she know what I know? But we just go through life and she'll figure it out. Built a goat house for her. We had four goats.

Ryan Armstrong [00:10:30]:
Nice.

Bobby Safranski [00:10:31]:
There's my livestock people. That's my ag connection.

Ryan Armstrong [00:10:34]:
Are they fainting goats?

Bobby Safranski [00:10:37]:
They are non milk producing goat pets. Nigerian dwarf goats.

Ryan Armstrong [00:10:43]:
Nice.

Bobby Safranski [00:10:44]:
So one day we'll have some producing stuff. But there's just so much to talk about with real life daily struggles to how that applies to just where I get my food, man. It's such a, that is if I had as a, as a healthcare practitioner and somebody who looks at things from a kiss mantra just to keep it simple. Right. Keep it super simple. How's that? I constantly hammer home to patients, you are what you put in your body. Right. So on my drive home I'm really thinking about where can I get my produce, how can I get healthier beef, how can I get healthier chicken? Where can I get this? How can I do this on a budget and how can we keep it so we can eat it for six to eight months? So my brain is literally all over the place, as you can tell and as you know from things we've talked about. Yeah, right. Like I could be driving to work and be like, hey, look at this farm. What do you need a farm for? I don't. But it's cool, right?

Ryan Armstrong [00:12:06]:
Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:12:09]:
I just, I don't know, I, I want to be in a good community of people and surround myself with like minded people and I think I've done a pretty good job of that and just always want to keep talking about the things that people don't really like to talk about.

Ryan Armstrong [00:12:29]:
Yeah, that's where, that's where the juice is, right. Like stuff where, you know, you squeeze it there, you're going to get the most juice. To your point about being in a good community, I'll. I always think about this. When I was, when I started working for Tropicana, I started driving like a lot of miles. This is 2013. So like I've. Since then I not, I maybe drive a half as much as I used to, which is still like probably 30, 40,000 miles a year. It's a lot. And one thing I noticed from then till now is in the past three years it went from. So up until that point you could just See, houses, communities, especially small towns, they are just either non existent, they're falling apart, or they are literal ghost towns. There's nobody there. And since, you know, three years ago, I've seen the opposite happen. You drive past people's houses, they're cleaning up the junk in their yard, they're taking off the scraps, they're putting in plants. You know that when, where I'm going with this is, is you can see that people are investing in their homes, right? Like it's, they're, whether they're aware of it or not, or we're aware of it or not, as, as a country, that's where people are leaning towards, right. Like they're leaning towards their house. Like that's for better or for worse. It, I do see that as a positive kind of thing and maybe I'm just clinging to, to have some kind of hope, but I, I, it does seem to make a difference, right. Like we were on that far of a slide and then it starts going back up. I do think that there's, there's something there, you know, that would be a.

Bobby Safranski [00:14:04]:
Cool, cool thing to look into if there was a way to look into it. Right? Like yeah, how, how many people are moving away from these like urban areas to get an acre, acre and a quarter, two acres so that they can have chickens and get their own eggs and grow their own little food and create this like small homestead. I think, I think that's more than just a trend of, you know, people trying to sell real estate and sell a dream. I think it's a real thing that's happening. I think that if you could somehow track that and compare that to the rise in inflation and the cost of living, you would see that, that as the inflation goes up, that would go up with it too and people trying to be more self sustainable.

Ryan Armstrong [00:14:55]:
Yeah, I mean one of the biggest things that I like and this, this goes for me personally too, but like one of the, I, I grew up doing this, which is canning, right. Like you have your garden, you pick what comes from the garden, you, as a harvest, you know, if it's your shell and peas or your whatever, whatever it may be, you do that and then you go take it to the canary, which that's like almost a completely lost art. I mean if you could get governments or infrastructure to be, you know, the, just the investment in a canary, like just build a canary, it doesn't even have to be like, I think you and I know, like it wouldn't even have to be like an indoor Canary like you could do an outdoor kitchen, you know, pull.

Bobby Safranski [00:15:34]:
I've never canned.

Ryan Armstrong [00:15:35]:
Really.

Bobby Safranski [00:15:35]:
It is definitely something I want to do and get into. I mean it's like on my list of like woodworking, like I want to be able to do those things. I think, I think part of the frustration for me is I'm working towards all those things. I had a pair of boots with a hole in the bottom and fall apart that there's no cobbler in town. How is there no cobbler in Okeechobee? How many people wear boots in this town? Right. That's crazy to me. So canning and a cobbler like those couple of things. Dying arts man, My office manager's Grandson asked me, Dr. S, if you didn't go to chiropractic school in college, what would you have done? I looked him quickly dead in the face and said I would have been a welder, a plumber, an electrician. And by the time I was 25, I'd had my own business and I would have to be very wealthy by the time I was my age. Now. Right. These trades, these hands on craftsman people are catching on to it. Right. And that there's a need for that. But just that dying art is kind of like the dying robes, you know what I mean?

Ryan Armstrong [00:16:51]:
See that map? Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:16:54]:
I was gonna ask about that.

Ryan Armstrong [00:16:55]:
Yeah. So I found this in the office when I walked into the bell office and for Trap Cana and it was hanging on the wall and I was like, oh, that's going home with me. They were going to throw it away. So it's an old map of Hendry County. So it's got all of the, see all the names on there? Those are all property owners.

Bobby Safranski [00:17:17]:
Oh, wow. That's pretty cool. Yeah.

Ryan Armstrong [00:17:19]:
This is from 86. Wow. Yeah, dude. I have, While we're on that topic, since I live in Tallahassee, I haven't done it yet, but one of the things I'm going to try to start doing is go talk to legislators that have farm backgrounds or, or focus on that kind of stuff. But I have a, like a map, a bucket. I don't know you call like a bucket, but you know, it's a storage container full of maps and it's all aerial photos of groves, black and white.

Bobby Safranski [00:17:51]:
Wow.

Ryan Armstrong [00:17:52]:
Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:17:52]:
That's cool stuff, man. I have so much wall space in this office and I don't know what to decorate it with. And I mean that kind of stuff is like cool.

Ryan Armstrong [00:18:05]:
You, I'll tell you what I do. I, I, since you're out you're outside a lot. I take my phone and like, if ever I see like just like a sunrise or a sunset or like take some of the coolest pictures.

Bobby Safranski [00:18:17]:
Yeah, I mean, I took, I took a couple panoramics when I was in the stand the other day.

Ryan Armstrong [00:18:20]:
Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:18:21]:
But I mean, I do that often. Yeah, I just like stuff like that. And we don't have enough room at the house for all that stuff. Like my office is all like from my like travels.

Ryan Armstrong [00:18:35]:
I.

Bobby Safranski [00:18:35]:
Over here I have. It's. It's literally a framed bag of deer. Corn. Deer, like a deer corn bag. And it's from Rock Springs, Texas. And it's from Country Boy Feeding Supply in Rock Springs, Texas. And that was in my buddy's apartment in Dallas. And that's just the feed store we get corn at when we would go to his ranch in South Texas.

Ryan Armstrong [00:19:01]:
But it's cool stuff, you know, I mean, it's cool stuff.

Bobby Safranski [00:19:05]:
Yeah, his mom had it framed just so he could like take his mind off of like the ranch and whatever. Yeah, I like stuff like that. And you know, maybe one day I'll kill some decent sized deer and have them mounted and put in here, but I don't know. I like stuff like that. I appreciate it so much.

Ryan Armstrong [00:19:24]:
Well, it goes back to what you're talking about. You know, it's. It's all, it's. It's. It's not what people focus on. You know, people don't look at that stuff anymore. They don't think about it. It's not valuable. I mean, it's.

Bobby Safranski [00:19:35]:
No, there's. Things are disposable now. I'll just get a new one. It's like, where did you learn that? My 7, 8 year old nephew. Where did you learn that? Get. Just get a new one. Like. No, let's fix it.

Ryan Armstrong [00:19:46]:
Yes, yes.

Bobby Safranski [00:19:48]:
Right, let's. Let's fix it and if we can't get it to work, then we'll get it. Yeah, that was for a water. A water gun I bought him.

Ryan Armstrong [00:19:55]:
Really?

Bobby Safranski [00:19:57]:
Just buy me another one. Yeah, you buy me another one.

Ryan Armstrong [00:19:59]:
Yeah, you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These little boys love water guns. I don't know what's up. That.

Bobby Safranski [00:20:05]:
Oh man, it was cool.

Ryan Armstrong [00:20:07]:
It was.

Bobby Safranski [00:20:07]:
I did. I mean, social media, right? I did see it on Tick Tock. That, that you can learn some stuff on Tick Tock.

Ryan Armstrong [00:20:14]:
Yeah. So I don't have like. That was the deal break. Everybody's addicted to Tick Tock. Addicted.

Bobby Safranski [00:20:20]:
I am, I am not addicted to posting videos, I can tell you that. Yeah, but, but learning stuff. Like, man, we were talking about canning earlier. Yeah, canning, Homeopathic remedies. I got like three or four, like, I don't know, books on like, herbal medicine that I want to dig into. And, you know, it's like, what helps? My wife was breastfeeding and she's weaning herself off and she's getting full again and she looked up on Google. I came into work on Monday and sure enough, man, some cold cabbage. Put on that and compress. It's just crazy how that is a dying art too.

Ryan Armstrong [00:21:02]:
Some, yeah. Talking about this makes me, it makes me want to, like, how, how valuable is the stuff that my grandma and my great grandfather were teaching me, running around with them when I was a kid. Like, I remember getting, just ate up by some, some wasps, right? Like, just getting hammered. And I run inside and I'm wailing, right? And she's like, come here. Pulls a pack, pulls a pack of cigarettes out of the cabinet and busts them open. Slap some tobacco on there. I'm like, what are you doing? She's like, just wrap it up and keep it on there. Go play.

Bobby Safranski [00:21:34]:
So we had, we had an anatomy teacher and like, stuff like that is. I, I didn't, I grew up. My, both of my grandfathers died at a young age for my, my parents, so I never met them. My mom's mom died when I was 8, 8 or 9. And then my, my dad's mom died when I was in college, like just my first or second year in college. So I didn't have that connection with my grandparents to learn that sort of stuff, but I wish I did. And I, I, I talked to my wife about that stuff. Hey, I don't care if it's a Monday night or, you know, Monday morning at 8 o' clock and my parents are in town and they want, they want to stop by and see Theo. Good. Have at it. I said we. I did not have that ability as a kid. I want them to have, I want him to have that ability with his grandparents. And, and like, she was like, yeah.

Ryan Armstrong [00:22:46]:
Duh, right, yeah, here we are.

Bobby Safranski [00:22:49]:
Why would you even have to say that? Like, because I wanted to say it. I didn't, I didn't have it. But. Right, to go back to your ant bite thing. There is a story that our anatomy teacher in chiropractic school told us about how his grandfather, he was about to step on a rattlesnake or something, and his grandfather picked it up, opened the rattlesnake's mouth, had a Dip in it, spit in the rattlesnake's mouth, closed its mouth and watched it die. And I was like, wait, what? He's like, it's the nicotine. And the nicotinic receptors in the snake is what killed it. And that's why your amplites. Yeah.

Ryan Armstrong [00:23:35]:
Well, like, dude, there's so, so much that I want. Like, I love stuff like that.

Bobby Safranski [00:23:40]:
But like, me too.

Ryan Armstrong [00:23:41]:
Like my. Like, I remember like, just. Just being in the yard. My grandmother would. She'd be like, well, come over here. Let me rip off a piece of this aloe plant. Like, I try to tell my son, want an aloe plant. He's like, a what? I'm like, fixes everything. Just rub it on there.

Bobby Safranski [00:23:56]:
Yeah. And what's wild. What? What's wild is. And we can go down this road if you really want to, but the aloe you buy at CVS is basically rubbing alcohol.

Ryan Armstrong [00:24:09]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:24:11]:
Really aloe. The. The difference in a sunburn with real aloe versus bought aloe vera. Aloe vera, whatever. Completely different. Yeah, completely different. How it helps. And that goes back to, like, why can't we just grow aloe plants? You know, that's seasonal. Let's see. Let's store it. We know where it's going to be. We know how much we grew, Right? Here it is. Go get some aloe. Rub it on it. Where is it? It's in the root cellar. You know what I mean?

Ryan Armstrong [00:24:40]:
Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:24:42]:
I just. I don't know. I have this, like, homestead, passing a book of knowledge on to my grandkids kind of mindset. I want a book full of all the knowledge we were just talking about so that my son and. And. Or grandkids know, like, hey, yeah, that works for heartburn. Go get that.

Ryan Armstrong [00:25:01]:
Yeah, let me show you. I just thought about something. This is crazy. So my mom did this. So every Sunday I used to eat. We used to eat Sunday dinner at my great grand, great grandparents house, the farmhouse house island. The house was built in like the 20s, I think the whole house is built out of, not heart pine. And he says I was lucky. And like, just by, you know, grace of God or whatever, I was lucky enough to sit at the table with him every Sunday. So I got to spend time with him, but I also got to sit at a table with him. And little did I know, like, the stories that he was telling, like how crazy they were. But like, dude, check this out. My mom recorded it and put it on a cd. My kids, my. My kids drew on it. But that's Actually, that's a picture of him when he was 16 and he had the first. That was the first car in town. Wow.

Bobby Safranski [00:25:59]:
Go back real quick.

Ryan Armstrong [00:26:00]:
Oh, you'll see it back up.

Bobby Safranski [00:26:02]:
Yeah, yeah. So what is that? Like, it's the conversations from.

Ryan Armstrong [00:26:07]:
Yeah. His name is Bertie. Adrian Crumb. Ba Crum.

Bobby Safranski [00:26:11]:
So she just recorded the conversations from what? Like what, she would sit down with him?

Ryan Armstrong [00:26:16]:
Yeah, yeah. Because we. He was getting older and, you know, we were like, what are we gonna do? Like, how do we record this stuff? Or how do we, like, document it? And that was. That's the only recording of him.

Bobby Safranski [00:26:33]:
Wow.

Ryan Armstrong [00:26:33]:
And, like, I mean, I have. I have stories, right? Like, there's actually. There's a guy. I can't remember his name. I reached out to him and he was kind of a bummer. He.

Bobby Safranski [00:26:44]:
He.

Ryan Armstrong [00:26:44]:
He was making a living. Do it, like, doing that. Like going to people. Like reaching out to people and getting their family legacies recorded and documenting it and like, putting in storage. And then he got a. He got a corporate job. Stop doing it. Like, man. But I was like, reaching out to him. I was like, dude, I. I know I'm only in my 30s, but I was like, I have so much that I want to tell you. Like, I want to tell my great grandfather's stories. Like the likes brothers stories, like running cows at the beach. Go ahead.

Bobby Safranski [00:27:15]:
Yeah. Although I. I have not been doing it as often as I thought I would. But just talking about it needs to. It needs to happen and I need to finish writing it. But I started to write like my son notes.

Ryan Armstrong [00:27:28]:
Nice.

Bobby Safranski [00:27:30]:
In a notebook. So I bought a bunch of these notebooks. They're around here somewhere.

Ryan Armstrong [00:27:35]:
What an idea. I love it.

Bobby Safranski [00:27:37]:
Yeah, man. So I. I skipped the first one I wrote.

Ryan Armstrong [00:27:40]:
Wrote.

Bobby Safranski [00:27:40]:
Was that seven months? And then I did eight months. The last one I wrote. I gotta. I actually kind of have to finish the thought, but I started like September of September 15th. So I've been like, putting the date how old he was, you know, a year, three months, a year, four months, year, five months, and just kind of like letting them know all that's going on at that time. And just what we were dealing with, what he was doing, how he was acting, you know.

Ryan Armstrong [00:28:13]:
That's amazing. Thank you for sharing that, man.

Bobby Safranski [00:28:16]:
That's really cool.

Ryan Armstrong [00:28:17]:
I love that idea. Yeah. Let's start doing that now. Now I'm bummed out. I didn't start it earlier.

Bobby Safranski [00:28:24]:
I kind of got. I kind of got the idea. And it's. Maybe I had it before. I just didn't have it all thought through, and maybe I still don't, but there was a show on Netflix with a movie on Netflix with Robert De Niro as like, president or something like that, or an old president, and he had a bookshelf full of notebooks that were dated, and he would keep thoughts in it, and when he was president, he would keep thoughts in it, and it would be like this, this, and this. And like, maybe. I don't know, I think one of them was like, encrypted messages or whatever, so you could decode it. Who knew the secret? Or whatever. And I was like, man, that would be kind of cool to have something like that leave to him for him to read one day.

Ryan Armstrong [00:29:10]:
Yeah, that's a really cool idea. In that same vein, you know what else I started doing too, is I started. Actually, I have. I printed out way more like five by eight pictures. But I've like. One of my big things that I try to do is, like, have pictures on the wall, pictures sitting on the desk, like, actual pictures of me and my kids and my f. Like, you know, like, I realized, like, when I was, like when you were in college. Like, I didn't really realize it at that time. There you go. Like, just stuff. Stuff like that. But like, it's like this, you know, today, in today's time, like, that's just not. It's like, oh, I have a digital picture frame. It's like, well, it's not a really. That's cool. But what happens when it's busted?

Bobby Safranski [00:29:51]:
Right?

Ryan Armstrong [00:29:52]:
Don't get me wrong. Normal pictures can. Can. Can be destroyed too. But it's sentimental.

Bobby Safranski [00:29:57]:
Absolutely. But it's tangible. It's real. It's not just here and gone.

Ryan Armstrong [00:30:01]:
Your kids get to see that. And then your kids go, okay, this is how. This is good.

Bobby Safranski [00:30:07]:
Yeah. So we. We've kind of talked a lot about that. Like the, the legacy or teaching kids and all that stuff. I get often asked a lot, and a lot of people assume my grandmother had, not mine, but like, oh, my grandma had scoliosis. My mom had scoliosis. I'm gonna have scoliosis, right? Oh, we got to take this kid to the pediatrician. They. They. They think that he's got scoliosis. So we're gonna have to get X rays. Well, your kid's gonna have some sort of curvature. They. All they do is sit hunched over in front of the computer or the phone or the tv. Yeah, they're gonna have something. But to your point about and why. I'll tie this In. In a second. It's tangible. The kids see it. They. They watch how you act. Right. I. I'm. There's a neurologic. I can't think of the reflex, the. The neurological term. I just know that it's a neurological development thing that, you know, your kids watch and learn how you do things so that they can learn how to do it. A good example is, yeah, my son, when he was. He's still learning to eat new things and how much he could put in his mouth and all that stuff, right? But, like, I gave him a piece of bacon, and he put it in his mouth, and it was just savory flavor. You could see him just going, whoa, what is this?

Ryan Armstrong [00:31:44]:
Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:31:44]:
And he didn't know. He didn't know how to chew it. So I put it in the front of my teeth. I said, chew it.

Ryan Armstrong [00:31:51]:
Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:31:51]:
So now every time he eats a piece of bacon, he goes like. Basically like, daddy, look.

Ryan Armstrong [00:31:56]:
All right.

Bobby Safranski [00:31:58]:
And that's how he eats it because he watched me do it. Right. So how does that relate to scoliosis and what I was talking about? Your kids are going to watch how you walk, how you sit, how you stand, how you sleep. They are going to neurologically develop and do the same patterns that you do. Good. Well, that's not true. I have a much bigger butt than my mom. You know, like. Okay, got it. Cool. Do you blow your nose like your mom? Do you blow your nose like your dad? Do you cough like your mom or your dad? Do you do the same thing in the shower like that you can hear auditorily that your parents do Catch yourself? I guarantee you, dude.

Ryan Armstrong [00:32:43]:
Well, I mean, you. And I can appreciate that, because I guarantee you. Probably. Probably. I don't know if I was the same for you, but I really started to notice it, like, kind of on the back end of college. And when I started, you know, I got into my career and started working, this was like, when it first happens, you're like, no, no, I'm not. That's not. And then you're like, a couple years go by, and you're like, oh, no, it's identical. And, like, you say stuff the same way. You got the same habits you like. And, like, to your point, I'll tell you one of the most powerful realizations that I've had. And I work on this every day. It's a constant thing. Like, I'm a human. But one of the things that I have to work on every day is understanding that, like, my children are literally hanging on every noise that they hear if I'm in the kitchen and they hear a noise that I make, within 20 minutes I'm probably going to hear the same noise again from them. If you're walking around saying, oh, I'm sick, I don't feel good, 20, 30 minutes are going to go, I'm sick. And I was just like the YouTube thing, it was like the YouTube thing. And that's how it kind of clicked for me is I was like, this is like a blank canvas. If I act right and I treat people right, I talk to people right way I eat right, I go outside, I go for, they're gonna wanna do those things. And I'll tell you what really hit it home for me was when my son was younger and I started taking him to the bookstore, I took him to the bookstore and now you know what he associates love with and caring sitting next to me, reading a book. Yep.

Bobby Safranski [00:34:21]:
Man. My son is big into books too. And my wife makes fun of me all the time because I buy books.

Ryan Armstrong [00:34:27]:
Nerd alert.

Bobby Safranski [00:34:28]:
I have, I have, I have this almost like a U shaped bookshelf around this window.

Ryan Armstrong [00:34:32]:
Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:34:33]:
And it's, it's got some, it's got some like stuff in it, like notes and stuff from school. But I'm buying books, I'm reading books. If I'm listening to an audiobook, I'll typically buy it just because I want. The tangible book is like a receipt that I read or listen to this book. Sometimes I'll listen to the book and read it at the same time and take notes in it. But my son loves books. Loves them. Like now we're starting to figure out like what did she say last night? Like, he's not speaking yet, but he says like 10 to 12 words.

Ryan Armstrong [00:35:10]:
Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:35:11]:
But he does this like and it's like what do you. And then when you grab the corduroy book, that's do that's what he wants to read.

Ryan Armstrong [00:35:23]:
Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:35:24]:
So we're, we're figuring that out and animals and pointing to things and he just loves it.

Ryan Armstrong [00:35:31]:
So, you know, it's really to the point about sounds. When I, we first discovered duck camp dinners and you know, they're talking in Cajun and French and different things. And I'm gonna tell you what, it's really, really cool. You're teaching your kids how to talk in English. You can teach them different languages and they will repeat it and speak is.

Bobby Safranski [00:35:56]:
I know, the coolest thing ever.

Ryan Armstrong [00:35:59]:
It's just one of the, the many things why people say kids are such a blessing, but I mean, it's just.

Bobby Safranski [00:36:07]:
I know, man. And it's. Every single day. I'll be driving home. What did I. I don't know. I saw, like, 38 people yesterday. And that's not. I. That's not. We could definitely see more everybody. Right? But it's tiring. It's physical. And then I have an hour drive home, and by the time I'm getting, you know, close to the house, and, like, man, I am so tired. Like, I single Bobby, work this hard, eat, couch, pass out. Or eat, you know, shower.

Ryan Armstrong [00:36:41]:
Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:36:41]:
Couch on. Like, eat dinner, pass on the couch, wake up, go in your bed. Like, that would be. That sounds incredible right now.

Ryan Armstrong [00:36:48]:
Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:36:48]:
I pull in the driveway. I pull in the driveway, and he's like this. On the window, like.

Ryan Armstrong [00:36:52]:
Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:36:53]:
Looking at me like, I'm wide awake. So, you know, it's. It's really awesome to just live right now. I think it's. It's just.

Ryan Armstrong [00:37:04]:
Oh, yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:37:05]:
Yeah.

Ryan Armstrong [00:37:05]:
Absolutely. Yeah. And I think to your point about, like, get being wide awake when, like, it just in. In today's time, I. I do feel like it's shifting. But, you know, four or five years ago, there was.

Bobby Safranski [00:37:17]:
There was.

Ryan Armstrong [00:37:18]:
And. And I think, you know, when 2020 happened and all that stuff happened, it kind of. It really changed things, obviously. But there was a big push then when we were. We'd been out of school for a little while, but there was that. I don't know if you remember this, but there was a time period where it was like, you know, the. And I'm not knocking them. This is a lot of his social media influence and stuff, but, you know, kids had to be on a schedule, and there's still people that are like that. Like, they have to be on schedule. They have to eat this at this time, and they have to do it by this. And, like, I've just found that it just really kind of takes the joy out of a lot of it. For me, personally, and one thing that I really try to keep in the forefront of my mind is that. Go ask somebody who's older or somebody who's in the, you know, the twilight years of their life. You. Your kids only. You only got to be a kid once. They only get to be a kid one time. So, you know, like, it's. It's the most valuable thing ever. Like, let them be a kid. Like. And you're like, I'll catch myself. Like, when my. When my mom's here, I'm like, mom, yo, lay off the Reese's Cups. He's had four of them already. And then it's like, it's gonna happen whether I'm here or not. Like grandma's in town. So, like, is. Is it great? No. But like you were talking about in moderation. Like, he's not eating six Reese cups a day. But when grandma's in town, it's like, he's gonna remember that when he's older. Like, oh, yeah, I had good times with grandma. You know, those things are important. Like you were talking about.

Bobby Safranski [00:38:44]:
Yeah. And we, we. We are catching ourselves doing that now. We've actually been. Man. He was sleeping through the night like a champ. And he turned 1. We had a party at the house. Literally. The party was on Saturday, dude, that Tuesday night. We were in bed and we were laying there. I don't remember. We were watching. About to watch something. Yeah, he was going to bed. Like he was going to bed because I get home at like 7. We kind of keep him up for like an hour. It was probably like 8:30, 9:00 clock we were in bed and just like laying there and 11 o' clock rolls around, I'm like, all right, we're getting ready to go to sleep. Dude sat up, started crying. He has not slept through the night since. Really?

Ryan Armstrong [00:39:30]:
Oh, no.

Bobby Safranski [00:39:32]:
Yeah.

Ryan Armstrong [00:39:34]:
That's rough.

Bobby Safranski [00:39:34]:
Last night, Last night It was like 10:30. But here's. Here's where I'm going with that. Is he's only a kid once.

Ryan Armstrong [00:39:41]:
Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:39:41]:
You know, if. If he. If we're blessed to have another kid, then so be it. But right now, he's our only kid. And we had a sleep consultant. And you know that part of their thing is it's part of the cry it out method. And they got to cry it out and self soothe and all. And I mean, I just remember my wife looking at me and this wasn't too long ago because we had to postpone this dang thing because of life. And we were supposed to have today's date, we're supposed to have it next week. We were supposed to do sleep consultant. Like four days, I'll have your kids sleeping through the night. And she's like, I just. He gets hives and he turns red when he starts crying. So we're. Like I said, do you mind that he sleeps in the bed? Do you mind that he does? I mean, he didn't do it all the time, but if he's. If he won't go back down in the crib, she picks him up, brings him in the bed. We put the barriers up. Everybody sleeps Right. Let him be a kid. I don't want him to be stressed. I want him to be happy. I want her to be happy. Like, it just, that whole schedule thing, it never really sat right with me. And then, you know, my wife said something. She's like, I just feel like we would need this schedule if I had to go back to work. And I was like, well, I mean, yeah, we're doing that and that's awesome. So she's taking care of the kid. You know, I'm super blessed. We. She didn't let me get up to feed him at all. So I sleep through the night so I can go to work. My. I want to be daddy. I wanted to feed him, but at the end of the day, like, that's just what we needed to do. And he's just the happiest boy, man. Like, he smiles, he laughs, he runs around, hits his head, you know, but that's what we do. And I don't think we change it for the world. I don't think we, we need to do the sleep training and I don't think that's for everybody in every situation. I don't think he needs to be on that rigid of a schedule. He needs a schedule, right? He needs to be in bed by a certain time so that we can have qu. You know, quality time together, get some decent sleep. But, you know, hey, drop what you're doing at seven o'. Clock. He needs to be in bed and in the bath. Like, couple Reese's cups ain't going to kill him.

Ryan Armstrong [00:42:05]:
Yeah, no, no, 100%. And, and what to your point about, you know, the sleep consultant and, and working through it, I, you know, in my mind right now I'm hesitating about bringing this up, but I think, you know, I feel convicted to say it, but in, in my situation, we've had conversations about this and you know, I'll keep it vague, but you know, that, that idea of, of having outside people, not that it's wrong to do that, there are obviously times for that to happen. But I will say that my personal opinion and my personal experience is that the world has completely dissolved the boundaries of who knows what's best for the children.

Bobby Safranski [00:42:52]:
You.

Ryan Armstrong [00:42:53]:
Yeah, yeah, because I, I, you know, like I said, I'll keep it vague, but we've had conversations in. And listen, I'm not the only grown man out here talking about this or a dad talking about this, but it's got to get worked out. The court systems and the family court systems are so out of control. They are destroying grown men. They are destroying families. And I just want to be real about this because it's something I'm really passionate about, and I've seen it happen. There are men who get destroyed financially, and when they get destroyed financially by the court system, they lose their children. And I know you and I can both relate that just the thought of those words getting tossed around is like, it's. There's nothing worse that could probably happen than to lose your children. And a lot of men commit suicide as a result of that. And it's a real. It's a legitimate problem that nobody wants to talk about.

Bobby Safranski [00:43:55]:
And yeah, men's. I mean, men's mental health. Yes, in general, wants to talk about.

Ryan Armstrong [00:44:00]:
Right.

Bobby Safranski [00:44:00]:
Because we're so. You know, look, there is. There is that side of the coin is we are supposed to be tough, we are supposed to be resilient, but we are supposed to have an outlet and an outlet of other men to talk about even stuff like that. You know, I know people who have gone through and dealt with court situations where the ex wife has by been diagnosed bipolar schizophrenic, but because the dad was late on child support because of changing a job and. Or losing a job and the timing of submitting court documents. Well, you didn't submit this in time. Like, dude, it happened Tuesday.

Ryan Armstrong [00:44:44]:
Yep.

Bobby Safranski [00:44:45]:
Like, I got these done as soon as I could. The system took three weeks to do it. It doesn't matter.

Ryan Armstrong [00:44:49]:
Doesn't matter.

Bobby Safranski [00:44:50]:
Right? And. And just because he's the dad, they were like, no, sorry. But she was running through work with a kitchen knife and had to be subdued in Baker.

Ryan Armstrong [00:45:04]:
Doesn't matter.

Bobby Safranski [00:45:05]:
She's got full custody.

Ryan Armstrong [00:45:07]:
And listen, and I want to be clear about this, too. This is not like this is about a me thing or a you thing or anybody we know personally. This. This is a legitimate problem. Dig into it. I highly suggest. Thank the good Lord there are people who have platforms that will talk about this. My favorite one right now is Mike Glover. I don't know if you know him. Mike Glover. I'll. I'll put that in the show notes. I'll send it to you too. But Mike Glover is like. And he's not the ones you see, like, talking, make writing books and stuff. He does that. But he's a special forces guy. He was Green Beret, but he's going through that stuff right now. But he has a podcast where he talks about that and he ties it into God and in the church and. And he's. He did one yesterday Or Sunday. He does every Sunday. It's called preaching to the choir. And he really, he, he really, he went into it, right? Not in a bad way. He was just like, this is the deal, this is how it is. And he's explaining it for like his ex wife's side, his side. He's like, the court system is just off the rails, man, just out of control. Yeah, but you know, there's, there's people out there that, that are talking about this and I just hope, and I pray that it gets a lot more attention. And, and I also want to be really clear about this, that it's not about the man or the woman in the relationship. Listen, everybody, listen to me when I say this. It's about the children. It's about the kids. It's about them having time like you were talking about with your grandparents. Those are things that you weren't, you didn't get. And we have these situations where the courts get involved and lawyers get involved in. You know, I didn't really intend on going off on this tangent, but it's, it is, it is a problem. It's a legitimate thing that's that like kind of tying back into what we were talking about is the family, the home. That's the integral part of it. There's nothing wrong with not being able to agree and having to exit a situation that's not good for everybody. But you shouldn't have to spend a half a million dollars or whatever it may be on court costs or time away from work and all of that stuff just because you can't. You have to agree to disagree for the betterment of the children. And like, it's just, it just has to be about them. So, yeah, I'm just really passionate about that because I love kids and I, I to your point about having an outlet, I mean, thank God that like we still keep in touch. Like I, I, I want to share this dude. I, I so my best friend Jared Player, and like he has been like, when I wanted to quit, he would always, he always had the saying. So I actually ended up, I don't know if I'll be able to, able to see it, but it says so on this bracelet. It says. Yep. So it says, what are you going to do? Quit? So every time that I would be like, like, I'm like, you know, I'm in my feelings, like I'm having a day like, wo is me, I'm Eeyore running around having kind of like everybody's out to get me attitude. He'd Be like, okay, you gonna quit? You want to talk? Like, there ain't. There is nothing that you can say to that. That's like, all right, that's a fair point, right? And I put. So on the inside of that, I was laying in bed one day. This is a true story. I was laying in bed one day, and he had been saying this to me, and I. And I just got the idea. I was like, I'm gonna put this on a bracelet. So on the inside of it has a bible verse. It's First Peter, chapter four, verses 12 and 13. And basically, you know, I'm not. I'm not a Bible scholar, but I'll give you the gist of it. The gist of it is, you know, when bad things are happening to you, realize that it's nothing that you did or nothing that's fully in your control, but you are in control of how you respond to it. And you can lean on God to help him. Let him help you fix it. So, like, don't be like, oh, why is it happening to me? Don't do that. Just go, okay. It's like, I'm just here, and I have somebody who can help me, and I'll get through it. And, like, dude, that. Yeah, it may be simple, but, like, to your point, I can't. Like, that stuff is so, so important. Like, it's.

Bobby Safranski [00:49:04]:
It is, man. And it's something I'm also working on, right? I'm look. Baptized Catholic. I went to Catholic. I went. I didn't go to Catholic school, but, you know, I did the whole. The whole deal through the Catholic Church. And, you know, I've always had God in my life, but it wasn't until I got to chiropractic school that I met this group of guys that just. Man, they talked about it different, right? Most people that I would. You gotta go to church. You go to church. You're a Bible. Thunder. It's like, whoa. No, man. I just. I just have beliefs, right? Like, it's. I think it's okay for me to say that, right? Like, you. Well, not believe that, you know, you shouldn't say that. And this. That the other. Like, okay, just back away and do the thing. But it wasn't until I met these guys and I actually went through a bad breakup that, you know, I mean, I basically was left in Dallas. I live 40 miles north of Dallas, and I had to take the bike to the train station to get to the train to make it to class on time.

Ryan Armstrong [00:50:07]:
Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:50:08]:
And if it wasn't for Those guys, like, I wouldn't have been able to move out of the apartment. We studied for boards, we fished, we hunted. And when we went through all that, wasn't until that I noticed, like, that is a great, great foundation. And they were taught that, and that's what they went through, and that was how they live life. So I realized it was okay to talk about those things. And it's taken me until I'm 40 years old to say, man, my morning readings need to be more consistent. Like, you know, there's a. They had men's groups in school, and they would always talk and meet and sit in the library within the conference room, and they would have their men's groups and they would all read the Bible. And, you know, there's the four of us. Three. Three of the guys I went. Two of the guys I went to school with and me. And then a guy that we know that graduated after us. We. We have like a. A group chat on Voxer that, like, you can talk and ask questions to. We're all kind of reading different books in the Bible right now. And, man, is the first time in my life I'm doing that where I'm just like, okay, I'm gonna start in Matthew and I'm gonna start working my way through the New Testament. And, you know, my one buddy went and did discipleship. He went to school for a year in Memphis and learned the Bible school, this whole thing. And after he went to, you know, University of Arkansas and went here and then the Dominican to do this and that. And he just like, hey, man, do you want to be the guy that marries me and my wife? Like, that would be pretty cool. And he obviously said yes. And then now he's in this group. And like, this morning I just asked a question in this group chat, something that's been thinking about, like, hey, man, when. When you're going through life, you know, you hear, like, you always have to put yourself first. You gotta. You gotta fix yourself to be able to help others. But then you hear in the Bible, so you put your wife first, then your kid, then, you know, you like. So I asked, like, what order do you guys think about that? Because I. I think it's a balance of both. You have to be square for yourself and take time for yourself, and then you got to. But you have to do that in order to provide that for them, right? So I bounce questions like that off. And when we. We get into something, we're reading, we talk about it, and I. This might be actually the first Time. I have talked about that out loud, but it's pretty cool because now I'm like, man, he, my son's going to see me do this. He's going to see me read, he's going to see me take notes. He's going to have this foundation that he can take with him and know that there's a reason behind it and know that if you're struggling and you need to go through something, that you can always lean back on your faith and. And you have a foundation of beliefs that you know are concrete. And time and time and time and time again have become true. So it's awesome. I, like, man, I want that bracelet. You know, I want a bracelet like that. That's freaking.

Ryan Armstrong [00:53:22]:
It's, it's literally. It's one of the things that I'm. I want to, like, kind of like, you're. The cars and stuff with you. Like, those are things. Like, I, I, I want to get it to get an engraving machine and start making them and just. I don't even want to, like, if it made money, that would be awesome. But, like, I literally just want to give them to people. I just want to give them people, like, just. Because I can't tell you how many times I look at it and I go, like, I legit. I, I legit want to quit, right? Like, I'm just like, I've had enough. Like, I've reached. Like, I, I just, I want to quit, right? Like, and this isn't, like, going to. But it's like, I look down at that and I'm like, all right, that's not an option, you know, like, in it.

Bobby Safranski [00:54:00]:
Yeah, it's.

Ryan Armstrong [00:54:01]:
It, it helps.

Bobby Safranski [00:54:02]:
It's not. Yeah, it's not. Right. Well, if you quit, if I quit right now, what happens? They suffer. Yep. You know, so it's awesome, man. There's so much we could talk about. We.

Ryan Armstrong [00:54:15]:
Dude, hey, we. We can do another episode as soon. As soon as you're available, because this is. I mean, we didn't even. I think we, we got to the first question.

Bobby Safranski [00:54:22]:
We might do a little more, a little more structure, but whatever.

Ryan Armstrong [00:54:26]:
No, no, we, we, we try to make it that way where it's just, just talking. You don't know. I mean, that's, that's what, that's what people desire, right? Like, that's, that's where. That's what people are looking for. Like, we were talking about the art of conversation. That's, that's what people want to listen to. They don't want to hear Ads. They don't want to hear any of that kind of stuff. I mean, listen, we know it's a business. Some people have businesses and they have sponsors and stuff, but it's.

Bobby Safranski [00:54:49]:
I got a business coach.

Ryan Armstrong [00:54:51]:
Oh, do you?

Bobby Safranski [00:54:52]:
He's got. Yeah, he's a. My mom's cousin was a chiropractor, and he's my mom. He's his old partner. And my cousin. My cousin. My second cousin bought him out, but because he was getting into this coaching side of things. So he's my. He's my coach. And he's got this thing where when you're at a networking event and you're talking to someone and you shake their hand, hey, man, I'm Dr. Safranski. Here's my business card. I'm a big lake chiropractic, you know, and I'm talking to you about what I do, and you interrupt me. You take the card and you put like a star on it and. Or a number one or an A. And you put that in, like, your left pocket. So people see you making a note on that card that, like, man, I'm special. That guy's going to call me. Because nine times out of 10, the person who does that just wants to talk about themselves and really doesn't care what you have to say. And they're really not going to become a patient, right? They're really not going to help you grow your business because they really just want to talk about them. Now, there's the side of the coin where you invite that conversation and you let them do that so that they. They come into your business and become part of your community. But the people who cut you off and just want to talk about you want to talk about them and their business and how well they've done and who they are and yada, yada, yada. Yeah, okay, star. Oh, he starred my car. He's probably gonna call me. That's the do not call list, man. Do not call.

Ryan Armstrong [00:56:27]:
Now everybody's gonna be like, you just star my cars.

Bobby Safranski [00:56:32]:
Yeah. Or you like. You put like an A1 on that. And they're like, oh, what are you doing? I was like, oh, I'm just making.

Ryan Armstrong [00:56:37]:
Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [00:56:37]:
You know, notes for who to call, you know, whatever.

Ryan Armstrong [00:56:42]:
That's funny.

Bobby Safranski [00:56:42]:
But the conversations need to be had. They're hard to have sometimes, but people really just want to talk. And there are days where we have saged this office, gone through the whole saging ritual, asked some of our seminal tribe patients like, hey, what's the proper way to Sage room. We got to get this out of here. Yeah. And we've done that to the office because of some of the things that we've been told and vibes in the office. And then there are days where you are more of a counselor than the chiropractor and people just pour into you and you just, I'm just drained. And, you know, but the conversations need to be had. Who knows if me listening to that person who needed to get it off their chest, what the result of that was. Like this. I've been talking to you for almost two hours.

Ryan Armstrong [00:57:37]:
No, I've enjoyed it. And I, I think, you know, we can. No, like, seriously, I, I, this is. I, I could keep talking. Yeah, I, to your point about the, the Seminoles in the sage, I feel like that's a kind of a good ending point, but I think that's a good starting point for our next one because that's, that, that's a really good, good avenue to go down. And it kind of relates to agriculture and spiritual warfare and good and evil. And in that part of the world is very little known area to a lot of people outside of it, but it is very real and it is everything that people think it is.

Bobby Safranski [00:58:17]:
I'll give you, I'll give you a quick little story about Seminoles. When I moved back in 2017, I joined a hunting lease and we hunted in Alabama. And we would drive 75 turnpike to 75, all the way through I10 and then cut up to go into southeast Alabama. And we had a buddy of mine now join the lease, and he always wanted to drive. Like, drive, drive, drive, drive, drive. And one time I told him, I was like, hey, man, I'd like to drive. I would like you to ride with me. I will drive. I just, I get car sick sometimes because I have an eye issue, and I just, sometimes I get car sick. So I said, but, hey, if I drive, we. I stopped for gas, typically at these points, and he's like, why don't you stop for gas? That doesn't make any sense. Why don't you stop for gas in Tallahassee? I said, because Tallahassee is in Leon county and that's where Florida State University is. And I will not spend a diamond. Leon County.

Ryan Armstrong [00:59:33]:
It's been, it's been an adjustment. I kind of just, I just deal with it. But, dude, that funny story about, that's my Seminole, dude. I, I'll never forget this. I was, I was at a shoe store, like, getting shoes for my son, and I was, I had on the gator hat. And I walked to the counter and the girl goes, do you know what's on your hat? Yeah. She's like, do you know where you are? I said, yeah, well, why are you wearing it? I'm like, why are you seminal? That was a great story, but it's just like getting used to living here. Like, they just. It's crazy the different perspectives that we have.

Bobby Safranski [01:00:14]:
Oh, I could tell you some more. And next time I'll bring up. Just. Just remind me.

Ryan Armstrong [01:00:19]:
Yeah.

Bobby Safranski [01:00:19]:
To tell you about that.

Ryan Armstrong [01:00:21]:
We need to get into the cheer side of it. The cheer side. And the. And the. I bet there's some stories in there.

Bobby Safranski [01:00:28]:
I'm sure there are, but you want to talk about a way to network. Oh, true, man. That's been my. One of my biggest networking conversation starters and it blows people away when they find that out. It's pretty wild.

Ryan Armstrong [01:00:45]:
So just as a teaser for the. For the next episode, just. Just tell them exactly what you. What you're talking about. And referring to.

Bobby Safranski [01:00:52]:
I was a cheerleader at the University of Florida.

Ryan Armstrong [01:00:55]:
And how many years did you do it?

Bobby Safranski [01:00:57]:
All four years. I. I did it two and a half. Two and a half years technically. But I mean, we. Yeah, we can get into that and get into you, how I got into uf, all that.

Ryan Armstrong [01:01:11]:
Deal. Okay, well, thanks, man. I. We. We killed this two hours. That was. That was a good time. It was legit and I enjoyed it.

Bobby Safranski [01:01:19]:
Felt like five minutes.

Ryan Armstrong [01:01:22]:
Thank you, Wallace, and so sincerely for connecting Field and Fork with us today on Farm Strong. Never forget that every day is your God given opportunity to change the world. Please let us know your questions or guest suggestions@farmstrongpodcastmail.com A special thanks is due to Casey Brown with Tealhat Communications for producing this podcast. More importantly, we want to thank you for investing your time in this podcast and taking the time to connect to the agriculture industry. This is a farm strong podcast. Work hard, be honest, speak proudly.