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The Cobbler Always Wears the Worst Shoes
25 Plays5 days ago
In this episode Andrew and Patrick discuss frugality, image, lack of honesty in business, and being an integral person.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Copybook Headings Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
and the brave new world begin begins when all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins as surely as water will wet us as surely as fire will burn the gods of the coffee book headings with terror and slaughter return
00:00:28
Speaker
Hello everybody and thank you for joining us for another episode of the Copybook Headings podcast. If you're a new listener just joining us for the first time, this show is inspired by the poem by Redyard Kipling called The Gods of the Copybook Headings.
Casual Banter and Weather Talk
00:00:39
Speaker
And every week we take an old saying, proverb or maxim and we break it down to see what we can learn from it and see if there's any ancient wisdom in these old proverbs that's still relevant today. I am your host Patrick Payne and with me as always is my co-host Andrew Stevens. Andrew, how are you man?
00:00:54
Speaker
Hey, I'm doing all right. How are you? Good, man. Doing a little shake it shake it up a little bit this time. We're recording on a different day. It's like throwing everything off. Even my kids were like, Dad, it's not it's not Thursday. What's going on? like Everyone knows everyone was freaking out at the paint household.
00:01:13
Speaker
Yeah, do do we miss a day? Like what happened? What happened to Thursday? Got to be flexible. But yeah, how you guys been? Yeah, been good. it got It got cold here this week. I don't know about you. Oh, yeah. And, you know, yeah, so that was just cold. I don't know. I'm just I've less and less patience. The older I get, the more I get snowbirds, the more they make sense to me. Oh, no. You're going to be getting a house in St. George before you know it.
00:01:45
Speaker
yeah
00:01:48
Speaker
um Yeah, thought so just ah just getting through the cold and Um, watching the crazy videos and pictures from, from the South, from like new Orleans and, oh my gosh, that's crazy. Yeah. Really cool pictures. If you haven't seen them yet, go, go check them out. For sure. I saw a guy like riding on the beach in Florida, like just yeah crazy stuff.
00:02:14
Speaker
I saw a guy like riding one of those airboats from Louisiana like on the snow. It's crazy. um I saw this picture online of like, the map, a map of like the world and all the like the cold fronts and the warm fronts and everything. There was just this big blob of blue over the United States was like and obscenely cold right here for whatever reason. Yeah, I think we must have just been at the edge of it. I don't know about up where you are. But like, because you know, we get We get like one one week a year, a winter where we get down into single digits for a day or two. And that's kind of the the most the most, and that's what it was for us this week. So unless we get some more of it later on, it won't be unusual for us cold wise, but it seemed like other places were really getting slammed.
00:03:04
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, the weather we got was cold, but it wasn't like super uncharacteristic. We we get cold days. So, you know, no big deal. But we had really good snow. i I was able to get out and do some snowboarding and it was like the most lightest, powderiest, most beautiful snow you ever saw.
00:03:19
Speaker
And there's like an app you can look at that tells the quality of the snow. And it was like the amount of moisture per whatever was super, like off the charts. It was awesome. Oh, nice. I was happy about that. Yes. Florida, I'm glad that you guys froze. Yeah. Well, I used to live in Michigan. And let me tell you, like there's a big difference in that wet, heavy, gross snow. It just turns to ice immediately. You don't want to ski on that.
00:03:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I grew up skiing in, not and not Michigan, but in in Washington. It was usually pretty pretty heavy and wet. Cool. Well, anyway, we got to got an
Exploring 'The Cobbler's Shoes' Proverb
00:03:59
Speaker
interesting one. You picked one this week, right? Wanna lay it on us?
00:04:02
Speaker
Yeah, just scrolling through our list um and it is, the cobbler always wears, oh gosh, what is it? The cobbler always wears the worst shoes or also you can see the shoemaker always wears the worst shoes. um Yeah, and so that just seemed kind of interesting to me and it also made me think of,
00:04:28
Speaker
today i was working on i was working on some belts which uh which i make on occasion i was making some some new uh making them out of black leather i don't have a uh i've been usually using brown leather and so i was thinking this thing is like ah you know what like maybe i should maybe i should keep one of these you know like because i don't have a black belt like maybe i should like i have a brown matching one that's black with like nice uh
00:04:58
Speaker
brass brass furniture, you know, hardware on it. That seems like a beautiful nice, but I was like, Oh no, I can't, like I can't waste it on myself. So I just like that mentality, the kind of like the craftsman's mentality of, Oh, if it's, if it's worth, if it's worth having, I should sell it to someone else, you know, or, or I can't afford my own stuff. Right. And so that's kinda, that's what came to mind. And so when I saw this, like, Oh yeah, that that's relatable. and I just, I just did that today.
00:05:26
Speaker
Yeah, we, uh, my dad was a car guy, um, his whole life and he was an automotive engineer. Like we lived in Detroit for that reason. And, uh, we always drove crappy cars. I was like, I don't understand. yeah He's a car guy, but he got carved out at work, I guess. yeah He always had his little hot rod, but yeah. Well, and, and with this one, I think there's, there's a, there's a few ways to take it. Um, I think the original way.
00:05:52
Speaker
It's kind of what I was talking about where um I guess. Well, let me let me back up here. So this one is another John Haywood one that shows up in 1546. His version is.
00:06:06
Speaker
who But who is worse shod than the shoemaker's wife with shops full of new shape and shoes all her life? um So kind of that version is right. His family, like keep the stuff he makes goes to the market, goes to the rich people, um and his family does not get it because, well, they're not rich.
00:06:27
Speaker
um So, so there's, that's one way to take it. The original way is that you just can't afford your own stuff. But the other way actually that came to me first was just, um, maybe it's, it's the the craftsman or the person who does something. It knows more, like knows better that they can go without it or that they can fix what they already have. Like thinking of a car guy, thinking of a car guy, like you don't, the car guy doesn't really need.
00:06:57
Speaker
the new car every three years, especially if he's got one he likes that he's been working on for 20. Like he'll just keep it running because he likes it. And, uh, yep. And so I think a lot of people who, who make things for them, make things, keep the things they make longer, I guess.
00:07:14
Speaker
Yeah. I hadn't thought about it that way, but that's actually kind of interesting. Um, maybe they even know like some of the tricks of the trade sticking with cars. You have a guy who works at a dealership. He knows all the sc scammy stuff. Like he's not going to go sign himself up for 72 year, 72 month, uh, you know, loan or something like that. He's not going to do that. He knows, he knows how the game is played. So he might be driving an older car while he's signing people up for these brand new leases or something. Yeah, exactly. Like he, all the,
00:07:43
Speaker
He doesn't care for all the the computer chips on the cars that are always failing, so he's just driving something old that is reliable, yeah. Yeah, he's he's seen the ones that get returned, and he knows you know all the stuff that's been going on there. um Yeah, so i so when I went to college, i my degree was in political science, mainly because I didn't know what else to do, and I thought it was kind of interesting, but it was like for a while there,
00:08:09
Speaker
I would just study this stuff in school and I could not be bothered to like talk about it. People would be like, oh, so, oh, you're Pauli Saya. What do you think about this? I'm like, dude, I don't even care. It's not I'm not taking a class on that right now. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to know about it. I'm not interested. I can talk to somebody else. um And it I was like that for a while because it was just maybe that's part of it is kind of just getting burnt out on your own.
00:08:37
Speaker
Your own field of study or your own industry and then you just kind of when you get home to your own stuff You're like man. Do I really want to fix these shoes? Not really ah yeah Yeah, I mean that's another yeah, that is another part of it um I You know as someone who? Does one kind of writing for my day job?
00:08:55
Speaker
means when it comes to my free time, the the writing that I want to do, like writing fiction or something, I'm just burned out on the writing in general. And do I really want to sit down at the computer again for another hour and write some more? Not really. You still do though. I do. That's good. Not as much yeah as as i as i would as ideally I would, right?
00:09:19
Speaker
Yeah, you had a poem that I really liked recently. Oh, thank you. Thank you. You guys should check out Anders. You should plug your sub stack. Yeah, ill ah we'll have to'll to link it. There you go. Yeah, he's got some good stuff. um But yeah, this, I mean, it seems like there's a few different ways this one can be interpreted and a few different reasons why this phenomenon might happen. But obviously, it's happened enough times that it became a proverb. So it's like repeated observed thing, um which is kind of interesting. I mean, ah like we said, a couple different reasons. But um yeah, I don't i don't know. what what What do you think is kind of the the more common scenario?
00:10:00
Speaker
hmm um i mean definitely like i i well like we always talk about there's lots of ways to see these and so when i think of when i think of like the original the original intent which may not apply to us today but like it's It was I think more about like the scarcity and and just and I noticed that the the article I found on this one talked that this was one of the few in that Heywood's book about that dealt with like craftsmen and tradesmen. um I think a lot of things are more agricultural or things like that. But this was like.
00:10:38
Speaker
um And so being like in that class at that time, like you were doing all right, but you weren't wealthy. You weren't yeah the aristocracy. And so you really, um, like you can get that, like you're seeing that, like your client, those are your clients all day long. You're seeing those people all day long and you, but you can't, um, and ah at the end of the day, you can't afford your own stuff. You can't afford what you make for them. Um, so that, that I guess, I think that's a pretty powerful, um,
00:11:10
Speaker
interpretation and, and I think it's still somewhat applicable today. Uh, people who, um, who, who make nice things or, uh, sell like the self nice thing. I don't know if you've in any of your sales jobs have been, uh, sold things that are maybe, I don't know if they're within your interest, but if they were out of your price range, like, I don't know, you know, like lots of salesmen probably do. I mean, going back to the cars, right? Like.
00:11:39
Speaker
the the latest hottest truck, not every salesman salesman's gonna be able to afford that at the dealership, right? ah so
00:11:48
Speaker
Yeah, and no, I think that's probably very common. um it's It's tough too, man. It's tough to try to sell something you don't wouldn't buy or don't believe in yourself.
Ethics in Selling and Wealth Accumulation
00:11:58
Speaker
Yeah. um That's why I could never do cars. I i just like, I mean, signing someone up for some big loan would give me, make me wanna, I would cringe so bad about it. Please don't do it. Don't do it. I'll say a cheaper one don't don't do this yourself um ah But yeah, ah so do you think this one's just kind of descriptive or or prescriptive at all? it Is it trying to teach us something or? ah I mean that's that's great because that that question that was like one of the first things that came to my mind when when I found this one and and sent it to you i'm like is this I
00:12:30
Speaker
Which of the two is it? I thought it was a descriptive one. um But there are always something, there's always something there you can tease out. But yeah, I just thought I thought it was more of a descriptive.
00:12:43
Speaker
Gosh, what was I gonna? like just this i guess you know ah go ahead and i just ah What you said about like um not like not wanting to sell something you wouldn't be interested in. I think for me that's that's something that I think about with ah trying to, if I wanted to start a business. right like or or business ideas I've had in the past, were or where I've seen other people succeed, like, I just don't, like, I don't think that's a good thing to be selling to people, right? Yeah. ah Or like, you know, like, it would make my family's situation better.
00:13:20
Speaker
But like, I don't know. And so, i you know, that's why I won't be a billionaire. But it's like, um you know, all the, oh, buy the drop shipping thing, for example, right? Like, I'm gonna buy a bunch of junk junk from China and sell it on Amazon and make a bunch of money. It looks easy. Like,
00:13:40
Speaker
people make a lot of money doing it. But I don't want to sell junk to people. Yeah, for sure. Or like even even things are maybe a little cooler, like 3D printed stuff.
00:13:52
Speaker
It's still, to me, just a pile of plastic. i don't Aesthetically, i don't I don't like it, so i don't I wouldn't want to do it and sell it to people. Some people like it, and don't and and they like the look of it. But but not me, so I don't know how I could do that. Because I've got a friend who does... He's got this whole setup. He does goes to fairs like every weekend selling these these things he prints. um But he likes them, and I just... I don't know if I could do that.
00:14:19
Speaker
Yeah, and in in it's not always like something that you could would consider immoral, you know, or like, Oh, I don't feel good about it. It's just like stupid crap that you don't like, like you said about this 3d printed stuff. And, and it what I learned about myself, and I think a lot of young men kind of have to figure out what it is they want to do and what they could do and couldn't do. And And one thing I figured out for myself is I have no interest or passion in just purely making money. Like if it was like, oh, you take this thing and you flip it, or you arbitrage it, or you do this and the other, and you can make money. Some people get really excited about just, I made 17% on this thing, and yay. And they just keep going up. I'm like, this is just, I feel like a feel like ah some kind of like ant. I'm just going back to the hive and bringing another thing over and over and over. yeah I didn't have any passion or interest for something like that.
00:15:08
Speaker
No, I don't get me wrong. I like making money. But i when it's tied to something that I feel like I'm contributing or solving some problem or something, if it was literally just like buying and selling something at a at a, you know, if I could buy something cheap and sell it high over and over, I just I realized for me, I had no interest in that. And so that's something you kind of have to of discover about yourself, I think. Yeah, it's it's ah It is interesting. It is an interesting thing to discover that like, there's more to your, to your well being, there's more to, there's even more to work. And there's more to making a living than just, just the paycheck at the end of it, right? The time you spend is your is your life. And if you're not spending that
00:16:01
Speaker
in a way that's fulfilling and meaningful, even if it's, even if you're getting a paycheck at the end of it, you kind of need to wrestle with that and and figure figure that out. Yeah. And, you know, I've been in business, I think long enough, I've seen some stuff where I think there's a lot of like wealthy people who are a little bit scummy, um yeah more than I thought originally. yeah you not When people would be like, oh, you can't get rich unless you're scamming people. I was like, man, that's poor person cope. you know I was like, that's just like you know people who are just broke and they've never been successful at anything in their life. and they're just But it's not it's not all cope. like its There's some real there some real stuff to that because there's a lot of ways
00:16:46
Speaker
there's a lot of ways to sell someone something they don't need or to to to sell some toter to leverage knowledge that you have against some some knowledge that somebody else doesn't have. I've seen it too many times. And so yeah, um you got to decide if that's something you want to do or or if ah if money means that that much to you or not because cause I'd rather make a little less.
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah, and and you know the part of yourself that you have to shut off to do that like is damaging to you spiritually, I believe. that you're you You shut it off long enough, it's gonna atrophy or just die altogether and you're gonna be less of a human being. Yeah.
00:17:28
Speaker
yeah i couldn't yeah I couldn't agree more. um You pay a price for it, whether it may not be monetary, but you'll you'll pay some youll pay some price for it. and yeah i mean i don't I don't really view it as that much different. when When you're leveraging something that you have to take advantage of somebody else,
00:17:48
Speaker
Some of those ways are legal and some of those ways are not. But if you have a guy that some 200 pound guy snatches a person from an 80 year old woman, he's leveraging his bigger physical strength. And when that's illegal, and we say that's bad. But if you have some guy who's got a IQ of 140,
00:18:03
Speaker
And he's really clever with numbers and some some you know Maybe someone who's below average intelligence comes in and he signs him up for some whopper of a of a deal man I don't I don't view that as very different you're leveraging something you have that they don't to take advantage of somebody. I think that's equally immoral That's a that's a great way of putting it. That's a great analogy Because yeah, I mean what you would you say?
00:18:28
Speaker
That taking advantage to me is is obviously wrong, but I like the way you phrased it there. um So how do we make a law, you know? Yes,
00:18:42
Speaker
i give it a lot of yeah
00:18:47
Speaker
every industry yes every lower IQ person needs a higher IQ friend to to keep ah keep an eye on them. um So I'm taking I'm taking applications for a high IQ friend to take take care of me. So don't do anything stupid.
00:19:06
Speaker
um But yeah, okay, so so this one's probably more descriptive, probably is some stuff we can we can learn from it. What if you find yourself in this situation where I mean, should you be embarrassed about that? If you get if you're the you're the car guy driving a junker or you're the the, I mean, in some cases, I think that would be very hard to do. Like we've had we've had Tanner Guzzi on the show. If he was a men's style coach and he dressed like a slob, like they just that just, that wouldn't work, you know? Yeah. um So in some cases, I think that's just not not feasible, but but I don't know. What what are your thoughts on that? I don't know, but even even when Tanner like dresses down,
00:19:47
Speaker
and like has gone through phases of that, like he's still doing it in a stylish way. He is, yeah. He can't he can't escape that, right? Because that's his but says frame. yeah but But I'd say, i mean part of this though, like in the original sense, really there was a hard barrier that like a craftsman to run up against, like with buying his supplies, like he needs those, it's like eating your seed corn, right? ah yeah Like you just you just can't you just can't keep it, like you'll starve. Today it's it's so different because you can just borrow, right? Like the the car salesman, like you've seen, like I think we've talked about those videos where it's all the people at the car dealership talking about how much their loans are because they're driving brand new cars. Yeah, that's insane. and um
00:20:35
Speaker
because there's no barrier now. Like it used to be, it would have been like those people just would not have been able to buy it because they had to buy it all at once. Right. But now everything's financed. So, so now it's, it's an act, I think it's more of an issue of willpower and, uh, and forward thinking. So the person who drives the beater, who who works at the fancy car dealership, um, you know, assuming his boss doesn't require him to drive a nice car for image sake.
00:21:03
Speaker
Um, like that guy probably is is going to be smarter and have better impulse control. Right. Um, because, because there's nothing stopping him from making that purchase apart from himself. Like someone's going to loan him that money, even if he's got bad credit. So I think, I think the things have have changed enough that this has a little bit different meaning.
00:21:29
Speaker
Yeah, that easy availability of credit and has really kind of, you know, introduced some perverse incentives and some weird things that I think, you know, have have led to some, had some deleterious effects on on various parts of society because,
Business Investment Challenges
00:21:47
Speaker
yeah, I mean,
00:21:49
Speaker
There has to be some friction when you when you're making a purchase that large and the people selling it have been are really good and very clever at removing that friction so that it's just too easy.
00:22:02
Speaker
um i ah But yeah, i mean your your point about eating the seed corn I think was interesting because like I had a i did was doing a little bit of, I've done various types of things and I've done some like real estate investing. And at one point I was gonna try to like,
00:22:19
Speaker
you know I was fine trying to find good deals on properties and I would buy these properties and then sell them, you know cheap properties. yeah right But you know and I did it wasn't like ultra wealthy. I had some savings and some money that I was using, but I'm not like a rich guy. So I'm like, all right, I would buy these properties. And when you added them all up, it seemed like a decent amount of money. But then the money you brought in kind of had to go back out.
00:22:44
Speaker
So it was like, it felt like I was totally broke, even though I had it on paper at, you know, fair bit of ah money in, in tied up in these, these stupid properties. So I could see how someone might be in that situation where all their money that they've saved and worked for is tied up in their business and the cobbler with and all these pieces of leather and everything he he can't really afford to cut into that for himself. Yeah.
00:23:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's how I feel, you know, just ah as a hobbyist, like I, my, my stack of leather, I'm like, oh man, I gotta, I need to use these as gifts or or so start selling more stuff before I buy it and use that to fund the next round. Cause I got, I, uh, you know, it's, it's getting pricey. So I gotta, gotta start feeding back into that system. Yeah.
00:23:32
Speaker
um Well, I was thinking before, i I don't know if I said it, but what what do you think you should do if you kind of find yourself in this in this situation? Is it okay to kind of... treat your Treat yourself a little bit or? Yeah, I think so. um I think there's you still need to be wise and frugal about it. But you know the cobbler who can make himself the pair of shoes probably cheaper than anyone else can, right? because ah Because if he wants to give himself that labor for free, there it is. It's just the material. So I think especially you know if if you if it's your own thing,
00:24:09
Speaker
if so You know, whether or not it's a physical thing, but it's something that you know a lot about ah because you're immersed in that. um Chances are you're going to give yourself the best deal. You're going to find the best deal. ah But you still, I mean, like if you want to get that nice car to bring over that nice ah classic car to fix up or something, you still kind of probably wise to save up for it first and and not finance it. Right. So yeah, but yeah, I mean, I definitely say treat yourself.
00:24:40
Speaker
With the projects I do for fun, like it I'll make something for for myself because it's a prototype or I don't it maybe wouldn't want to try and sell it to someone else because it's first my first attempt, right? So that's that's how I end up with a lot of the stuff I have is the first one I made. So there's there's plenty of plenty of that to go around too.
00:25:03
Speaker
Yeah, and I think it's ah it's helpful. I mean, it you need to make sure that the reason you're not you don't have your own product is because you don't believe in it. like if If that's the reason, that's a red flag, and you should probably get into a different industry. you know If the guy knocks on your door and he's selling security alarms, ask him if he's got that at his house. yeah I mean, see see if he can show you some pictures or something, because ah you know i mean like if if you're doing something that you want to know that the guy who's selling you the thing, believes in his own product. And and and if and if you don't, that can be I think that can send a ah bad signal to potential customers. So you definitely want to definitely want use your own, drink your own Kool-Aid, as it were.
Conclusion and Audience Engagement
00:25:47
Speaker
Yeah. definitely That's the first thing I think of when when I see the people selling various courses on things, you know investing and things like that. like
00:25:56
Speaker
Are you selling this investing course because that's where you're making money and you don't make any money, you know investing Yeah, but you're also thinking of the ah I wouldn't want to be a member of a club that would have me, you know like ah kind of avoid right right yeah you ah Yeah, you definitely want to believe in what you're doing and and the products you're making for sure Oh, dude, yeah, those courses, those get me. I talked to a guy one time who was like, dude, you can make money selling these courses on my courses on what he's like, anything, man, just think of something you how to do. yeah Make a course. Come on, man. Come on. that's one It's always ah on those like top 10, like passive income lists. Yeah. Yeah. sell ah Sell a course. It's like,
00:26:41
Speaker
um See what I'm writing to you like how to how to write Oh write the best-selling novel by someone you've never heard of Exactly. yeah had ta Yeah Yeah, courses are great for people who have ah mastered some field or gained expertise in something if you're just trying to figure it out or you're a regular guy I mean, it's like I there's a lot of people I think with courses out there that nobody's buying and they spent a lot of time making them so I
00:27:09
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is a good one. This is an interesting one. I didn't, I didn't know where this was one was going to take us as, as is often the case. Yeah. All right. Well, any, any last comments on this one before we wrap her up? Um, let's see. Um,
00:27:28
Speaker
No, no, I don't. Okay. No, no, no pressure on us. All right. Cool. Well, uh, yeah, I thought this was a really good one. Um, say that, tell me the exact phrasing again, the cobbler. Uh, yeah. just said The cobbler always wears the worst shoes.
00:27:50
Speaker
Cobbler always wears the worst shoes. once you Once you hear it, you'll probably start seeing it all over the place. so Yeah, it's an interesting one. ah Thank you for listening, everybody. We will be back at it next week. If you wouldn't mind, um maybe leaving us a review on Apple or Spotify. Some of you have, we appreciate it.
00:28:11
Speaker
and
00:28:14
Speaker
That'd be good. Helpful. All right. All right. We'll see you guys all next week. Bye. We'll see you. There are only four things certain since social progress that after this is accomplished and the brave new world begin When all men are paid for existing, and no man must pay for his sin, As surely as water will wet us, as surely as fire will burn, The gods of the copy were hideous, with terrors of water.