Transcript
Speaker: The Voice of Growth, mastering the mind and market. Timeless wisdom, proven strategies, and the deep work that creates lasting success. Like and subscribe to stay aligned with what truly drives results.
Speaker: Welcome to the Voice of Growth podcast, mastering the mind and market. My name is Manny Turan, and I'm your host. On today's podcast, I'm reflecting on some stoic lessons that I was able to put together from a trip down to Argentina recently.
Speaker: I was initially intending to record a few podcasts on location, but the more time we were down there, the more I realized there are so many lessons that I wanted to make sure to coalesce these lessons in a way that was manageable for our audience, you.
Speaker: So I decided to do that. There'll be lots of B-roll video that I took, and um man, there was so many lessons to share. The first of which is,
Speaker: Only focus on what you can control. And this is a lesson that comes in two forms. The part a was all about the flight down there.
Speaker: What should have been 15-hour trek, Tucson to Dallas, layover in Dallas, Dallas to Buenos Aires, should have been easy. I've done that flight many times before.
Speaker: Turned out to be 36, 40-hour legacy trip. forty hour legacy damn journey. Whereas we were coming down touchdown in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Speaker: There was weather. So we got diverted to San Antonio. We're there in San Antonio. There are no flights to go to Dallas. So that got postponed. And the eventually there was a flight from San Antonio to Dallas, but it would land after our flight from Dallas to Buenos Aires would leave.
Speaker: So we decided to rent a car and drive up there at in the middle of the night. It's like a four hour and a half four and a half hour drive. We get there, we get a few hours of sleep, I got a hotel. The next morning we rushed to the airport.
Speaker: Turns out that they rebooked and basically took that same flight. It was canceled completely, so they moved it to the next day. Long story short is that we ended up having to wait like eight hours at the airport.
Speaker: Then when we're in the plane finally on the runway about to take off, there's some mechanical issue. we had to turn around, go back, unboard, deboard, and wait for another plane.
Speaker: So it was a huge saga and it brought to crystal clarity the fact that we can't control things like this. We can only control how we react to them. Me being a practicing so practicing stoic for so long, I recognized these things and I took it at for what it was.
Speaker: I had a beer, I hung out, I did some reading, I people watched, I laughed with my family, whatever. But other people were just so irate and they just couldn't handle it. And I understand, i mean, this is something that is frustrating.
Speaker: But I've done a lot of work over the years to like separate myself from that. And so we took it at stride. We eventually got on board. We eventually got to Buenos Aires and we missed basically a whole day that we expected to be there.
Speaker: But what else could we have done? Matter of fact, I'm glad that we they recognized this mechanical issue and took care of it rather than be up in the sky and have things play out such that maybe I wouldn't be here today sharing these stories with you.
Speaker: So taking it at stride. The other other piece of this, and actually I'm gonna share this stoic lesson first, this from Epictetus. He says, the chief task in life is simply this.
Speaker: identify and separate matters so that I can clearly to myself say which are externals and which are under my control. Essentially, things we can control, things we cannot.
Speaker: The other piece of this first lesson is about the economic madness that Argentina has dealt with over the last 80 years. political unrest, economic unrest, market shifts, ah regimes coming in, dictators.
Speaker: You know, you've got military coups and you even got the current president, Millet, with his austerity measures cutting lots of government bureaucracy to the detriment of most of the everyday Argentinians.
Speaker: I have a tendency, part of my personality, to talk to lots of people. So I took it upon myself to have conversations with every taxi driver, every Uber driver, people who were hanging out at the bars or whatever, to understand kind of their daily life.
Speaker: And they all had a sense of, well, that's the government. Yeah, it sucks, but I'm living anyway. And that's the way that we should consider it.
Speaker: They have had so much uncertainty and the with runaway inflation, military coups, all the madness that they just live their lives.
Speaker: They start families. They buy a car. they They live their lives. And so I see a lot of people, especially entrepreneurs, especially A-type people, that ah have so much frustration because they cannot control the market. They cannot control the customer.
Speaker: They cannot control so many things that they start to to burn a hole in their stomach thinking about what they can't control. Hey, listen, things are gonna happen at the government level. You just live on. You make your decisions based on what you can control.
Speaker: You can't control the government. You can't control the market. But you can't control what you think about it. You can't control, at to at least to some degree, your employees, what you're going to work on. What's the market doing?
Speaker: i don't know. But here's how we're going to react to that so we are able to catch that wave and ride it versus digging in our heels and saying, we're going do anything and we're going to let these markets pass us by.
Speaker: Huge lessons. Next lesson, calm in the chaos. There are really two lessons here that need to be shared.
Speaker: The first of which is sort of the reason why I decided to do this podcast post trip rather than doing it on site. And that is driving.
Speaker: Driving in Argentina, especially in Buenos Aires, and even to some degree in Bariloche, where we were for part of the time, is insane. Insane. The lanes are a mere suggestion.
Speaker: Stop signs are just there for show. You're cruising down the middle of Buenos Aires and the way it goes is whoever gets to an intersection fastest with ah with your sort of other cars with you is who has the control of that intersection.
Speaker: Everybody else waits until there's a small break and then they rush in. Most Americans would be like, what the hell's going on? And so I've been there many times, so I've seen it, I've you know i've lived it.
Speaker: And when I was in Badia Loche, rented a car and I was part of it. And you're driving, the lanes are a suggestion, there's bus buses going crazy, there's motorcycles diving in between cars.
Speaker: You get within six inches of cars and you don't eye. And I think about in America, that would be all cause for road rage. We'd have these massive issues if you're driving and some car comes within six sections of you.
Speaker: Over there, it's the way things are. And so it got me thinking about, you know, this is the way that everyday life is. there's There's a certain calm under the chaos.
Speaker: And that calm is the way that things are. The second part of this lesson is just in general how Argentinians live in the chaos.
Speaker: The city of Buenos Aires is massive. It's like 16 million people around the metro area. The entire country is about 46 million. And so you have all these people living in a tight space. You have high rises everywhere. You have apartments everywhere.
Speaker: And there's this chaos seemingly about living there. But then at every street corner, there's a cafe and there's people having their cafe con leche and their mate, which I'll come to in a second, and and just hanging out. and they have their conversations. They had they really are able to enjoy their time, and in doing so, they're able to live their life, and then they get back into the chaos.
Speaker: um You go to the street, and there are people everywhere, walking different directions, you get bumped into from time to time, and you just keep on going. You don't make a big deal of it. Whereas other cultures,
Speaker: We have this this really heavy ego-driven way about us that we want to really say, you know what? This is my space and I want things orderly in this way and da-da-da. And it's very ego-driven. Whereas instead, if you have a mentality of, you know what? I'm part of the chaos.
Speaker: I'm part of it. I'm going to get into it, ride through it. And eventually I'm going to go to my safe space, my calm space and and be okay with that. the The other thing about the whole chaos is that people just live their lives.
Speaker: um This kind of bleeds into the other, my other lesson, third lesson, is community creates resilience. There's a sort of sense of pride about things being Argentinian.
Speaker: Everything from being made in Argentina to the Malvinas, which are a set of islands that ah were this the center of a war or but should call it a conflict between the UK and Argentina back in the early 80s.
Speaker: These islands are way down in South America, just off the coast of ah the bottom fifth of Argentina. Look at a map. And there was a war because the Argentinians believe this is their islands and the British believe it's theirs. So there was a war, it was a contested or skirmish, but it was a big skirmish. Over 600 Argentinians died.
Speaker: And over 250 British soldiers died. So as you walk around the cities, you see a lot of these these national pride-filled signs talking about the Los Malvinas.
Speaker: Los Malvinas son Argentinos. the the Malvinas or the Falklands belong to Argentina. And there's this central identity about these islands that pervade all culture in Argentina.
Speaker: We were in Buenos Aires and there's monuments to this. We were in Barrioche and there's literally a museum and monuments to this. We were out in the middle of Patagonia on the middle of the sticks and there's signs talking about the Malvinas and saying that the Malvinas are this far away from this area, you know, 2000 kilometers, whatever it is.
Speaker: And so it just, this national identity around Malvinas creates a certain amount of pride. And the pride also comes in the form of made in Argentina. A lot of things down there are made in Argentina, and they're putting priority over local manufacturing versus importing everything.
Speaker: I am surrounded in my studio here, my RV studio, by things made in China. These lights, this recorder, my glasses, so many things here are made in China.
Speaker: The only thing that's not made in China is the actual RV I'm sitting in, in our my RV studio. In Argentina, you look at things and they're made in Argentina. From clothes hangers to furniture to everyday items, yeah, they do import a lot of stuff as well. I'm not saying that's not part of it, but they prioritize locally made things.
Speaker: The lesson from a stove perspective is not really that strong, But from a business perspective, there is some strong value in making sure you're not too dependent on your supply chain.
Speaker: Something that most recently a lot of us have felt because of the tariff situation, because of the global demographic situation, causing strife and issues within our supply chains.
Speaker: The company that I run, Infrared Labs, we do send things out to get worked on at different places, but we also have the ability to do almost everything in-house if needed.
Speaker: That's our choice to outsource, but we do have the fallback to do most of it in-house. I know lots of companies that have outsourced almost everything about what they do.
Speaker: I'm not saying it's good or bad, I'm just saying that if market shifts, if demographics shift, if supply chains shift, it may put you in a bad spot. It's just something you need to be focused on, understanding if that's going to create chaos if things go in a different direction.
Speaker: We all know that globalism is changing significantly. From 10, 20 years ago to now, there is a shift in globalism.
Speaker: A lot of things are being brought in-house for better or for worse. I'm not going to create any judgment calls there. I'm just saying that economies are really focused on inward, less on outward.
Speaker: I can go on and on about why it's happening, but It is what it is and just be ready for it. So the last thing on national um you know a community creates resilience is the World Cup.
Speaker: The World Cup for Argentina is so pervasive in everyday life. They won 98, 86, and ah again America.
Speaker: in two thousand twenty two this year the world cup is being held in north america the US, Canada, and Mexico. And everywhere you look, there are massive signs and banners and buildings with huge, huge portraits on the side of them, um on the news, everywhere you see the national team.
Speaker: You've all heard of Messi. There's pictures of Messi everywhere. There was even a bag of laundry detergent in one of the Airbnbs where we stayed that had the national team on it.
Speaker: So for Argentina, the World Cup is pretty close to life. It's a big deal. And why it is is, was actually shared by one of my family members as sort of why and it made sense to me.
Speaker: When it comes to the world stage, there are certain sort of a players, b players, and C players, and so forth. The big eight players are the United States and you know the whole thing happening with China, and you have all these sort of larger economies. And then you have other smaller economies that maybe bleed into the B and C domain.
Speaker: I don't know what Argentina is, but it's it's not an A domain player in the world stage. So maybe it's maybe it's a C player, maybe it's a B player, maybe a D player, who knows. But when it comes to the World Cup, they are the A player.
Speaker: And the United States is probably an E player, or f player, who knows? So this has becomes a national obsession and it's a form of national pride. And you can see it, you can feel it.
Speaker: And there's even a sense of you being proud of it for them. I'm not a huge soccer guy or football guy per se, but I can feel the national pride and I lean into it.
Speaker: My children are half Argentinian. And during the last World Cup, I was there when we saw the final game where they won and became thatt our world champions again for the third time.
Speaker: And it was such a poignant moment that i ah they became my team too. I'm a hardcore U.S. guy and all this, but when it comes to soccer, football, I've got a ah heart a soft place in my heart for the Argentinian team.
Speaker: You can see that in the nationalism. The lesson here for business is really about understanding the the dynamic of the customer. If your customer it feels the way about your product the way the Argentinians feel about the World Cup, you're going to make he be making money hand over fist.
Speaker: And so the idea is to find opportunities to have a product or service up that has that kind of allegiance And you'll be wildly successful if you do.
Speaker: Obviously, the the idea of the World Cup is very much um a global situation, but nowhere like it is in Argentina. And it was really cool to see that.
Speaker: Number four, slow down to slee to see clearly. Okay, what does that mean?
Speaker: What do I have here? This is yera mate in this particular gourd and with a metal straw. This is a national pastime.
Speaker: This is everywhere. This is a kind of tea. might have heard of yerba mate. And it is everywhere. In the parks, there's people hanging out with their mate, pouring hot water into it, and then drinking it.
Speaker: It is everywhere. We visited my um ex-wife high school and I looked into one of the rooms and there was high school kids drinking their mate.
Speaker: There were, during one of the breaks, they came out and there was a hot water um source and they were filling up their thermoses so that they could be enjoying their mate while in their classrooms.
Speaker: Everywhere. You see people on bikes with the thermos tucked into their side, holding their mate, all their hand on the handlebars, cruising around, sipping while they're driving. You see taxi drivers. You see it everywhere.
Speaker: And the reason that I want to talk about this is because this creates a sense of calm. Now, physically, the material, the yerba mate, is a slight stimulant.
Speaker: It has a kind of caffeine. And so in that sense, it's like coffee culture, but this is extreme. And what I mean by saying that it that it slowed down to see clearly is that people drink this as a central community statement.
Speaker: They're sitting around with other people enjoying their mate. They're talking, they're conversing. Yeah, they might be on the front from time to time, but they're centrally, this is part of the culture.
Speaker: You see people at coffee shops drinking their coffee, like cafe con leche, sitting down, I mentioned earlier, before they go out and and into the chaos. There is so much to be said about slowing down.
Speaker: Man, for me, going down Argentina for a couple of weeks was a stark slowdown from the way I typically live my life.
Speaker: And by the way, I don't live my life that crazy. I'm not as I used to when I had my former company. And before I recognized the power of slowing down, man, I was up at six and I was working all the way till nine at night and 10, it was crazy. And I was i was really wearing myself down.
Speaker: Now that I understand that when you actually slow down, you gain so much power, Napoleon would tell, by the way, Napoleon was one of the most brilliant strategists ever known in war.
Speaker: No one's going to contest that. There's a handful of others that might be in that upper echelon, but he was there. He would tell his generals, slow down. I'm in a hurry.
Speaker: The idea of haste makes waste. has Haste does make waste. If you are in a frenzy trying to get things done, you're going to make mistakes. Your quality is going to suffer.
Speaker: But you take time to slow down. it will do nothing but help you in what you're doing to move faster overall. Now, the mate for me was that lesson to slow down.
Speaker: And I have consumed this for a long time, but the gourd I had but most recently ah began to leak. And the other gourd I had was sort of would tip over. So I didn't have a way to drink it, pick one up.
Speaker: And so I'm really happy that i did that because I too enjoy the bitter flavor of it. And I enjoyed the the idea of this ritual and it helps me to slow down.
Speaker: The other part of of slowing down to see clearly had to do with our trip down to Bariloche. Bariloche is way down in Patagonia. Patagonia is a region, much like we refer to as the Rockies.
Speaker: It's a region down in Argentina that is strikingly beautiful. We were in Bariloche, which is um heavily influenced by a lot of German and Eastern Europe culture and architecture that is so beautiful and just blows your mind.
Speaker: There was a bunch of lakes up there called, this is actually a drive, the Seven Lake Tour. ah The Nauel Wapbi is this massive lake down there, right adjacent to Bariloche.
Speaker: and stunningly beautiful, breathtakingly beautiful, pulling up to these lakes, the one called Espejo Lake, which is Mirror Lake, and just my jaw dropped at, is this even real?
Speaker: I was blown away by the still water, backdrop against the sky, looks like a mirror. And I always recharge in nature, but this was like a supercharge recharge in nature.
Speaker: i um I just wanted to share that, you know, the stillness series I did a while ago last year, my podcast, might be a good time to revisit that.
Speaker: Even for me, I'm gonna revisit that. And I really gained a lot of perspective of life. We hustle, we we bustle,
Speaker: But when you go to nature and you just sit in it and you absorb it and let it absorb you, more importantly, then it fills your soul again and it recharges it. It's like ah like a ah fresh charge on your on your phone.
Speaker: It gives you a sense of peace. Man, i had I got so much peace from my time in Bariloche. And I really thought that this is something I wanna share with the audience.
Speaker: you know um ah was just blown away. And so um take the time to go out in nature if you can. And even when I was in the city, in the big city of Buenos Aires, there were parks, there was the riverside, the actually it's the seaside, but it's kind of like a big bay there.
Speaker: There was moments when you could find a sense of peace as well. Which brings me to my last lesson, which is life is happening for us.
Speaker: And the idea is that we have a tendency to believe that something will happen someday. um yeah, someday some did this or someday that.
Speaker: But when I was down there, i visited something called the Recoleta, which is a neighborhood. And there's a cemetery called the Recoleta Cemetery that is eye-opening.
Speaker: Every time I go down there, I visit this cemetery. Why? Because it is such a testament to honoring life through death.
Speaker: that the lesson could be made more clear. Some of these mausoleons are millions of dollars by families that spend over the generations.
Speaker: They are go down 40, 50 feet. And if you look down in some of them, you can see the caskets. And behind the caskets or inside the caskets are obviously bones.
Speaker: but there are dozens of caskets buried underneath these mausoleums. Some of them are decrepit, falling apart. There's trees growing out of them.
Speaker: And so the whole counterpoint is just eye-opening. And there is a sense of of peace walking through the halls, if you will, of this cemetery.
Speaker: And there's famous people buried there. There's generals. Eva Perón is buried there. And people visit her grave quite often.
Speaker: Sort of a national hero of Argentina, who is the wife of one of the longest serving dictators there. um She was a ah person of the people.
Speaker: And we had the pleasure of going to her museum, and learning all about her life. And even to this day, people are enamored with the idea of Evita Peron. And so her her her body's there.
Speaker: And the Recoleta is, you know, they they so they've spent millions on these crypts with some of the most awe-inspiring sculptures that I've seen in this hemisphere.
Speaker: It is something of magic, but yet it is a celebration of death. we, there was during our time there, there was actually a body being brought in and putting in and being laid to rest.
Speaker: And as you're walking down these, these corridors, and among all the the decrepit caskets you see behind the wrought iron, there was some that had fresh caskets.
Speaker: And so it just makes you think, man, I'm going to die. One day, my bones are going to be somewhere, or maybe I'll get cremated and my ashes will be somewhere, and eventually I'll be consumed into the earth.
Speaker: Fast forward enough time, everybody listening this podcast will be dead and forgotten forever. And so...
Speaker: The whole idea of Memento Mori is not to think of this as a sad thing and as an ominous thing where like, oh, life isn't worth it because I'm going to die.
Speaker: If you flip the idea, life is worth it because I'm going to die. I'm enjoying these things in life. I love doing this podcast. I love drinking mate.
Speaker: I love eating Argentinian steak. This is a part of their their culture as well. I love grilling and being of Mexican heritage, you know, carnesadas.
Speaker: The Argentinians have their own form called ah a parria. it's It's basically a grill. And they this is a sense of of national pride as well.
Speaker: So going down there and having some of their their their beef, which is among the best in the world, was something else that really brings me a lot of joy because I love eating.
Speaker: I also love being healthy. And a lot of people were running and exercising. And so that was nice to see. So to sort of bring this to an end, um ah bit of rambling today, but nonetheless, I wanted to share these all these little stoic lessons that remember you will die, remember,
Speaker: Remember that you have one life to live. Stop postponing what you want to do for life. um And all this against the backdrop of only focus on what you can control.
Speaker: You know, it shouldn't be seen as a rigid straight line where you're born and then you're racing to die. Life is beautiful. Life should be celebrated.
Speaker: Relationships should be cultivated. And even it's ah if it's a simple conversation with somebody at the coffee shop or your Uber driver, take the time to to get to know them. i I guarantee that it will fill you up with a sense of joy and happiness and peace as well as them.
Speaker: And these are all elements that I use every day to try to make myself a better leader, a better communicator, a better empath. Because in the end, I'm not only a human being, but I'm also a business leader.
Speaker: And if I understand people, it will help me more in business, in relationships with my with my employees, relationships with my clients, and with my vendors, and with my community.
Speaker: And isn't that what it's all about? Being able to create your own community. And if you're able to do so with a sense of joy and calm and cultivate that, that's it's all about.
Speaker: Thanks for your time. Cheers.
