There comes a time when people decide that what they are doing professionally doesn’t suit them any more. They change their careers. A career change is not just finding a new job in a different company, it means a total upheaval, often with far-reaching consequences. Igor, from Curitiba in Brazil, has done this process three times, and he is “only” 31 years old. What is his story? In the first episode, he tells us of his first career steps before deciding to do something else. He faces scepticism at home, but receives lots of support in California. Listen to this fascinating insight into how people can influence a path without knowing it. This conversation was recorded on February 20, 2023.
Transcript
Frank Good afternoon, Igor. We are back again, talking about careers and jobs, job interviews and everything that goes with it. And I just want to welcome you to another series of discussions this time, much more personal, much more emotional as well; on the subject of career changes, changing one’s career. It is a positive and a negative experience. It’s a long journey into perhaps an unknown path. And I think you just want to tell your story about your career change. So, Igor, welcome to the show.
Igor Thank you, Frank. I’m excited to talk about that again, and I’m excited to share what I learned and maybe listen about what you learned, because I know you have this kind of background as well.
Frank Yes, albeit mine was, mine was 30 plus years ago, but I don’t think the emotions change that much.
Igor Yes, I don’t think so.
Frank So I’ve got a few questions here. We’re sort of, we’re going to move between the actual factual side of the career change and we’re going to move through the emotional side and there’s a certain structure we’re going to just, we go back to when this whole story started, remembering the past, and then we’re going to sort of try and understand why career changes happen, why people suddenly want to move from one stable career to something totally different, and then how to actually go about doing this.
How do you, how do you prepare yourself for this, for this change, for this big step? And then we sort of analyse the challenges, the fears, the financial sides of it all. And then we go into the lessons learned and we see, you know, was it worth the journey? Was it worth the experience? And finally, we will finish this discussion with the question of, there are other people who would like to maybe change their careers and the question is, what advice can you give them, some practical advice that you can give them to do this based on your experience and my experience as well.
So that’s the journey that we, that we’re looking at. So, going back, actually, I don’t really know how long ago this was, when did the story of yours actually start?
Igor I think it started on December of last year.
Frank 2022, yeah.
Igor Yeah, I’m pretty sure it ended on, I think it’s December. I think we, no, January. I think the last talk we had about this subject was January. Yeah, but it is recent. Seems like a lot of time have passed, but it’s quite recent.
Frank It just shows how intense this process is and what happens afterwards as well.
Igor So it’s intense here, intense here for Igor.
Frank It certainly is. And I know there are other stories in the pipeline. We could actually write a book about this.
Igor So that’s not a bad idea. Actually, I’m very excited to write about that because I have, like during the process, actually before during the process of changing my career, this time I had a company and I would see many people coming from different areas and trying to work with me, working with me. And I always had some thoughts about this subject, but never had any reason to share my thoughts. So I’m excited to talk about that, organize my feelings, my thinking, and then write maybe some guide or maybe some, not a guide, but maybe some thoughts on how people can do that and why people should sometimes and when people shouldn’t, because I think there are times that people shouldn’t.
Frank Well, we can certainly explore that and definitely, I think we live in an age now where so many things are possible. If you want to change something significant in your life, then do it.
I mean, I know of a person, she lives in Germany and at the age of 30, she had a very good, well-paying job as an engineer. And one day I spoke to her, and I asked her, Julia, what’s new? And she said, well, I’m going to start studying psychology. And at the age of 31, she threw everything into the ring, gave up her job, gave up her security and started to study psychology. It also cost her long-term relationship and she had to find a new apartment at the age of 31 with no job security. She had to find a new apartment in a difficult housing market, but she is thriving. She loves it and she does not regret a single move in all of this. So, there are positives, there are negatives. And let’s go in, into your story and let’s just explore this a little bit because I think what is puzzling in your particular situation is that yes, you had your own company. It was successful. Why on earth would you be thinking about a career change if everything is working so well, or maybe it wasn’t? Were you struggling with career changes or where did this whole idea really come from?
Igor Well, that wasn’t the first time I changed the career in my life. And the interesting thing is all the times I changed careers had a different reason. And it was very good to understand that there are different reasons for people who want to change their careers because sometimes people just relate with like, oh, people are sad with their doing, people are maybe overworking, people are lost. Here in Brazil, we have this kind of expression, like when someone is lost in life, like they don’t know exactly what to do, they don’t know themselves and things like that. But in my case, the first time I was studying, it’s a kind of nurse assistant, here in Brazil we call nurse technician, but I’m not sure if it’s popular, this kind of role in other parts of the world. And I was studying that. I finished my degree, which was 18 months degree. I was 18 years old at the time. I was taking care of two gentlemen, one with 95 years old and other with 92, I think. And I was quite okay with that. The first time in my life, I was earning my own cash and I was happy, working hard but happy.
But then my dad suggested me to do a test on a school where I live, in the city I lived, which was a very renowned school on dairy technology. So, it was the only one in Latin America, it’s a very popular and very difficult one to enter. And at the time I had no idea what was dairy technology, but I did that because everyone told me that I would earn more money. And I did that, it was kind of a difficult decision, and the motivation was purely money because I was earning very low income as a nurse technician. And I thought, oh, okay, I’ll try another thing because this won’t give me money. I found a job but won’t give me enough money to do things I like. And I did this, it was perfect.
Everything worked fine. I went to live in the United States and Canada. And the second time when I was in Canada, the money wasn’t a motivation because I would earn less money if I changed my career. But the motivation was flexibility because I was working a dairy farm in a very small town called Ponoka in Alberta. I was earning money, I was doing things I liked, like running, but I had no flexibility to travel. I wasn’t interacting with people. So, this was my motivation. And the third time, it’s the most interesting one because that was the first time that I started to think, and I think this is a matter of getting old, that I started to think that if what I was doing was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. So I was with a company, a very successful company. I was working a lot, like really a lot. It was a very overwhelming time of my life. But the reason I started to think about changing careers was that I couldn’t see myself doing that for the rest of my life because it wasn’t something I felt I wanted to do. But in terms of purpose, you know, I always, I used to wake up and think, oh, I don’t believe I have to deal with those people, do those things that I don’t see any value. And that was the motivation.
So, I changed my career three times, and each time had a different motivation, which I think is very interesting for me. Because I would never change career when I was 18 years old, thinking if that would be what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, because at the time it didn’t make sense, but now it makes. That’s a perspective I would like to share, which we have different reasons to change careers.
Frank I think there’s something really important in what you’re saying because it was your – who encouraged you or who suggested to you that you might want to go into nursing?
Igor My stepfather, he was a nurse. He had a 35-year career in nursing. And at the time, as most teenagers, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do. So? he incentivized. And I did that without much thinking.
Frank And I think this is an important point in that parents, step-parents, family members think they know what children want, they’ve raised them, they’ve observed them. The kids, and especially in today’s day and age, where the choices are so much greater than they were 40 years ago when I was doing all of this, they don’t know any better. They’re confused. They just say, okay, so mom, dad, whoever in the family says I should do this and I’m going to do this.
And the same thing happened with me in that my parents said, why don’t you go into the hotel industry? You like traveling, you speak the languages, just do that. And I followed their advice.
I actually wanted to do something totally different. But I followed their advice, and I stuck it out for 13 years and then something happened. I was lured by a better job and much more money. That fell by the wayside rather dramatically. And then my then wife said, look, I was offered a job teaching languages and I thought, yeah, we had separated by then. And I thought, yeah, I can speak two languages fluently. I do have a training certificate, so let’s do that. And I went to a training program organized by Berlitz, an international language school. And it was like an epiphany. It was like, yeah, this is what I want to do. And I think we sometimes are at an age where we don’t really know what we want to do. We can’t articulate it. And then if I sort of look at your stepping-stones, yeah, you started off as a nurse, and then you went into the dairy technology and there you went traveling and you lived in Canada. You probably had a great time, a bit colder than in Brazil, but probably had a great time. And then even then you were not a hundred percent happy. And so, I think this is one of the more emotional sides. Do we today want to be more fulfilled and have a more meaningful and inspiring career or job than just doing something because it earns money, it pays the bills, and it puts food on the table? Are we as young people expecting more of our careers?
Igor Yes, I think yes, but with observation that young people that have access and have the opportunity to choose, because sometimes it’s easy to get caught in this kind of bubble where we think everyone has the same options. And I recognize I am very, how can I say that? I’m very lucky. Lucky is not the right word, but I don’t think I’m…
Frank Privileged.
Igor Yes, perfect.
Yes. And a lot of people of my network are. But yes, I think today the world is changing very fast and what I understand about that today is that we have a lot of things and it’s very easy to get access to things. So I don’t know, maybe when my dad had my age, he had to work a lot to have access to the Internet, for example. Today it’s very easy. Like today we can have laptops, smartphones, everything is cheap. Even people who are poor, they can have access to a lot of things. So we don’t have this drive anymore of having things because most of the things are very accessible. You know, that’s one reason, I think. And the other one is like, at least from my experience and a few friends of mine, once we don’t have kids, we don’t have family. When my dad had my age, he had two kids already. I have none. And maybe you have one like in the next five years or 10 years, I don’t know. So, we don’t have the drive to have things and we don’t have the drive to put food on the table because we don’t have any dependents. So, we kind of, we don’t have abstraction, you know, in the sense that we have to bring food to the table and don’t think very much. We have to provide and that’s it. So, in my case, when I had my company, it was exactly that. It’s the perfect case because I had money, I had flexibility, I had authority, I had status, but I didn’t have any other drive, you know. So I had to look to the purpose and things that made sense in terms of value for me. Maslow was very correct when he wrote about the Maslow hierarchy, when we don’t have anything else to worry about, we start to worry about our internal values, you know.
Frank Getting back to your dairy technology job, so you must have been in your early to mid-twenties when you went out to Canada.
Igor Yes, I went to the United States with 21 years old, which was my first job as a dairy technician.
Frank What was that like? Where did you go? What did you do? Just explain the adventures that you had. You sort of, you’re leaving the home nest and you’re flying out. It’s almost like in spring, the birds have hatched from their eggs and they’re taking their first of lights.
Igor It was amazing, and I had only good memories from that time. Well, because first, I was the first person, literally the first person in my family and I have a huge family to go abroad, not leave abroad, just go abroad, I was the first one. It was a time in Brazil where people were starting to get money to travel abroad. So? my family, I was the only one. So, it was very exciting for me because it was literally like, I can relate, although I don’t know how it was, but like sailors getting in a boat and going to the higher zone without knowing what to do and especially without support to go back because it was my case. My family didn’t have money, no one spoke English. I was by myself, and it was this feeling of exploring, you know, it was very exciting. I was extremely happy. When I got in the United States, I was very lucky to meet a very nice host family, which I have contact until today and actually in April, I went to visit them in the United States again, 10 years later, it was very emotional. And it was very adventurous for two reasons.
First, I had a huge bucket list of things I wanted to do. So, in one year working in the United States, I had the bucket list and I had the support from my host mom, her name is Becky. So, it matched perfectly because I wanted to go snowboarding, I went to snowboarding, I wanted to go skydiving, I went skydiving. I wanted to run a marathon. I ran a marathon.
Like everything I wanted to do, I was able to do because I had money and I had someone supporting me, like in terms of logistics, you know, she used to drive everywhere on my days off. And this was one of the reasons and the second one is that I didn’t bring with me any smartphone or laptop, like none. So, the only time I talked to someone from my previous life was on the phone, sometimes on Sunday with my dad, like for five minutes.
Frank You would use Becky’s home phone, or would you go to a public phone somewhere and throw in a couple of coins and say, hi, dad, this is me. I’ve got about what, 50 cents worth of speaking time. And then that was it, you know.
Igor I used the Becky’s phone. So, I didn’t have a smartphone, anything, it was perfect. It was maybe the best decision I made in my life because for one year I was literally in another planet, you know, like I got to a point that when I thought about my life in Brazil, it was almost like a previous life. I couldn’t relate to the Igor which was in Brazil before going to the United States. And it was perfect. So, I was lucky to have a good boss, a good host mom. I even dated my host mom’s daughter for a few months, which was very crazy as well. It’s one of the things that we never imagined were going to happen, like date an American, but it happened.
And the thing about that, that it’s important to point out that I was there for one year and as I said, it was like a different life, literally a different life. And I was dealing with cows, with tractors, things that I didn’t have in Brazil. And I went there in the same farm in April of this year, and it was so different, like really so different because when I was there at the first time in 2012, I think, Igor was this young guy with nothing to lose, everything to win, very adventurous, nothing to worry about, learning English. My English was terrible, very, very bad. I couldn’t talk that much. And when I went there on April of last year, I was the Igor with a company with 21 employees in Brazil. So I was like the Igor from Brazil, but in the stage of the, like, it was like if I watched a movie in 2012 and last year I went to the stage of this movie, you know, it was a very weird feeling and I am very happy and grateful to have lived in this feeling because it’s crazy to see the farm, the cows, my boss, and I am like this Igor here from Brazil.
Frank So it’s almost like saying you escaped, but reality caught up with you almost 10 years later.
Igor Yes, yes. That’s a good way to put it.
Frank And you couldn’t run any further or didn’t want to run any further. There are two things here. First of all, how did you break the news to your family that Christopher Columbus had decided to move to the United States and rediscover the United States, only it’s not 1492. It was 2012. How did you, how did your family take the news?
Igor It was very funny because I would talk about that because it was a long process, like one year process to start to study the possibilities, getting the visa, the passport. It’s one year process. I started to talk about that, especially with my dad and my mom, but mostly with my dad and my dad would say, cool, okay, cool. And would choose subject because it was something very out of any possibility, like really out of possibility because no one of my family went to United States or went abroad. No one had a passport. I didn’t speak English. No one spoke English. So, it was very like, okay, Igor, I got it. Let’s keep doing what we are doing. No one would believe me. And on each stage of the process, I would tell my dad and he wouldn’t believe. He would say, okay, it’s going to stop sometime. It was, this was his thoughts about that. And at the one of the last parts of the process, which was like one month before going to the United States, I had to pay the last fee of the exchange program. I was signing up, which was a very significant sum. I don’t remember exactly, but something like $5,000, very significant for me at least. And then, okay, now I need the money. So, I started to ask, to borrow, ask to borrow cash for everyone I knew. So, uncles, my teacher, director of the school I studied, yes, basically three uncles, one teacher and one director of the school I studied lent me some money. And in the last day I had to buy the flight tickets and I was desperate because I didn’t have money. And I called one of my uncles, he’s more, he’s not rich, but he has more financial conditions. And he went, he said, Igor, are you crazy? Come with me. We’re going to buy this now. So, he met me at my house, and we went to buy the flight ticket. And then I went home, and my dad was drinking coffee and I said, okay, now I have the visa, the passport, and the flight ticket. No, that’s it, I don’t need anything else. And then he kind of, he got quiet, a little bit and the next day he said congratulations, but I could feel he was like shocked with the fact that I was really going. And my grandma, which was my mother, my dad’s mom, she was very scared of everything. And then she started to ask to my dad, oh, is it real, he’s going, are you letting him go and things like that. So, the feeling of me going to the United States in 2012 was very, everyone shocked. No one believed, you know, everyone was, oh wait, he’s really going. But it was cool. And in the last day of my, my last day in Brazil, so I would travel in the next morning. My grandma did a party for me, which she brought family members and it was very emotional because people gave me gifts to go to United States and things like that. It was a good moment, but it was funny.
Frank I can imagine, there’s of course, you probably didn’t know it at the time, but sort of in hindsight you’re going around people that you know and saying, look, I want to go to the United States, it’s going to cost me $5,000. I need some cash. This is probably the foundation of what turned out to be your marketing career later on because I mean, you’re asking people for something and there’s no return for them. There’s no real return on investment for them because you’re sailing off into the unknown. So, you’ve got to convince people that investing in you is a good cause and you’re going to be sitting somewhere stuck out in the Midwest of the US looking after cows, which is not the most interesting investment prospect, but you probably learned your first marketing lessons there.
I think the most important takeaway out of that is you might have been afraid of the step or certainly have had mixed feelings, but talking to people and sharing these emotions with people is what carries you through this entire process of being, you know, you hear this often, follow your dreams, follow your passion, but you can’t do that by yourself. And you were lucky that you had people who helped you in Brazil at home, but you were even luckier that you met Becky and that she and her family somehow managed to fulfil everything that you wanted to do without actually knowing what was going to happen. So, who were these people who, Becky and her husband and apparently a very pretty young girl that you dated for a while?
Igor Yes, they are very interesting people because they are farmers. They are farmers from California, but they struggle a lot with financial matters because and I emphasize this because I had this feeling before going to the United States that all Americans were rich, and they didn’t face problems that we faced in Brazil. Everything was fine. The Americans had a perfect life. I had this feeling and I know that today a lot of people have this feeling as well.
And Becky’s family, it’s very inspirational because they are a family that struggle every day with mundane things. So, they have a farm, but it’s a very small farm in California, which is expensive. So, they are almost always out of money and like trying to do magic to survive financially. They have family members with problems like disease, drug addiction. So, something that I would describe their family is like it’s a very, very persistent and hard-working family. There are five members of the family, and they are very, each one is very unique.
So, the first one is Mr. Joe. Mr. Joe, now he’s 94 years old and he still works in the farm. He feed the calves, right? So, it’s an easy work, but he makes sure he is working. At the time I was there, he was 82 years old, no, 81 years old. Yeah, something like that. And he worked in the farm, of course, and I lived with him as an exchange worker. I lived in his house, and it was very interesting because suddenly I was living with 81 years old, who loved to cook and cooked a lot of amazing things. Who would get offended if I didn’t eat a lot. So, if I ate less than the day before, he would get really frustrated. He would think that the food wasn’t good, that I was sick. And who loved to watch Big Bang Theory and talk about that. Do you know Big Bang Theory?
Frank I see the shorts on YouTube sometimes and I need to get the series because it seems to be the spinoff of Friends when we watched Friends. And I think the Big Bang Theory seems to be almost better than that.
Igor But the thing about Big Bang Theory, it’s a very geek series. So? the references are very geeky, like Star Wars, Dragon Ball, very, very geeky. Mr. Joe loved to watch and talk about the things. So, 90% of the English I learned, I would say in my life, but maybe not in my life, but at the time, was by watching Big Bang Theory and discussing it with Mr. Joe in the dinner table. So suddenly I was in this place, right? This is Mr. Joe. And of course, he’s very old. So as every old person, he has some beliefs that are unshakable and sometimes it annoys people, but this is Mr. Joe. So we have Mr. Joe, I will leave Becky for the last. We have Mr. Pete, which is Mr. Joe’s son. He is the one who runs the farm. The farm is still who owns the farm is Mr. Joe, but who runs the farm is Mr. Pete. Mr. Pete, he’s a farmer. If you imagine a farmer in the countryside of the United States, this is this guy. So, he never had anything on internet. Even today, he doesn’t have a smartphone. He has no idea how to navigate the internet. All he does is wake up four in the morning, milk cows, feed cows, work in the farm, go home, take a nap, go back, work again, go at night at home and watch football. That’s his life and drink beer. And he’s very funny because although he is this kind of person who are not linked with everything is knowing the world, he had received a lot of people abroad because I wasn’t the last one. Like before me, they would receive exchange workers for 20 years. So, he was very open minded in terms of talking. So, it was interesting because I would talk to him a lot while we were milking cows. And he was always very kind. Like he wouldn’t like to, there is a rose, a water rose on their bar that sometimes the cows would get stuck in the middle of the way. And we would have to spray water on the cow’s face to make the cows move. It wouldn’t hurt, but it’s annoying. You have to spray water in the cow’s face. And he hated that. Like when we would do that, he would say, no, go there and try first, try to push first. And if you cannot do anything else, you go and spray water. He was very kind of like this kind of gentle farmer with the cows. He would only eat when the cows were properly fed as well. I remember one day the tractor got broke on the field. It was very late. Everyone was very hungry. And he said, oh, first I will fix the tractor, feed the cows, then I will go eat. It’s a very interesting character. It was very emotional meeting him again because at the time I wouldn’t speak English very fluently and it was fun because he would understand me, of course, and I would understand him. But we didn’t have the language skills to go into deep subjects. And at the time I went, last year I had, so it was very emotional to talk about a lot of things.
Frank So what I like also is how you address this. So it’s Mr. Joe, it’s Mr. Pete. So it’s the first name, but by addressing the Mr. you show a deep sign of respect.
Igor It’s funny. It’s not intentional. I think when I got there, there was an Indian guy that he was very polite in the sense of very worried with the politeness. I don’t know. It’s like a cultural thing because I’m not like that and Brazilians in general are not. But it got stuck and I called them, but it’s not intentional.
Frank Okay. So we had Mr. Joe, Mr. Pete. You want to talk about Becky last, at least two other people. So one of them is the girl, so there must be someone else.
Igor Yes. So Mr. Pete and Becky had two children. One is John, which he is my age. At the time, we didn’t talk much because he was like a teenager, and I wouldn’t want to talk to me. I don’t know. And he had a lot of issues with drug addiction at the time. And it was interesting, of course sad, but interesting because Becky would talk to me about him. So, Becky, we would drive a lot together and he would talk about John. She was worried about John, et cetera, et cetera. And I was like someone, she would talk about that. And I always felt very lucky to have someone to talk about that with me because I know it’s a very sensitive subject. And the time I went on April, I met John and it was one of the most emotional encounters because I asked him, sorry, because at the time I wouldn’t give that much attention for his problem. He wouldn’t talk to me because he was jealous of his mom or something like that. So, we met, and it was very beautiful because I hug him, he hug me and said, oh, don’t worry. I like you. You can count on me And things like that. Like man, man things and men were to interact with each other.
And then we have Brittany, which was the girl. I met her again. It was very pleasant because we always liked to talk with each other. She’s extremely funny and she drove me to a very beautiful place, and it was an amazing time. She knew I was with Mari, so everything went fine. We didn’t touch on the subject of dating. But she shared with me what he is going like with her life and things like that.
And then is Becky. Becky is very, she’s like a superwoman because she would take care of the family as every mom does, cooking, taking people to doctors, et cetera, et cetera. She would work on the farm as well and she would like deal with me because every day off, which was Friday, she would take me somewhere and I always bring some plans, like crazy plans.
Oh, Becky, this weekend I want to go skydiving and she would search where to skydive. She would do things like that. And she loved that because she always said, oh, I would never think about those things if it wasn’t for you. So, she drove me to run my first marathon and I run in four hours and 30 minutes, which is a long time. And she was waiting for me. And when I got in the finish line, she cried, and I cried. And she had like three friends that cried as well and they didn’t know me, but they cried. And so, I was very emotional, like things like that. Like climbing, she took me to climbing. So, she’s like this superwoman that is able to do everything. She drives very well. She’s very communicative. And this is Becky. So those are the people.
Frank When you describe them, it makes me want to go out and meet them because they must be really wholesome, fantastic.
Igor They are. They are. There are two more that I will be quick that, but it’s worth mentioning. The one is Mr. Alvin that is still alive and he’s 96 years old. And he’s able to fix everything like everything. I remember things breaking their farms, think that no one had no clue how to start fixing like some pump, which work in a very specific way. And Mr. Alvin would go with eighty-six years old and open things and fix everything.
This was Mr. Alvin. And a good memory I have from him is that I was doing push ups in a roof in the farm, and he saw that and he asked, no, do you want me to do a push up a bar for you? Not pull up a bar for you. And I said, oh, yes. And he made a very beautiful pop bar for me like in 20 minutes. So, he cut the, he found the metals. He cut, he, he welded the metals, everything. He was able to do everything. He’s still alive. So, I think he’s still able.
And the other one is Carlo. Carlo was a Mexican neighbour, very funny guy because he would like the, he was retired. He was old guy, but the purpose of his life was to track and kill raccoons. Like he hated raccoons, and it was very funny because he would tell, oh, oh, Carlo, there was a raccoon last night here on the barn and Carlo would like stay at night watching the barn to see the raccoon trap and kill the raccoon. Of course, it’s, it’s kind of a controversial because we are talking about killing animals, but it was funny. His obsession was funny. You know, we would laugh a lot about him, like why he has the obsession. And he, he would say that one raccoon ate his favourite chicken. And from that day on, he promised he would kill all raccoons he could, it was, he was Carlo.
Frank Those are other characters, a real bunch of characters. Okay. So, you stayed there for a year and then it was time to say goodbye and you moved on. I suppose it must’ve been a very emotional farewell, probably more, probably more emotional than saying goodbye to your own family back home in Brazil, because, because, because I can feel the love that you have for this family. It really comes across. And that you still have, you know, that you’re still in contact 10 years later, that that speaks for itself. So, what did you, it’s actually very obvious, but it’s, it’s, it’s not easy to formulate, but what did this family do for you that you can still feed off this experience that it still helps you in whatever you’re doing today? What was the long-term effect of this year with this, with this wonderful, wonderful family?
Igor Well, that’s a very good question. And I have thought about that. Something that I, I see myself, have you read that, read a book called like the languages of love? It’s a very popular book,
Frank I think that I haven’t read, but I will write it down.
It’s very simple and straightforward book. Basically, it says that there are five languages of love and one of them is action, right? So, I think, and I see myself and I always saw myself like that, someone that communicate in terms of action. So, I’m not the person that will talk that I’m going to do something, that one day I will do that, that I miss you, but someday I’m going to miss you. No, I go and do like, I, my language is action, so I’m always doing something right. And people who are not like that annoys me a lot. So, I have people on my family that for the past 20 years says that they’re going to do something. Every year they do this. Oh, I’m going to like, I have a relative that always say, oh, I will buy a farm and live in my farm. Like for the past 20 years, he says next year I will do that. And this annoys me profoundly. So I think something that I got from or was reinforced by Becky’s family was that the power of action, of doing things, you know, and I think the fact that being farmers, it’s very, it’s easy to relate to this kind of language because on farms, like there is no talk, like on farms you have to do, if you don’t milk the cow in the next day, the cow will be sick. If you don’t feed the cow, the cow will die. And so, it’s very action, everyday action, you can’t think in farms, you have to do, and that’s it. You don’t have time to philosophize, you know, you just have to do it. Like one day the barn fell apart and there wasn’t anything to do about it. We had to rebuild the barn and we did that, you know. So that’s something, it was reinforced, and I really lived through that and that’s why I have this kind of admiration because they are this kind of people. And for being those kinds of people, I had only good experience with them, you know.
Frank Your world today, your professional world today is an almost complete contrast, isn’t it? I mean, you had your own marketing company, you were dealing with the internet, dealing with internet marketing. Now you’ve gone even further into this, working with Spencer Greenberg. Do you miss this world of the farm in California?
Igor Yeah, I think I miss, but I’m conscious that it’s just nostalgia, you know. I miss, but I understand that my memories about that were very poetic, you know. I know that’s not so easy, that probably I wouldn’t like to do that nowadays, but I miss the simplicity of that. That’s the one, because I would work real hard, but it was very simple, like everything was very simple. I would just work without worrying about paying taxes, things like that. I just work and work and walk and walk and that’s it. Yes, so I miss that.
Frank But there is a trend today, isn’t there, to sort of minimalist living, off-grid living, tiny homes containing homes. There’s a whole culture evolving almost that people are sort of remembering and saying, you know, let’s live like our predecessors, like our grandparents lived, and there might be something in that. I mean, when I look around what we have in this house here, I’d love to throw 90% of it away. But I can’t.
Igor Yes, I think so. I think this is a good argument for people who are being minimalist. And I think that’s a huge problem, like a really huge problem that people are very anxious and overworking and people are, I don’t know, getting a little bit crazy because things are very complex. I don’t have research proof for that, but that’s my feeling, you know. Because I’m going through this process to live in LA, which we can talk in detail later, and I’m starting to get to study about visa, about flight tickets, and oh my God, it’s so complex, you know. So, oh my God, it’s starting to get me anxious just because it’s complex. It’s not difficult, I’m not worried, but it’s just the fact that I have to worry about so many things make me anxious, you know? So, I can imagine people, because I’m very privileged again, because I don’t have to worry that much about financial. So, I went to visit my father-in-law and it was fine. I didn’t have to think how I would pay. I wouldn’t have to see five different companies to see which one is cheaper. So, I can imagine how life can be difficult for people who have to deal with this kind of complexity and don’t have resources to navigate through as easy as I can, you know?
Frank Okay. So by way of a teaser for the next instalment of this storytelling, you left Becky and her family and you went on to Canada from there?
Igor Yes.
Frank And you spent how long in Canada?
Igor I spent seven months. It was supposed to be 12 months as it was in the United States, but it was seven.
Frank As positive an experience as California or totally different?
Igor It was positive in terms of understanding myself and the big picture of life, but it wasn’t so adventurous and so exciting as it was in the United States, it was a little bit different.
Frank So the difference in just personal growth and learning about yourself. So seven months, Canada, and then back home to Brazil.
Igor Yep. Maybe we can leave that Canada part to the next time.
Frank I look forward to hearing about it. So by way of a summary, I think you just said you were going to go to LA later this year. How far would you be away from Becky and her family?
Igor Not much. I think it’s four or five hours driving. It’s quite close.
Frank No distance really. So, I guess you’ll be dropping in on them every now and then. So Igor, thank you for sharing this first part of a, I think it’s going to be a fascinating story actually.
Igor I’m enjoying a lot because that’s the first time I’m telling details and I have to think how I frame the words. I’m really enjoying.
Frank So let’s leave this in here and next time we will talk about your seven months in Canada. Watch this tale unfold.
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