Preserving Legacy in a Digital Age: A Conversation with Jimmy Spikes of Beternal

Patrick Bass sits down with Jimmy Spikes, the innovative CEO of Beternal, a groundbreaking platform dedicated to preserving family legacies in the digital age. Jimmy shares the heartfelt story behind Beternal's inception, rooted in the personal loss of his mother's digital memories. Discover how Beternal ensures that your precious memories and digital assets are securely stored and passed on to your loved ones. Jimmy also discusses the challenges he faced in launching a tech company, providing valuable insights for aspiring entrepreneurs. Tune in as the conversation delves into broader social and political issues, offering a unique perspective from both the United States and Puerto Rico. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in technology, family heritage, and the entrepreneurial journey.

#PatrickBassShow #JimmySpikes #Beternal #FamilyLegacy #DigitalPreservation #TechEntrepreneur #Podcast #Entrepreneurship #PuertoRico #Legacy #DigitalAge #TechTalk #FamilyHistory #Inspiration #Innovation

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Transcript

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KQ everybody, we're going live in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And now, live from Fort Smith, Arkansas. This is a planet wide broadcast, courtesy of the World Wide Web and affiliate radio stations across the globe. It's The Patrick Bass Show with your host, Patrick Bass. Welcome back to this episode of the Patrick Bass show. So glad you're here with us on this journey. All right. Kickstart my heart there. It's the 23rd of July. And we've got a great show lined out for you guys today. I'm going to be speaking to a guy who's. Got a really incredible story to share. He's come up with an amazing product that I'm very excited to. Expose you guys to. It's something I think that can actually help everybody. Every family. We don't. Have a lot of product based shows on this program, but this is something that I think is going to Very instrumental for a lot of people. We'll dig more into it right after this break. But before that, I also want to remind you about our Facebook page. It's facebook .com slash realpatrickbass. Please go on there and like our page so that we can get the required number of likes to go live on the Meta platform. Also, our call in number today, if you would like to provide some comments or if you have a question for our guest, our call in number today is 855 -605. 8255 that number 855605 talk and we're going to jump right into it right after this message. Don't forget to hit our website at www .pwbass .com. More of the Patrick Bass show coming up. Are you on a journey of professional and personal transformation? We all are or we should Patrick Bass, he's the author of Burn Your Ships, How to Conquer Doubt and Live Without Limits. The book dives deep into understanding the roots of your fears and to learn not just how to face them, but how to conquer them permanently. You'll learn how to embrace commitment and dismantle the option of failure. You'll get practical advice backed by psychological research. strategic planning tools, and inspiring success stories from people who've truly embodied the burn your ships philosophy in their own lives. Burn your ships, how to conquer doubt and live without limits, available at pwbass .com or on Amazon. On the battlefield, there's a saying America's military men and women live by. Never leave a fallen warrior behind, ever. Off the battlefield, Wounded Warrior Project operates with the same goal. Wounded Warrior Project was created to help our men and women returning home with the scars of war, whether those scars are physical or mental. Wounded Warrior Project, we never leave a fallen warrior Learn more about what we do at WoundedWarriorProject .org. Jimmy's journey led him to create a company called Beternal It's a platform dedicated to preserving your family's legacies. He has a deep interest in family history and heritage, of course. Jimmy's here to share his story about Beternal and also lots of other things that he just has on his mind he wants to talk about. Welcome to the show. Let's dive in. Jimmy, welcome. Thank you, Patrick. It's an honor to be here and the opportunity to share with you more about Beternal Like I was talking to you earlier, in 2020 when I got here, I moved to Puerto Rico shortly after my mom passed away, just kind of a change of life and this, that and the other. But when COVID hit, one day I was sitting at the beach and like most of everybody, you know, just thinking about what I needed to do, how I needed to do something. So I was looking. to make some changes, so to speak. And I was looking for some inspiration. So I started flipping through my phone. And my mom was very important person in my life. And so I was like, man, mom will have some inspiration on here. So going through all 2000 pictures on my phone and all that stuff, come to find out I only have one picture of me and my mom saved on my phone. So then it was like, well, let me go on social media. gone out to social media only to find out that her accounts had been removed during that time. She had uploaded and saved a lot of our family history to Dropbox and Google Photos and things like that. We lost access to all of that because she didn't remember to tell us where any of the information was. So pretty much everything that I had left of my mom. was one picture on my phone. I sent in a couple of people, they've sent me five or six, but in general, everything that we had of her digitally was gone. And that's where it came up with the idea to form a company that will help you save all your digital assets, media and data, and then in the event that something happens to you, we will pass them to the recipients that you choose on our platform so your legacy continues on. You know, Jimmy, in today's world, we all have a digital footprint. And for a lot of us, we have Facebook, Instagram, X used to be Twitter, of course. And there's all these other kind of platforms. And people don't keep photo books anymore. I remember growing up, we'd go to grandma's house or something like that. And she'd break out the photo albums. You know, in the 70s and 80s, my dad had the Kodak slides and he'd break out those reels in the slides and we'd watch those. But all that is kind of gone by the wayside, things in part, to technology, for better or worse. It's what we have. And so now, as you pointed out, everything's on a digital media somewhere in somebody's cloud. And that stuff is sadly, as you experienced, prone to being lost. especially in times of when the account holder has passed or something like that. And that was kind of obviously your impetus for creating this company. I wonder if you could tell us a little more about it. I kind of get the concept of preserving memories. What is it actually doing? it... Are you uploading to Beternal or is it capturing when you upload? Or how does it work? As today goes, we're set up in a website. So you will upload the data or media to maternal. You'll make a video on your phone and you can go on. It is a web app, so you can get on your phone, pull up the site and upload your videos and data that way, or you can do it through your laptop. Then once you upload the information, you will have to set up a bank of recipients or just one person that you want your data to go to and you'll assign them the information. And it's like I said, in the event that something happens. When we do our verification process, will just if you're verified no longer around, we will pass the information on to them. And you can have up to three primary recipients. That way there's a fail safe set in place. You know, if you can't get a hold of you, something and so they'll go to the first contact. They can't get a hold of them. The second contact. And so on and say the third contact they get a hold of and they go, well, Patrick always fishing in Costa Rica. Okay, well then he's okay. He just can't, he's fishing with the other two people. That way the distribution process isn't started. I gotcha. Okay. And how can folks find out about the service? What is your website? website is www .beternal .life Okay, and you told me right before the show you've set up a code for our listeners for listeners who want to sign up for a year. It's 30 % off using code Patrick Bass. So you can go there and be eternal dot life. Sign up with code Patrick Bass and get 30 % off the first year. Jimmy, you mentioned a few things that and we had a brief conversation before the show started and you gave me a little bit of background about you. You're a very diversified guy. You've been in the military. Now you've started this business. Coincidentally, you're from Hot Springs, Arkansas. I'm based out of Fort Smith. That was just coincidental. But now you're living in Puerto Rico. Tell us a little bit more about you, man. Let's dig in and find out who you really are and what's going on and what's unique about you. What is life like? What is life with Jimmy like? Fortunately these days it's pretty boring actually. But you know after the military I did odd jobs here and there. Tried to go to school, worked here and there doing this. Never really got a foothold in anything. Always had a passion for fitness and working out. When I was helping my mom, she had had a condition, a heart attack or a stroke. I thought it would be a good time to get into personal training, got into that, got certifications. Needless to say, I didn't get the opportunity to work with mom before she passed away. And then it's like I said, past that, it was just like a change of life. I needed a change of scenery. And I talked to my family before mom had passed and said, you know, I just got divorced. trying to find a new life. So I was already planning to move, just didn't know where. A friend of mine had come down here after Maria, the hurricane, and said, you need to go check out Puerto Rico. So I sold everything I had and packed what I had left into two suitcases and moved down to Condado, best western in Puerto Rico, and just started driving around and fell in love with the island. Just decided to stay. you sometimes there's nothing quite like a fresh start just going somewhere where you can just start over and put a stake in the ground and say this is day one going forward. This is my new life. It sounds like that's exactly what you did. So you're running a be eternal down there. Obviously, you've got folks helping you. You mentioned you have a CTO. What else is happening? You mentioned you were learning how to dance. What's the story there? Well, it is a story, that's for sure. My significant other down here is from Dominican Republic and we're supposed to go there for Christmas. And so she wants me to learn how to do merengue and bachata. And I don't even know if I'm pronouncing it right, much less being able to dance. So we'll have to see about that. I get a lot of opportunities down here to, I guess, make a fool of myself and not have to worry about anybody knowing me and going, hey, look, there's Jimmy over there. He's trying to dance and he fell down again. Oh, no, not anymore. I'm too old. If I'm up past 9 o 'clock, it's an act of God. Okay, well I mean it's hard because you said you're into health and fitness so that probably makes you look a lot younger but I would put you in your 40s, mid 40s, something like that. Where are you at? Okay, I wasn't too far off. So I got a few years on you but my party days were over probably in my, also in my mid 40s I can kind of understand where you're coming from there. By the way, what military branch were you I was in the Navy. I was in a non -combat role for it to matter. Well, you know, I mean, there's a lot of jobs. My son was in the Navy for about 10 years and he was working on F 18s. You know, there's a lot of there's a lot of support roles and there's a lot of I guess forward combat roles. I was never in the military, so I don't know really the right terminology for it. But I know what it does is it takes all the members of the team doing their part to make it all work. So thank you for serving our country in the military and glad to see that you're doing okay now. By all accounts, your life has really come together. You're down enjoying life on the beach in the beautiful area of Puerto Rico, running beaternal, learning how to dance and merengue. Got some big plans for Christmas. What else is going on? just trying to enjoy my life as much as possible and to record as much of it as possible because you know for a lot of people even even my nieces and nephews back home and my sister they still enjoy hearing all the stuff that I get to do these days and for some of the littler kids you know I live in a in a different country as far as they're concerned. You know that they can't fathom that English being a second language, you know, so it's pretty neat for them and they enjoy when I send stuff back home. But you know, for the most part, it's just trying to live my life today. As much getting as much of it as as I can. Is the key to my. that's why I was kind of asking you about some of your background because you're out there experiencing life, you're creating your own story, but you want to be able to share that, you said, with the rest of your family. And you know, this platform, Eternal, really does allow users to kind of document and maintain their family history as it's being created, Yes. I wonder if you have any stories of success or feedback from users who have found value in doing this or any remarkable stories that you've been able to capture and share? Or perhaps even some advice you would want to give somebody who's wanting to start preserving their family history and they don't know where to begin. Well, you begin by just taking videos and looking at your videos that you got usually with somebody in this set. But you know, for the most part, at this point in time, you brought up a very good point earlier, and that was the photo album. I mean, that used to be the thing when I'd go visit my mom would be break out the photo albums and look at this and you go see all these adventures that people went on. And for the last 20 years, we haven't saved anything. You know, we've taken for granted. It's uploaded somewhere. It's saved on this. You drop your phone. I donated one phone to the Atlantic Ocean, which I lost about 2 ,000 photos on because I didn't know what dang -a -ma -bob it was saved to and all of this stuff. But you know, for the most part, everybody that I've talked to has an experience of loss when it comes to losing digital assets and not taking advantage of actually being able to save them and assign them and send them off. You know, you don't think about it, but tomorrow is not promised. mean, and you want to be able to say that I done something for somebody or I made them laugh or whatever at some point in your life and this is an opportunity to do it long after you're gone. So I suggest if you're talking about how to do it just get up there and make a funny video. I'm videotaping myself. learning how to do a dance when I got two left feet and I'm clumsy. Why? Because if Uncle Jimmy can do it, why can't I do it? And then maybe in 100 years somebody can go, do you want to see what crazy Uncle Jimmy did besides skydive and do all this other stuff? He learned how to dance and he couldn't even speak the language. So why can I not take a chance? Yeah, and guess that's the thing, because obviously all these social media sites allow you to post videos and post pictures and updates and things like that. But I guess the issue becomes how is that stuff maintained? How is it accessed? And you guys are providing a platform by which continued access is more or less guaranteed and will endure past your lifetime. And it and it will transfer to people that you have named who will then become custodians of those memories and be able to access them directly. Or you can, you can, we're gonna give people the option. If you wanna download it on a hard drive, that's fine. But it would be a lot easier to keep it on the site. Cause this way you can keep a realistic live genealogy of your life at that point forward. And if you have older stuff, you can save it too. You know, if you're lucky enough to not lose all the things from your past, you can get it digitized and then keep it from there. But you know, nowadays people just, you lose so much information every day. That it's just, it's just sad. about my own situation where when my grandmother passed, I remember as a little kid going over to her house, and the family in those days would sit around and actually talk to one another. It was an amazing concept that we've gotten away from. We all sit in the living room, extended family, and kind of pile in there. And the kids would kind of be in the corner playing. But I remember the stories she used to tell. And so what would be really cool is, let's face it, probably a 70 or an 80 -year -old or maybe 90 -year -old person isn't going to really be a user of this service. But their children or their grandchildren or maybe even their great grandchildren could be using this service to record those story times and capturing all of that for them to really help maintain a family legacy. an importance in storytelling, something that we've gotten away from in this social media driven world where our attention spans are probably about 10 or 15 seconds long, if that. Yeah, and you know, you bring up a good point, and I thought about this one day when I was in my sister and brother -in -law, or the pastor, and their dad, his dad was a pastor. You know, how cool would it be for him to sit down and read the Bible, and record himself reading the Bible and then going over the Bible for somebody to listen to in a hundred years. You know, we do, we're losing a lot of story time, but we're also losing your heritage and your values. And you know, when you talk about social media, the one thing that scares me to death is at any given moment you make one person mad, your account is deleted. Everything on your social media is deleted and it's all controlled by somebody else. It's not you. It's not your account. It's owned. Meta owns you. TikTok owns you. YouTube owns you. You don't own that information once you assign it to them. It's their information. Yeah, and that's exactly the truth because we have, you know, I've personally been banned off Facebook two or three times for our views that we've had on our different broadcasts. And, you know, it's more than inconvenient. When you have, like you said, when you have all your pictures, all your videos, all your chat histories on there, and they decide that because they didn't agree with some opinion that you had or... it didn't meet the rigor of their so -called fact checkers, that you're not going to be able to access their platform anymore. To your point, that is a severe blow. And, you know, really, in some ways, it's almost a public utility anymore, because it's so ubiquitous. It's so common. And, you know, I can't think of anybody, maybe one or two people that I know that don't have a Facebook account or something like 15 years ago, was probably MySpace. But the point is the same. We're putting so much of our lives out there onto these social media platforms that ultimately, we don't control that data anymore. And so with this, what you're telling me would be eternal is we're going to maintain ownership of that data and have a way to ensure that it is preserved despite what Mark Zuckerberg or Metta might want to do or think or change their mind about. I remember before Elon Musk bought Twitter. Boy, that was a debacle. They were banning people left and right for just basically reasons they can't even explain. So I really like this concept that you've got with B eternal Jimmy. What are the future plans for it? What kind of expansions and additional features are you looking to Right now we're working on uploading large files. So basically what it will be is you can transfer your Dropbox accounts and your Google Photos. You can scrape your photos and stuff off of Facebook and Instagram if you choose and download them to the site. But that'll be the first big thing because we want we want you to start assigning these individual private memories to the individuals that you want. Whether it be one person or 50, we want everybody to get what you want them to have. Not just one big blanket bam of stuff that you're gonna go through when there might be somebody that you're not, they don't know who might want that photo. And then after that, what we've what we've come up with is a shared platform where everybody that has say everybody in your high school graduation has a paternal account where you can all sign up for a shared platform file shared file where you can all in enter different videos or pictures and this that and the other. Maybe they have a picture of you and and Bob that you want to you want to save. Well, he uploads it and you download that way. It's shared file aspects, maybe you have this, what if somebody wants to have this? But everybody will have access to those files in a private setting. That way somebody can't go, I don't like Mary, she's deleted. One person will be in charge of it and they'll be able to mediate what goes on there and doesn't go. But nobody, you're not gonna get banned because you vote one way or you look a certain way or you don't like taking shots or whatever. mean, our platform is not made for, it's not social. I'm talking to Jimmy Spikes who is the CEO of B -Turnal, a company that helps preserve your family legacies. We're going to take a quick break and when we get back I'm going to ask him some questions about what it was like to start a company, tech company, and what are some of the challenges that he's experienced in doing that. We'll take a quick break and we get back we'll dig into that on the Patrick Bass Show. We'll be right back. Patriotism times ten. If you're liking the show, hit our Facebook page and chime in at RealPatrickBass. More real and raw truth coming up The Patrick Bash Show. Council. Talking to Jimmy Spikes, he's the CEO of Beternal, a company that helps you preserve your family legacies. If you want to get in on the action, have a question for me or Jimmy, give us a call on our toll free open line, 855 -605 -8255. Jimmy, what are some of the challenges you've faced creating and launching B Well, first and foremost is I know nothing about technology. You know, if I throw it out there, I mean, I'm just an old country boy from Arkansas and my impression was. You came up with an idea, you built an app and then somebody paid you $60 billion to for you to go away or or whatever they needed to do, and that's about as far from the truth as humanly possible. So I've learned everything. there is to learn about this process the hard way. And that's from hiring freelancer developers to not knowing anything about marketing, to not knowing anything about design, to learning everything on the fly, so to speak. And it has been nothing but a challenging. adventure, but it's been the most rewarding thing that I've ever done. And I thank God every day that I ran into my CTO who's helped me and basically saved me with this company by building. If there was one big got you outside of having a really good CTO and somebody was listening to this program and say, you know, I've got an idea for an app or a service. What would be that one got you that you would warn them Be very mindful if you go the freelancer route. Because you're going to save money on the front end, but more than likely you're going to double it on the back end. And more than likely, it's not going to come out the way that you think it should. If it's too good to be true, probably is. I've fallen into that twice so far and you know it's been an experience. So when by freelancing you mean you you contact an independent developer and you say hey I want to create an app or service that does this and you kind of lay it out for them and then they interpret that and go and create something based on their interpretation of what you said and I guess that's where it breaks down Well, not necessarily that as much as it is. When you go out to the freelancer .com, Upwork, there's some other ones where you can hire developers. Usually the communication is pretty good on what your ideas are, depending on how new tech it is. they might be able to use a lot of code that was, if you're having improvement on an existing product, then they can basically just rewrite the code a little bit to add to that. But what I found is, you know, it always comes back to the bottom dollar and they would tell you, we're going to do it for $5 ,000. You get to $4 ,999 and you're halfway there. And they're like, well, you know, we ran into this, so we need to do this. And then it's like, well, guys, can't, you know, and then basically one of them tried to hold me hostage, if I'm honest, you know, he was, got my money and I was trying to be nice. And then he finally was like, well, you're not getting your, your, your product because you still owe us this, that, and the other. And so luckily. I paid attention to the rules of the freelancer community that time, not trying to be a nice guy and go zoom call these people. So they were held accountable and they had to give me my product. But if you're going to do it, you need to follow the rules of the platform that you're using to hire these people to the T and they'll stick up for you. If you bend the rules just a little bit, thinking you're going to be able to make it faster or go better, it's going to cost you. got you. So really, whatever platform you're using, make sure you're well within the rules so that if there is something that comes down to the wire and they have to make a ruling, hopefully be in your favor. Jimmy, I'm wondering, what is your plan for this five, 10 years? Is this something that you're wanting to mature and run in the long term? Or is this something that you're hoping somebody else will pick up and champion and take through the next evolution? For the time being, do plan on running paternal for the immediate future because I do have a mission and I'm doing it in honor of my mother. So other people don't have to have the experience that me and my family did about losing all her data. So I do have a vested stake in paternal and will as far as long as I'm alive. The only time I see me getting out of it is probably if I can ever find anybody who would have the same passion and drive that I do in order to carry it on. I'm not looking to get rid of it to a bigger company that's not going to carry the same principles and desires for it that I do. So obviously you started this, as you shared in the early part of the show, because of your mother. I wonder, are you comfortable talking about her? Would you tell us about her? Oh yeah, she's wonderful. Well, she was wonderful woman. She was a. She got married at a young age, had two children at 16 back in the day. You didn't do that. So they ended up moving to New York. She got married again. Her husband died. Ended up back in Arkansas where she met my mom, my dad and. And lies me and so we married into the Brady Bunch style family. You know, two sisters and me, I was the youngest. And you know, she was, she was a very strong woman. I mean, she put up with a lot of stuff in her life and had, you know, great stories to share. She, she, she had her issues and, know, just a normal person for the most part. But she, some of the stuff that she worked for Clinton and the 94 campaign, um, got offered a job going to Washington with him, turned it down. started out as a bookkeeper for automotive dealership and made it all the way up to the comptroller. She was a very hardworking woman and very, very influential in a lot of people's lives. Wow. What was her name? Her first name? Karen, yeah, like Karen, she would love that too. You know how they talk about women these days that are mean, that are Karen's. My mom, my mom would embrace that. She would love it. She'd be like, hell yeah, I'm a Karen. Got a problem? It kind of reminds me of some people I know now. They're just very unapologetic and matter of fact, and this is the way it is, and have had to basically work hard for everything they've gotten. And they're not going to let anybody take it from I think that's a missing part of today's society. I mean, I really do. And that's why I think saving all, especially for the older generation and then mine and yours generation is saving what it takes to get where you're at. Because I don't think a lot of people have an idea how hard it really is. And we need to start saving this stuff because history's not getting written down anymore. and it's changing on a regular basis. We need to start recording how you actually make it in life or else people just be standing around wanting it given to. You've seen that more and more, Jimmy. mean, that's really the situation that we're in now. What do you think the most important lesson your mother ever taught you was? Never give up. Even if you gotta get to the point where you are literally broken, never give up. And then once you're broken, get back up and then start over again. love there was different times in her life and in my life too that that's a part of our story. know, starting over, trying to get your head out of your butt, you know, doing this, that was one of the things I mean, I can, I can picture her saying that in my head sometimes when I'm moping around feeling sorry for myself is, you know, smacking me in the back of the head and be like, Hey, Jimmy, you know, get over it, you know, but I don't have it. When did she pass? I here in 2017. So, I mean, there's been a lot of stuff happen in the world since then. If she was able to see where we're at now, what do think she would say? she had wrote, I mean, she wouldn't be, well, you I don't know. mean, politically, she was always very, she, she worked, she loved Bill Clinton, but she didn't like his politics. But she liked him as a person. So that kind of, you know, if you asked her what side of the aisle she followed on, she fell on, she based her political life like I do, you know, it's on the individual, it's not party line. I mean, I can't vote like that. But as far as everything else goes, man, I don't know. It's like I said, she embraced the word caring. She would not tolerate some of this stuff that goes on these days. If you brought that to her house, man, you wouldn't win. You would not. reintroduced to self responsibility. What do you think? 100%. You know, and I don't know where that ended. I sit down on a daily basis and I think and I watch these videos, these kids act in certain ways and people do insert not just kids, people in general. And I'm like, where did where did where did we go wrong? When when did this start? I mean, how did it how did it get here? It seems like there's a real sense of entitlement. 100%. Well, everybody gets a trophy. I know when that started. I complained about that the first time I saw it. I said, you get first, second, or third. If you got him fourth, you need to work harder. Yeah, there was an old joke going around second place is actually first loser, right? That wasn't a joke. remember I had a soccer coach when I was a kid and he was a crusty old man and he would cuss us like a sailor. And that was basically his motto. You know, if you kid... We won all the games that year because we were scared of Coach Holler. Not because we were good. Because you didn't want to make him mad. But he would. He would tell you, that second place is the first place loser. Go cry to your mom. If you're going to cry, get off the field. I mean, all of it. I think it did us good. Well, I think you're right. You know, I mentioned I'm a few years older than you. I remember when I was growing up in our neighborhood, if you were acting up and if another mom saw you acting up, they'd get after you. You know, they'd swat you and if it was egregious enough. And then when you got home, you probably got it again from your mom. And then, you know, when you got home, when your dad got home from work, you probably got it from him for upsetting your mother. And that wasn't abuse, know? mean, clearly there's a huge difference there. But I tell you what, Jimmy, I can't think of one single time where I didn't deserve it, if I'm being honest, where every one of those was earned, if you know what I mean. How about you? one way or another. mean, even if I wasn't immediately involved, I might've instigated whatever happened. I mean, I was a ruffian, you know. Yeah, don't hit the wrong button. Sorry about that. No problem. But yeah, I instigated stuff too. So I mean, was I at fault? Eh. Yeah, think kids need to learn and I don't want to get back on this soapbox that I get up on so often, kids need to learn that life is not fair, not everybody's a winner, and they need to learn how to fail. in a safe place. And what I mean by that is, as parents, as grandparents, we need to... So often I see these kids being protected from failure, but what that really is happening is you're doing them a disservice in the long run. You need to let them fail, but, you know, protect them from the egregious consequences of that, but let them experience failure. And that helps build resilience. And that's necessary in the real world. I see, you know, I'm pretty active in a lot of Facebook groups. And these people come on and say, hey, I'm looking for a job. And you might say, well, these seven or eight places are hiring. And they got a reason for why they don't want to work in those seven or eight places. It's too hot. I don't want to do this or that. And when I was a young kid trying to find a job, honestly, I would take whatever I could get. And here's the thing. Generally speaking, nobody likes But you do it to make ends meet. do what you have to do. And I think that's a quality that has somehow we've gotten away from it. And I think it's sorely needed back in our lives. I think it's not just needed, it's necessity. There's gonna come a time when these people that are supporting that type of mentality are gonna be gone. And then what are you gonna have? You're gonna have those people that they supported not knowing how to do things. That's right. just gonna be back to square, we're gonna be worse than square, because they're not gonna know and they're gonna be too scared to take a chance because they have no safety net to fall back on. They didn't learn to get up, tighten your shoes up and go back down the street and do it again. So some people think that we need some adversity in our lives in order to kind of reset everything. You know, sometimes in history you look at it, you know, there was, you know, the Great Depression, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, stuff like that. I was born in 69. I was telling somebody the other day, my entire life, our country has been at war in some way or another, but it's not been like... you know, our grandparents might have experienced in World War II. You know, it doesn't affect the entire country in a grand way, the way those major conflicts do. And some people kind of advocate the idea that we need something like that in order to kind of reset us, to get us back to a functional society. What do you think? think that's extreme, just to be honest with you. I mean, you're talking about from a military perspective and there again, knowing people that didn't come back. You're talking about risking somebody's life that would actually volunteer to go versus somebody that's gonna get drafted. That's the kind of thing that makes me nervous. Now, I do think that we should... Maybe change back some of the legislation on how kids get away with things in schools and this, that, and the other. Let the teachers be the teachers and let the parents be the parents and hold them accountable like they used to to certain degrees and do that because nowadays the kids don't respect the teachers and they don't respect the parents. And it's obvious. mean, it's the one thing I like about Puerto Rico is when you go to Walmart, if that little kid starts acting up, you look over and you watch that little kid for about two seconds. And then you see his mom slowly turn her head and giving the look and that kid shuts up because he knows that that Latin woman is about to rip off her chocolate and start whooping his butt right there in the store. Yeah, my mom carried a wooden spoon in her purse for that purpose. Or she'd take her shoe off. But, I mean, that's what, and that didn't kill us. But, you know, to say that we need a reboot as far as like a major war or something, I mean, we had 9 -11 and the way that that happened, a lot of people that were weekend warriors that never signed up to go to war got volunteered or they got put into position where they weren't mentally and physically prepared. to go over there and endure. That being They were also a lot softer of a generation than the World War II, the Vietnam, the World War I, then the Korea, because they had been given so much of their life, they didn't have to work for anything. So all of a sudden you put them in this high stress position and then you see the uptick in suicide. You see the uptick in PTSD, you see, because they're not conditioned to deal with adversity. And that's the biggest problem. All that being said, you said let the teachers be teachers. One of the biggest problems I think are the teachers. You see some of these teachers that are wanting to expel some of these really strange ideas in the classroom. And to me, that's scary. think, you know, my personal opinion is, you know, public schools ought to be about teaching, you know, the basics of, you know, reading, writing, math, stuff like that, history. But they want to turn it into a social experiment I see so often, especially at the elementary and middle school level. I don't know. Do you think it's recoverable? Do you think we're too far gone that we could even turn this around anymore? I think personally it's changing right now. I think the youngest generation that matters right now is seeing that there's a definite change that needs to happen because it's not sustainable. know, and when you go back to the teachers, when I say let the teachers be teachers, let them teach. But when you start giving your opinion on things, you're gone. This isn't your opinion. This is what you read out of a book. And this is history. This is math. This is science. It's in black and white. That's what it says. It's not your opinion. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, you know, obviously I wouldn't want to I would hate to see our country in a major conflict. I certainly wouldn't advocate that. But there's just, you know, I'm aware that there's a group of people who say, that's that's what it's going to take in order for us to have a reset. I sure hope not. Like I said, you know, we've been in some kind of conflict my entire life. And my opinion is we need much less of that. less fighting, maybe more diplomacy. Many people have this misconception about me personally that I'm a hardcore Republican. I'm actually not, I consider myself a constitutional libertarian. I vote, kind like your mother did, I vote on the issues and on the person, not necessarily on the party line. So I know there's some people that will just go in and vote one way or the other, depending on whoever. whatever ideology they happen to have. And whoever's running on that particular ticket is certainly something that I don't do. I've voted left, right, and in the middle, just depending on who the person is what the issues are. So I'm wondering what it's like down there in Puerto Rico compared to the states. Do they have a much different opinion of how things are going on here in the continental US? they ask me all the time, you know, what's going on up there? What are they doing? Man, I don't know. I was like, you know, I follow it as much as I possibly can, but y 'all are hard to keep up with. I mean, every day it's changing. Every day it's this, every day this goes wrong. Next day you gotta call these people this. Next day you gotta do, it's every day it's just. It's so much different. You know, the politics down here are pretty funny, but I have been here when they kicked the governor out of office. You know, they didn't like him. They banded together and they removed him from the office. They I went into the rally with that. I might have been the only American down there. Earth. It's because they kindly call me sometimes gringo. But you know, it was fun to see that type of unity. go on because they were not happy with the way that the people were running the island. They formed together and they got the guy removed. You know, did it change anything? No. Corruption is very bad here, just like it is in the States. But here it's so small when they rob from rob from the people it actually affects. So as a gringo living down in Puerto Rico, do they want to be a state or do they want to be left alone? It depends. Unfortunately, the people that do want statehood think the people that are from here that want statehood don't know what statehood involves. And I tell them go find you and go find you a Hawaiian, native Hawaiian, and ask them what they think about statehood. And they'll tell you that you lose your culture, you lose your freedom, and you're going to pay more taxes. And that's exactly what would happen to Puerto Rico. They would lose Spanish, would lose their culture, they're gonna pay more taxes, unemployment would skyrocket because of the bureaucracy that goes on here. And for what? A vote for the president? I mean, Arkansas has the same electoral votes that Puerto Rico has. It's not gonna change anything. Yeah, sadly, I think you're right. When it comes down to electing a president, it really is put into the hands of a few key swing states. And especially when you live in a state where they vote overwhelmingly Republican or overwhelmingly Democrat, if you have a differing vote, it really doesn't matter. I think the most significant impact that we still have is on local elections, local, you know, county and city and that type of thing. But when it comes to these national elections, I'm going to vote, obviously, but I just don't know if my vote will actually count. I really don't. Well, when you move down here, you lose that ability. And that's what a lot of people ask me, if I was upset about losing the right to vote for presidency. I said, to be honest with you, I don't care. I said, I can't think of one that I've liked in a very long time. I was like, but at the same time, it doesn't affect much down here besides somebody saying that we'll get funding or won't get funding. mean, so it's hard to say, but I can take it. Y 'all are the talk, you in the states are definitely the talk of not just in Puerto Rico, but people all over the world that I meet that come here and they're like, you're from the states. What about this? What about that? And I don't know. And they're like, they're crazy. it's like, well, everybody has. from your vantage point, are they seeing us as, I mean, how do they see us from your vantage point? What is their view of our current status right now? Current today, you're a paper tiger. And that's the truth. I mean, that's the way that people that from Russia, people from China, people from Japan, people from South America, everybody says the same thing. What happened to big, tough America? Because it's not there anymore. Nobody respects no, no individual that I've talked to from a different country here respects America. You know, and it's really hard to get unbiased news in the States. Obviously, we have CNN, we Fox News, we have MSNBC. And those really, to me, Jimmy, when I listen to them, if I want to hear the Republican take on stuff, I go to Fox News. If I want to hear the Democratic take on stuff, I go to CNN. If I want to hear the very liberal take, I go to MSNBC. And if I want to hear the truth, I go to like Sky News in Australia or something like that, or BBC. Because I'm not getting it here. What's your take? That's 100%. I mean, you can, you can, you can get the same story. And I've told people to hear and wherever they want to know what the difference is. said, go watch the same, go watch somebody speak and then go watch them speak and commentate on Fox, go watch them speak on CBS or CNN or MSNBC and listen to exactly the same. What two people get out of the same speech. I said, it's polar opposite. And I said, in realistically that's impossible except for it's an opinion it's not the news. So the latest thing going on right now, I don't know if it's made its way down to Puerto Rico, but there's a theory right now that Joe Biden has died and some senators are calling for proof of life. He has not been seen apparently since stepping down from his campaign. And I guess there were some third party reports that he was airlifted. the day before he stepped down, was airlifted to a hospital. Of course, this is all wildly speculative. I'm not making any breaking news. These are the conspiracy theories. All that being said, nobody's seen the guy. Have you heard anything about that? Very vaguely, there again, most of the news that I get down here is, if I get the news, it's usually from YouTube or something like that, because I don't follow a lot of it. I do watch Sky News from Australia for the most part because I do feel like you that they're just given their news the way it is. now, and you know, that's the scary part about America being in that position that I talked about being a paper tiger. If something's wrong with the guy, let the people know they need to know now. They don't need to wait. don't, you know, you need the information. Yeah, I mean, my personal opinion, if he's not able to run again because of some impairment, then he probably ought to be replaced immediately. Because obviously, I mean, we're not stupid. I mean, I can see. I've got two eyes. I've got a brain. I can see something's not right with him. But who knows what's going to happen? We watched the debate here and everybody said the same thing. You know, what's wrong with that guy? I mean, it's like, man, there's something wrong with him. And that was it. You know, there wasn't any question, well, that's this point of view. It was like just common knowledge. didn't have the chatterboxes on either side telling you good, bad, or indifferent. That was just people's opinion. Yeah, mean, clearly something's going on. And there's a lot of speculation that he has Parkinson's or some kind of cognitive disorder, obviously. I was watching some clips from him, clips of him from 10 and 15 years ago and compared to now. I mean, obviously, people are going to age. You're not as spry as you used to be. All of that stuff is understandable and forgivable, but that's not what we're talking about here. And this is not a newsflash to anybody that's watched television in the last three years. There's some kind of issue that is causing a real impairment that I think puts the security of our country into jeopardy and causes this perception that, as you said, we're a paper tiger. And I think that's just a shame. for our country to be in this situation. What's a shame though is nobody knows what a paper tiger is. But there again. you don't know what a paper tiger is, go look it up. There again, that's not a position America wants nor needs to be in, especially if the head of the if the president of the United States is not in capacity to make decisions on a split second basis. That is not the position you need to have that country. Yeah. You know, there was another time in history when we were kind of a paper tiger. was when Jimmy Carter was the president, we had the Iranian hostage crisis. And the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in office, those hostages were released because they knew that this guy was not going to pull any punches and that he was going to come for them. And so the day, you know, Carter was no longer the president, those hostages were released. And that's the difference between a very weak leader and a very strong leader and how the country can be perceived one way or another. The country didn't change overnight. Our leadership did. But the perception of our country changed overnight because of our leadership. And I think that's where it is even now. We've got to have a leader that's perceived to be strong and not weak. No matter what platform they run on, but they've got Yeah, personally, I would love to see Robert Kennedy Jr. I don't think it's going to happen, but I think he'd make a great president. Talking to Jimmy Spikes, we've been chatting just about all kinds of stuff here today. But just to wrap up, he's created a great platform for preserving families' legacies and histories called B -Turnal. It's bturnal .life. And if you want to sign up, give it a shot. He'll get 30 % off using code PATRICKBASS for one year. Sign up, you'll get 30 % off. Go check it out. And Jimmy, anything you want to say in these last few minutes before we wrap it up, anything you want to share or mention, this is your chance. I just appreciate the opportunity. It's nice to talk to somebody from back home, even legitimately from Arkansas. You don't get a chance to do that a lot. I did meet a guy down here who's my mentor. He's from Little Rock. So it seems like we're all in pretty good company no matter what we are. But you know, the one thing I want to share is how important everybody listening to this show is to somebody and how they would really appreciate you leaving private messages, memories. in the event that something happens to you. If nothing happens to you then you know and you outlive them that's fine but if something happens why are you letting everything that you've worked your entire life for and saved online disappear with you? That's what maternal was made for. Jimmy Spikes. Thanks so much be eternal dot life. Check it out. 30 % off one year membership with code Patrick Bass. Thanks for listening to the Patrick Bash on the Vanguard Radio Network. We'll catch you next time. Thanks for listening to the Patrick Bash The Patrick Bass Show is copyright 2024, all rights reserved. Thanks for listening and tune in next time for more real talk on the Patrick bash show