028 | Analog Man in a Digital World Transcript

Intro [0:24]

Morgan:  My guest today is a man of many talents. A player, a coach, a student of life, and now author to the wildly popular, new book “Pickleball and the Art of Living”. I really don’t know where train is going to take us, people. So just hang on tight for part one of my interview with Mr. Mike Branon.

 

Analog Man [0:42]

Morgan:  Mike, how are you doing, mate?

Mike:  Oh, you know? Just me and technology, the usual odd couple.

Morgan:  (chuckles…) Well, you can’t be good at everything.

Mike:  Well, I’m definitely not good at this, so thankfully I have a wife, and my kids even call in when I’m in desperate need. 

Morgan:  I’d say you’re an analog man in a digital world, then huh? 

Mike:  That’s a kind way of putting it.

Morgan:  (chuckles…) So, what’s new? What’s happening in your world? Before we get into the nuts and bolts of why you’re here, what’s happening?

Mike:  Actually, it’s going great. The book’s doing better than I had hoped. The audiobook came out today and we’re living a pretty good life. 

Got one little setback about 10 days ago. I got hit in the eye directly with a very hard shot. So I’ve been on pretty much non-physical activity and bed rest. I’m supposed to be away for another 10 days because it tore up my iris, so my pupil is wide-open.

Morgan:  Oh, no! 

Mike:  I know you probably wear glasses all the time, I remember watching you. But, man, I definitely learned my lesson.

Morgan:  Are you going to be someone who now will wear a patch around the court? Because your cool factor will go up ten-fold. As soon as you do that, you get that and you get the parrot, suddenly, doors just open.

Mike:  (chuckles…) If I was any cooler, I just would feel bad for everybody else.

Morgan:  (chuckles…) Fair enough.

Mike:  But yeah, I’m definitely going to have to wear protective lenses for sure. They said don’t ever get hit there again or else you’re done for, so I’m definitely going to do that. Hopefully, they’ll find some way to get my vision back too. But I’m getting around okay. Other than that, just a little bump in the highway and life is really great. How about you?

Morgan:  Yeah, can’t complain. Busy – a lot of work, teaching. Since I stopped playing so many tournaments, I’ve been teaching a lot more and I’ve really been enjoying it. 

Mike:  Good!

Morgan:  It’s gotten to a point where I could do a bit of break but as they say, “Work is like old age, it’s the worst thing in the world except for the alternative.”

Mike:  There you go. And I’ve been feeling the same way too. Since the book came out, I’ve had so many people just word of mouth, it’s hard to take care of everybody that wants to be with you for the lessons. But it’s sure is fun, it’s sure is rewarding.

Morgan:  Excellent! That’s why we do it. 

 

Why Pickleball? [2:49]

Morgan:  So tell me, what inspired you to write this book? And why Pickleball? There are a lot of sports out there. I’m sure you’re no stranger to a few of them, so tell me.

Mike:   Yeah, I originally wrote this book when my wife and I were one of those lucky people stuck on a cruise ship when the pandemic broke out. We’re off the Coast of Australia on the way to Fiji, on a dream vacation that stopped being dream-like pretty quickly because all of a sudden, we were confined and no country would let us in. We zigzagged across the Pacific for quite a while, for over 20 days. Finally, blew an engine – that’s the only reason Hawaii let us off, off of protests and we were able to get back home. 

So I’m sitting there on the boat and kind of not much to do, and so I started writing. Being out there in the ocean was a good place to be alone, and I wrote the entire book relatively quickly and it had almost nothing to do with Pickleball. It was just a throw-away paragraph, using it as an illustrative point.

When I got home, I forwarded the manuscript to a couple of my friends in the book business, and they both independently reached out and said, “We love your writing. It’s funny, it’s wise but no one is ever going to read it because you’re not famous. The way the book business works these days is you have to be famous first and write a book. You can’t write a book and do it the old-fashion way.”

So they said, “Hey, what about that Pickleball thing that you’re writing about? That could be your platform since you’re so thoroughly unfamous and a social media troglodyte?”

Morgan:  I hear you’re pretty famous in your family. Almost everyone knows you.

Mike:  Well… (chuckles…) I’ve been excluded from certain gatherings. But no, I do pretty well in that demographic – yeah.

Morgan:  I get scared if I walk into a room and a bunch of my family there, and there’s a handful of friends. Anything more than about eight people, I just assume it’s an intervention.

Mike:  Oh yeah! (chuckles…) 

Morgan:  I get scared and I run away, and they say, “No, no, no. Just come back. We’re just hanging out.” – Oh great!

Okay, so arguably, if COVID didn’t hit, we wouldn’t have this book to read.

Mike:  The universe works in mysterious ways.

Morgan:  Very mysterious. 

Mike:  You know, being noble like I am, I definitely would have traded my notorieties and author for the world to be healthy and happy but that’s just the kind of guy I am, you know? 

Morgan:  Look, you’re just a kind and generous soul. That’s very sweet of you.

Mike:  No doubt about it. But yeah – the good thing about it, I guess – there is a silver lining behind everything because I tend to be optimistic, is that no matter what life throws at you, there is always an opportunity there somewhere. I think a lot of people have taken opportunities in different ways whether it’s reconnecting with the people they can be with or starting new projects or just taking a little bit of a slower look at life. When you’re not quite as busy, things start to appear on your horizon and it can be an opportunity for growth.

Morgan:  Certainly. It’s one of those things everyone is forced to stop and smell the roses whether you knew they were there or not. Relationships change, your life changes, you’ve got much more time on your hands or you’ve got more time at home. Certainly, you see things in a different light, and what stems from there is anyone’s guess. But I think for a lot of people out there, they’re getting a second lease on life.

Mike:  Yeah!

Morgan:  If I was to look at Pickleball in a more holistic kind of fashion, that’s what really is for so many people out there.

Mike:  Oh yeah. Every day that you don’t play once you get into this thing, you feel a little bit empty. You just got to get out there. And more than anything else, just reconnect with your buddies and just have some laughs. It’s fantastic! Again, the other silver lining to this thing is as we begin to crawl out of our caves and live our lives again, you can’t help but be more grateful. 

I was out the other evening at an outdoor patio with a buddy of mine that I hadn’t seen for a while and he brought his copy of the book. He highlighted it and dog-eared it and wanted to talk about different things. It was just great just being out in the world with an actual waitress we can talk to and people with their dogs, and the sun is shining. It’s good to be out again, so I hope we get more of that.

Morgan:  Definitely. We’re all having our fingers crossed.

For me, and this is just my perspective, but it would seem that the American rat race generally inspires people to work until they can’t work anymore and then hope to live long enough to enjoy the fruits of their labors. You retired pretty young. I think the age of 40, I hear.

Mike:  That’s correct.

Morgan:  Talk to me about why that happened. How you manage to pull it off?

Mike:  Well, a lot of it was luck. A lot of it was also never have had anything. I didn’t have this huge goal to have millions of dollars to stop working. I manage to live quite well with a Pickleball paddle, a good book and some good friends. I’ve always been very thrifty, some might say cheap, like my wife who says that.

Morgan:   I did get the email from her actually yeah.

Mike:  Did you? (laughs…) She’s pretty prolific when it comes to that. 

To be honest with you, I kind of struggled in the work world for a while. I’ve done okay, I definitely made ends meet but it wasn’t satisfying. And then I formed my own company at 34, a construction business. Six years later, it had grown to one of the biggest companies in its field, and several things happened where I sort of checking in with myself and realizing that my kids who were 9 and 11 at the time weren’t going to see their dad much if I continue to do what I was doing. I had good guys that worked for me which gave me that freedom, and stepped off the diving board before I knew what I was doing. I just did it and I’ve never looked back, and I’ve never regretted a moment. It’s been an incredible blessing for me, Morgan.

Morgan:  That’s fantastic. I’m a firm believer of just bite off more than you can chew and then chew like crazy.

Mike:  Yeah. (chuckles…) 

Morgan:  My dad told me that a long time ago.

Mike:  No, you really would be good on a cruise ship buffet. I think this is down your alley, bud.

Morgan:  You can just put the buffet away – away from the bar.

Mike:  There you go! But no, it’s been – again, I’ve truly realized how fortunate I am that things broke right for me. But I’m also kind of proud that I went ahead and did the unorthodox thing and stepped away from the potential to make a lot of money and traded it for a lot of experience and a lot of time with my loved ones. Again, I never would have discovered so much whether it was through travel or even things like Pickleball which may have never come up on my radar. So yeah, if you can live with less, I highly recommend it.

Morgan:  For sure. For a long time, I was kind of wandering the Earth, traveling, teaching tennis in different parts of Europe, North Africa, Asia, Middle East for a little while. I kind of had a bit of a rule with myself that I didn’t ever want to have more than about $3,000. I knew with $3,000 – Euros generally, I could get back home to Australia, get patched up and get back on the road. But any more than that, I might start acquiring all kinds of stuff that I didn’t really need it. I have no use for a big-screen TV. Until eventually, I really wanted a big screen TV and I moved to America. But I’ve never been more free in my life, and I kind of miss those days. I have upwards of $4,000 now.

Mike:  Wow!

Morgan:  I don’t even know what to do with that extra $1,000.

Mike:  You could buy probably 58 “Pickleball and the Art of Living” copies and be really, really happy with that. That would probably make all the difference for you.

Morgan:  Okay. Right, well I’ll put that on the list.

Mike:  Shameless plug!

Morgan:  Shameless plug – don’t worry, there will be plenty of time for the plug. No, you’re good, you’re good. It is a fantastic read.

Mike:  Oh, thanks!

 

Life Has Been Good Ever Since [10:03]

Morgan:  For me, I like writing as well. I often write not because I try to communicate a point or illustrate anything but I do it to actually kind of find out what I think about something. I find it’s kind of therapy and I work through my thoughts by putting it down on paper. And then if I read it again, I think, “There’s probably something to that. I’ll put it somewhere.”

Writing this book must have been a real journey even though you were on a relatively stationary cruise ship. What did you learn from writing this book?

Mike:  You know, just the points that you brought up, Morgan, are excellent. I found that a lot of times writing things down is one of the most clarifying things you can do. In business, I was constantly writing down plans. There was actually a – I think I referenced this in the book. There was a study done by Harvard that they studied MBAs in this program. They found that 3% or something like that, of the students in the program actually were writing down their goals and had plans for the future. They checked back 10 years later, and that 3% had over 90% of the wealth generated by that class.

Morgan:  Wow!

Mike:   It’s not just a way to grab money. It’s really a way to – when you write something down, you can’t escape it. It’s write there. You can keep going back to it and it’s your conscience but in a good way. It’s like when you get your values down on paper, it does a lot for you. I find the same thing too when I have a conversation with a good friend. You have all this stuff rattling around in your brain and you’re distracted. But when you actually have to say out loud what your intentions are and what means the most to you or do it in writing, it brings clarity and it brings power.

Morgan:  You’re absolutely right. It saved me from some fairly serious mental health problems I was having about six or seven years ago when I first arrived to America. I was going through culture shock. For the first time ever, my brother was my boss – I’m pretty sure he doesn’t listen to this podcast.

Mike:  Whoah, good thing!

Morgan:  It’s not going to come back and bite me. But I was really struggling with my new-found place to live. I knew I couldn’t just pick up and leave. I had a visa and that’s great. I knew I had to stick around for a couple of years, and I hadn’t been in that situation for a long time. I could always just pick up and find a new country. 

But I found myself every night waking up at around 1:30, 2 o’clock and never being able to get back to sleep. So after a month or more of getting two or three hours of sleep, my brain was just losing it. And one of the things I found was something called cognitive behavior therapy. And one of the little tricks it suggested was before you go to bed, write down what you think might be weighing on your conscience; things you’ve got to do, things you’ve got to accomplish. That way your sub-conscience, when you’re sleeping, isn’t trying to remind you of them to let you know, “Remember, you got to do this, you got to do that. You got to concern yourself with this.” They’re written down, you’re not going to forget them, it’s in place and your brain can kind of relax. It gives you a better night sleep, and then it will have a very quick, kind of snowball effect to me regaining the power of speech and not forgetting to wear pants in the pro shop.

Mike:  (laughs…) 

Morgan:  That happened. That was an awkward moment.

Mike:  Well, as long as you were wearing something sassy underneath, it’s all good. That’s what really counts.

Morgan:  A classic pair of banana hammocks.

Mike:  Fantastic! I’m visualizing – thank you!

In all seriousness, I’m very familiar with that cognitive behavior therapy and I think you should teach Psychology as well. I’ve been doing a version of what you’ve talked about forever. I found that especially when I was working so hard and I was working night and day and it was tunnel vision. And yeah, I could be a wreck, I know how you felt. You could be so exhausted but still not sleep. And I found that you just do that brain dump, you just dump all that information out on to a sheet of paper and you know it’s going to be there in the morning so you don’t have to, all night long, be trying to make sure it’s still in the chorale. 

Morgan:  Yeah!

Mike:  That’s brilliant and I’m glad you found that, buddy. That’s awesome!

Morgan:  Incredibly powerful. It changed everything. I mean, that getting over the hump and realizing what were the real issues and therefore finding Pickleball, I knew I had to be in a different business. I quickly played a couple of games of Pickleball and decided it was fantastic. Pretty soon, I was teaching and it and life has been great ever since.

Mike:  That’s such a good story. 

Morgan:  Yeah, can’t complain now.

Sponsor: CooachMe Pickleball 

 

It’s All About Perspective [15:07]

Morgan:  Alright, so let’s move on a little bit. We’ve got so much to talk about. I feel like a kid in a candy shop with you.

Mike:  Yeah, (chuckles…) I do touch a lot of bases here, so if you’re into this kind of stuff and you want to live your best life, I mean there are so many angles to approach it from. I try to hit a little bit of everything, so hopefully, something piqued your interest.

Morgan:  Oh certainly. It was chapter six that talks about perspective.

Mike:  Yes. 

Morgan:  That has always interested me greatly, and for my money, it’s kind of the key to happiness. The one thing that no one can change but me is how I view the world or how I view an outcome of, for example, a Pickleball match – it’s completely my choice and therefore I’m really the only one that gets to decide if I succeeded or not. 

Tell me a little bit about your thoughts on perspective and how it can relate to the average Pickleball player toiling on the kitchen line?

Mike:  Yeah, you know, you’re absolutely right. I think it’s interesting, a lot of the stuff in the book is stuff that we, deep down, we already know in our souls to be true. If you were to say to someone, “Well, you know what? Perspective is just so important,” and everyone will nod their heads. But a lot of times, we just get distracted. The busyness of life, the emotions jumping up in our reptile brains and taking us different places. We lose these real touchstones that keep us sane and content, and perspective is one of those. It’s no coincidence in that chapter that you refer to, that’s the chapter in which I interviewed different Pickleball pros, and you were one of them whose story I related to. The theme of that which was so interesting to me was that every pro I talked to, I didn’t specifically asked them about perspective but I got it every single time. I think that says a lot for the pros that I interviewed which are Steve Dawson, Mark Renneson, Irina Tereschenko, and the inimitable Morgan Evans. Every one of you guys had something to say about that, and not just from your own perspective but the perspective of the people you’ve met on the court. Like you brought up your older clients and how you felt that this was part of your purpose, to help them live healthier, more vibrant lives. It’s just this wonderful feedback look when your perspective is in the right place. Everyone around you in your circle, they feel it. It’s hard for them to lose it on the court when their partner has a smile and is forgiving and is supportive. It means everything from dealing with cancer, to dealing with questionable line calls. It is everything, so when you have that, your perspective and gratitude go hand in hand. You’re about as bulletproof as you can be, I think. 

Morgan:  Yeah, no one can take that away. And I’m always in awe of anyone, and I think Steve Dawson is a great example of that, and for me, Cammy MacGregor also…

Mike:  Oh yeah.

Morgan:  Just has this air about them that they are 10-foot tall and bulletproof. They’re doing what they love to do. They’ve done more than most and they’re living happy lives – content with where they are in life and in Pickleball. That’s a huge win. I often refer back to a mountain climber metaphor, you get a lot of people that really want to get to the top of Everest, and you get other people that just really love climbing. When those people that really just want to get to the top of Everest, when they finally do it, the letdown, the depression that they slip into soon after, there’s no turning back from it – versus that climber that just loves the grind, loves the climb, enjoys their life out in the rocks – that’s the winner in my book.

Mike:  You got it. And that climb is interesting if you look at that and use that as a metaphor for your spiritual journey, living an enlightened, mindful life shouldn’t be this dower, stoic, one-foot in front of the other, “I’m taking this seriously because these are such big issues” type of a journey, it should be light-hearted. I mean, the Buddhist teachers who I followed, they all have a twinkle in the eye. The Dalai Lama who I was fortunate enough to see when I was in Australia – in Melbourne years ago at the World Parliament of Religions, and just different people that I have met who have that spark. And you know what, Cammy is one of them. It’s funny, I played with her and Darren, and I know she’s busy these days, their net business is going great and she’s down here in La Costa which I can see from my house, so I can feel her presence down there. But people like that is just wonderful. They may be really busy but they always look you in the eye and have a kind word and a smile. It’s awesome!

Morgan:  Yeah, it’s those people that despite what you might think in terms of the time constraints, always take that time to make you feel like you’re someone. You’re not nobody and you’re worth a quick chat or a smile or a beer. In the case of Cammy and Darren, I must owe them four or five slabs of beer by now. It’s unbelievable. Don’t tell them that otherwise, they may collect and I’ll lose most of the extra $1,000 I’ve got.

Mike:  Okay. (laughs…)

Morgan:  They’re just the nicest, down-to-earth people, and it’s amazing when you meet those people and you realize and find out what kind of success they’ve had in life. It’s not always easy to put those two and two together. We meet and we hear about incredible athletes, world #1s, people who have done astonishing things, and then as they say, “Never meet your heroes.”

Mike:  Yeah.

Morgan:  I remember, this was probably eight years ago, seven years ago maybe, I’m in one tennis tournament, the BNP Paribas. I was lucky enough to meet both Raffa Nadal and Roger Federer.

Mike:  You probably beat them too. You’re just being modest.

Morgan:  Yeah – no, I certainly didn’t. My only claim to fame with Roger was the morning, a friend of mine, he was a lefty and Roger was training to play against Raffa. So my friend who was a lefty, needed to get warmed up so he could warm up Roger. So I warmed him up and we played a set and I beat him, and then he went to go and warm up Roger. And I was like, “If I was just left-handed, that could have been me.”

Mike:  Talk about a very tangential brush with greatness. I practiced with the guy who practiced with the guy, who practiced with the guy who practiced with the roommate of Roger Federer.

Morgan:  Well, there you go. Jeez! That’s like six degrees of Kevin Bacon right there.

Mike:  There you go!

Morgan:  What I was referring to like on that day, I briefly met him and we took a photo. But later on that afternoon, I happen to be on one of the courts next to Raffa who was practicing as well, and he started talking and we just kind of started talking. He learned my name. Anyway, the next day, I saw them both in the locker area – it wasn’t weird, don’t worry. Raffa actually remembered my name.

Mike:  Wow!

Morgan:  I thought that was the sweetest thing. Even though I’m a huge Roger Federer fan, if I was to want anyone to win another Major, it’s him. I love his style in the court. But when the next day I asked for a photo with Roger and a friend of mine, he said to me, “Alright but make it quick.” And then, skipped off really quickly. It came away with a different kind of perspective on him even though I’m sure he’s a very busy man but so is Raffa.

Mike:  Yeah.

Morgan:  Yeah, it’s one of those things.

Mike:  You know, I think that’s important too when you’re a position at the pinnacle of your sport or business or whatever it is, that you do make that time for people. It’s just an amazing feeling because I think we all want to be seen for who we are. And a lot of times, when we’re playing Pickleball, when you’re an oldster like me, you’re playing with the people and you look at us and we’re all really – we’ve got our wrinkles and our crinkles and we’re moving a little slower than we used to. But if you stop and you notice this is just a snapshot of these people and you start to talk to them, there are just amazing human beings roaming among us anonymously. There’s heart surgeons and people that have done wonderful things for humanity and just such kind souls. To me, that’s again, one of the big pluses of Pickleball, is I find having played sports my whole life and different things, I’ve never just really interfaced with people like I do with Pickleball. It just lends itself to conversation. The things that you find you about people are just lovely, it’s just fantastic. I find myself in awe so many times how humble these peple are who just want to play the game. It’s good stuff!

Morgan:  It’s beautiful. I guess that’s the kind of secondary way that Pickleball is such a social sport. I mean, obviously, when you’re on the court with people, you’re close enough to be able to have a good chat. But throughout the time you spend together, you may indeed learn enough about that person to realize this person’s very similar to me or we have this in common.

Mike:  Yeah. 

Morgan:  And now, it could be a life-long friendship. I think we all realized that as people get older and older especially men who are generally less social beings than women. If their wives pass before they do, men don’t often stick around too long.

Mike:  No.

Morgan:  But something like Pickleball is their reprieve. They get a chance to have that social interaction that very well can be the fuel that to a large extent, keeps them alive longer than if they didn’t have that.

Mike:  Yeah, and I think something interesting that actually nobody knows about, but this is your big scoop, I’m actually apparently addicted to writing Pickleball books. I’m just finishing up a follow-up book. It’s a very small book but it’s specifically about Pickleball for seniors.

Morgan:  Oh great!

Mike:  Yeah! And in it, I share some profiles kind of like what we’re talking about. And when you’re talking about how Pickleball can really save – it literally can save your life, I do have a feature about one person I spoke to and she had some real heartache in her life and as she told me, Pickleball became my refuge. And now down at the club at Bobby Riggs, she’s a fixture. She always got a smile. Every time I see her, I’m getting baked goods from her, and she’s just a beautiful person, so it really can be a life-changing thing. And when you’re unlucky enough to either be injured or away from it for a while, you really do miss it, you miss that connection because at the end of our days, nobody sits around in their final stages and think about that extra $1,000 that they have like big guys like you. They think purely about relationships, that’s all.

“Who did I meet? Who did I affect in this life?”

Maybe this is a little deep for Pickleball but that’s kind of what I do in the book. I try to mix humor and depth to hopefully make people realize that even when we’re doing as silly as knocking a plastic ball around, there is always an opportunity to connect and savor this precious life.

Morgan:  There is obviously a lot of parallels that you draw between life and Pickleball in the book, and it doesn’t take long to search the depth of your imagination to find a lot of metaphors that exist between sport and life. For me, it’s not – well, one of my favorites have got to be it’s not so much how you start, it’s how you finish.

Mike:  Yeah.

Morgan:  It’s not so much if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game, how you live your life. I’m probably never going to have more than $5,000 but I’m probably the happiest person I know. 

Mike:  Hey, like Charlie Sheen, my role model, used to say, “Winning! You’re winning!”

Morgan:  Absolutely, absolutely!

Mike:  That’s awesome! (chuckles…) 

Morgan:  Exactly. 

I’ll never forget, I met this guy. I was living in the South Coast of Turkey, an area called Beldibi. I was working at a nice resort. It didn’t seem like it was Turkey inside the resort, so every time I would go out it was always kind of a shock to the system. But one of the guys I worked with, he helped out in the recreation department. His name was “Ymir” I think. He was just one of those just unbelievably delightful, happy people. He was about 20, 21 years old – very young and he was just always a delight to be around. He didn’t speak perfect English by any stretch of the imagination. But anyway, one day, I go to work and he’s not there anymore. The next day, he’s not there again. I finally asked what happened to Ymir, and I was told that his father had passed and he was the oldest of 14 children and it was left to him to be the sole breadwinner, and the rest of the kids were all under 13 or 14, weren’t gainfully employed. But within about two days after that, he was back at work and the smile wasn’t quite the same but within a week, it was. It struck me as such a classic case of his perspective on where he was at in life and what had just happened. He was able to keep a smile on his face based on the fact that he was alive and the rest of his family was alive. He had a good job compared to many others and he had enough so that each of those children and his mother could eat at least a couple of meals a day. And he went on and kept doing his job. They promoted him and he kept being that nicest guy ever. I couldn’t fathom being in his shoes but I can now.

Mike:  That’s a beautiful story. I think the main reason I do have a little Aussie in me myself, I just love to travel. I grew up in a military family. I was in 10 different schools by the time I went to high school. I think that taught me some of the greatest lessons is to; one, be able to land on my feet evey time I ended up somewhere new. And the other was to see people from different cultures and backgrounds and just – I mean, to this day when I travel, it gives me such hope for humanity to see people that have so little and yet it sounds corny, but they have so much more. 

Again, it’s that perspective thing again. When you don’t have certain things, if you don’t have that big screen TV or that dare I say $6,000 in the bank – aim high, Morgan – you know what? You gravitate to what you can control. And what you can control again is your perspective, your appreciation for family, simple pleasures, just being with people you love and breathing fresh air. It’s a fantastic thing.

I understand your culture shock coming to America at times where our culture more than any other, I think, has lost its way a little bit in that race, in that race to acquire. I don’t want to put myself [holier] now because I was in that race, and I raced hard. Having money gives you freedom but it doesn’t give you that spirit. So we can all learn a little bit, that’s a beautiful story about that guy. I bet we could swap stories about people we’ve met around the world, right?

Morgan:  Yeah, for sure. It will be fun. We’ll do it in the next podcast, for sure.

Mike:  Oh good!

 

That Concludes Part One [29:32]

Morgan:  That concludes part one. I think we can all agree it’s already been a hell of a ride. We’ll be finishing up this interview in a few weeks. But until then if you’re not already sick of listening to me, I’ve got some good news for you – I’m getting back in the commentary booth. Realistically, I think it’s a tent but the booth is the dream. I’ll be on the mic at the upcoming APP Tour Event, the Delray Beach Pickleball Open from the 18th to the 21st of March. 

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