29-Year-Old Comedian Refuses To Grow Up

0:00CBAS Matar 29 based out of Austin and this is Financial Audit. What do you do for a living? So right now, currently unemployed. I was a bartender working the service industry for about 10 years. And as less than a month ago, I left my job. So right now. Okay. Yeah, I left my job. No, no, no, no. God, I've never been fired from any of my jobs. Why did you leave your job? It was a little bit of a lot. I've been with the company for like 10 years. So I've pretty much had my ups and downs with them. I've kind of low-key built a career there that I didn't want to do. I didn't want to serve tables forever.

0:35And I had been through like over the course of 10 years, maybe like five different rebuilds and different teams and different store locations all within the same company. And I kind of just started to see what was coming down the pipeline as far as like a new general manager was in the picture. A new head chef was in the picture. Regional was breathing down the necks. And I was like, all right, you know, my boss who since I transferred, I'm actually from Miami. So I transferred from Miami to Austin. my boss who got me the transfer ended up leaving the company for another company that paid him more and then the boss who accepted me and took the transfer in austin she left the company as well for another company okay so once i saw i had no ties anymore and i didn't have to make sure i look good for anybody i put my two weeks in i wrote them a nice letter of resignation thanking them and uh yeah you know and i was like all right i'm out i'm gonna figure this thing out i'm in a new city you know i do stand-up comedy that's the other thing that i'm really trying to do i make some money off of comedy but definitely not enough to like cover uh consistent bills month to month so well if you want to help me cover consistent bills month to month please consider subscribing because we're really close to 100 000 subscribers everyone is awesome thank you so much so that's cool yes what do you bring in what do you think now from comedy from comedy Oh, God.

1:54Jesus. I mean, I can tell you in the past 12 months, I've done probably maybe a thousand dollars off of comedy, possibly. But that's the. So how were you eating? Well, again, this is I've only not been had a job for about a month now. So before that, I was probably bringing in on the books somewhere like 30 ,000. Well, how have you? OK, a year? Yeah. She's even, I mean, in Austin, that's hard, but how are you eating now? Well, my wife, now wife, she's got a pretty stable job and we've always been like half and half with everything. So we've always like rent's been half, bills have been half, groceries or whatever.

2:35Oh, so she's helped subsidizing, pursuing the dream. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's like not a sugar mama, but like a splendor mama. She's like, I'll give you a little bit till you figure it out. But now what does she do? She's a wedding planner and an event coordinator. She brings in how much a year? I would probably say somewhere north of like 60, but I could be, I'm not entirely 100 % on that. It's still 15 ,000 hours below the Austin median household income. Yeah. She knows. She's definitely like, I got to get to 100K. Like that's where I need, that's where she wants to be. And that's what she's.

3:09It's definitely more livable than the zero. I thought you were at for a second. Sure. No, no, no, no, no, no. So married. So now we have combined finances. Yes. Okay. So that definitely changes the picture a bit. So this comedy pursuing 29 career change going into an incredibly competitive field. Right. Absolutely. Austin might be a town to do that in coming up with Joe Rogan and everything. I mean, I think it's kind of just the luck of the draw. Not really luck of the draw, but like anybody can make it anywhere. Like I started out seven years ago in Miami and I saw, you know, people leave Miami, make it somewhere else.

3:47I saw people from Miami kind of bubble up and make it in Miami. So I've seen different. And then, of course, listening to different comedians and podcasts and listening to books, you hear everyone has like this really weird way of just making it. So, I mean, I don't bet all my marbles on Austin, but I know it definitely doesn't hurt to be able to be in front of a new crowd. Well, so comedy is one of those things, kind of like a musician, right, where you don't make money until you're one of the very few who make it. Right. Right. Right. What is your plan for the remaining decades of your life?

4:20Have you thought about that? So primarily with comedy, the good thing about it, it's kind of like you pick how far you want to take it. You can do the Kevin Hart route and sell out arenas night in, night out and make millions. Or you can do like a local club comedy scene, make a few thousand bucks on the weekend. You do four weekend spots. You got four to six thousand dollars depending on your club. I mean, I've heard of clubs that people make a deal with the club and they end up making like, you know, close to 10 ,000 a weekend. And these aren't even like you most likely have not heard of these comedians, you know, and they're making close to 50 ,000 in a month just off a club.

5:00Well, making a thousand hours in the last 12 months, how far are you allowing yourself to take it before we're like, all right, regroup, time to go to your career? I think I also don't go into it thinking like this is solely going to be my bread and butter. I mean, I've been doing it for so long that I kind of know that it's not. It's a side hustle. Yeah. Like, it's not even so much a side hustle. It's, like, the primary one, but I know it's not the one bringing in the money. But that's, like, how I ended up getting on backstage was through that, where I was like, okay, let me shop around and look at what, like, other people need as far as, like, voiceover work and as far as, like, production crew work.

5:36I haven't done production crew per se, but I have done a lot of the manual labor stuff and things like that of different productions. So not looking at comedy ever being my main source of income, at least not to the 10, 12-year mark where it's a little different now. That's where you kind of got to let it sit a while before you start getting ROI on it. So what do you plan to do for the monies? uh production work you know trying to do the voice over the the the commercials the okay so you're not choosing something that's not overly highly competitive i mean for i think yeah the short answer is yes because at the end of the day that's like the thing i've been working on for seven years i haven't been working on commercials or working on these things i have the capabilities and a skill set to do other things.

6:29So you've been doing it for the last month. How has that gone? Well, thankfully, I was able to save up a lot of money before I made the move. You know, I didn't just up and, you know. How much did you save up? I'd probably say like, give or take like$2 ,000. Nothing crazy. Just enough to hold me down for a few months. You know, figure it out. If that. I think that, I mean, the marriage is what's keeping it afloat. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I lived on my own for three and a half years running pretty much that same schedule. Like running that. The reason why I'm making like$30 ,000 is because.

6:57Even if we're talking in three years, though, Austin's essentially doubled in cost. Yeah, for sure. Like Miami was expensive and like we have these things called deficiencies. Fair enough. Which are like not heard of here. They might be called something else. But essentially what it is, super illegal. Somebody has a house with an extra room that they don't use. They break down the wall, make a private entrance. And you pay that person, in my case, with$600 a month. And you give them$600 a month and you have utilities and you have everything included. but and they come in all shapes and sizes and mine didn't have like a kitchen so i had to kind of like you know hot plate toaster oven i had no kitchen sink so i had to wash my dishes in the shower or wash my dishes in you know the bathroom sink yeah and stuff like that there was no living room it was it was all one space with everything in it and i lived there for three and a half years but what i pretty much would do was yeah i got by just pretty much like i got a pen and paper and said like all right how much are my bills and how much do i need to make month to month and i sat down with my boss and i told him like i'm pursuing this comedy thing so and i was at this point me and my boss had created a reputation where we both knew how we worked with each other i was reliable i was one of the hardest workers and like in the ranking system i was a first rank server so i went up to him like after him seeing what i can do and being like this is what i want to do and he was like dude no question like i see how much you hustle so whatever schedule you need just write it down and I'll make it happen.

8:20But now, of course, you're in a partnership. Right, right, right. So can't just be full on your own. Yeah, not at all for sure. What is your current living situation? In what sense? Where you live and stuff. Like I live in a 2-1, not too far from here. I'm like in South Austin. And she essentially just takes care of the rent then? As of now, like she right now takes more care of like the going out stuff. Like we want to go out and have a drink or we want to go out. Cause I'm the first one to be like, yo, we can just stay home. You know what I mean? Like we don't need to go out and do this. So she's like, all right, bro.

8:54Like I'm, I'm with you and I want to enjoy your company. Like I don't care. Have you guys done the full combining money thing yet? Where like your money is her money. Her money is your money. Yeah. Yeah. We have, so we have, um, and I didn't want to use her numbers or anything. So these are strictly my numbers. Yeah. Um, but before we moved here, we had, uh, talked about moving to Austin for a few years. And finally, the last year, what we were doing was putting away a hundred bucks a week, both of us. So over the course of a year, you know, we made a nice little cushion to move over here because we knew all the stuff we weren't going to bring.

9:27And we're going to have to buy new stuff and all that. And then right before, not right before, but four or five months before we left, I proposed to her. So we had an engagement party and then people that combined the engagement party with the goodbye party. They gave us some money as well. So we had that money stashed away. And yeah, we do have like she has her money that she handles. I got my money that I handle. And then we have a joint account where we both put in what we can. Or like when we're paying rent, we take from there or we put money back from there or whatever the case may be. All right.

9:58So we'll loop back to the career thing in a second. But we have a couple of accounts. Okay. Okay. Let's go. How much is in your checking account? Because it doesn't have a balance. My checking account, I believe as of yesterday, is probably like$2 ,500. Okay. And you both manage separate checking accounts at this point? Yes. What's going on? I'm Arch Manning, Viore athlete and college quarterback. Whether I'm running, training, traveling, or just unwinding at home, I love doing it in my core shorts from Viore. With a breathable boxer brief liner, they're quick to dry, super versatile, and stand up to even my most intense training sessions.

10:29Plus, they come in three inseams and a ton of colors. Ready to try a pair? Go to viore.com slash arch and get 20 % off at checkout. I think you're going to love them as much as I do. That's V-U-R-I dot com slash A-R-C-H and get 20 % off your first order. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. Not only will you receive 20 % off your first purchase, but enjoy free shipping on any U.S. orders over$75 and free returns. Have a great day. So$2 ,500. Yeah, that's a comfortable balance to have in there. We had$5 ,536 come in, which is mostly payroll, which does not exist anymore.

11:09exactly but 4932 went out how were we gonna have anything similar to that coming out when no money is coming in um i think a big part of it is like and not not thousands of dollars but i know a big part of it is like going out to comedy shows and like having a beer and you have one beer and that's seven bucks and you have 214 you tip on that you're walking 17 18 bucks and then you're doing four or five shows you know what i mean so you multiply that you're losing you're not losing i I wouldn't say I was losing, but spending hundreds of dollars on like going out, drinking, things like that. Whereas now it's a little more before I knew I was going to get the money, especially working as a bartender.

11:49You get cash in hand. You're kind of like, ah, I barely feel this. You know, like the 30 bucks I'm going to spend on drinks, you know, I'm not going to feel it. So that's another thing to having cash directly in your hands is completely different from like having a wait for a paycheck every two weeks. And like, I gotcha. Lots of zells going out. Lots of Zell's and Venmo and then paying off cards as well. Yes. I always pay my card off every month. Well, that's good. My wife taught me that. She got my credit score up. Again, how do we pay off cards every month without money? Now you guys are combined, so I guess she could, but...

12:25No, I mean, I still... Nervous about that at all? I did this with a game plan of like, I'm going to have three months of figuring this out and doing this and doing that. Like, worst case scenario, bartending is not rocket science. What is this? That is my savings account. Okay, you said$2 ,000. I see$5 ,000. I thought you said check-ins. What's in my check-ins? Oh, earlier I asked how much was saved up. Oh. You said$2 ,000. Before I made the jump to leave the company. That's what I meant. But it's$5 ,000 now. Yeah, it's$5 ,000, but the cushion I gave myself before is that$2 ,500 that's in the check-in.

12:59Where'd the money come from? Just the remaining paychecks? Yeah, hourly. And then I have a long history with this company. But long story short, I always save up my PTO and I don't use it. Yeah. So when this does happen, I can cash it out. Oh, sure. And I can count on that money coming in. So when was your last day? The 16th of December. Okay. So leading up to right before then, you know, Salt Traders, Amazon, Nordstrom, Nordstrom, Audible, Apple Subscription, Nordstrom, Nordstrom, Joann's, Bluefin, Sushi, Torchy, Spotify subscription, Native Hostel, Native Hostel, Lyft, Ride, Nordstrom, Wendy's, GoPuff, Amazon Order, Amazon Order, Amazon Order, Amazon Order, Nordstrom, Waterburger, Nordstrom, Slackers Brewing Company, McDonald's, Anderson, Milk, GoPuff, Nordstrom, Lavica Street, Uber, oh, this is a Postmates, Amazon payment, Amazon Order, Nordstrom, Nordstrom.

13:57That's something that can't even come close to continuing. Well, I mean, the Nordstrom stuff won't, because that's where I ate. That's why Nordstrom was there. Then there's big spends on Nordstrom because of gifts. You ate at Nordstrom. Yeah, Nordstrom has restaurants. I was a bartender and server at their restaurants over three locations. But yeah, that's where a lot of the Nordstrom spending came from and then the Amazon stuff was a lot of the last minute gift shopping. Sorry, can you curse on here? Sure. You know, gift shopping and stuff like that and trying to get the holidays ready so like a last minute of all that between, but I did, I definitely did go to Nordstrom and go buy some gifts, but for the most part, Nordstrom is food.

14:39American consumerism. Yes. That's fine. It's even though you're preparing for a whole career change that makes another money, we're still spending, spending, spending on those holidays. Spending, spending, spending. Yeah, man, you got to make them people happy. So what's the hustle to collect now? What is the day-to-day in your life? Right now, I'm just doing, you know, going on backstage, sending out cover letters, sending out auditions and applying to different, you know, weird gigs i've always come up on some weird gigs that's just been my what has the response been like so far um i mean i got one here with yourself i got another here with another lady that i'm working on a uh she's she's trying to launch some sort of service and she kind of wants some like test dummies i would say so you know making a few hundred bucks there with her doing that and then um there's another website i've looked into it i haven't really applied to anything but it's an ambassador website so they freelance ambassadors and i did a lot of work with the dolphins and the marlins back in miami so i have that ambassador side of me and like that skill set how many hours a day are you working right now right now i mean technically i'm not making any money you know yeah but working or trying to get work trying to get work probably i would say like let's say five five hours give or take whether it's right me writing comedy me sending my clips out to comedy clubs.

15:59Then why don't you get another job? Five hours is not a lot a day. Right. When you only have$5 ,000. Of course, this will prolong the runway. If you had another job that was bringing in something, it would prolong the runway of you being able to bring in more money before your savings was drained. You're married, but before your savings was drained. Yeah. Right now, I kind of have this bohemian outlook where I'm just kind of like... you know, I'm, I'm not from the standard school of thought or anything like that. So I just look at it like I left Miami for a reason and I came to a new city and I'm not going to do the same things or look for the same opportunities that I had in Miami in a new city.

16:40Luckily, money doesn't care about schools of thought. Uh, no, it doesn't. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Um, but for the most part, that's, that's what I'm looking at is just kind of like, you know working on stuff there's also it's a bunch you know it's writing the comedy it's going out to do comedy and how do you walk into a company and go hey uh because this is pretty much what i did when i moved here uber eats and stuff you're ordering a lot of yeah things where you make your own i used to do postmates as well before a few years ago um i think the real the best scenario for like those sort of things would be ride sharing like uber is gonna be the best bang for your buck and all that sure uh but again not my car i'm sharing it with my with my wife which i'm sure she wouldn't mind i know that yeah but that's why i'm like nah i don't like using other people's cars for those sort of stuff like i barely like driving to gigs with her car any reason you don't have a car because you know it's a car infrastructure place so you kind of have to have one yeah uh i really wanted so when i moved here i had my car but due to like the state inspections my car wasn't gonna pass it the emissions it was that bad yeah it was it was pretty bad i had it checked in in miami by a mechanic and i told him like you know is this gonna pass the because we don't have emissions tests over there or anything uh and the guy was like i mean it will if you put like three thousand dollars in it and i've had this car for 10 years and i was like all right like i'm definitely not dropping three thousand dollars on this and then my fiance was like yo let's just share my car she works from home yeah so i was like all right That works I mean it took It's still taking some Drive her job While she's working then Huh Well no She can't work Like she can work From her car But she needs a reliable Like wifi No You work Yeah In her car While she's working from home Yeah no I'm not gonna take her car Like that What It's not taking We're not taking No no no But like I don't like Unnecessary driving In her car Although she's the one That goes like Yo this is our car Isn't making money necessary Yeah but again Just a school of thought where I'm from, it's kind of like, I'm going to try to do this first before I can.

18:44Like, I've never put money first. Money's never been a motive of mine. It's the reason why I've been doing comedy for seven years. Do you want to be able to retire? Yeah. And I know that for a fact in comedy, if you do it well enough, there is that. Well, we don't bank on that. I mean, that's like trying to bank on that. I bank on that. I've invested seven years of my life. Realistic humans don't bank on that. That's why. I'm not from that. like you know it's not every day that you tell somebody like yo i'm not gonna go to school and i'm gonna pursue stand-up comedy people look at you sideways i've done it long enough i've had enough conversations with people where they're kind of like and then they don't know that you can make 10 g's in a weekend at a mediocre club well yeah but what if but that's such a that's such a what if there's like a million people who want to make it what do you mean there's like a million people who want to make it in all these different things we hear about the stories of the people who do make it what happens when statistically right right right it's just like someone doesn't make it what what do they do they're not able to retire because they've put all their time into this so granted i i don't want to sound like these uh these little gurus and whatnot but like i don't think of like what if i don't make it like i genuinely don't have that thought in my head that's not a healthy way of thinking though is it because that's not realistic it's not in the real world it is how that's not in the real world kevin hart you don't think so much told him like what if well of course of course absolutely of course but what about the 99 who don't again we only hear about the people who do make it that's what i just said for sure uh i mean i think i'm part of that one percent that does that will make it a thousand percent isn't it more mature to be prepared for the statistical likelihood of not i think that's safe and i've never played immature isn't it mature no what are you saying people who do things that are reckless are immature?

20:30Yes. Like Tony Hawk is immature? What do you mean? Immature? That's his career. I mean, that's not immature. But that's reckless, is it not? He's throwing his life out there. He's risking it. I bet you he has all these insurances on and all these measures. Before he did all that, though. I bet... So when he first got into it? You think he was like, man, I gotta stay at this McDonald's because like, no. Like, I'm sure when Tony Hawk was like, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. And that's the type of mentality he had. I don't think he was thinking about what if this happens and what i genuinely don't like well not necessarily we don't know he could have been working he could have been working during that whole thing and okay if he was going through a situation where he uh was making no money and he was just jumping into something like that that could you know put his life in danger i would say of course that is an immature choice but he just became well it's not just luck because it came from talent but he became one of those where he did get lucky to make it that doesn't make it a mature choice necessarily i mean i just see it as like playing it safe isn't always the best bet like yes you can have for sure you can have the money and you can do that i for a short time i worked for tesla i worked for tesla for four months i was a sales associate or a sales whatever it's not associated, something else.

21:52No commission, no nothing hourly. And I mean, I was working doing the grown up nine to five, the real mature. This is a real good story about Bronx and his dad, Ryan, real United Airlines customers. We were returning home and one of the flight attendants asked Bronx if he wanted to see the flight deck and meet Captain Andrew. I got to sit in the driver's seat. I grew up in an aviation family and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me of myself when I was that age. That's Andrew, a real united pilot. These small interactions can shape a kid's future. It felt like I was the captain. Allowing my son to see the flight deck will stick with us forever.

22:27That's how good leads the way. Her thing, and I was miserable. And I was like, this is no... And everyone around me was miserable too, because we would talk about it at the lunchroom. Like, there's no way I'm doing this tomorrow, right? And I'm like, you're gonna do this? And you'll hear people... And this is that I was on the lower tier. I didn't even have half the responsibilities that big heads had. And those guys weren't even that big head. And I would just be like, no, man, like I'm not going to trade in

22:59my freedom, my liberty, my way of feeling good. Again, I'm also coming from an aspect of like, I went up to my manager and told him I need to work weekdays only, no weekends, no nights. I'm only working days. Well, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Do you understand how those are two polar opposite ends? There are middle grounds there between someone who is miserable and to them, the person who is absolutely miserable, the job that show up to that job every day and they say, oh my goodness, I'm so miserable at this job. Then they go home and they don't apply to a single job. I say they're essentially acting like a child.

23:35If they are miserable in that situation, now there are times where you are busting your butt to get another job. And if you're not getting that other job, then okay, fine. Yeah, I would complain about it too because they're at least putting in the work to get that other thing. But the vast majority of people who are just complaining, we've all worked with them. I've worked in the service industry for years. Right. If they just complain about the job and then they don't do anything to actually fix it. Right, absolutely. So like I don't take that to heart very well in that Tesla situation. I mean I also saw I also see not just saw but I also see the handcuffs people put themselves in when they're like well you're gonna make$70 ,000 a year and if you do xyz not only gonna make your 70 but you're gonna get another 20 on top of that and on top of that 20 you're getting you're gonna get stocks and you're gonna be able to buy in at half price and you're gonna be able to do all this so now people are go oh man like I want to leave but I'm so tied up here I'm so tied up to this job that I can't afford to leave it.

24:33Everyone puts themselves, not everyone, a lot of people that I've met have put themselves in positions where now they can't move because if they move, there's too much at risk. And that over the course of my life, I've put myself in positions where I can kind of bounce in and out, figure it out. I mean, I've washed cars, I've sold products at Walmarts, Tesla, Marlins, Dolphins, radio, bartending, serving, I've done all that. but I've never put myself in a situation where I'm like confined and I can't make a move because I know they offered me an assistant manager position many years ago early into my comedy career and I was like okay so you want me to go on salary to get paid for 40 dollars I mean for 40 hours but work 60 not have my nights not have my weekends and what what happened to my comedy it slowly starts trickling away because now and then being in the service industry working with so many managers i the higher up you go the more the more contained you are in that place the harder it is for you to break away from it because now you're the gm now you got to handle the the the front of house you got to handle the back of house you got to handle the head chef i mean no one's forced to take a job for sure i mean there's priorities but we're also talking about nobody walks into that versus working zero hours a week for sure a thousand percent but i i do see the way people put themselves into this corner and I just kind of go like, I'm not going to do it.

25:55A lot of that mindset, though, they're just kind of uneducated about the job market in general. Like they could find a position at a competing company or within the overall marketplace that could, you know, maybe they'll start a little lower, but they'll be able to accelerate in a position they care about and actually enjoy. Now there's always caveats to that. It could be the, you know, 2008, 2009, all over again. Then that's much harder to leave a job. Right. But that is not the vast majority of the history since the industrial revolution in the country. Right, right. I didn't know that. They're just wrong about them locking themselves in.

26:26It's just what I see. It's the, you know, you got family. They're just uneducated. Could be, 100%. It could also just be like they don't want to start at zero. Like, you know, how many companies are hiring GMs off the rip, you know? Well, exactly. That's why I said it's situational to the overall economy. So it's like now you have kids, right? Because let's just use my example. I was 10 years with the same company on and off every now and then. but overall 10 years with the same company. I started when I was 19. I'm 29 now. My life has gone so different than what I thought of in the first, you know, what I could have thought when I was 19.

27:02Now you take those same 10 years and you apply it to somebody who was 29 and is now 39, who at 29 had no kids. 39's got three kids. Now they got health insurance. They got a wife or a husband depending on it. They got their kids depending on it. They got that income depending on it. Now, how do you tell that person just bounce, just look for something else when you've built what you've built at this company because there's also like non-tangibles or i don't even know if i'm saying that right but things you can't measure of like the people you work with the manager you have the situation you're in how close this job is to you like yeah i've seen people who maybe take a less pay cut but now the job is so much further and it's so much more inconvenient for them because there were certain perks that you couldn't necessarily then they chose the worst job that doesn't make sense but but again scenario they're not doing their research and asking the right questions in the interviews and lots of things.

27:49I don't know if that's all the way true. And if it's further, then use Google Maps before you take the job. Yeah, but I still don't think that that's... There's always caveats. You can always get a place and have a bad manager that you didn't know. That's 100 % true. Yeah. But if anyone feels they're 100 % locked in a position that if they go to another company that they're going to lose everything, then they're just wrong. I mean, for sure. I totally get that. But from my experience, I'm not talking about anybody else. From my experience, from what I've seen, I've had those conversations with people where they're kind of like, man, I hate this job.

28:22I hate coming here. But I just have so much tied up into it that I really can't just bounce. And again, me, thankfully, I do want kids, but not right now. I don't have any kids. I don't have any major debt over my head. I don't have, you know, when I got my car, I paid it off in seven months. So I wouldn't have to pay a car note. and I knew that I was going to take this weird, did I know I was going to be a comedian? No. But I knew it was going to be in the entertainment industry. I wanted to do radio. I wanted to do that sort of thing. And ignorance to not knowing that I could go to, at that point, I was going to the community college of Miami.

29:00I didn't know that I could go into the production department. I had no idea that was a thing. I thought like, well, if you don't go to school for science or math or social studies like or English you're not going to get anything like I didn't know that and I went to a technical school called Miami Media School yeah I don't regret it because the people I've met the lessons I learned I was young and naive but I definitely would have done it over by doing it through a college program and then moving into the university realm but that wasn't the way that the cards fell in my favorite you know I took a more um rogue route where I was a basketball announcer at the college then i was um i would do like pep rallies from my old school and like voiceover work for them when i graduate and it was just like these weird very weird way of doing stuff no we do a really bad job in this country and preparing people post high school of what they're all what the reality is yeah yeah yeah do you have any depth from that community college um right now i do but i'm up in debate uh 7500 what's in debate the forgiveness no no no No, no.

30:07There was something else before that. Another one of my classmates told me about it. It was a, it's a specific application where they, you give them like what, you tell them exactly what happened to you in your scenario and like the school. And if they find that you were misled or something. But this was a community college. No, no, no. This one, no, no, no. Oh, sorry. This was a technical school. Oh, sorry. This was a private? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Private technical. Okay. So you get certificates. You don't get a degree. You get a certificate. You get a diploma. and one of my former classmates told me that he submitted this application and it went up for dispute and he won and he got it taken off so right now have you pursued that yet i have and i've checked on it and they still it still says pending and it's been going on three years yeah and i tell them like but do you have a response yet and they're like no all i can say is like i see what you see this is what's on my end and it's just pending under review definitely wouldn't bank at that but if you were led astray i know there's lots of things like that and then those colleges everyone has had their debt forgiven for those kind of colleges if anything like that actually didn't happen then i hope that gets forgiven because obviously that's yeah it's preying upon young it's it's miami man it's a city built off cocaine what do you think you know like how do you who do you think is going to rise to the top which is why i wanted to get out of there i just felt so misrepresented so i just kind of see it like it's another one of these schemes they do man they sell you dreams and go like oh you you want to be the next radio person like here you go read this script and then you do this little demo and then they're like you're great so 7 500 is that private debt or federal um i believe it is federal if i'm not mistaken good because that's what would be forgiven i don't know if you'd be able to get yeah no no no i got i got a grant and then i got a federal loan okay yeah so i have that with a federal any other debts No.

31:58Just that. But you'll want to get a car at some point, probably. Yeah, absolutely. That's one of my goals. Renette wrote that in my goals journal. A goal for how long? Within 12 months. I mean, I don't think in December I'm going to get a car. Absolutely not. But I think somewhere along the lines of June, August, I'll have a better understanding of what my finances are looking like. Don't get me wrong. June comes around. I still ain't bringing no money. my wife ain't gonna be like well go out there and you know meet joe rogan like that's not gonna be the play like i told her we both came into agreement like at the end of the day i know how to bartend i know how to wait tables and well how long are you giving yourself before you like real world scenario i'm saying three months i'm saying months isn't bad yeah no no i'm giving it three months because at the same time i'm reinvesting like you know with those thousand dollars that i made from comedy this past year i reinvested it in building my website uh i bought you know a little bit of merchandise nothing crazy just some t-shirts i had made um i reinvested that money into headshots and then ultimately invested some of that reinvested some of that money into backstage where i was looking for these sorts of weird gigs and a kfc tale in the pursuit of flavor the holidays were tricky for the colonel he loved people but he also loved peace and quiet So he cooked up KFC's 499 chicken pot pie.

33:24Warm, flaky, with savory sauce and vegetables. It's a tender, chicken-filled excuse to get some time to yourself and step away from decking the halls. Whatever that means. The Colonel lived, so we could chicken. KFC's Chicken Pot Pie. The best 499 you'll spend this season. Prices and participation may vary. Supplies last. Taxes, tips, and fees extra. Jobs and things like that. So three months is what I'm giving myself. If I can break even, that's, you know, not horrible. But again, definitely not the goal. Okay. I appreciate that. I think that's a relatively mature way to look at this. For sure.