Hey, everybody, it's Bill Courtney and we've got shop Talk number seven and today we're going to be talking about the power of dreams with parentheses around it that says, be real, the power of dreams. Be Real. But before we get into shop Talk, I want to tell you about an awesome music festival that's actually led by a friend of the podcast and a friend of mine, and it's in my hometown of Memphis. This year, the inaugural river Beat Music Festival is May three through five. It's held downtown and tom Lee Park along the Mississippi River, and y'all, they have completely recently renovated tom Lee Park and it is as fine of a venue as any place in the country. And to the east you've got the skyline of Downtown behind you, and to the west you've got the Mississippi River, and as you sit in the park, you're looking up a bluff. It is really a cool venue. And my buddy is starting this Riverbeat Music's Festival May three through fifth, and it's got huge acts like Jelly Roll and the Fujis Play and a ton of others. If you're interested in learning more about it, you can visit Riverbeet dot com and check out Memphis in May. It's not too hot. It's a cool venue. You're just steps from world famous Bill Street and downtown Memphis should be a lot of fun. Shop Talk number seven, The Power of Dreams. Parentheses keep it real. Right after these brief messages from our general sponsors, all right, everybody, we're back with shop Talk number seven, The Power of Dreams. So here's the deal. I started in the lumber business when I was twenty six year old as a sales guy, and by thirty one, I was the vice president of sales of a lumber company that I started with. And when I first went to work in the lumber company, I couldn't tell you a piece of red oak versus people peaks of poplar. I didn't know grid. I didn't know anything except that if I learned the lumber business and sold more of it than anybody else, I could make more money. And that's what I need to do because I had my wife, Lisa and kids at home, and I needed to make more money. And so I went to work. Little by little, I sold more, kind of learned the craft, moved up, and like I said, by thirty one, I was the vice president sales of the company, and candidly we grew the size of that company's sales significantly, really quadruped them. And at thirty one years old, I was looking at private we held family company, great company. People were good to me, the kids getting into college, and I was worried that I was going to wake up at forty years old and be maybe a victim of nepotism. Not that that was projected by any means, but reality's reality, and I was worried about it. And so I wanted to be able to buy in and own a piece of the company and have some type of parachute. And was fully prepared to spend the rest of my life working for that company and growing it and doing the best I could for it. But the family at that time was not ready to bring in any outside folks from family, so I was in an impasse. I was making more money than I ever thought i'd make. I was the vice president of one hundred million dollar company, moved up, hired a bunch of salespeople, was respected and treated well and paid well. But was worried about the future. And so I started thinking, could I do this for myself? Where would I get the money. How would I do it? What about Lisa and the kids? If I have to take a major step back to start my business. And so I went to Lisa, talked about it a bunch, and at the end of the conversation, Lisa said, you know what, you were broke when I met you, and we can be broke again. If that's your dream, chase it. So I started Classical American Hardwoods. About nine months later, I was seventeen thousand dollars in the brank on a wing and a prayer. There's a whole nother story to all that, but that's really not what I'm talking about the power of dreams. I will tell you something that I recognized about the power of dreams going through that whole process. Is this. Nothing in the world that has ever been created by a man, nothing didn't start out as first a dream, a thought, an idea. The light bulb, the wheel, skyscrapers, the car, the atom bomb. All of it was an idea. All of it was a dream. All of it was something that somebody initially, at some point, thought maybe I could make that happen. This country was a dream. I mean, you just think about anything that human beings have ever created. It first started with a thought, with a dream. The power of dreams is phenomenal because everything we have, we are, and will become in the human race will start as a dream. Another interesting thing is I'm a psychology major, and I'm going to batch this, but I'm going to do it as best I can because I'm going back thirty years when I was in school. But they took a bunch of people in a test and the control group, they monitored their brain activity while they slept for seven days and they got normal sleep seven to eight hours, and they monitored their brain activity. Put them on a class. The other group, same class, same everything. The only difference was in the four stages of sleep, which is ra EM sleep, which stands for rapid eye movement, which is when you dream, your eyes go into r EM. The other stages asleep, you're really in and out of kind of light consciousness. But the true heavy sleep happens when you dream. And so they monitored the subject group while they dreamed, and when they met with RM sleep, they were awakened. So they wren weren't allowed to dream. They were allowed to get as much sleep as they could, and certainly they because they were shaken during RM sleep. Instead of getting seven or eight hours, maybe they got five or six hours of sleep, But the key was they only awoke them during r EM sleep. After three days of this, many of the people in the test group literally could not function. After four days, they had some of those people start entering stages of psychosis. And after the fifth day they actually called off the experiment because they were worried they were going to do everlasting damage to the people that they were studying. Five days, just five days without dreams, and they were worried about the long term safety of the human beings that weren't dreaming. So not only has everything that's ever happened in the history of the world first started with a dream, the flip side to that is, as human beings, if we do not dream, we literally die. We literally become psychotic, we literally can't function, We literally die. The power of dreams is phenomenal. Not only on the positive side, does it create everything that we ever have and ever will be. But without dreams, you die. What does that say about a six year old born in poverty in our country, who's never heard a lullaby, who's never seen somebody go to work, what is their dream and how can they dream? What is their access to the things that they dream for? I remember interviewing r. Sha Cooper on an Army Normal Folks some months back, and I remember him telling me, growing up in West Side Chicago that his big dream was to see the Seers Tower. Marche Cooper lived fifteen to twenty blocks from Sears Tower, but because his neighborhood was so dangerous, he didn't dare walk those twenty blocks just to see Sears Tower. What does it say about a kid whose dream, his dream, now his big hope for his life is to be able to walk twenty blocks from his apartment to be able to see a tower that's in the very city he lives in. How do we expect people like that to become doctors and lawyers, and how do we expect him to live and not become psychotic? Socially and culturally? The power of dreams is phenomenal. If I I didn't have the power to dream, my company wouldn't exist. I would have never coached a manassas, I would have never won an Academy award, I never wrote a book, and I'll never be talking to you today. That's the power of my dream. Another power of my dreams was when my mom was going through divorces and I was dealing with all kinds of dysfunction in my life. I dreamed of a wife and a home and children and consistency in my life. It's another dream that became reality. The power of dreams is phenomenal. It saved my life, it built my business. The power of dreams is also dangerous for those who don't have the power or ability to dream. It becomes a psychosis in our culture and our society. So what does that say about us? Don't we have to do things to enable people in our culture to at least be able to dream, And don't those dreams have to be something more than being able to walk twenty blocks from your home without getting mugged. Guys, an army in normal folks has a lot of work to do, and if just some of that work is enabling people in our mythst to be able to dream so they can raise themselves up and find something for their own lives. I just think it's incumbent upon us to understand the power of dreams, to understand the danger of not being able to dream, and to recognize what it's doing to our culture and society, and do something about it. The last thing the parentheses be real. I remember I had a kid played football for me, not at Manassas, at another school. He was six foot, two hundred and five pounds and was one of the best defensive linemen I've ever coached in high school. The guy was quick off the ball, he had what's called great takeoff his stance. He had a flat back, he was really loose in his ankles and in his hips, quick hands, and was just strong and tough. He was awesome. And his dream was to play for Alabama. And y'all, I don't care how good a high school football player you are. If you're six one six two two hundred and five pounds, you are not playing defensive line for Alabama, or for that mind, probably any Division one school. And when he came to me with his dream, I was careful to talk to him about being realistic, get real, the power of James Princes, keep it real. Sure, if he dreamed to play college ball, there were places that he could play college ball, but there were simply limitations that were not going to allow him to ever play for University Alabama anywhere in the SEC and probably any Division one football team at six one two oh five. So instead of saying, dude, you're stupid, the dreams aren't any good, we talked about being realistic with those dreams and a variation of those dreams that would make sense. Because here's the thing. The third thing about a dream is everything that has started and exists did start with a dream, and people who cannot dream will get sick and become psychotic. But the third one is you don't ever want to set anybody up for failure by allowing them to have an unrealistic dream, because that failure may cripple them if they're chasing something that's impossible. When I started my lumber company, I did and say I wanted to become Georgia Pacific. I just wanted to start a lumber company. So as you're thinking about maybe working in community, and you're thinking about maybe working in your nonprofit, or you're thinking about your own children, remember these three things. We need to We need to understand that everything that ever happens in the world does start as a dream, as a thought. The inability to dream will turn to psychosis and death. And we need to understand that Achieving a dream starts with having a realistic goal and dreams in place. But if we do that, amazing things can happen in our lives and the lives of those around us. And I am living proof of the power of dreams. That's shop Talk number seven. I hope you'll think about it. I'm Bill Courtney.

Hey, everybody, it's Bill Courtney and we've got shop Talk number seven and today we're going to be talking about the power of dreams with parentheses around it that says, be real, the power of dreams. Be Real. But before we get into shop Talk, I want to tell you about an awesome music festival that's actually led by a friend of the podcast and a friend of mine, and it's in my hometown of Memphis. This year, the inaugural river Beat Music Festival is May three through five. It's held downtown and tom Lee Park along the Mississippi River, and y'all, they have completely recently renovated tom Lee Park and it is as fine of a venue as any place in the country. And to the east you've got the skyline of Downtown behind you, and to the west you've got the Mississippi River, and as you sit in the park, you're looking up a bluff. It is really a cool venue. And my buddy is starting this Riverbeat Music's Festival May three through fifth, and it's got huge acts like Jelly Roll and the Fujis Play and a ton of others. If you're interested in learning more about it, you can visit Riverbeet dot com and check out Memphis in May. It's not too hot. It's a cool venue. You're just steps from world famous Bill Street and downtown Memphis should be a lot of fun. Shop Talk number seven, The Power of Dreams. Parentheses keep it real. Right after these brief messages from our general sponsors, all right, everybody, we're back with shop Talk number seven, The Power of Dreams. So here's the deal. I started in the lumber business when I was twenty six year old as a sales guy, and by thirty one, I was the vice president of sales of a lumber company that I started with. And when I first went to work in the lumber company, I couldn't tell you a piece of red oak versus people peaks of poplar. I didn't know grid. I didn't know anything except that if I learned the lumber business and sold more of it than anybody else, I could make more money. And that's what I need to do because I had my wife, Lisa and kids at home, and I needed to make more money. And so I went to work. Little by little, I sold more, kind of learned the craft, moved up, and like I said, by thirty one, I was the vice president sales of the company, and candidly we grew the size of that company's sales significantly, really quadruped them. And at thirty one years old, I was looking at private we held family company, great company. People were good to me, the kids getting into college, and I was worried that I was going to wake up at forty years old and be maybe a victim of nepotism. Not that that was projected by any means, but reality's reality, and I was worried about it. And so I wanted to be able to buy in and own a piece of the company and have some type of parachute. And was fully prepared to spend the rest of my life working for that company and growing it and doing the best I could for it. But the family at that time was not ready to bring in any outside folks from family, so I was in an impasse. I was making more money than I ever thought i'd make. I was the vice president of one hundred million dollar company, moved up, hired a bunch of salespeople, was respected and treated well and paid well. But was worried about the future. And so I started thinking, could I do this for myself? Where would I get the money. How would I do it? What about Lisa and the kids? If I have to take a major step back to start my business. And so I went to Lisa, talked about it a bunch, and at the end of the conversation, Lisa said, you know what, you were broke when I met you, and we can be broke again. If that's your dream, chase it. So I started Classical American Hardwoods. About nine months later, I was seventeen thousand dollars in the brank on a wing and a prayer. There's a whole nother story to all that, but that's really not what I'm talking about the power of dreams. I will tell you something that I recognized about the power of dreams going through that whole process. Is this. Nothing in the world that has ever been created by a man, nothing didn't start out as first a dream, a thought, an idea. The light bulb, the wheel, skyscrapers, the car, the atom bomb. All of it was an idea. All of it was a dream. All of it was something that somebody initially, at some point, thought maybe I could make that happen. This country was a dream. I mean, you just think about anything that human beings have ever created. It first started with a thought, with a dream. The power of dreams is phenomenal because everything we have, we are, and will become in the human race will start as a dream. Another interesting thing is I'm a psychology major, and I'm going to batch this, but I'm going to do it as best I can because I'm going back thirty years when I was in school. But they took a bunch of people in a test and the control group, they monitored their brain activity while they slept for seven days and they got normal sleep seven to eight hours, and they monitored their brain activity. Put them on a class. The other group, same class, same everything. The only difference was in the four stages of sleep, which is ra EM sleep, which stands for rapid eye movement, which is when you dream, your eyes go into r EM. The other stages asleep, you're really in and out of kind of light consciousness. But the true heavy sleep happens when you dream. And so they monitored the subject group while they dreamed, and when they met with RM sleep, they were awakened. So they wren weren't allowed to dream. They were allowed to get as much sleep as they could, and certainly they because they were shaken during RM sleep. Instead of getting seven or eight hours, maybe they got five or six hours of sleep, But the key was they only awoke them during r EM sleep. After three days of this, many of the people in the test group literally could not function. After four days, they had some of those people start entering stages of psychosis. And after the fifth day they actually called off the experiment because they were worried they were going to do everlasting damage to the people that they were studying. Five days, just five days without dreams, and they were worried about the long term safety of the human beings that weren't dreaming. So not only has everything that's ever happened in the history of the world first started with a dream, the flip side to that is, as human beings, if we do not dream, we literally die. We literally become psychotic, we literally can't function, We literally die. The power of dreams is phenomenal. Not only on the positive side, does it create everything that we ever have and ever will be. But without dreams, you die. What does that say about a six year old born in poverty in our country, who's never heard a lullaby, who's never seen somebody go to work, what is their dream and how can they dream? What is their access to the things that they dream for? I remember interviewing r. Sha Cooper on an Army Normal Folks some months back, and I remember him telling me, growing up in West Side Chicago that his big dream was to see the Seers Tower. Marche Cooper lived fifteen to twenty blocks from Sears Tower, but because his neighborhood was so dangerous, he didn't dare walk those twenty blocks just to see Sears Tower. What does it say about a kid whose dream, his dream, now his big hope for his life is to be able to walk twenty blocks from his apartment to be able to see a tower that's in the very city he lives in. How do we expect people like that to become doctors and lawyers, and how do we expect him to live and not become psychotic? Socially and culturally? The power of dreams is phenomenal. If I I didn't have the power to dream, my company wouldn't exist. I would have never coached a manassas, I would have never won an Academy award, I never wrote a book, and I'll never be talking to you today. That's the power of my dream. Another power of my dreams was when my mom was going through divorces and I was dealing with all kinds of dysfunction in my life. I dreamed of a wife and a home and children and consistency in my life. It's another dream that became reality. The power of dreams is phenomenal. It saved my life, it built my business. The power of dreams is also dangerous for those who don't have the power or ability to dream. It becomes a psychosis in our culture and our society. So what does that say about us? Don't we have to do things to enable people in our culture to at least be able to dream, And don't those dreams have to be something more than being able to walk twenty blocks from your home without getting mugged. Guys, an army in normal folks has a lot of work to do, and if just some of that work is enabling people in our mythst to be able to dream so they can raise themselves up and find something for their own lives. I just think it's incumbent upon us to understand the power of dreams, to understand the danger of not being able to dream, and to recognize what it's doing to our culture and society, and do something about it. The last thing the parentheses be real. I remember I had a kid played football for me, not at Manassas, at another school. He was six foot, two hundred and five pounds and was one of the best defensive linemen I've ever coached in high school. The guy was quick off the ball, he had what's called great takeoff his stance. He had a flat back, he was really loose in his ankles and in his hips, quick hands, and was just strong and tough. He was awesome. And his dream was to play for Alabama. And y'all, I don't care how good a high school football player you are. If you're six one six two two hundred and five pounds, you are not playing defensive line for Alabama, or for that mind, probably any Division one school. And when he came to me with his dream, I was careful to talk to him about being realistic, get real, the power of James Princes, keep it real. Sure, if he dreamed to play college ball, there were places that he could play college ball, but there were simply limitations that were not going to allow him to ever play for University Alabama anywhere in the SEC and probably any Division one football team at six one two oh five. So instead of saying, dude, you're stupid, the dreams aren't any good, we talked about being realistic with those dreams and a variation of those dreams that would make sense. Because here's the thing. The third thing about a dream is everything that has started and exists did start with a dream, and people who cannot dream will get sick and become psychotic. But the third one is you don't ever want to set anybody up for failure by allowing them to have an unrealistic dream, because that failure may cripple them if they're chasing something that's impossible. When I started my lumber company, I did and say I wanted to become Georgia Pacific. I just wanted to start a lumber company. So as you're thinking about maybe working in community, and you're thinking about maybe working in your nonprofit, or you're thinking about your own children, remember these three things. We need to We need to understand that everything that ever happens in the world does start as a dream, as a thought. The inability to dream will turn to psychosis and death. And we need to understand that Achieving a dream starts with having a realistic goal and dreams in place. But if we do that, amazing things can happen in our lives and the lives of those around us. And I am living proof of the power of dreams. That's shop Talk number seven. I hope you'll think about it. I'm Bill Courtney.