An Army of Normal Folks - The Power of Dreams (Be Real)

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

For our “Shop Talk” series, Coach Bill Courtney talks about the necessity of dreams, how they’ve built America, and the danger of unrealistic dreams.Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Riverbeat Music Festival is May 3 through 5. It's held downtown in 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 River Beat Music Festival, May 3 through 5th, and it's got huge acts like Jelly Roll and the Fugees playing and a ton of others. If you're interested in learning more about it, you can visit riverbeat.com and check out Memphis in May. It's not too hot. It's a cool venue. Your 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 generous sponsors.

I'm Solea Mosin, and I've covered economic policy for years and reported on how it impacts people across the United States. In 2016, I saw how voters were leaning towards Trump and how so many Americans felt misunderstood by Washington. So I started The Big Take DC. We dig into how money, politics, and power shape government and the consequences for voters. It's an election year, so there's a lot of focus on the voters that TikTok is reaching.

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Someone who's covering the market, I'm often very worried about an imminent collapse. So I'm thinking about it quite often. Listen to the big take on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 26 year old as a sales guy. And by 31, I was the vice president of sales of a lumber company that I started with and when I when I first went to work in the lumber company, I couldn't tell you a

Piece of red oak versus people peeps a poplar. I didn't know I didn't know anything Except that if I learned the lumber business and sold more of it anybody else I could make more money and that's what I need to did because I had my Wife leasing 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 31, I was the vice president sales of the company. And candidly, we grew the size of that company sales significantly, really quadrupled.

At 31 years old, I was looking at a privately held family company, great company, people were good to me. I had kids getting into college and I was worried that I was going to wake up at 40 years old and be maybe a victim of nepotism. Not that that was projected by any means but reality is reality and I was worried about it. 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 a $100 billion 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 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 Classic American Artwoods about nine months later. I was $17,000 in the bank on a wing and a prayer.

There's a whole other 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 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. 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 I'm a psychology major and I'm gonna botch this but I'm gonna

do it as best I can because I'm going back 30 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 all in a class. The other group, same class, same everything. The only difference was in the fourth stage of sleep, which is REM sleep, which stands for rapid eye movement, which is when you dream, your eyes go into REM. The other stages of sleep, 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 REM sleep, they were awakened. So they weren't allowed to dream. They were allowed to get as much sleep as they could. And certainly they, because they were shaken during REM sleep, instead of getting seven or eight hours, maybe they got five or six hours of sleep. But the key was they only woke them during REM 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 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 never 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 Arshay Cooper on an Army of 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 Sears Tower. Arshay Cooper lived 15, 20 blocks from Sears Tower,

but because his neighborhood was so dangerous, he didn't dare walk those 20 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 20 blocks from his apartment to be able to see a tower 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 them to live and not become psychotic socially socially, and culturally. The power of dreams is phenomenal. If I didn't have the power to dream, my company wouldn't exist. I would have never coached up in NASA's. I would have never won an Academy Award. I'd never wrote a book and I'd 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 on 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 20 blocks from your home without getting mugged? Guys, an army of normal folks has a lot of work to do. And if just some of that work is enabling people in our midst 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

and 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, 205 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 6'1", 6'2", 205 pounds, you are not playing defensive line for Alabama or for that mind, probably any Division I 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, Prince sees. 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 of Alabama, anywhere in the SEC and probably any Division I football team at 6'1", 205. 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 didn't say I wanted to become Georgia Pacific. I just wanted to start a lumber company. So as you're thinking about maybe working your community and you're thinking about maybe working in your non-profit or you're thinking about your own children. Remember these three things. 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. I'm Salaya Mohsin, and I've covered economic policy for years and reported on how it impacts people across the United States. In 2016, I saw how voters were leaning towards Trump and how so many Americans felt misunderstood by Washington. So I started The Big Take DC.

We dig into how money, politics, and power shape government and the consequences for voters. With new episodes every Thursday, you can listen to The Big Take DC on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Big Take from Bloomberg News brings you what's shaping the world's economies with the smartest and best informed business reporters around the world. We cover the stories behind what's moving money and markets and help you understand what's

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Oh, my gosh. Congratulations. That is very, very exciting. And that's just the beginning. We'll also be joined by podcast host Jay Shetty, Hillary Clinton, Renee Flemming, Liz Cheney and many more.

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