The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Journey of My Mother’s Son: Volume I (Many Random Thoughts from the Road.) by Dan Clouser

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

The Journey of My Mother's Son: Volume I (Many Random Thoughts from the Road.) by Dan Clouser Journeyofmymothersson.com You don't need to be a man, or a son, or even to be traveling the country in an RV to glean beautiful life lessons from reading "The Journey of My Mother's Son." Dan, along with his wife, Sandy, opens up his heart and their home on wheels to share the rewards reaped from simply stopping to look, listen and love the planet of which we're a small part. He imparts the wisdom learned from lending a hand through volunteering and serving those in less fortunate circumstances. He shows that we can gain immeasurable rewards from adopting the "enjoy the moment" attitude of a canine companion. Through his approachable, honest storytelling, he is able to shift the reader's life perspective. To get them asking themselves the important questions. To teach them that the little things are never really little at all. "The Journey of My Mother's Son" is a must-read. Beware: you may quickly yearn to put your "bricks and sticks" home on the market to join the RV community.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss well hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in thanks for being here again as always refer to the show your friends neighbors relatives Be sure to go give

us some, what is it, the referrals there on the iTunes. Go on iTunes and say, you know, type out good, wonderful things from the show. I was just looking. We got a ton of those on the show. So give us a good referral on iTunes if you would, please. Also go to goodreads.com for just crisp, see everything we're reading over there. All of our groups

on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, the big 122,000 LinkedIn group, our big LinkedIn newsletter, that thing's always popular, and also youtube.com, Fortress Crispus. Today, we have an amazing author on the show with us. He is the author of the newest book that just came out, May 15th, 2022. It's called The Journey of My Mother's Son. This is volume 1, Many Random Thoughts on the Road by Dan Clouser. He's going to be on the show with us today talking about what he's done, and he's written multiple books, so we're going to get some pretty good insight from him and his life and what he's put into his work.

After 30 years of successfully leading a nonprofit youth sports organization in Berks County, Pennsylvania, Dan Clouser and his wife, Sandy, sold their home and all their stuff in August of 2020. They now live full-time in an RV traveling the country with their golden retriever, Ukyllis. Is that pronounced right, Dan? Ukyllis. Ukyllis.

Okay. I've got, sorry, I've got the cameras right in front of the middle part of that. Working around Dan's speaking aid egg coaching, workshop schedule, they volunteer at various locations, help others, and tell stories of their travels and those they meet through blogging, social media, and podcasting. He has dedicated his life to serving God by giving back and helping others and has no regrets.

Welcome to the show, Dan. How are you? Doing great. Thanks for having me on, Chris. Thanks for coming on and give us your.com as your plugs are people who can find you on the interwebs. You can find me at journeymymotherson.com, or if you don't want to type that much out, danclouser.com.

They both go to the same site, but I did them both just because journeymymotherson.com can be a little bit of a mouthful sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, definitely. So you've got the new book out. How many books do you have? So I have three books out.

A book was Beauty of a Diamond in the Eyes of a Coach, and then that came out in 2012, and I republished it last year with 10 new chapters. So it's Beauty of a Diamond in the Eyes of a Coach, new edition. The original version is only available used on eBay and places where you can get used books now. And that really chronicles the 30 years I spent coaching youth sports and really teaching life lessons through the games of baseball and softball.

Awesome. So you're also a speaker and you also have a podcast going on. What's the podcast? Podcast is The Journey of My Mother's Son as well. And that's just an opportunity for me to... I started podcast when I was with our organization, actually back in 2012, where we'd have sponsors and alumni and stuff on.

And I really enjoyed it. So when we decided that we were going to sell everything and travel around the country in an RV, I wanted to keep telling stories of the people that we met. The whole concept behind the Journey of My Mother's Son is that my mom did this when she was in her mid forties. She took an old 1967 Plymouth style and kind of converted it into a an RV so to speak she took the back seat out and put a sheet of plywood in there and bought her a girdle reading stories of

people that she had met in her travels and I man, it would really be cool to do this in real time. Like if Ma was in the social media age, how cool would it have been for her to do it in real time? So that's why I wanted to do the podcast and tell stories of people we've met through our journey and people that we haven't met face-to-face yet, but we meet virtually and then try to connect with them later on down the road in person. Yeah, it looks like we had Sean Foley just jump in here. Thanks, Sean, off of LinkedIn. Say hello.

Hey, now we got some garbled audio from the internet, and I'm not sure if we got all of what you mentioned. You said your mom had converted a car to, we lost about a whole minute of audio there. Gotcha. Yeah, she'd converted an old 1967 Plymouth Valiant. She took the backseat out of it, put a sheet of plywood in there and a mattress made of the bed and traveled around the country, you know, just meeting people and volunteering and connecting with friends and family. Awesome sauce.

So you guys decided to do this. I had a nonprofit charity for a lot of years. And then was this a big decision to take and make or was it fairly easy and you felt like it was time? No, it was a big decision because I loved what I was doing. I mean, I absolutely loved what I was doing. We were helping kids. One of the most rewarding things about what we're doing now is being able to reconnect with some of my old players and having breakfast and lunch with them or my old players and, you know,

having breakfast and lunch with them or them coming out and meeting us in the campsite or something. So I really did love what I was doing. So it wasn't an easy decision. It was kind of a struggle. And then, you know, there,

there was a time in early 2019 where I took a couple of road trips by myself and on those road trips, it kind of hit me as to to this is why mom did it. You know, there's like this incredible serenity on the road. And when I got back, I wrote. I wrote like I hadn't written in years. And that's when it kind of hit me that, you know what, it's time for a new chapter. I did enough at that point with the nonprofit, and it was time to open up a new chapter. But no, it was not an easy decision at all.

Yeah, and I'm sure, was the wife excited to do it, or did it take some cajoling? It definitely took some cajoling. She thought that I had lost my mind when I first ran it by her. But now she is 100% in with both feet. She loves it. The dog loves it. We truly have no regrets whatsoever. You know, this RV community and living in RVs and traveling in RVs and people doing this has just been growing and growing and growing.

And I've seen the RV community. It's pretty amazing. So tell us about the book. What's inside the book and what have you shared about it? So it really is, you know, as the title says, many random thoughts from the road. So it's really a chronicle of what we were going through the months leading up to us departing on the journey and the first roughly 18 months of the journey. And whether it was, you know, thoughts of getting to election or carrying

the thoughts or, or, you know, meeting someone or getting a volunteer project, we'd blow up on volunteer work all year. We took a little bit of a thought of being on the front, you know, while we're out here. There you go. I think we had some break-up in the audio, but I think StreamYard will pick it up.

If there's anything on your computer, you can close down. Close it down. Let's see. So it looks like you, you know, you basically kind of a journal maybe to help people understand,

you know, what goes on in setting up this RV life. Is that a good analogy? Definitely. Definitely a great analogy. Definitely. Definitely. Let's see. And part of it is about your life too through volunteering and serving.

Talk to us about why that's important to you, volunteering and serving those less unfortunate circumstances and maybe how you apply that to your life? Again, I think a lot of that probably came from my mom. I mean, she was always volunteering and my dad was also very giving as well. He was an over-the-road truck driver, so he didn't necessarily have a lot of time, but he was more than willing to always make a donation or provide financial resources where he could. So I think just growing up, going and helping her on Meals and Wheels or her volunteering for an entire day at the Little League concession stand or something like that just kind of grew on me. And as I went into my adult life, the nonprofit that I'd ran for the first 20 years of it was as a volunteer before I actually became, you know, executive director and a paid staff member. So when we left, we were as well concerned as to how to live with my wife.

She had volunteered at a local dog rescue, which is where we'd gotten our golden retriever from. And when we connected with the Year to Volunteer, it really gave us a purpose to go in and help with these projects. We'll go in for a two-week period of time, whether it's at a state park or a nonprofit organization, and really kind of dig in and do different projects, whether it's painting or rebuilding trails or bridges or fishing piers. And to me, it's just, I think that's what we're here on earth to do, is to help and give back to others. And it's just incredibly fulfilling for me to be able to do that. And when you meet some of the people in these communities that you're helping and see how grateful they are for your help.

You know, we did a project in Lake Charles, Louisiana at a state park that had been closed since Hurricane Laura and Hurricane Delta had hit in 2020. And a lot of community groups and church groups had come in and actually fed us during that project. And again, to see how grateful they were when we came in was just absolutely incredible. Yeah. So what is life like in the RV? Every day is a little different. It's, you know, it's an adjustment. You know, we lived in a 3,500 square foot house and now we probably have roughly 300 square feet to deal with but it's really it really gives the appreciation of how much we don't need in life you know like when we were selling all our stuff off there were times where just like what what did we have all this stuff for you know stuff that we hadn't seen or used in years.

And even now we're actually at our one daughter's house, camped in her yard. And it's one of the places where we still have some bins of stuff, you know, that we didn't actually sell. And to pass eyes even more, like this is stuff we hung on to that we'll never need. So let's get rid of it. So it's liberating, I think you could say, you know, and I think you appreciate the little things in life a lot more when you're,

you know, living the RV life and really appreciate urges much more than things. Most definitely, most definitely. So with the, with the RV life, you know, there's a lot of work that goes into that, but you guys have a huge community for RV life, you know, there's a lot of work that goes into that, but you guys have a huge community for RV stuff, a huge community of people that, I mean, it's just amazing. Like there's Facebook groups, there's LinkedIn, or not LinkedIn groups, Instagram stuff. I mean, it's just extraordinary. And then there's a big community around it, correct? Yeah. Yeah. There's the full-time RV community is actually incredible. There's 1.5 million people in the U S that live in an RV full-time. And when I first heard that

number, it blew me away. And then when you have the, you know, the weekenders and, you know, people who may take a, you know, who are retired and may take a month or a two month, you know, trip across the country, it's even bigger. But it's one of the most giving communities you'll ever meet. I'm personally not the most handy RVer in the world, very possibly the least handy, but it's amazing that people jump in and help you out. We had an issue going into the One Volunteer project where our water pump broke coming into the project.

And when we arrived, all I had to do is mention where our water pump broke coming into the project. And, you know, when we arrived, you know, all I had to do is mention that, you know, our water pump broke and we had three or four guys who were, you know, willing to help me and show me how to change it. Luckily, one of them had a spare water pump that, you know, he just gave me and all I had to do is order it for him on Amazon while we were there. And it came in the next couple of days, but, you know, we literally lost no time, and they helped me and walked me through it. And didn't just do it for me, but showed me how to do it so that the next time I could do it myself. So it is an incredible community, without a doubt.

That is awesome, man. You know, we used to have that in our housing communities where people helped each other out. You know, my mom would send me to go, you know, get sugar or salt next door if somebody is out and, you know, they, they come over too. And of course we'd, sometimes we make dinner for our neighbors and they make dinner for us. People don't do that anymore. It's, you know, nowadays, if you knock on people's door, they go, hi, they're like, I don't know. It's, it's really kind of weird. So it's great that there's that community out there. And I've seen that, you know, one of the events we always do is I think it's called the Rocky Mountain Motor Show or Motorsports.

It's basically trailers and RVs and vans and different things from everything from camping to long-term stuff with what you're doing and like they have these little they have these little campers that they fold out into these crazy things where they got you know full-scale tents and you know this whole rack slides out that's a full you know it's got better cooking gear than i have in my kitchen you know it's like just you know another thing slides out it's got sinks and washes and showers and and i've seen these van conversions that people have done where their vans literally are probably more expensive than my house or something, you know, the stuff they put into them, you know. You look at it and you're like, oh, my God, it's like luxury opulence

that people have inside of a Mercedes Sprinter van. And the RVs, of course, you know, they go through. There's like million-dollar RVs. It's like you know, they go through, there's like million dollar RVs. It's like crazy, man. Yeah, it is. We went to the Tampa RV show back in February and it was just completely overwhelming just seeing some of the different, you know, like you said, the amenities that some of these things have. And it really is mind blowing the technology that they've been able to take care of nowadays and then what are some other things that people are going to learn from the book the journey of my mother's son there's some life lessons in there some wisdom oh yeah definitely and again a lot of

it just revolves around living in the moment again you know collecting experiences not things and you know just just understanding how fragile life is. I mean, when we, since we've started this journey, you know, we've lost a lot of people and a lot of people who had big plans once they retired and that sort of thing, and then didn't make it to that day, which really kind of reiterated for us that we made the right decision. And, you know, a lot of people we talked to, I did a podcast with another full-time couple, you know, and they'd mentioned one of the things that, you know, really drove them to finally make the decision was just the fact that they came to the realization that today

is the youngest they're ever going to be. So don't, you know, it's not like, well, we can do this next year or we can do it two years down the road because at the end of the day, we don't know for sure that we have next year or two years down the road. The book really does talk a lot about that in the moment, you know, appreciating life for what it is. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's, that's an important lesson that, you know, we, we don't have a lot of time. I've been studying a lot of stoicism lately and memento mori, if I recall correctly on my pronunciation of it. And it talks about how, you know, we don't know how much time we have and how the time is short and it gets shorter. You know, you're probably about my age where you look at life and you go, you start realizing you're in the third or fourth quarter of the life, you know, and you need to start, you know, paying attention that time, making sure you're not squandering it.

You know, we did a lot of that when we were young. I don't know about you, but I did. Did a little bit of squandering. Did the squandering stuff. Tales from Squandering is my next book coming out. There you go. Tales from Squandering. So is there any stories you can share in your book or give us a little teaser or tidbit that you can share?

Maybe what's one of your favorite stories? You know, I think I start off pretty early in the book when I talk about every journey begins with the first step. And that was really, you know, again, once we're going to and then finally put the house on the market. And, you know, that was really the first step. And that was, you know, again, every step leading up to this, it was, you know, overcoming that fear, you know? So it was like, okay, now the house is on the market. So now this is really going to happen.

And then shortly after we put the house in the market, then COVID hits. And, you know, we were literally sitting in the RV dealership the day that the governor of Pennsylvania was issuing shutdown orders for the state. And that wasn't part of the plan. You know, it wasn't part of the plan to have a mortgage payment and an RV payment at the same time. It was, you know, sell that house, buy the RV. But we had a really good opportunity on a leftover 2019 model that we wanted to take advantage of. So we're, you know, in the process of taking the house off the market until things settled

down a little bit with COVID and buying the RV with a complete uncertainty as to whether or not how long that was going to last. Was this going to be, you know, could we depend on this or was she going to get a call in a week saying, hey, remote work is dried up. It can't, you know, we've changed direction sort of thing. So that's one chapter where I really talk about, you know, the courage to kind of continue on even when it might not have made sense to continue on. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So it actually probably happened in reverse where actually remote work kind of amplified, didn't it? Yeah, and we've met a lot of people now who are not retired, so to speak, and they do have full-time remote jobs living in an RV. So for anybody out there listening who's kind of like teetering back and forth as to, you know, can I do this? Can I do this? Do I need to wait until I retire?

The answer is you can do it now because there are so many opportunities for remote work out there nowadays that the opportunities are really endless. You know, the biggest challenge as we've experienced through this podcast right now, is getting great internet. So, you know, I'm working off a hotspot, so we end up getting some interruptions there. But that's the biggest challenge, making sure we have good internet. I understand, and this isn't a promo in any way because we don't have it, but I understand the Starlink internet satellite is a game changer for full-time RVers.

It's probably done. Oh, I assume. Yeah, I guess people are doing that and it's getting better and better. That's the Elon Musk system, right? Yes. Yes. We have a couple friends who do it who swear by it and they do a lot of

YouTube stuff and that sort of thing. So they're doing a lot of downloads. So we'll see if that might be the next chapter for us. Yeah, that sounds like it might work out really well. You know, internet, that's the biggest thing for me. I can work anywhere in the world as long as I have internet. But if I don't have, you know, we have problems. Yeah.

So you've got to have internet. You know, I've got to be able to do the podcast. And then, you know, everything I do is on the internet, my email and everything. I can afford to be out. When I've done events or traveling, there are times where I'm off the grid or I'm asleep sometimes. You've got to sleep for eight hours. Then you wake up and you've got all these people on email going,

where are you? People do sleep in the middle of the night. When you have international clients, they're like, what are you doing? You're like, you know, it's sleep. We're sleeping here in the U S right. Kind of stuff. We do that every now and then. I know it seems like it's ethical to what we should do in America, but what do I know? But yeah, it's, it's pretty interesting that way. And, and how the whole thing works, anything more you want to tease on in the book? Again, it's, you know, the number of people that I know personally who've read it have enjoyed it. I think it really is an insight

into how to live your life different than the social norms that have been established for us, you know, and really understanding that, you know, you don't have to, you know, wake up and go to a nine to five, you know, and I think this, this whole realm of what you and I are in today, you know, being able to do things virtually and, you know, podcasting and all that stuff has just opened up a lot of doors and a lot of opportunities that, you know, tell you don't have to go to the office every day and you can, you know, you can go out and you can live your best life. What we've seen so far in this country is just mind-blowing, and we've only scratched the surface.

I mean, we've been to 39 states so far, and most of those we didn't spend enough time in. We're like, well, we've got to go back and see this, this, and this. So the bucket list keeps getting longer. But man, there's just so much, so many beautiful things from incredible people. I won't stress it. There are, you know,

let's face it, our country is a mess right now. But if you look for awesome people, you will find them. And that's one thing that's certainly has proved to us that we've met just so many incredible people from incredibly awesome people, you will find them. And that's one thing that's certainly improved us. We've met so many incredible people from incredibly diverse backgrounds and differing political opinions.

But at the end of the day, they're great human beings. And I think that's something that we need to, you know, look for and concentrate on more as a society than what we do today. Yeah, I mean, community, it's interesting how you have to leave a suburban community, a subdivision community, to find community on the road. Isn't that interesting? It is because we were very involved. And yet, we never felt like we were as much as we did. You know, we were with some chamber networking events, you know, because my position was not profit and stuff like that.

But this community, we absolutely feel like we belong here. It's incredible to put it into words and really experience it ourselves. There you go. There you go. Has the wife kernels to put it into words the experience there you go there you go as the wife finally learned to love it uh she loves it as much as if not more than what i do she really does there you go there you go well that's everyone comes around change sometimes it's hard for everybody and this is a you know a significant change, especially when you've lived your whole life in a house. But I know so many people love the freedom of it. They love going places. One of our plans was one of my plans, our plans.

I was speaking, my business is R. You call my office and we're the international headquarters of the Chris Voss Show. And they're like, how many people work there? But I just learned that a long time ago. You do that business. It's always we, of course, for, I think for 20 years, I had a business partner, 15 years, 13 years, I had a business partner. So I used to have a wee brain, but thankfully I don't anymore. But one of my biggest plans, well, my dogs are kind of an R or we, maybe that's it. I don't know. But one of the plans was, is to travel around. And when I go to events or when I speak, I travel around.

And I wanted to stop at some of these different, and you're welcome to steal this idea. I would stop at different, you know, those towns that used to be the freeway towns, you know, where everything would go through the town. But, you know, then the freeways came and circumvented the town. And now they've kind of become these little ghost towns. And so my idea was is when I go to events or speaking like CES show or CDS show or different shows, on the way there, I take my time and I stop at some of these places and maybe go into some of the, you know, those wonderful little greasy spoon diners that are around forever and talk to people, maybe interviews to people on the podcast. Like, why do you still live here? And what,

what, what motivates you? And what's, what's life like here, you know, and kind of get a piece of the old, you know, American mainstream.

And so that was kind of one of the ideas that I had planned. And to me, I think it's more, it's more interesting. You know, I haven't been able to see so much of the world as I wanted and go visit things and then take your time like i hate i hate racing the events it's like get on a plane race fly to south by southwest being four days on you know get on a plane get the hell out of town you know all that stuff i'm like i would really like to be able to

drive somewhere and take like i don't know three or four days to drive there, stop and see stuff, take a nap whenever I want. And then, because they don't like that when I undress on the plane, take my shirt off and curl up in a blanket on the floor. Evidently, that's against the rules. And then take my time on the way back where I don't have to hurry. And then also, you're not paying for hotels. And cost-effective-wise, I figured out between hotels and flights and putting my dogs in daycares and stuff, it's extraordinary what I spend.

And I'm like, geez, I could buy an RV, you know, and have it paid off in a year. Not sooner. Well, this has been pretty insightful. This has been pretty insightful, Dan. Good. I hope that you do decide to do the Sprinter van thing or an RV thing at some point because it is great. And the taking your time is really the part that sold me. When I took those trips in 2019, it was the first time in my life where I took my time because we traveled as an organization and it was just like you.

We're traveling places with 50, 60, 100 kids in tow at times. So it was always a very regimented schedule as far as, you know, we've got to be at this place at a certain time and we have, you know, an hour for the kids to eat and get back on the bus. And that's what sold me was being able to take our time. And we do travel interststates but when you get off on those secondary roads like you're talking about that's when it's that's when it is most enjoyable because the the things we've found the the most rewarding are the things we did not plan

at all where we're on you know some secondary you know u.s something highway in the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden here's this barbecue joint like you said the something highway in the middle of nowhere, and all of a sudden, here's this barbecue joint. Like you said, the little hole in the wall, and they got parking for the RV. So we roll in there, and there's 14 seats total in this place, and just the best food and people you'll ever meet. So that is by far the most attractive thing about this journey, is being able to take your time and do exactly what you were just talking about. What people might say, the real America, the heartland of America. There you go. Yeah.

Yeah, no doubt. Well, this has been pretty insightful to have you on Dan. And thankfully our internet held up through most of it. Give us your.com so that people can find you on the interwebs. Absolutely. It's again, Dan Clouser.com or journeyofmymotherson.com. They both are the new place. There's blogs on there and there's a speaking page

if anyone is interested in having me come out and speak to an event. And, you know, everything you need to know about my book, everything you need to know is there. There you go. And be sure to pick up the book, guys. It's available on Amazon wherever fine books are sold. The Journey of My Mother's Son, Volume 1, Many Random Thoughts from the Road by Dan Klauser. Dan, thank you very much for coming on the show.

We really appreciate it, man. Thanks a lot, Chris. There you go. And thanks, my audience, for tuning in. Be sure to go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss, youtube.com, 4chesschrisvoss, and all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. All those crazy places the kids are playing.

Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.