One thing that I like to do, whether I agree with you or disagree with you, is I like to highlight my content creators. So I always want to give props, I always want to give more visibility to the people that put themselves out there. And I want to give credit to the people that put themselves out there just because it’s a hard thing to do. I’ve been living my life like an open book for a long time, so I understand what it feels like to get support, to get pushback, all of that. It’s very unique. But content creators are my heart.

My bad chasers and content creators are my heart. So without further ado, I want to introduce my friend Paul right here. Paul, what’s up Paul? Hey man, how’s it going? Pretty good, I can hear you pretty good. So Paul, I did a review video on you. Let me mirror myself really quickly so that I could be looking that way. I did a review video of you and you gave us a little bit of information. I want to bring the people in that may not be familiar with what’s going on here. I did a review video of you specifically speaking about being laid off and then you gave a little bit of context about how you were feeling and I called you lazy.

I called you lazy. Paul came back and he did a response video explaining why he didn’t feel as though he was lazy and he gave a little bit more context. But instead of us going back and forth and rehashing the past, I want you to give me your perspective. So I’m gonna ask you a different a few different questions and then we could just let the conversation flow however it flows. Is that cool? Yeah, fine with me man. Okay, so first and foremost, give a shout out to your YouTube channel. I want to bring visibility to what you got going on.

So if the people can go over there and check it out, if they like it, they’re more than welcome to subscribe. If you can mention your YouTube channel before we get started, that’d be cool. Yeah, my YouTube channel is Jal Panos. There’s not really a specific niche. I’ve just been kind of making random videos to see kind of what resonates with me and also the audience which happens to be my videos are getting laid off for right now. But in any case, yeah, my real name is Paul Janos. I wanted to kind of make a really cheap way to differentiate it from my real name, you know, just in case for right now.

I am looking for work. So I don’t want to like, you know, have those necessarily cross paths. But like I like I said in my older video, if a recruiter or something did somehow find my YouTube channel, I hope they would see that. I’m not a degenerate. But in any case, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So what is what is the story? Because you said that it was some context that I missed, but we can only go based off of face value, right? What is the story? Of course. So I just I just went on a little trip right around New Year’s and I got back and my company wasn’t really doing well.

For a while, it was it was kind of like a slow decline. And I always took it for granted because I was an engineer. And, you know, I, my job was pretty chill. You know, I showed up, I did my time, whatever. But then I just all out of nowhere, I didn’t have any like foresight or anything. My boss, like, you know, called me in for a meeting. And and then like, but there was an HR person as well. Which means, you know, like, obviously, anyone incorporating that kind of knows what that means.

So then I just kind of happened all at once. But like, he was like super regretful and like supportive and everything. Like everyone was like kind of shocked and stuff. So like, they weren’t exactly happy to lose me or anything. So that that’s basically just how old are you? I’m 26. How long were you working at this company? Five and a half years. And but that specific team for two and a half. I guess half of it now. Well, yeah. And I had just gotten promoted like six months before that. So one of the reasons why I was critical of you, I believe, again, and then, you know, obviously, context matters.

And this is one of the reasons why I want to get you up here in order for you to and feel free to go at me or hold me accountable or anything like that is because you express how you don’t even like doing what you do. So it’s just so. Yeah, like I chose my major as like a kind of like a means to an end, like, but at the same time, that being said, I don’t like hate coding. It’s just I’ve been kind of like thinking about like, you know, longer term, I could see myself not liking it in the future.

You know, like a lot of software engineers will end up getting burnt out by the industry just in general. And like, I’m still young. So I’m just trying to like explore my options. So the things that have really been kind of speaking to me is this the content creation world in general, and that there’s like a lot of different like skills in that like videography, photography, video editing, just the YouTube channel, all that stuff. And then just sales, because I’ve seen like a lot of people that can get good at sales can make their bag.

Not that that’s easy. But in any case, like, I never really used to be a people person growing up, but like, getting older and stuff working on myself, I’ve gotten more confident enough to make the YouTube channel. So I kind of see myself, why don’t you think that I understand what you go through? Well, I guess, well, I guess what I was referring to is just the context of the software engineering grind. Some people in my comments said that you have tech experience, which I didn’t know, because I didn’t do my due diligence on your channel at all.

But yeah, do you do you have tech experience? I do I actually went to community college first, and then I transferred over into a major university. The reason that I did that was because it was cheaper, obviously, in order to get the general education requirements done. And then transferring over into a major university, I wind up working for the University of Michigan as a software engineer. And what that allowed for me to do was get them to pay for me to go over to the major university or pay for my tuition, once I transferred over into the major university.

And so then I graduated with my software engineering degree. But more importantly, and then I went over from there, and then I worked for software engineering from a bank, and then I started my own companies and stuff like that. So I understand the grind. What I want to transition over into is UX UI. I think that UX UI was a much better transition for me just simply because I like the designing aspect of it. I like the understanding the user working with the users. But also, it was an opportunity for me to also leverage my software engineering experience to communicate not only with the stakeholders, which included obviously the project managers, the scrum masters, and I’m sure that you worked in an agile environment.

But also, I was kind of the go-between between the developers and them because developers often at times somewhat have a reclusive personality and they don’t like to communicate as well as maybe the project managers or the product owners or even the managers in a higher up. So it was an opportunity for me to be able to bridge that gap and then leverage that to get higher up in corporate America. So that’s the pathway that I took. But while I was doing it, I was also working on my own companies. And then on top of that, content creation was a longer-term play.

Right? So I leveraged content creation in order to bring more visibility to myself, which ultimately led to me getting a higher promotion and moving further up in corporate America. But then I also leveraged that user experience and also my understanding of what happened in corporate America to bring that into content creation and bring some of those same practices, some of those same methodologies, even the way that I schedule my time in order to make sure that I get the most out of this experience and I’m also able to promote myself within content creation and leverage my experience in order to continue to level up.

So that’s my pathway. But one of the things that I understand about that is that it’s still a competition. You expressing, and this is just my opinion and you can correct me if I’m wrong, you expressing your lack of interest and the pathway that you’re taking in order to be successful while not also leveraging the opportunities that you have in order to build on other things that you have going on outside of what you’re doing in corporate America is one of the reasons, in my opinion, that you don’t have something else going on in addition to what you were doing at your job.

Am I off about that? Well, I mean, I’ve had, like, I guess the YouTube channel has become kind of a side hustle because I’m close to monetization. But like I said from that, like, my, what am I, how do I wanna word this? The, my distaste for this, like the general interview process of the field is something that I’ve struggled with for a long time. But like I can, I’ve experienced, and you as well, now that you’ve given me the context of your background, like what it’s like on the other side of that.

And like the actual job, I don’t mind doing, like I can get good at and whatnot. But the actual like interview process is what’s always really kind of irked me. And like sometimes it’s on the easy, because like it depends on how, how you’re grilled, like what kind of technical questions like they’ll ask you and stuff. Like sometimes it’s I, I think I view the process as reasonable if they ask me stuff that isn’t super challenging. But then sometimes they’ll ask me about some obscure data structure that I haven’t seen since I was literally in school, nor have had to use.

And there’s, I’m sure you might be familiar with leak code, but a lot of those like puzzle type, software problems and stuff that are more reflective. Because right now you’re just talking about a job, right? But the way that I’ve structured my life in particular is that I always reverse engineer exactly where I want to be. So I paint the picture of where I want to be, right? And then I reverse engineer how long it’s going to take for me to get there or where I want to be based off of the pathway that it’s going to take for me to get there.

And that doesn’t matter whether it’s corporate America, whether it’s business or whether it’s content creation, right? So I know I have to hit certain milestones in order to get to that place. It seems like right now you just existing, right? You’re doing a job because that’s what you have to do, but you’re just kind of winging it trying to discover yourself. In my opinion, the discovery process happens through the work. So you don’t really know what you want until you experience it. You probably didn’t even realize that content creation was a thing for you until you started to upload to YouTube and you started to get feedback and seeing that it was something that you could do successfully, right? And so the laziness part of it is the mentality.

You don’t have nothing to do with whether or not you’re going to work every day. And life is a competition. Life is literally a competition while you’re sitting there loathing the idea of what you do for a living and somebody else that’s salivating over the opportunity that you could probably be getting. And that’s my sentiment. It’s not to rag on you, but it’s kind of to motivate you and push you and even maybe make you upset at the idea that who is this guy that’s talking negatively about me or who is this guy that’s saying that I’m lazy? Prove it.

Because I don’t care about the job. I don’t care whether I’m shoveling rubber dog doodoo or if I’m in tech and professions or whether I’m vice president or director or become CEO. I want the money so that I can do what I want to do when I want to do it. And I think that that’s where your motivation should be. Now how you get it and whether or not you like the job. I think that the problem is that you identify yourself by what you studied in school. You more than what you did for a living.

You’re more than what your profession is. You’re more than what where your bachelor’s degree is. You’re more than where you went to school. Who you will be defined by as a man or the opportunities that you have will come based off of what you accomplish in his lifestyle. You know, in his lifetime. And I just think that you’re too smart. For somebody like me at 42 years old to outwork a person that’s 26 years old, I think that I’m very valid in calling you lazy. You out there in Columbia trying to discover yourself instead of grinding and pushing yourself.

You said that you save for a house and you spending your savings on a trip. Like what do you want out of life? What do you really want to accomplish? What do you want to do? I’ve been career. What do you want to travel? What do you want to drive? Do you want a wife? Do you want kids? Do you want your kids to ultimately go to the greatest universities? What does that look like for you? My version of success is just being able to, like you said, like do what you want.

And I mean, my career was always just kind of like a means to an end. It’s like a way to do that, you know, a somewhat stable, like, you know, wage, maybe above average, because of that’s just tech. But like, I’ve been like really like contemplating, like, you know, is there other ways to like achieve the same thing? And that’s like half the reason why I made a YouTube channel, because everyone online that I’ve looked up to over the years have at some point screwed the nine to five and went all in on content creation, and then sent it like, I’d like to think of my trip right now, not necessarily as a waste, because like, I’ve been trying to like document it and experiment with the whole like travel vlogging thing, because some people have gotten really successful with that.

So it’s not like I’m just here, like screwing off, per se, and I’m like doing the things that like lighten me up. I think that that’s great one in the content creation. And I think that you should use it to market yourself. And I think that you got a great career in it. And the fact that you’ve been open and, you know, sharing your experiences, I think that that’s a great way to continue to build a community of people around you. But what’s the long term play? Because I’m gonna tell you, it’s hard.

100% I can already see that like, like, I mean, it was met. I don’t know if I have to be honest with you. I don’t know if I have the balls to go all in on it, which is why I’ve been I’d like to get another job. And while I while I’ve been down here, like I’ve been talking to people every all the time, maybe not the past week, because I’ve been off the grid. But like other than that, like I’ve been literally talking to recruiters and stuff all the time. So I’m just I’d like to get another I think you got the balls to do it.

Honestly, just because it’s scary, like, because I’ll have to live off of well, more so than now. But like for real live off savings. And just, you know, basically, why can’t you do both? Why can’t you do content creation and have a have a full time job? Oh, I could, I kind of still want to like I want to get another job because I have a small amount of student loans that I want to knock on the tail. And I wouldn’t like to have something like real income coming in to kill that.

And then when I’m debt free, then I could say, you know, actually rethink things. What what criticisms do you have of me that I or what, what do you think that I got wrong about you? I mean, you took my video at face value, which I mean, I can’t blame you for. And I know other people did as well. And like, and I’ve rewatched the video like since then, and I can totally see how I could come off as like, you know, an entitled, maybe stereotypical Gen Z, if that’s how you want to word it.

But I just kind of like when I saw that, and I was just like, it’s just like this to get where I am, even though like I am unemployed right now and stuff like, but I just grinded really hard. It’s in general, like through school, even in my job and stuff. Even when the job wasn’t necessarily something I wanted to do or whatnot, I’d always just put my head down and dive in. And I kind of miss that in a weird way. And I don’t think that’s honestly, bro. I think that the reason I think you’re so comfortable.

You’re too smart to not be what you think is a grind is the reasonable expectation for somebody like you. That’s the minimum. That’s the minimum that you can get, bro. And the only reason I say that is because you’re too talented. And I can tell just by the way that you communicate and how you talk about certain things, because I look for the context and what people say, I don’t pay attention necessarily to what they say as much as I pay attention to how they say it, what they say, how they communicate, and all of that.

No, I paid attention to when you was talking about your server jobs. I paid attention to when you was talking about how you came up and all of that stuff. And so I believe that you’re too talented and you have too much opportunity in front of you to not take advantage of it and give every single thing that you have in order to be great. For you to be regular would be a disappointment to me. No way in the world that I would expect for you to just be regular or just to be relaxed.

I expect you at 26, you should be absolutely destroying where I am at 42. And I’ve been incredibly successful in my lifetime. And you have so many gifts, bro, and you’re smart. And I think that you have the work ethic. I just don’t think that you push yourself as much. I would guarantee you today, as a guy that is unemployed, but have so much insight information, degreed and all of that, I would guarantee you that you probably can’t account for your 24 hours the way that you should, the way that you’re supposed to every single day.

No way. Sometimes, sometimes that’s true. But I mean, this week is the exception. But I mean, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. That’s half true. Well, what is half true? What’s half true? Because like when I’m trying to like work on things like I mean, like the main thing that’s been occupying my time outside of looking for a job is like a YouTube channel. So I put a lot of time into like learning how to like edit the videos and clip them up and stuff like that. Okay, so just a job all in itself.

How long you sleep? Uh, six to eight hours. Okay, so let’s say eight. I mean, you got 16 more hours. How do you account for the other 16? I prioritize fitness on a usual day. I try to work out one, two hours a day. Okay, fair enough. And then the rest of the day is just trying to work on, you know, either applying like I said, applying to jobs or the YouTube channel. 14 hours for the YouTube channel. You got to justify 14 hours to yourself, not to me, but to yourself. 14 hours, seven days a week.

Assuming that you work out every day and that you sleep at eight hours a day. You got 14 hours on your calendar. And you’re telling me you utilize them as effectively as you can. Because you’re not spending 14 hours applying to jobs. And you’re not spending 14 hours working on YouTube videos. Because if you’ve spent that amount of time doing it, then you would be employed, number one, and then also you would be pumping out videos every day. You see why I use the word lazy though? Because lazy isn’t necessarily to say that that’s what your personality is.

But lazy is basically saying that you’re not utilizing the full capacity and you’re not taking advantage of the things that people would kill to be in your position to do. 14 hours, seven days a week. You got the greatest opportunity. You young, you know what I’m saying? You smart, you vibrant, you got a full head of fucking hair. There’s no reason why you should not be winning at the highest level, bro. At the highest level. I had a mentor and he wound up passing away at 53 years old. And we used to have these conversations on the phone all the time.

And he used to tell me, he said, Anton, at the time I was like 39, 40. And he used to say Anton, there’s no way that you’re going to sit here and let a 53 year old man outwork you. And it’s not about grinding. It’s not about, because I think that a lot of times we get caught up in the terms and the hustle culture and the tick tock videos and what people are saying. And sometimes we get influenced by other people that saying, Oh, I got laid off or whatever, man, you’re not like them.

You’re not like these. I see lay off videos all the time. You ain’t like them. You better than them. And it’s okay to say you better than people. But if you better than them, that means you got greater expectations. I have greater expectations because I got other people following me. I got to be an inspiration for the people that come behind me. I got a daughter that I got to make sure it is never as Biden for student loan forgiveness. And I think you got it, bro. I just think you need to take advantage of it.

It’s people like me. I would kill to have some of the skills that you have. I got where I got, not because of my talent, but just because I endured long enough and I worked my ass off. I work my ass off every day. This studio that you see behind me, I rent this. This is my studio. I’ve invested literally tens of thousands of dollars in this place. I live the life that I want because I earned it, not because nobody gave it to me. And so what I’m telling you is that you got to get rid of that spirit.

You need to create a Google calendar that makes you and forces you to account for your time. And you need to take care of business, bro. And you need to leverage the opportunity and leverage the visibility that we’re giving you and leveraging your own insight, understanding, and then your previous experiences and in order to get it. Fuck the coating. Fuck the job. Fuck the software engineering. That’s a means. That’s a way for you to make more money so you can put the money into the things that you really want to do. That’s you, man.

And so I’m not ragging on you. I’m inspired by you because I think that you have a great future ahead of you. And I think that you would be fumbling it not to really take advantage of it. That’s just my sentiment. So it may seem like I’d be getting on you, but it’s just because I want better for you, bro. Now, honestly, as we’re having this discourse, I completely respect and hear what you’re saying. So I don’t have any disagreements. You got any questions for me? You got anything else you want to discuss? How’s your week going? I’m subscribed to your channel, and I’m going to be watching you.

And now, if I don’t see you progress, then I’m going to criticize you. And so if you don’t want to get my criticism, if you don’t want to get my eight, my eight, then you’re going to have to level up. You’re going to have to push yourself. All right, man. Yeah, no, I hear you. I’m ready. All right, my friend, I’m going to be subscribed, and I’m going to continue to push people over to your channel. What’s your channel name? Tell the people what your channel name again. It’s Jall Panos. Jall Panos. So it’s right there at the bottom of the screen.

Make sure y’all go and check him. Hey, y’all hold him accountable, just like I’m holding him accountable. Because I wouldn’t be holding him accountable if I didn’t see him, see all of the potential that he has. And I just want him to win. All right, big dog. Thanks, Anton. I appreciate you. Thanks for coming on the platform, my friend. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me. All right. That was Paul Jall. Make sure y’all go and check out his YouTube channel if you guys have not already. [tr:trw].

See more of The Millionaire Morning Show w/ Anton Daniels on their Public Channel and the MPN The Millionaire Morning Show w/ Anton Daniels channel.