Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Bill Courtney and we've got shop Talk
Speaker 1: number seven and today we're going to be talking about
Speaker 1: the power of dreams with parentheses around it that says,
Speaker 1: be real, the power of dreams. Be Real. But before
Speaker 1: we get into shop Talk, I want to tell you
Speaker 1: about an awesome music festival that's actually led by a
Speaker 1: friend of the podcast and a friend of mine, and
Speaker 1: it's in my hometown of Memphis. This year, the inaugural
Speaker 1: river Beat Music Festival is May three through five. It's
Speaker 1: held downtown and tom Lee Park along the Mississippi River,
Speaker 1: and y'all, they have completely recently renovated tom Lee Park
Speaker 1: and it is as fine of a venue as any
Speaker 1: place in the country. And to the east you've got
Speaker 1: the skyline of Downtown behind you, and to the west
Speaker 1: you've got the Mississippi River, and as you sit in
Speaker 1: the park, you're looking up a bluff. It is really
Speaker 1: a cool venue. And my buddy is starting this Riverbeat
Speaker 1: Music's Festival May three through fifth, and it's got huge
Speaker 1: acts like Jelly Roll and the Fujis Play and a
Speaker 1: ton of others. If you're interested in learning more about it,
Speaker 1: you can visit Riverbeet dot com and check out Memphis
Speaker 1: in May. It's not too hot. It's a cool venue.
Speaker 1: You're just steps from world famous Bill Street and downtown
Speaker 1: Memphis should be a lot of fun. Shop Talk number seven,
Speaker 1: The Power of Dreams. Parentheses keep it real. Right after
Speaker 1: these brief messages from our general sponsors, all right, everybody,
Speaker 1: we're back with shop Talk number seven, The Power of Dreams.
Speaker 1: So here's the deal. I started in the lumber business
Speaker 1: when I was twenty six year old as a sales guy,
Speaker 1: and by thirty one, I was the vice president of
Speaker 1: sales of a lumber company that I started with. And
Speaker 1: when I first went to work in the lumber company,
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell you a piece of red oak versus
Speaker 1: people peaks of poplar. I didn't know grid. I didn't
Speaker 1: know anything except that if I learned the lumber business
Speaker 1: and sold more of it than anybody else, I could
Speaker 1: make more money. And that's what I need to do
Speaker 1: because I had my wife, Lisa and kids at home,
Speaker 1: and I needed to make more money. And so I
Speaker 1: went to work. Little by little, I sold more, kind
Speaker 1: of learned the craft, moved up, and like I said,
Speaker 1: by thirty one, I was the vice president sales of
Speaker 1: the company, and candidly we grew the size of that
Speaker 1: company's sales significantly, really quadruped them. And at thirty one
Speaker 1: years old, I was looking at private we held family company,
Speaker 1: great company. People were good to me, the kids getting
Speaker 1: into college, and I was worried that I was going
Speaker 1: to wake up at forty years old and be maybe
Speaker 1: a victim of nepotism. Not that that was projected by
Speaker 1: any means, but reality's reality, and I was worried about it.
Speaker 1: And so I wanted to be able to buy in
Speaker 1: and own a piece of the company and have some
Speaker 1: type of parachute. And was fully prepared to spend the
Speaker 1: rest of my life working for that company and growing
Speaker 1: it and doing the best I could for it. But
Speaker 1: the family at that time was not ready to bring
Speaker 1: in any outside folks from family, so I was in
Speaker 1: an impasse. I was making more money than I ever
Speaker 1: thought i'd make. I was the vice president of one
Speaker 1: hundred million dollar company, moved up, hired a bunch of salespeople,
Speaker 1: was respected and treated well and paid well. But was
Speaker 1: worried about the future. And so I started thinking, could
Speaker 1: I do this for myself? Where would I get the money.
Speaker 1: How would I do it? What about Lisa and the kids?
Speaker 1: If I have to take a major step back to
Speaker 1: start my business. And so I went to Lisa, talked
Speaker 1: about it a bunch, and at the end of the conversation,
Speaker 1: Lisa said, you know what, you were broke when I
Speaker 1: met you, and we can be broke again. If that's
Speaker 1: your dream, chase it. So I started Classical American Hardwoods.
Speaker 1: About nine months later, I was seventeen thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: the brank on a wing and a prayer. There's a
Speaker 1: whole nother story to all that, but that's really not
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about the power of dreams. I will
Speaker 1: tell you something that I recognized about the power of
Speaker 1: dreams going through that whole process. Is this. Nothing in
Speaker 1: the world that has ever been created by a man,
Speaker 1: nothing didn't start out as first a dream, a thought,
Speaker 1: an idea. The light bulb, the wheel, skyscrapers, the car,
Speaker 1: the atom bomb. All of it was an idea. All
Speaker 1: of it was a dream. All of it was something
Speaker 1: that somebody initially, at some point, thought maybe I could
Speaker 1: make that happen. This country was a dream. I mean,
Speaker 1: you just think about anything that human beings have ever created.
Speaker 1: It first started with a thought, with a dream. The
Speaker 1: power of dreams is phenomenal because everything we have, we are,
Speaker 1: and will become in the human race will start as
Speaker 1: a dream. Another interesting thing is I'm a psychology major,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to batch this, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: do it as best I can because I'm going back
Speaker 1: thirty years when I was in school. But they took
Speaker 1: a bunch of people in a test and the control group,
Speaker 1: they monitored their brain activity while they slept for seven
Speaker 1: days and they got normal sleep seven to eight hours,
Speaker 1: and they monitored their brain activity. Put them on a class.
Speaker 1: The other group, same class, same everything. The only difference
Speaker 1: was in the four stages of sleep, which is ra
Speaker 1: EM sleep, which stands for rapid eye movement, which is
Speaker 1: when you dream, your eyes go into r EM. The
Speaker 1: other stages asleep, you're really in and out of kind
Speaker 1: of light consciousness. But the true heavy sleep happens when
Speaker 1: you dream. And so they monitored the subject group while
Speaker 1: they dreamed, and when they met with RM sleep, they
Speaker 1: were awakened. So they wren weren't allowed to dream. They
Speaker 1: were allowed to get as much sleep as they could,
Speaker 1: and certainly they because they were shaken during RM sleep.
Speaker 1: Instead of getting seven or eight hours, maybe they got
Speaker 1: five or six hours of sleep, But the key was
Speaker 1: they only awoke them during r EM sleep. After three
Speaker 1: days of this, many of the people in the test
Speaker 1: group literally could not function. After four days, they had
Speaker 1: some of those people start entering stages of psychosis. And
Speaker 1: after the fifth day they actually called off the experiment
Speaker 1: because they were worried they were going to do everlasting
Speaker 1: damage to the people that they were studying. Five days,
Speaker 1: just five days without dreams, and they were worried about
Speaker 1: the long term safety of the human beings that weren't dreaming.
Speaker 1: So not only has everything that's ever happened in the
Speaker 1: history of the world first started with a dream, the
Speaker 1: flip side to that is, as human beings, if we
Speaker 1: do not dream, we literally die. We literally become psychotic,
Speaker 1: we literally can't function, We literally die. The power of
Speaker 1: dreams is phenomenal. Not only on the positive side, does
Speaker 1: it create everything that we ever have and ever will be.
Speaker 1: But without dreams, you die. What does that say about
Speaker 1: a six year old born in poverty in our country,
Speaker 1: who's never heard a lullaby, who's never seen somebody go
Speaker 1: to work, what is their dream and how can they dream?
Speaker 1: What is their access to the things that they dream for?
Speaker 1: I remember interviewing r. Sha Cooper on an Army Normal
Speaker 1: Folks some months back, and I remember him telling me,
Speaker 1: growing up in West Side Chicago that his big dream
Speaker 1: was to see the Seers Tower. Marche Cooper lived fifteen
Speaker 1: to twenty blocks from Sears Tower, but because his neighborhood
Speaker 1: was so dangerous, he didn't dare walk those twenty blocks
Speaker 1: just to see Sears Tower. What does it say about
Speaker 1: a kid whose dream, his dream, now his big hope
Speaker 1: for his life is to be able to walk twenty
Speaker 1: blocks from his apartment to be able to see a
Speaker 1: tower that's in the very city he lives in. How
Speaker 1: do we expect people like that to become doctors and lawyers,
Speaker 1: and how do we expect him to live and not
Speaker 1: become psychotic? Socially and culturally? The power of dreams is phenomenal.
Speaker 1: If I I didn't have the power to dream, my
Speaker 1: company wouldn't exist. I would have never coached a manassas,
Speaker 1: I would have never won an Academy award, I never
Speaker 1: wrote a book, and I'll never be talking to you today.
Speaker 1: That's the power of my dream. Another power of my
Speaker 1: dreams was when my mom was going through divorces and
Speaker 1: I was dealing with all kinds of dysfunction in my life.
Speaker 1: I dreamed of a wife and a home and children
Speaker 1: and consistency in my life. It's another dream that became reality.
Speaker 1: The power of dreams is phenomenal. It saved my life,
Speaker 1: it built my business. The power of dreams is also
Speaker 1: dangerous for those who don't have the power or ability
Speaker 1: to dream. It becomes a psychosis in our culture and
Speaker 1: our society. So what does that say about us? Don't
Speaker 1: we have to do things to enable people in our
Speaker 1: culture to at least be able to dream, And don't
Speaker 1: those dreams have to be something more than being able
Speaker 1: to walk twenty blocks from your home without getting mugged. Guys,
Speaker 1: an army in normal folks has a lot of work
Speaker 1: to do, and if just some of that work is
Speaker 1: enabling people in our mythst to be able to dream
Speaker 1: so they can raise themselves up and find something for
Speaker 1: their own lives. I just think it's incumbent upon us
Speaker 1: to understand the power of dreams, to understand the danger
Speaker 1: of not being able to dream, and to recognize what
Speaker 1: it's doing to our culture and society, and do something
Speaker 1: about it. The last thing the parentheses be real. I
Speaker 1: remember I had a kid played football for me, not
Speaker 1: at Manassas, at another school. He was six foot, two
Speaker 1: hundred and five pounds and was one of the best
Speaker 1: defensive linemen I've ever coached in high school. The guy
Speaker 1: was quick off the ball, he had what's called great
Speaker 1: takeoff his stance. He had a flat back, he was
Speaker 1: really loose in his ankles and in his hips, quick hands,
Speaker 1: and was just strong and tough. He was awesome. And
Speaker 1: his dream was to play for Alabama. And y'all, I
Speaker 1: don't care how good a high school football player you are.
Speaker 1: If you're six one six two two hundred and five pounds,
Speaker 1: you are not playing defensive line for Alabama, or for
Speaker 1: that mind, probably any Division one school. And when he
Speaker 1: came to me with his dream, I was careful to
Speaker 1: talk to him about being realistic, get real, the power
Speaker 1: of James Princes, keep it real. Sure, if he dreamed
Speaker 1: to play college ball, there were places that he could
Speaker 1: play college ball, but there were simply limitations that were
Speaker 1: not going to allow him to ever play for University
Speaker 1: Alabama anywhere in the SEC and probably any Division one
Speaker 1: football team at six one two oh five. So instead
Speaker 1: of saying, dude, you're stupid, the dreams aren't any good,
Speaker 1: we talked about being realistic with those dreams and a
Speaker 1: variation of those dreams that would make sense. Because here's
Speaker 1: the thing. The third thing about a dream is everything
Speaker 1: that has started and exists did start with a dream,
Speaker 1: and people who cannot dream will get sick and become psychotic.
Speaker 1: But the third one is you don't ever want to
Speaker 1: set anybody up for failure by allowing them to have
Speaker 1: an unrealistic dream, because that failure may cripple them if
Speaker 1: they're chasing something that's impossible. When I started my lumber company,
Speaker 1: I did and say I wanted to become Georgia Pacific.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to start a lumber company. So as
Speaker 1: you're thinking about maybe working in community, and you're thinking
Speaker 1: about maybe working in your nonprofit, or you're thinking about
Speaker 1: your own children, remember these three things. We need to
Speaker 1: We need to understand that everything that ever happens in
Speaker 1: the world does start as a dream, as a thought.
Speaker 1: The inability to dream will turn to psychosis and death.
Speaker 1: And we need to understand that Achieving a dream starts
Speaker 1: with having a realistic goal and dreams in place. But
Speaker 1: if we do that, amazing things can happen in our
Speaker 1: lives and the lives of those around us. And I
Speaker 1: am living proof of the power of dreams. That's shop
Speaker 1: Talk number seven. I hope you'll think about it. I'm
Speaker 1: Bill Courtney.