What is going on, y'all? Robert Sykes, Keto savage.com
and we are in episode 700 of the podcast.
So every time we do 100th episode, I bring crystal on.
This time it's no different. I got Crystal here, I got Roger
here. There's all kinds of background
noise and chaos, but that's what this whole podcast is about,
embracing the chaos of our life in its current state.
So third inch of the conversation, I got no doubt
that hopefully you'll get some entertainment out of it, some
insight. So without further delay, sit
back, relax, enjoy the conversation with my wife and I
for episode 700. I am accompanied by my lovely
bride and son and we are diving into episode 700 of the podcast.
How are you babe? I'm.
Good. Good.
We've got a limited time to record this, like 20 minutes
because Roger's got an appointment.
It's been total chaos getting the set up and he's eating some
keto pizza because he doesn't want to be alone.
So we've got him in the background eating keto pizza,
making noise and coloring. And by the background means
right next to crystal. Yes, but it is what it is.
We're in a season of life where we have to just embrace the
chaos, and with every 100th episode I've published, I've
brought Crystal on and we've just kind of given an update
what's happened over the past hundred episodes worth of time.
So here we are. It's been about a year, 11
months, I think just shy of a year from episode 600.
A lot has happened in that time. How you doing, babe?
I'm good, You're good. Good.
That's all we can say. We're just good.
You remember what the theme the manifesto for this year was.
Is. I can't ever say it in the right
order. Recalibrate reflects reflects.
Recalibrate. Yeah.
Re Engage. That one.
And it's funny because I feel like we are doing things that
are in line with that, but I feel like the theme or manifesto
for the year could totally also be.
Embrace the chaos. Yeah, just like hold on to your
butt or life is currently a. Cluster.
Cluster is so. We're going to end that one.
Yeah. So, yeah, we have had a lot
happen in the past eleven months.
We did the competitions, we did several podcast episodes that
kind of like went deep into the competitions, did five shows,
got my pro card, competed in two pro shows, competed the world's.
And most of those shows were us driving to them personally with
Rigel in the car seat in the middle of a big rig.
So total chaos there and but we did a deep dive into those.
I'm not going to dive too deep into the competitions, but what
else monumentals happened in the past eleven months?
Anything come to mind off top of your head?
No, I feel like it was just like a big time getting you through
your prep. Yeah.
And then it's just been really busy and kind of chaotic since
then. It's interesting because we've
got, I've talked about the whole 10 segregity model and how we've
got these five primary pillars of our life, you know, health,
wealth, relationship, self development, spirituality.
And I definitely can look at those pillars and confidence
that we've got very defined things on the day-to-day that
fit into each of those pillars. And the whole concept of
consecrate. It's like not have this balance
and I definitely don't feel like anything in our life is balanced
right now. So like in that regard, we're
right on point. Lots of tension.
Heck, we don't even talk to each other, you know, like our
relationship is interesting because like this right here,
this 20 minute Rush podcast is probably the most time we've had
to talk to each other. This is the first time I've
actually sat down, looked at each other in the eye and
talked. And probably four months maybe,
which has. Been, I mean you guys like
probably think we're over exaggerating, but it really has
been a little bit crazy. Yeah, like it's, it's probably
not healthy. It it's not, yeah, But we're
making it through and we know that this is just like a really
busy, stressful, weird season. I'm trying to get better at
saying no to things and being more selective on what I say yes
to. But all the things that I've
said yes to are things that I feel like I should be saying yes
to. Like right now I'm I'm training
for the 50 mile March for raising awareness for veterans
and that's the end of this month, end of August.
So I've committed to walking 20,000 steps a day minimum in
preparation for that. And the way the day works out,
it's a pretty much have like a 2 1/2 hour block where I go out
and walk 7 or 8 miles and that's 2 1/2 hours I normally get with
y'all or have time to fix everything else going on in
life. So it just adds more chaos to
our already chaotic life. That's just like everything.
Like there's never an ideal time for any of the the nonsense
that's going on. Like we had our sheep get sick
so we spent half the week babysitting.
A sick lamb, diesel or dog is equally as chaotic.
Who is actually going to a trainer?
Actually, we haven't even talked about diesel on the podcast.
Yeah, we've got a dog. We got a dog.
Yay. He's seven months old.
He's a Connie Corso. He is awesome but also crazy.
He does. He's huge.
He's already like 95 lbs. He's.
Probably 100 lbs by now. No 'cause it was like 3 weeks
ago that he went to the vet and. He was £90.92.
I bet he's £100 now he's putting.
On weight, pretty fast. I don't know.
He's huge. It's Needless to say he's a lot.
It's a lot. Mostly I think for me because I
am home with him and Rigel all day and they're both like little
puppies or or toddlers. Either way you want to put it,
it's the same thing. It's the same chaos.
It's a lot. But he is going to the trainer
soon and I'm really excited about that and we're really
excited about his trainer. So yeah, it.
Should be good and I'm glad we have diesel, but like, it's
weird because there's so many things in my life that have made
sense to do those things when we've done them.
Whoops. Example number one.
OK. We're going to keep that turned
off, OK. So like everything that we've
committed to or we've accepted or we've embraced, like it's
made sense that we've done it with the time that we've done it
in. But like nothing flows smoothly.
Like anytime we make a little bit of progress with like the
business or the competitions or like we close the chapter or
door to something and hope to have some time, something else
opens and we have less time than when we.
Started with it's hard too because like we have friends and
family who like contact me to want to hang out or they say
like we really miss you guys or we want to hang out sometime.
And I'm like, that'd be really cool in like 5 years or
something, you know? But it's like, it's hard because
literally Robert and I don't like this is the first time
we've looked at each other in the eye to have a normal
conversation. It's hard to justify going to
hang out with friends when I don't even hang out with my
wife, you know? It's rough.
But again, this is our own
self-imposed chaos. Like I've got nobody to blame
but myself and I'm not complaining.
It is just very stressful at times.
But like with the business that's taking up a whole bunch
of attention and detail and focus right now.
And there's things that are outside the control, like the
whole cacao, but a crisis situation, which I've talked
about, like I just got back from Brazil trying to figure out a
way to source cacao directly. And that's just chaos in and of
itself. But like everything that we've
done, I feel like it's made sense that we've done it that
way. So I can't say that I wish I
would have done anything differently.
Rigel is how old? I don't know, just turned 2.
He turned 2 in May so he's two years and like 3 months or
something. I had to call Chris the other
day and ask her how old I was. Yes, that's kind of wild.
Yep. I'm 32, by the way.
I thought I was 33, but I'm 32, so I just came to here, which is
good because I probably lost five in stress over the past
little bit. But Ryger's rocking him.
He's getting bigger, he's getting smarter, he's getting
more into everything. Into everything.
Very opinionated, lots of personality.
We're going to go the homeschooling route in the
beginning. It should.
Be several years from now so I'm.
Trying to, but he's like pretty inquisitive and he's learning a
lot now. Like he's learning a lot.
Like he's doing swim lessons now.
So we go to swim every single week with him.
He's picking that up. He loves swim and what else we
got babe. Anything else cooking?
As far as the homesteading stuff we've got, we've kind of had to
do an unintentional downsize because several of our chickens
got. Desolized.
Our dog's name is Diesel, if we didn't mention that.
Yeah, so he took a hanker into chickens for a while there.
Yeah, we saw. Yeah, it's actually been a good
little while since he's gotten anything.
So we've got 3 remaining chickens and he hasn't messed
with those so that's good. But we are not going to get any
more animals until we eat the sheep that we have.
We get some. We will probably get more
chickens. We do need more eggs.
We are going to get more chickens, but I really want to
like redo things. I really want to like paint
their coop get like a fenced up area.
Like I just don't, I don't feel like I can, I don't feel like I
can take on more chickens knowing that we do have an issue
with diesel. And if we don't get that under
control or we get more chickens and it's more attracted to him
that we, I need a safe place to put them essentially.
So like I want to build a structure like a fenced in area
for them and that way they can have free reign.
But if Diesel is starting to show signs he wants them again,
then they have a safe place to go and we just won't let them
out again. So.
Yeah. But I mean, hopefully we'll know
a lot more about his temperament after the training session.
And yeah. He'll hopefully have a little
bit more. He's going away for two weeks,
so it's going to be interesting, but it should be really good.
He is a really good dog though, super smart dog, very protective
like everything. He's already protective, which
is interesting because everything that I've really read
has like their protective instinct kind of hits around age
2. And with him being only seven
months old, it's actually pretty good.
Like we were walking around the property without me and Rigel
were walking around the property and there was a noise.
One of the sheep made a noise, but he didn't know it was the
sheep. And he totally got like all up
in ruffles because they he just was like, who are you?
What are you doing? It was pretty cute.
I was actually like, so impressed with him and like,
thanked him 'cause you could just tell he was like going into
protect protective mode. And yeah, huh.
You love diesel? Rigel loves tractors.
Yeah, you want to say tractor, Tractor, tractor.
He also loves motorcycles, but he pronounces that one Nemo.
Can you say a motorcycle? I don't know if you guys can
hear that, but OK, let's not play with.
Those ones. But I'll tell you one thing,
like before I had a kid, before I had a wife, I was like, I
can't have a wife until I get the business dialed in because
she's just gonna be a distraction.
And that led to a whole bunch of disarray.
I realized that I made a mistake, brought Crystal back
into my life, and she's only been a positive for the
business. Then I was like, I can't have a
kid until I get the business solid because kid will just be a
distraction that is. Facts.
That is probably facts. That is probably facts.
But I'm OK with that distraction because what's the point of
having a business if I don't have a legacy to leave it to and
someone that would take it over. And he may not even want the
business, but like he gives me reason to do everything that I'm
doing. Like he is my wife for a lot of
things, for everything. And that's a positive.
That's a good thing. But there is definitely no
moment of solitude. There's no moment of relaxation.
There's no moment of let's take a deep breath and just recenter
like that doesn't exist in our lives right now.
I mean, while you're at work, you could have a moment.
I mean, I've got moments alone, but it's never like my my my
thoughts are never at peace. Like my mind is never in a
tranquil state. It's always just total chaos.
I've got World War three raging in my mind at all times, which
is what I signed up for, so I'm not complaining, but it is kind
of exhausting at times. But you come home, you see
Raji's all happy and it makes it all worth it.
You know, we have a we started the podcast in 2016,
consistently published 2 episodes since 2018.
Started it out recording in that big walk in closet I had in
Spokane, WA in the basement. And Fast forward to today,
episode 700 with Raiji sitting next to a seat in mosquito pizza
and making a bunch of noise and messes and having you.
It's like kind of crazy. It's kind of crazy.
You've seen the timeline of events unfold.
Makes me excited for what the next 100 episodes of time will
bring. What do you anticipate in a
year? Like we're doing roughly about
episodes 100 every year. What is this next year going to
consist of? I honestly don't know, like all
I do is just spend my time with Rigel and like try to do as much
work as I can. I spend all my days with Rigel
so just growing him really and hopefully doing some stuff on
the homestead and stuff. It's really hard for me to make
any decisions on the home stuff or really do anything because
because I I either need someone to help with him or.
Why are you eating like that? You don't ever eat like that.
You're just making a you goob or what are you doing?
Yeah, or I need help, you know, lifting something big or
building something or whatever. That would be nice to have
Robert alongside with four. But yeah, I don't know, it's
just so I I think that we could do a lot of stuff with the home
stuff, but I don't know that I see it in the next year.
Like it's just, I just see a lot of crazy twists and turns with
the business right now. I hate inefficiencies, and
there's a ton of inefficiencies in our life right now, which is
frustrating, especially with this whole year's theme being
recalibration. And I feel like we are certainly
recalibrating certain things, but there's so many things that
have come in outside of our control.
And it's like we have to hurry up and wait until we resolve
issues here before we can start refining things elsewhere.
And that's frustrating because like I said, I hate
inefficiencies. There's just a bunch of those
right now. And it's like you just have to
embrace that chaos. Like when I look at how you
responded during my competitive season and like, you weren't
able to train as much as you normally would.
You weren't able to be on top of everything that you normally do
because you were helping me and wrangling Rigel.
Yeah. It was like we got back from a
trip. I unpacked, I cleaned
everything, I got everything ready, then I prepped all
Robert's food to prep Rydel's food to prepped my food.
I packed everyone up and then we loaded up and when did the whole
thing all over again? It was like there was no.
But like, you had to sacrifice a lot of the things that you would
want to do, you know, solely. We just kept saying.
That it was like a season, like that was just a season.
And I feel like we're in a season right now on a macro
level, like our life, our family, our existence is like
just a season of chaos. And I'm just trying to be
present through it all. Like I'm frustrated that things
are inefficient. I'm frustrated that things are
getting. There's so many ends that are
not tied up. There's so many loose ends or so
many things that are just frustrating to me with my very
much so type A organized mindset.
But when I stop and think about it all in 80 years or whenever
I'm on my deathbed, I'm not going to be like, hey, I'm
really frustrated that we didn't get another 20 minutes to record
this podcast and then there was a bunch of background noise.
But I will be grateful for the fact that Rigel was with us, you
know, And I feel like if I just embrace that with an air of
appreciation for the things that we do have going for us, it
makes the chaos and inefficiencies tolerable.
Yeah. You know that's just me.
Yep. What do you think Reggie?
How you doing on time babe? You got to leave in 5 minutes.
Yep. You are kind of bringing back
some Lady Savage stuff potentially.
Am I? Maybe I shouldn't have said
that. I don't know.
I, I've been obviously like
we've talked about is like, it's been chaotic in our lives and
I've honestly just been like keeping things afloat.
I feel like I make sure Rigel stays healthy and alive and fed
and all of the good things that children should be.
And I keep our household running and I try to keep Robert from
losing it. Yeah, like, I mean, Robert's
been travelling a lot and he has a lot more travel through the
rest of the year. And Rigel and I have just been
staying home. I've been staying home with
Diesel and the sheep and the chickens and the child and all
the things. So I feel like I've just been
like staying, but I have not been, I'd say I would not be as
on top of like my nutrition and my workouts and things like
that. Like there's a lot of reasons to
not and but there's also a lot of reasons to do it.
So I thought about bringing back my Instagram.
I've had a lot of people reach out and say like, hey, like it
would be nice if you just brought back the Instagram so I
can reference back to it. No, you can have those later.
OK. But because like I did have like
all my pregnancy stuff from Rigel and all that, like it was
nice for people to reference back to or share my page with
other people. But it's also just a really good
way for me to kind of like keep myself accountable and stuff.
I haven't like tracking my we'll have it when we go.
Bye bye. OK, in a little bit, just a
little bit. We're going to get in the car
soon. So yeah, I don't know, I, I may
end up bringing it back, I may not.
But for now, my Lady Savage website is actually turned off,
which is kind of crazy for me. But I am from time to time time
accepting new clients. But I just don't have a website
for them to sign up through. So I just been directly emailing
them and things like that. So I pretty much turned
everything off with Lady Savage. You are going to get more
involved with the core stuff too though, which is an outlet for
you, which is good. Yeah, I'm trying to take my time
as I, I like ease back into things because Rigel is starting
to get to the point where he can.
He can be a little bit more independent and I may get a
little bit of help here and there, but when we have help,
like he's never fully gone from me.
He's still in the same room or the same building or whatever,
even when someone else is watching him.
So it's really it's, it's just me trying to balance my time and
my energy and, you know, nap times and making sure I get rest
and fed and all the things. So it's just been like a huge
balance for me as being a toddler mom.
So it's a lot different than being a baby mom.
They're two totally different worlds.
They're both busy, but different busies.
So yeah, as I say, busy Rigel's unpacking the entire bag that I
have to pack in about 5 seconds so that I can run out the door.
Yeah, yeah. Let's, let's wrap it up there.
But it's kind of fitting that he's here being chaotic, because
this whole thing is, yeah. I mean, this is what I mean.
Like he, he literally doesn't ever go away.
Like he's never been watched away from me.
I think Ellen watched him one time for like 30 minutes.
But he is always with me and he doesn't want to be away from me.
And that's OK. That's the season that we're in
right now. But it's it is the chaos that is
our life. I think I think we'll be very
grateful and again, like we're not going to think about how
stressed we were during this phase.
We're going to think about the positive memories that we made
with him. And I think that's what it's all
about. Like I subscribe to this daily
Dad newsletter and like a lot of parents put.
That in the. Bag regret not spending more
time with their kids and I'm definitely gone a lot like you
spend much more time with him than I do.
But I'm grateful that we don't send him off to be watched
somewhere like he's not in daycare all day long.
He's with you. Not that there's anything wrong
with that. For each, each family does their
own thing. There's people that are out
there judging me right now for never having someone watch him,
and that's OK too. You're allowed to judge me, but
it's just not. It's not for our family.
Even though it adds additional struggles, it's not for our
family. Yeah, I think the whole concept
of embracing the chaos is that much more amplified because we
have taken him on to the extent that we have.
But I can't imagine doing it any other way.
Yeah, when we when we decided to be parents, we knew that this is
what we wanted. So we're just in the thick of
what we decided we wanted. Well, now that we have 20
minutes to talk to each other, not unattractive, but.
You're really handsome. Yeah, well, you, you.
You're quite attractive yourself, babe.
I do love you. I do love.
You. Hope that I'll see you some more
sometime soon, so. I will let you guys know that we
have decided to have dedicated time together in the morning.
So we, it's a new, it's a new thing that we're, we're like
trying to make happen, but it's been pretty successful thus far,
right? Yeah, more or less, yeah.
Relatively so. Yeah.
All right. Rides was crazy.
She's getting around the appointment.
We appreciate y'all for tuning in.
We love y'all. Thank you for listening to
episode 700 of the podcast. We'll keep them coming.
And we got some exciting things in the works from a business
standpoint, from all kinds of things, from a family
standpoint. So more things in the works.
Appreciate y'all tuning in. Love you babe.
Love y'all for listening. We'll talk to you next time.
Say bye, Raji. Bye.