Do You Think You're Lucky?

After Harley has one of those weeks with a GI bug relapse, head-to-toe bug bites, and the dreaded red light at airport customs, Brian declares it's officially her unlucky week.

That simple comment sparks a conversation about luck, mindset, and the stories we tell ourselves when life doesn't go according to plan. We talk about why Harley has never considered herself an unlucky person, David R. Hawkins' Map of Consciousness and why blame isn't always the worst first reaction, and what goes through Brian's mind when he loses a cooking competition.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

She thinks that I've been off hustling bimbos on the st while I'm out traveling. I did think you that you gave me an STI. And you know what the best thing about that is knowing you've done nothing. Bring it on, girl. I guarantee you got none of that shit.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

Welcome back to the Harley Mullarkey podcast. Good to see you.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Oh, thank you so much. Well, we've been on the road. We just got back from Cabo.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Yeah, we did just get back from Cabo. We celebrated the 4th of July in Cabo. First time being out of the country in my whole life on the 4th of July.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Oh, I thought like ever. I was like, oh my god, I thought I swear to God. Was that your double ganger who went out of the country with me before? We weren't um not the best patriots, but maybe we were great patriots because we went and sells. It's the land of fireworks. It's the land of fireworks. Got some good fireworks. Good food. Good life. Cabo in the summertime, who knew? It's fun. Yeah. Keep it going. We're here. We're going, girl. Let's go.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Well, you gotta warm up a little sometimes. So just don't pressure.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

We all know when a woman says she needs to warm up. We all gotta take a deep breath. Take some patience, you know, and just can just go jump into things. You know what I'm saying? Just kind of jam it in there. You gotta like, you gotta like talk really nice and warm it all up.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Yeah. And we we've been gone for a while. We haven't posted a podcast in a while. We've recorded a few uh that I might release, but we haven't released them. So we haven't told people that we're kind of working on changing things up. We dropped the old dog new tricks. Um we're just we're playing around with our podcast. We're gonna do a little restaurant series while you're opening your restaurant in a couple weeks. Um and then we're gonna we're doing some rebranding that you might see in the fall. But sorry we've been gone for so long. We've truly missed you.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

So, anyway, what happened is is I did a post from some pictures of Cabo and it kind of went slightly viral. All right, I've kind of been into this viral thing lately. Um it started with my John Dutton is my father for Father's Day that has 1.7 million views. Like, who knows why? What the fuck happened? Anyway, Harley and I, we did one the other day that has 130,000 views, was just pictures of us that were just normal pictures of us. But I put this song that kind of was when we had some difficulties back in the day and we got back together.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Yeah, we had it, we had a one-month breakup edge of the ocean by stick figure. It was like our breakup reuniting song.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

And so I I may or not. I don't know why you chose that. I may or may not have been back into my gummies because I I took my six months hiatus and now on vacation, I'm allowed to.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

I think you lasted longer than six months.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Yeah, thank you, eight months, I think. Um, but uh I was maybe on gummies that day, and my music choices aren't the best when I'm like, oh yeah. But I was like going, that song resonates with me because that's our get back together song.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Yeah, we both love that song, it's meaningful to us.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

And we think that maybe people thought, like, oh my god, they were going through a rocky patch and they were breaking up, and that's why there's been no Harley Mullerkey podcast.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

And that's it. Yeah. So everyone was like so excited to see us.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Yeah, they're like, oh, they're back. Oh my god. They were couples back. They're they're back. Yeah. So it's we never went anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

We wanted to catch each other a few times, but we weren't really fighting, we were just we were just growing together.

unknown 3:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

You learn that you can fight and yeah, and sometimes when sometimes like you know, watching like teenagers grow, you know, sometimes their head gets big and their arms get long, and they're like that. It's not all proportionate. No, that's our growth has been like that from time to time.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

Uh no, it wasn't yeah, not nothing particularly rocky or scandalous or exciting happened.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

But it was good for that, it was good for that post. So a little controversy was good for us.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

Yeah, it was.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Jump in, girl.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

Uh, I did think you that you gave me an STI, but maybe I'll cut that up.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

I like this one. Yes. So Danielle went down to the beach, laid on a blanket, and got attacked by some sort of I think no sium bugs.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

Well, this is okay, this will get into a Noceum bugs?

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_02 3:57

We will pause. We'll revert back to this. First, I need to know what was the best thing you ate this week. Probably what was the best thing you ate in cabo?

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Noceum bugs was uh on the menu. Uh oh, sorry. Uh the best thing I ate in cabo. Well, I never had my favorite thing on the planet, which is the chocolate clams.

SPEAKER_02 4:12

But it's actually really sad you didn't get any chocolate clams.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Do not get my chocolate clams. Uh, I had some ceviche at the pool side place that I thought was very good. You know what it was? It was the baked fish.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Yeah, that I made us order.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

The baked fish with the clams.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Because I thought it was gonna be really bland because I was having stomach issues, and it was the least bland thing.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Everything, the fish in Cabo is world class, just world class. All the all the shellfish, all the lobster, all the everything, everything that comes out of that ocean is the best ever. Um, even the bad restaurants have good food in Cabo. It's so amazing. Uh, but we had this lacquered. My favorite thing right now is lacquered food, right? As it's as it's baking or grilling, you you're rubbing something on that's got a touch of like a little sweetness on it, a little bit of heat to it. And it was like a chili lacquer, and I asked what it was, and it was mayonnaise.

SPEAKER_02 4:58

And guajio chilies.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Um, yes, chilies and mayonnaise on this fish, and it was like, oof. I took a picture of it half eaten, and I was like, just to remember to steal this dish.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

Yeah, that was probably my favorite thing too, but since I can't choose that, I'm gonna choose the uh ahe tuna ceviche, and it was like this really spicy chili sauce, the one that we had by the pool.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Beets?

SPEAKER_02 5:21

No, not the beads. There was beets in it. Yeah, but the beets weren't the good part. It was the sauce. You didn't think the sauce was really good. It was like so salty and spicy.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

I didn't want to tell you this, but I didn't like that tuna at all. The I didn't like the cuts of it. There's a lot of pieces were stuck together, and that sinew and shit like that just pisses me off when people can't cut the tuna, right?

SPEAKER_02 5:40

This is what I have to deal with. So I like it. You didn't think the sauce was good?

SPEAKER_00 5:45

It was good. It was good.

SPEAKER_02 5:47

Well, agree to disagree.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

I thought the what was it, mango and beat green apple.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

It was it was odd. It was just the sauce is really good. It was like a salsa matcha, really salty. It just really hit the spot. Uh we stayed at the Cape, which we really enjoy.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

The Cape is first class. The Cape is amazing. Nice place, boutiquey resort-ish hotel. Every room has an ocean view. And the good thing is there's not a lot of fucking kids there. There's like maybe like one person that brought a kid, and all of us just like stank items. Just like, what the fuck are you thinking, man? Like when I in my last life, yeah, uh we took kids to Tulum.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

And everyone in Tulum, like little eight, nine-year-old kids were in Tulum were like, get the fuck out of here. Like you really you don't there's some places you just don't take.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

How many times did you take them to Tulum?

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Just once. And the people looked at us in town, like, get the fuck out of town. You're not supposed to bring kids to Tulum.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

Don't take kids to the Cape.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

We were talking about the noceum bugs.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

Noceum bugs.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Me thinking that I got an S S T D.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Here I thought for the last week you were saying something very, like, uh very doctorish, like noceum bugs. Like it was like like Latin or something, right? But now it's called no see them bugs.

SPEAKER_02 7:01

Yeah, that's literally what it is. No see them bugs. It's not their like official name, but they're called no seeum because you don't see them biting you. And she got completely covered by these bites. Yeah, so no, this is this is where it started. So Brian went to Portugal with his daughter, and on their way home, they got had what they thought was horrible food poisoning. They thought they ate bad beef tartare the night before, and they're both like, we got the worst food poisoning ever.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Two days later. Literally threatened the restaurant manager there. I was like, You're lying to me. I know you're lying to me. Everyone who ate the beef, like dying, dying. She goes, No, nobody else is dying, but we were dying.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

And then two days later, Sailor's boyfriend gets uh the exact same illness, like same symptoms Sailor had, really sick. And I get a mild, just like stomach version of it. And maybe it was a bug. And so I was like, at first I was like, Oh, I got food poisoning too. And her boyfriend was like, I got food poisoning too. And then we're like, wait a second, there's some culprits here with the virus. Anyways, so it was kind of mild, it went away after five days, and then I went out to dinner with a friend, and we ate some rich French food at Lakehawk. I drank three drinks, which I don't normally do, and I woke up in the middle of the night super sick. I got a fever, my stomach was like way worse. I had this horrible rebound of my virus. And then, and Brian was out of town, then the next day, I'm laying in the sun. Well, first I had gone to the beach and I had gotten these like three little bites on my belly, like maybe three to five, and I was like, oh, whatever, not a big deal. Who knows what it was? Little sand fleas.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Then I had this a lot of seaweed on the beach right now.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

A lot of seaweed on the beach. I had this same blanket that I took to the beach and I like folded it up and it was just sitting in a corner in the house. And I went and sat in the backyard for like an hour and a half reading the book.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

This is our horribly landscaped, our our dirt yard that is just holes and bricks and cement and literally the most rough yard ever.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

Yeah. And the gravel pit yard. But it's depressing to stay inside all day. And like sometimes the beach in La Jolla is just really crazy during the summer, and I'd rather I'm just like, I gotta get my vitamin D. So I'm sitting out there and I walk inside, and I notice I have a few bites, and I'm like, oh whatever, it must have been like a m rogue mosquito or something. And then I'm like looking in the mirror that night and I'm like, wow, I think I need to get like a backfacial before cabo. I have all these zits on my back. I'm like, that's weird.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

I don't even know what a backfacial is, but totally down with it.

SPEAKER_02 9:16

Uh it's just when you get like I understand that it's like a noceum bug.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

I got what it was through just the words alone. Yeah, that's good.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

Uh so then the next morning I wake up and I'm like, holy shit. And it looks like I have like chicken pox. Like my whole belly is covered in bites, my whole back is covered, my face is covered, my scalp is covered, and I'm like, what the fuck is happening to me?

SPEAKER_00 9:41

I immediately was like, fuck you, RFK. I was like immediately going that route. Why? Because he's the one that everyone's blaming for chicken pox returning because he said we don't have to get the vaccines anymore and blah blah blah blah, but I don't think it happened that fast, but whatever. It's you know what, we just all need a reason to bitch about politics from time to time. So actually, I'm a big huge fan of a lot of things RFK says, but he does say some pretty stupid things also. Um, anyways, uh I'm going on the record for all kinds of crazy shit.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

I'm like, fucking stone. Are you okay?

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Right in stone.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

Uh so I still had my resurgence of my GI bug. I had these muscle aches, I had my whole body covered and these bites, and it was just rough. I had one other thing going on too.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

You know what, world though, I was still fucking turned on by her. She was like, look at me, I did this, this. I was like, you know what? I will get cooties with you, girl. I will get cooties with you. We're going off to Mexico because we haven't got any time together for a really long time. I was like, girl, I am blind to your cooties, blind to your your whatever weird herpes, AIDS things you got going on here. I'm still yours, baby girl. That's what I said.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

Which I appreciated. And I did have one other weird symptom going on too.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

Give me that weird shit you got going on, girl. That's what I said to you.

SPEAKER_02 10:53

Yeah, you did, which made me feel better, but still made me think that I could be dying.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

And I did go get tested for all the STIs, including syphilis, which I was like, why are you do people still test anybody for this? Turns out I don't have any.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Um, just like worlds, listen to what she just said there. So upon a panic, on a she went to a dermatologist who said, Those are the noceum bugs, right?

SPEAKER_02 11:14

Oh, you got he barely looked at me and he's like, Yeah, those look like bug mites. They don't look like a viral rack.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

You've seen all the noceum bugs, you know? Anyway, so he tells her and he gives her a prescription for a steroid, which she doesn't want to put on him, but eventually does. Um, and she is like, that's not enough because she's got to get on her chat and she's got to ask it all its questions about am I gonna die? How am I gonna die? What is this? What is this? What is this? She thinks that I've been off hustling bimbos on the st while I'm out traveling and I've picked up herpes, I've got AIDS, I've given her syphilis. She's like, Well, this is all gonna come down to you. And I was like, What the fuck did I do? And good thing, yeah, I did nothing, man. And you know what the best thing about that is knowing you've done nothing, you've got nothing to show. I'm like, bring it on, girl.

SPEAKER_02 12:01

No guarantee you got none of that shit because I did I didn't really think that you had given me an STI. I and I didn't really think that I had one.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

How did it become STI and not STD?

SPEAKER_02 12:10

It's less, it became one recently because STDs are more um shameful because it's like a disease versus an infection and infectious. Is that unhoused and homeless? And a disease is permanent. Uh yeah, it's kind of like that. Yeah, well fuck that. All right, I'm I'm on re today. Yeah, you are. I didn't I wouldn't have pushed you so hard to record a podcast if I knew this is. No, this is gonna be good.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

This is where I get to be me and real.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

Uh no, I didn't really think he gave me an STI as but I get a little crazy in my head and I was like, what if it's like been sitting dormant in my system? Like, what's going on? Anyways. So moving on to our topic, which is that we so I have I had a little bit of a rough week, and I thought about like what is going on here. And I think the thing is is that I've always had health anxiety. Like I thought I felt a lump in my breast earlier this year, and so I went and got a breast ultrasound to make sure that I didn't have breast cancer, which is very uncommon for somebody in my age, but it's possible. But it's something that I grew up with because my mom constantly was convinced she was dying. I don't know. I can spin out of control thinking that I have some sort of terminal disease when I'm actually incredibly healthy. I don't know. I don't even know if that's even part of the story, but it's it's something that I struggle with. We live with it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

It's part of our story. Do you talk to your chat too much? Do you have a personal relationship where it's sometimes very, very intense? So does Daniel Harley. It's our confession.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

Uh, when I get freaked out by health stuff, I do use it as my little uh doctor in my pocket, which I don't recommend.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

We should do a whole other podcast on your relationship with chat because now chat is like pretending that it's a human being. Yeah, chat's pretending it's my friend. When I was 16 years old, I experienced stuff just like no, you fucking didn't, chat.

SPEAKER_02 13:52

You weren't 16 years old. And it's like, oh, that last sentence you just wrote, Danielle, that makes me smile. I'm like, you can't fucking smile.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

She's smiling, chat, and chat's gonna be smiling, I love you soon. And then people, people are having massive relationships with her chat. I mean, she does right now. Like some nights I get home and she's like, Brian, there's not enough room in the bed for all three of us. I'm like, who's here? I was thinking, like, oh my, this is gonna get freaky. And it's like she's got chat with her.

SPEAKER_02 14:16

Okay, so we haven't podcasted in a while. We might be a little rusty here. I think it's hilarious. But so my my thing of all these kind of completely unrelated health things happening to me at once is I think that I really need to trust my body more. Trust that I am really healthy, I take very good care of myself, I'm going to continue to have good health. And if I am trying to bring a child into this world, your body changes so much when you're pregnant. You have all these weird symptoms, and I need to develop a greater greater sense of trust with my body, which I think is what all these random things pushing me to my edge was kind of trying to teach me. And we get to Cabo and we we go through, you know, customs, and then you have to go through like the little, I don't know, immigration line where they They said, Does your woman have cooties?

SPEAKER_00 15:04

And I was like, She does.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

How did you know? And so I press the button because the button either is green and you don't get further inspected, or it's red, and you have to get your bags inspected. And so I pressed the button and it was red. And Brian said, Damn, this is really you're really having a streak of bad luck, or like this is really your unlucky week. And I was like, Don't you dare fucking call me unlucky.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

No, I didn't know. I mean, I really pushed a button.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

But I was like, I do not think of myself as unlucky at all. I was like, I don't think of all those weird health things as like me having horrible luck. I think of all those weird health things as like there is some lesson in here for me to learn. Like, yeah, I don't need to talk to Chat GBT so much. I can trust that my body's healthy. I can take symptoms at face value and not think that I am dying of some rare incurable disease because I have some weird symptom going on. I can like trust that I'm going to be okay. And that I, and that this area of myself needs more attention, that I don't have enough trust in my body. And that's what my kind of panic and getting unnecessary testing done this week taught me. I didn't feel unlucky for a second, and I've never felt unlucky in my entire life. Because I think that my dad did a really good job of instilling in us, like, we are lucky people, like Harleys are lucky. Good things always happen to us, good things are always happening to Harleys. And whether or not that's objectively true, to orient yourself in that way gives you so much more power in how you move through the world and how you see the world. And you're not stuck in like, oh, bad things keep happening to me, like I'm a victim. This is about me. It's more like, oh, I have these opportunities to grow and you orient yourself to the world differently.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Amen. Yeah. When you said that, I was just saying that, I was like, damn, you got you woke up, you got cooties like yesterday, and something else happened, and our flight was delayed, and like some stuff was going on. I was like, damn, girl, you're having a streak of bad luck. And you were like, fuck no.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

You know, it was so good that our flight was delayed because I was really anxious that morning, and I never really drank in the morning, but uh, we went to the Chase lounge that I'd never been to before, and because our flight was delayed, I got to drink half a glass of champagne, and it really changed my day. Damn, girl, you were just like that, you were like not to promote alcoholism.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Uh, what was it, bridesmaid or whatever? Like, woo, get a potential. Like she had the whole plane going, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and uh Billy Idle was on the plane with us.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

It was so much fun. So, do you ever consider, do you ever start thinking that you're unlucky? Have you ever considered yourself an unlucky person?

SPEAKER_00 17:39

So when you said that, I thought the exact same fucking thing. I was like, I've never looked at like a streak of bad luck. I'm always like, I'm just one turn away from things going exactly the way I need them to. And I am naive enough or blind enough or believe in myself so much that I too always think, fuck that. I'm not unlucky. I will position myself to be in the right situation. And even if a couple things happen against me, like fucking stuff that's very uncomfortable, like fucking divorce, business failures, I'm like, fuck, fuck. But I do exactly like you do. Get mad, I take it with my chunks of salt. Um and I go, I learn something from that, and I'm gonna get I'm gonna get better. I there's I won't do that again. I won't put myself in that situation again. Um, you know, and so I have had those things, but again, I don't look at it as a bad thing. I look at it as a lesson in life, exactly like Hal has taught you Harley's. Do you you always look at things that are unfortunate as lessons? I got do you have an example of one that I didn't? Uh let us explore this uh example that you have.

SPEAKER_02 18:54

No, it's not a particular example, but I would say your knee-jerk reaction, which I think you've gotten a lot better at when things don't go your way.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

Pissed is to blame somebody else. Blame is good.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

Yeah. Which I actually don't think is necessarily the worst first response. Like it's better to blame somebody else for a second rather than turn inward and turn against yourself. Blaming somebody else is also kind of powerless. It doesn't give you any power to change the situation, so it's not a good place to be stuck. But I think the worst thing that you can do in life is turn against yourself. So if you're gonna blame other people first, and then you can take a step back and be like, okay, I want to take my power back, I'm not gonna keep blaming this person. But I don't think it's the worst thing. Oh, that's good. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. It's not the it's not the highest level of the way to handle this situation, but I don't think as long as I get to the right level at some point.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Sometimes you don't go as the crow flies. Sometimes you gotta take a little, sometimes we would go on and go on a Sunday drive. Sometimes you gotta take the back roads to get to the main road. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:56

And there's actually like this scale of emotions. I think it's in this David Hawkins book, like The Power is Within You. I don't know, I'm getting it a little bit wrong. But it's like the lowest emotion, I think, is like shame, depression, sadness. And then some of the emotions that are like higher, like the happiest emotion is like joy, ecstasy kind of thing. I'm getting these a little bit wrong, but anger is a much higher emotion than depression. Like anger is a higher level, like better emotion than depression.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

Oh, yeah, oh 100%. So that's a tool. That's where you need to go.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

That's what my thing coming from is saying, like, it's better to blame somebody than to become a victim and become depressed. Fuck yeah. Neither are ideal, but on the scale of things. On the scale of negatives, I'm a better negative.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

I'm a better negative. I love that. And for my horse racing fans out there, it was fucking Blame who beat Zinyata in the Pacific Classic to take away her undefeated streak. It had Mike Smith just moved, maybe 10 feet, 15 feet earlier. Zinyatta would have won that race and finished undefeated as the greatest racehorse of a generation. The horse's name was Blame.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

Yeah, I got that. Okay. Um Do you think that you've gotten better at not blaming people now?

SPEAKER_00 21:10

No disrespect to Mike Smith. It was still a brilliant ride, and you helped her win like so many races. So don't get down on yourself about that. You're still, you know, uh an OG.

SPEAKER_02 21:19

Do you think that you've gotten better at not using blame as your coping mechanism?

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Or do you uh no, uh, yes. Yeah, uh we'll get back. The jury's still out on this one. It's a day-to-day some some days I have better control of my emotions, and some days I'm more receptive to things, and some days I um as a great racehorse, sometimes they put blinkers on me so I can't see anything else except the fucking anger that I have right here. Um, but yeah, I like your example of that if I blame somebody else, at least I'm not blaming myself, but then I'll come back and go, Oh, could you have corrected that self a little bit better?

SPEAKER_02 21:57

Yeah, what's my role in this?

SPEAKER_00 21:58

What is my role? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

And how can I take my power back? Because if it's somebody else's fault, you have no power. We can't change other people. Shut the fuck up. Um, how do successful chefs respond when everything goes wrong?

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Oh, well, uh, most of them just go to drinking. Uh successful chefs, uh oh, successful chefs. Unsuccessful chefs uh would just go to drinking, um, having sex with the staff, uh, you know, uh coming in late, just kind of the wheels fall off. Yeah. That's a good deal of people in our industry, right? But a successful chef will be like, he will be like, he will be kicked, he will be beat, he will go home, he will think, he will concentrate, he'll take some notes, he'll figure out. He's like, how the fuck am I never gonna let that happen again? And they will prepare better, they will come with more more unity, more ideas, more organization. They will get in front of the trouble so that it does not ever catch up with them again, and they will never go down like that again, and it has gone, I have gone down in a blaze of joy of glory before. Oh, a brunch we had back at Searsaka one day, just the ticket machine just kept coming up. There's eggs, no, no more eggs. It was this line cooks were walking off, and I was like, wake me up.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

And how'd you handle it?

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Uh well, I didn't handle it really well.

SPEAKER_02 23:15

I started I was hoping it was gonna be a good story. Oh, it was a good one.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Oh no, no, no. Uh uh by the next brunch, we were 100% dialed in. So you learned a lot. Yeah, and we controlled the door a little bit. That that that was that was a day we didn't control the door, we just sat everybody at the same time, and you're just gonna die. And so sometimes you have to take a couple steps back to take a couple steps forward.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

I like that. Uh how does luck play into entrepreneurship? Like, you know, I think that there's so many setbacks when you're trying to start a new venture, a new company. And I think if somebody were to look at themselves as unlucky, they would probably never survive in that industry. So how have you how have you felt about like luck, opportunity, making shit happen in the entrepreneur space?

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Uh believe it or not, uh, I think, and I think most entrepreneurs probably look at this is luck doesn't fucking matter at all.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Right? It is uh luck favors the prepared. And I think any great business person would say, if I'm prepared, I've set myself up, I've done the research, I've done the homework, I know what my options are, I know what this is, I know what my competitors are doing, I know what the industry is doing, I know what this is costing us, I know what they're going, I know what the trends are doing. I have to do those things to get lucky.

SPEAKER_03 24:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

And lucky is just uh it's the you don't like maritino cherries, but it's the cherry on top of the sundae.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Like why does it have to be a marathino cherry?

SPEAKER_00 24:35

What are the what's the good cherries called? Uh Rainier. Oh, yeah, we could be fresh pitted Rainier cherry because we want to remove the pit, you know. Um uh but luck favors are prepared. Chris Poffer has said that since we opened our first restaurant. Um, we don't get lucky, we get to where we know we can go because we are organized and we've done the work.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:58

And I this is not necessarily, yeah, I think this is related to what you're saying. I wrote down maybe being lucky isn't about having fewer problems. It's about being the type of person who can turn any problem into wisdom or a solution.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

With just a little blame first, you blame some people, and then you come back around and you realize, oh, how how can I uh write right by ship?

SPEAKER_02 25:19

Yeah, and I think some of the biggest like, you know, failures or problems that happen in entrepreneurship end up being the thing that propels you to where you need to go. And I think that's the same in life. Like some of the things that you look at is like, oh, that was like one of the most painful, shittiest things I've ever been through. But if I hadn't been through that, like my life wouldn't be as amazing as it is today. Um uh and so yeah, I just I think that I encourage anybody that has ever called themselves unlucky or said that they're having a streak of bad luck to really think about how you can change that narrative in your mind. Because when you identify as unlucky, you're no longer like just talking about the situation, you're making it about you as a person. And then when you identify as an unlucky person, your brain is going to start looking for evidence that you're unlucky and it's going to find that evidence because that's what our brains do. They look for, you know, patterns. But when you when you start telling yourself, I'm lucky, good things are always happening to me, then your brain is going to organize itself that way. It's going to see challenges as opportunities. It's going to notice all the good things in your life. So it's very important that you program yourself the right way.

SPEAKER_00 26:27

And and you know, I think like when you think about like people like, look, like I went to Vegas and I got lucky. Well, if you're playing your specific game, be it blackjack, roulette, whatever it is, there's there's rules on how to play that to put yourself in the position to be the luckiest. You know, you only hit at there, you hold here, you don't pit, you don't pass there, depending on what the dealer's holding there. You don't play these numbers, you look at the numbers, you look at this. Like there is different things that you have to do to put yourself in that position to be lucky.

SPEAKER_02 26:57

Yeah. But there is such a thing as just like dumb luck. Like if you're playing the slot machines and you win $10,000, you got dumb luck. You got the slot. There's no skill in a slot machine. And my dad always says it's better to be lucky than be smart. You know, if you're gonna just randomly win $10,000 playing the slot machines, you think you're lucky stars. Well, that might be the highlight of your life.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

That might that might be it. You know, you're not going to accomplish anything in the yeah, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 27:21

But if you tell yourself that you are a lucky person and good things are always happening to you, I guarantee you that you are going to start having more good things happen to you. You're going to invite more good things into your life.

SPEAKER_00 27:31

Well, Miles and I, we only play the lottery when it gets over a billion dollars because we're like, why else? You know, like what's that 700 million gonna do for me? We want the one billion, um, but we haven't manifested that quite yet.

SPEAKER_02 27:44

Do you have an example of something that could be considered unlucky or something that pissed you off recently that we could ask some questions about to turn it around differently?

SPEAKER_00 27:53

That happened to me recently.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

Yeah, or no, just as an example you can think of of like where you felt unlucky where you really wanted to blame somebody.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

Uh uh. Or we can use You know, on I mean, like on cooking shows, like I have lost uh quite a few times. Uh and I always like, oh, the fucking judges of this and this and this and this. But when I turn it around, I go, oh, how can I do better? How can I do better? And I do have some new shows coming out where I did a lot better, so stay tuned to that one. But in my personal life, uh something uh I I don't think there is.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

I've I've well I think we could use the example of you losing a silly game show. So not silly because some of them are, you know, I know that's no, they're all pretty silly. Okay. So you could be you're really pissed off and mad because you didn't win. You could ask yourself, what is this trying to teach me? Yeah, what is it trying to teach you?

SPEAKER_00 28:40

And it's telling you to not take yourself too serious. It's just a game show.

SPEAKER_02 28:45

And what part of that can you control?

SPEAKER_00 28:48

Uh, I can control that I should come better prepared. I should uh really get into the kitchen and grind and cook and make sure I'm really uh up to my tip top speeds and uh being very uh organized and um open-minded.

SPEAKER_02 29:04

Yeah, and you can't always control, even if you made the best dish in the world, you can't control who the judges are going to pick, but you can control how you show up. You can control how entertaining you are on TV, how nice you are to all the people working, how much they're going to want to invite you back. That has nothing to do with whether you win or lose, because that's really not in your control completely. It is.

SPEAKER_00 29:23

You I mean, but you we can we can also practice like athletes. We can go and work online and learn how and like get our speed and our groove, you know, like when Stella got our groove back. Yeah. Like how we get our groove back too.

SPEAKER_02 29:34

I'm saying that's still important. That's all you that you can control is how you show up. You can't control how you gotta do the work 100%. Uh and like what story am I telling myself? I think sometimes when you lose, you tell yourself I fucking suck.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

I fucking I'm I'm too old for this shit. I wasn't prepared enough. I'm just a restaurateur now, I'm not a chef anymore. Like, what the fuck were you thinking? Like that internal dialogue? Yeah, that internal dialogue.

SPEAKER_02 29:57

And you're like, oh, maybe, maybe that's not the story I want to tell myself.

SPEAKER_00 30:00

Maybe I and then I'm like going, fuck that. I'm as good as anybody out there. What the hell are you saying? It takes so yeah, sometimes I do get a little beat up, but I I don't stay beat up for long.

SPEAKER_02 30:08

No, I know. But these are we're just we're helping other people think of how they can be. Oh, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

So yeah, so if you if you do tear yourself down, be sure to build yourself back up. Yeah, right. And it's okay to kind of tear yourself down because maybe you didn't prepare as much as you should have. Maybe you weren't as ready as you should be. And you can have that, you know, three hours, six hours, twelve hours. But after that, fucking you wake up and you like dust yourself off. The old cowboy saying, when you get bucked off, what do you do? You get back on the same fucking horse and you teach that horse that you're gonna be, you're you're not going anywhere. You're not going anywhere. You're gonna stay here, you're gonna ride, and then you guys are gonna move forward together and be a better team.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_02 30:47

I like this question a lot because I think I get really wrapped up in like getting so stressed out about something, and this can kind of pull you out to see the bigger picture. So this question is will this matter to me a year from now?

SPEAKER_00 30:57

That's a big one.

SPEAKER_02 30:58

Yeah, and so when you lose 99% of the time, fuck no. No, and so you're like, really, I'm gonna spend two days like wasting my life and my energy over something that I'm gonna give zero fucks about in one year. So it's always a good question to pull yourself out.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Back in the olden days, and part of why I got sober is well, I did have a DUI or two in my my life. Yeah, and that's one that takes a while to recover from. Yeah, you this will still this will still matter a year from now. You you beat yourself up for that one going, what the fuck was I thinking? That's so stupid, and you gotta go to these classes and you gotta pay fines and your insurance goes up and you're this and people are like that. And it's just like, oh God, yeah, that's one that you better just not drink and drive.

SPEAKER_02 31:37

Yeah. I mean, when you really fuck up, it's not you shouldn't live in shame because when you feel really shame, we discussed that was really low on the level of emotions. You can't really make productive choices, but you should acknowledge, wow, I really fucked up and I really need to figure out how to change my life because And sometimes those are big moves.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Yeah. Big moves.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

Yeah. Life-changing moves. Um, I think that's all I've got. Shut the fuck up. That was kind of fun. Yeah, that was fun. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:03

Uh, but now we so we had some other segments that we were doing, um, but it was too much. So now we're just gonna do a new kind of miscellaneous thing at the end, one of which will occasionally be listener questions. So if you have any questions for us, please DM them to the Harley Mullarkey podcast and we'll answer them on next week's episode. Um, but this week I wanted to do my book of the week. And if you have a book of the week, you can do one.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

I can I I am so excited. I don't often have a book of the week, but I do have a book of the week.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

Okay. My book of the week is a very popular one, but I just finished it this morning, so it's front of my top of mine, which is Remarkably Bright Creatures, which they just released the movie on Netflix as well. So I haven't watched the movie yet, but I finished the book. I'm gonna watch the movie tonight. And it was just a really Will I be watching that movie with you? You might be. If we can get maybe Sailor to watch it too. Okay. Um, but it was just like a very sweet story, a good fiction book. It was a nice book to read to kind of get your mind off craziness. Highly recommend it. Also makes me not ever want to eat octopus again, which my octopus teacher should have made me do that the first day.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

Is there another octopus teacher book?

SPEAKER_02 33:06

It's it's fictions, but it's it's about this yeah, this woman's relationship with an octopus. I still have to do that to myself. Yeah. Not fake, fake.

unknown 33:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 33:16

Uh, but it's a really sweet book, so that's my book of the week. I love it. Yeah. Not really. I don't even know what it's about, but uh, it's about an octopus. I never read fiction. Yeah, it's about it's about an octopus and a lady who lost her son and her husband, but it's not as dark as it sounds. I didn't read it at first because I thought it was gonna be dark.

SPEAKER_00 33:33

I didn't know I had dinner plans tonight. I have to go to the restaurant. So you enjoy that movie. It's it's all it all takes place in the Pacific Northwest, which I did appreciate. Those are not little octopus up there. I have seen them.

SPEAKER_02 33:46

Giant Pacific octopus. Giant. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:48

Giant. Where have you seen them? I fucking learned to I got I got certified snorkeling there. I saw a giant octopus. They're you see one of those fucking things underwater, you're like, ah!

SPEAKER_02 33:57

Fun fact, octop octopi, octopuses, octopi have three hearts. Oh they're very intelligent. I think they're more intelligent than like dolphins and pigs and dogs. Shut up. Yeah, they're super, super smart.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Yeah, I think they are aliens. Oh, maybe they have alien ships down there, and that's what we see coming out of the ocean. All right, thank you for that lovely, lovely report on your book. Let me tell you about my book, okay? So I read autobiographies. I do too. That I'm really into. And so I had seen an interview with Johnny Depp, and he was like, My spirit, my spirit guru, my spirit guide is Al Pacino. And I'm like, well, fucking Johnny Depp, you're pretty fucking cool, you know?

SPEAKER_02 34:36

He he said that most interesting man I've ever met is Al Paco.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

He's Al Pacino. And I was like, I gotta know. I gotta know. Now I love Scarface, and I haven't watched The Godfather maybe ever, but maybe I tried to watch it a few times. Uh, you know, but Scarface is amazing. What else do you see Al Pacino in? He's done some, he's done some good stuff. He was in um uh once upon a time in Hollywood. Uh just an edgy actor, very edgy, very edgy, right? And uh I was like, well, I'm gonna dip into Al Pacino because I just saw his autobiography came out, and he's had this illustrious career, and he's also like 85 years old and just had a baby. And I was like, shit, I'm 53 and I'm trying to have a baby. Let's see what the OG. Now you feel like a real spring chicken. Yeah, let's see what this OG man is up to, right? And I read it, and fascinating. He is he is just uh the most uh he he is an artist, he is an actor, actor, and that is what he does. He's been reading Shakespeare since he was small. All he does is act, he writes, he he loves the entire process. Um, horrible with finances, horrible in relationships. He's just a hundred percent actor. But I I did not see I think I think Johnny Depp respects him as just what a committed actor, and probably the amount of stuff he has memorized from great uh plays he's done. He loves Broadway more than he loves the movies, and he's just always he'll do a he'll do a play for free. Money is of no value to him. So he has great essence of that, but it wasn't like he fucking did some crazy party shit, he did this, he did that. He didn't have any of those kind of like you know, bordanish stories that I was kind of hoping for. Yeah. Uh he's just an incredible artist. Uh so it's a good read. If that's your genre, uh, it's a great read. I couldn't put it down, so that was great.

SPEAKER_02 36:15

I was the fastest I've ever seen you read a book, but it was a kind of interesting because you're not really like telling everybody they should go read it, but you couldn't put it down.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

I I I because I I wanted to get to Scarface, I wanted to get to the 84-year-old baby. Uh I wanted to get That would be the chapter I'd flip right to. And and you know, I had just read the Val Kilmore one autobiography, and that one was fascinating because Val Kilmore does do crazy shit, and he does do drugs, and he does travel, and he did play Jim Morrison, and he does do these things, and he did date all these incredibly beautiful And he's like a philosopher. I want to finish that book. It is like poetry, and it's this. And his almost was too far there, and and uh like the the poetry like like Al Bacchino's best friend writes and stuff like that is some really awful poetry. Like, I'm like, how this is these are just words that are put together that make no sense. What did you learn from this book? Uh I learned that it was a reflection, because I asked myself, why did the universe give me this book to read? And it was all of this hard work he's done throughout his entire life to, you know, he's been nominated for like eight Academy Awards. He won one, he's won Tony's, he's won Emmys, he's won all of these things, he's he's lost his fortune, he's made his fortune, he's had children, he's been, I don't think he's ever been married. And he um he's reflecting as an 84, 85-year-old man right now, going, God, I just want to go back and relive my childhood. And that was like the really the hardest part. Parents uh separated, families, deaths, all this trouble, poor, poverty. And he's reflecting, going, that was the best time. That was when I was me. That's when I slept on the theater floor, that's when I was an usher, that's when I was that. And it was all it was all saying, it's the fucking hard grit that makes you is what you go back and reflect upon in life and go, damn. Yeah. That's when I was living. The journey. The journey. That's what I got out of the book.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:06

Drop the microphone.