This week on Keepin It Real Cam Marston has noticed a trend amongst his empty nester friends and what their hobbies become once the kids are gone. The predictability of it gives him comfort.

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In my part of the world, the female empty nester is an interior designer or painter who has been caged by her responsibilities as a mother and once the kids are gone, they finally step into their lifelong artistic fulfillment. It’s a distinct pattern around here. The number of friends my wife and I have who start throwing paint on a canvas or buying furniture at market after the kids are gone is phenomenal.

From what I can tell, they subscribe to Architectural Digest or Southern Living magazines and recreate what they see when they decorate their friend’s houses. Or they have an untapped and remarkable talent for tossing a menagerie of paint colors onto a broad canvas and selling it as a home accent piece at their kid’s school fundraiser or in a corner at their friend’s gallery. It’s not a painting of anything, it’s just colors. They’re going to be rich and famous from their innate ability to create color combinations differently than anyone ever before them, certainly different from anyone around here. Their friends, standing leaning on one hip and holding their stemless wine goblet, ooooh and ahhhh at these masterpieces and offer compliments more effusive than anything Michaelangelo ever got. These same friends unwittingly compare their friends interior design projects with what they just saw in Architectural Digest or Southern Living while they were waiting at the orthodontist with their children. Some of these empty nested women become jewelers. Some become elite, specialized travel agents. Eventually they all sadly back away from their remarkable, God-given talent, find pickleball and only take on special projects for insistent friends. The cost to establish themselves full time in the business was simply too high to continue. Talent was never the issue.

I suspect something similar can be said for the men around here. Once the kids are gone they seem to grow. Eating takes priority when the kids have left the house. They become very interested in the preparing and then doting on brisket or boston butt as it slowly gets to the golden zone, all having powerful theories about getting the meat through what they call “the stall” when the temperature stops rising. Lots of time spent talking in a group standing next to an elaborate cooking device, beer in a koozie held waist high by the top of the can - each complaining that they have more koozies than they know what to do with - and discussing the stall and other brisket or Boston butt mysteries. Then they touch on college football. Then golf. Then hunting or fishing. And then they eat.

I suppose I should welcome this predictability in my world. If any one of these empty nesters suddenly declared they were meant to be a puppeteer or a mime or a treasure hunter I’d worry about them. So long as they’re meant to be a painter, an interior designer, or talk a lot about meat, I know my world is in order. All is right and well and good. Like it or not, I’m home amongst my people.

I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep it Real.

On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston got some blowback from a social media post this week. He asks us, "How do you deal with haters?"

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One year ago, I set a goal to paddle board across Mobile Bay. I completed that goal in May. The second part of the goal was to write about the challenge and be paid to have it printed. That was completed last week when the story was carried in Mobile Bay Magazine. I will get a small payment in a week or so. A year’s planning, researching, note-taking, exercising, preparing and lots of paddling later, the goal was entirely met. Pretty cool.

Yesterday, Mobile Bay magazine made posts about my paddle with links taking readers to the story and I received a good bit of social media attention as a result. The vast majority of the social media comments were very positive and congratulatory. Today’s commentary is about the ones that weren’t.

No sooner had the magazine posted the story than a handful of people jumped in to denigrate my effort. Some said that my paddle across the Bay wasn’t that hard and that they could do it. Essentially, my effort wasn’t worthy of the attention I was receiving. Others said they know people who swim across the bay and that my paddle, again, wasn’t much of an accomplishment. And let me say again, the vast majority of comments were very positive, but what makes people want to attack other’s accomplishments? What triggers haters?

There’s a type of person that simply can’t let others be acknowledged without debasing their achievements. Unfortunately, they’re everywhere. They lurk in shadows waiting to leap out and knock down someone’s efforts. Is it possible to scroll through social media and NOT attack other’s success? Certainly. But some can’t. Or won’t. What is it about these people?

Remarkably, I sat this morning after reading some of these comments and began questioning if my paddle board crossing was truly that hard? Maybe they were right? Did I overblow the effort seeking some sort of vainglory? It didn’t take long for me to answer No. All aspects of this goal were a difficult challenge and when I finished crossing the Bay the pain and exhaustion I felt were very real. A superhero athlete could have done it easily. Me? It was a true struggle.

Discouragement is a powerful drug. It’s meant to stoke the ego of the pusher. And the ego, unchecked, always compares, elevates and separates. It says I’ve judged you, I’m different and I’m better. It’s the motive of the hater. I knew none of the people who tried to devalue my effort. I think none of them knew me. Anonymity is key to haters.

If there is a message here, it’s one you and I have already heard before - it’s to keep achieving. Keep making things happen. Set goals, do bold and audacious things. Let the haters try to knock you down but don’t flinch. Don’t even turn your head. Accept helpful criticism but ignore the rest. Because when they’re judging, evaluating and separating they’re dying inside due to their personal weakness. We’ll never be rid of them, but we can devalue them. And maybe, in time, like gnats and mosquitos, they’ll go away.

I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to keep it real.

On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam and a client discuss employee retention issues and he shares and idea that may get you through any business turmoil that may lie ahead.

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On a call with an upcoming client this week I was discussing one of their challenges. They’re having a hard time recruiting and retaining young talent. “But here’s something we did recently,” my client said, “that may have some sort of impact. We added a snack pantry to the office kitchen and it’s been a huge hit.”

"Tell me more," I said.

“Well,” she said. “Our young employees know they should have health insurance, and they do, and they know they should have a 401k, which they do. But neither of those items are very important to young people who seldom need those things right now. They’re like a boxes that needs to be checked – and they are - but they aren’t very fun. So, we decided to add something that our young employees could use right now. We added a snack panty and included a new refrigerator.” She said, “I fill the pantry each week with new and different snacks. Some healthy and some not healthy. They love it and have told me so.”

Other than people happily snacking in the kitchen, I asked, has there been any other benefit? I mean a snack pantry and a new refrigerator is a high price to pay just to get happy snackers.

“We invested in a fancy coffee maker,” she said. “It grinds the beans for each cup and it can make hot chocolate. It takes a moment or two to make each cup. In the kitchen we added an island. And while people are waiting for their coffee, they stand around the island and talk.”

I reminded her that during the pandemic, a big complaint from corporate types was that creativity in the workplace was taking a hit due to a lack of spontaneous interactions. There are no spontaneous interactions over Zoom or on a Teams call. Bumping into someone and catching up often stimulates new ideas and there are buckets of business school case studies about this. The Pixar movie Toy Story, in fact, was supposed to be as good as it was due to Pixar people and Apple people chatting in common areas when they were making the movie and shared office space. They’d bump into each other and talk about the plot.

“That’s happening,” she said. “Around the island, they catch up with each other and discuss their work and projects. It’s become an unexpected benefit of the snack kitchen. We’d be foolish to shoo them away or hurry them back to their desks.”

Back in the day the tech companies offered pinball machines and foosball tables in break rooms? Remember this? I thought that was crazy. Could it be, though, that this iPhone in my hand was conceived by two workers standing next to each other at a foosball table discussing an idea that eventually led to this phone? And could it be that the next major business breakthrough comes from a pack of string cheese you put in the office fridge and then sent a Teams message that read “Free string cheese in the fridge. Please help yourself.” Worried about tariffs? Worried about a recession? Consider the potential of string cheese. It’s an idea so powerful you’d think it originated in Washington DC.

I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.