How Do You Say Success in Spanglish?
The path to success isn’t paved for people of color. Join me as I sit down with individuals who share their stories as we learn how to say Success in Spanglish.
How Do You Say Success in Spanglish?
Redefining Success in Spanglish: Insights from a Season of Personal Growth y Progreso
What if success isn't just about financial gain? In our season finale of "How Do You Say Success in Spanglish," I reflect on the journey of producing nearly 35 episodes, drawing from my personal experiences and the wisdom of our incredible guests. Inspired by an episode of Good Mythical Morning and the story of Jimmy John's, we examine the disparities faced by minorities and immigrants in accessing opportunities, and how my own career struggles led me to seek guidance from impactful audiobooks like "Atomic Habits" and "The Compound Effect"
Do you believe in taking risks to achieve your dreams? We'll discuss how personal growth and collective progress contribute to a more fulfilling definition of success. Overcoming imposter syndrome, embracing self-awareness, and understanding what truly matters in our lives are key to unlocking long-term happiness. By making incremental improvements and staying aligned with a clear sense of purpose, we can build the skills and experiences needed to reach our goals.
Balancing career ambitions with personal life is no easy feat, especially as a father. I share the importance of self-care, mental health, and cherishing time with loved ones. Drawing inspiration from "The Compound Effect," we talk about the power of small, consistent changes and recognizing our progress. As we close out season one, I express my heartfelt gratitude to all our listeners and share my excitement for what's to come in season two. Thank you for being part of this incredible journey as we continue learning how to say success in Spanglish.
See more at www.successinspanglish.com
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Intro Song: Regaeton Pop - Denbow Ambiance
This is Raul Lopez and you're listening to how Do you Save Success in Spanglish. The path to success isn't easy For minorities and people of color. Many attempt this journey with little to no guidance. Join me as I sit down with individuals who share their stories of perseverance so that together we can learn how to say success in Spanglish what's good, mi gente, it's your boy, raul. Welcome back to how Do you Say Success in Spanglish. Today, my guest is me.
Raul Lopez:I wanted to take some time, this being my last episode of my first season and almost a year into this and about 34 episodes, 35 episodes deep, really hope that I've grown and gained a lot from this and I do feel like I've learned a lot in this first year with everything that's been going on and all the guests I've had, all the amazing guests that I've had. So I kind of want to just take a last breath for this season and talk a little bit and reflect and kind of think about you know where I've come from what Mythical Morning, and they were comparing sandwiches from Jersey, mike and Jimmy John's and I'll get to the point of where a sandwich competition comes into play with how do you say success in Spanish? But they were talking just randomly, random facts, kind of they throw in there, and they talked about Jimmy John and how the owner of Jimmy John, his father, had given him $25,000 and said start a business, um, and if you fail you have to go back to the military. And it reminded me of, kind of what got me started with this. Um, for any, for a lot of people, uh, especially who grew up poor and sometimes an immigrant and not having this resources, availability or capabilities of our family to kind of guide us, the idea of having a family member, say, here's $25,000, start a company and going with it, um, even now, my age of that, I'm at the idea of having 25 000 dollars to drop on a company, you know would be nice not there yet, to be able to just go there and start that. Start that way, um. And it reminded me of, like, why I started this, you know, because there's this disconnect, there's this difference, this nuance in how a lot of us who have gathered, gained any type of success or are trying to gain success, we travel this road. You know, I don't know if I mentioned it in my previous podcast, but the reason I kind of started this was, like I said I was going through my own tough spot when it came to my career.
Raul Lopez:I had not felt like I progressed where I was, I was not getting the promotions I wanted. Things were being dangled in front of me. I had worked for too many years at a few different companies with very little upper mobility. So I think I had averaged about seven years in my first job and at the job I was at I was circling almost eight years seven years I think at that job as well. So it was kind of like not moving anywhere and sticking around.
Raul Lopez:And so I decided, hey, let me get into some self-help stuff, start reading. Well, I don't like to read. I don't like to read, but I'm a really slow reader, so reading for me is very difficult. So I like to listen to audiobooks and I was listening to a few audiobooks about different things and self-help and you know some great books like. You know some some great books like um, you know Atomic Habits, um and uh, rich Dad, poor Dad, uh, the. The one book I kind of changed and kind of got me into this was Shoe Dog, and not necessarily for the motivational aspect of it, um, cause I remember reading all the reviews and shoe dog was kind of like hey, yeah, um, you know this is a great motivational story. This inspired me. This was a wonderful, wonderful story and I think as a business uh, and shoe dog is a story about the founder of Nike, um, and as a business, I agree. I think as a business it's a very inspirational underdog story for a company.
Raul Lopez:But on an individual basis, early on I couldn't get past a certain aspect of it. You know the just to kind of quickly give a little glimpse of what happened, you know, after you know, graduating and spending some time in Hawaii and deciding he wanted to open a start, a shoe store. Based off of some research he did in college, at Stanford, he went to his dad, was able to get a loan from him for once again, kind of like jimmy johns, a loan to start his business. And because his dad had connections as um in different businesses, he was able to get him a connection with someone who knew someone who knew someone in japan and got him that initial door opening to discuss, uh, opening a factory, uh, well, getting a factory to break these shoes for him in Japan. And that was early in the book, really early in the book.
Raul Lopez:You know I'm probably like less than you know. You're probably like a third way into the book at this point and I was like holy shit, I would never have that opportunity. You know my dad was an immigrant. You know we were all immigrants. You know my dad was an immigrant. You know we were all immigrants.
Raul Lopez:You know he was a truck driver who never wanted me to drive trucks and made his life duty, never to let me even like the idea of driving a truck, even to the point of never teaching me how to drive a truck out of fear that I enjoy it. Never wanted me to work because he was afraid I would fear making, you know, six bucks an hour seven bucks an hour at the time as opposed to wanting to go to college. So my dad was very focused on me not fucking up and going to a certain route and going to college and becoming more successful. And I couldn't get over that in the book I could not. No matter how I got there.
Raul Lopez:Every time I learned and I learned more about the story, I just couldn't get over the fact that, yeah, but you had a headstart, you had a little bit of something that I would never have had and you gathered this huge level of success and it's not the same story I would have had. And that's kind of what drove me to want to do this show, this podcast, and present these stories and these journeys of all my guests who come on the show. Um, because we do have these stories and it's we're underrepresented and nobody necessarily talks about it. You're not going to not that many books that you're going to read about and audio books about you know the successes of people that we I show on the show and you know I want that representation. I want people like me who are going through stuff to be able to hear these stories and learn and recognize and maybe, you know, take a lesson from one or two people and apply that to what they're doing.
Raul Lopez:Personally, I have I think I've learned a lot from this from my guests and have been able to actually apply that at work in my own job. Um, you know I've I've become more vocal, um, a lot more um intentional in what I do with my career and what I want next, and being more vocal about you know what, what I want, and more demanding of what I need, uh, from a job, as opposed to just working where before it was me proving myself and now it's me expecting something back in return and holding my job accountable for that. And so it's been working out for me and I'm you know, I'm happy with where I'm at my job. I'm happy of where I'm going and the, the possibilities that are opening up for me, um, and which is great. You know, it didn't I it's funny because I was like I didn't expect this show to teach me lessons. Um, you know the old feeling of you can't teach an old dog new tricks, and I thought I was hopefully just building something for others. Um, but remarkably, it's actually helped me out and lots of times when I'm at um my own life and their situations, um, I think about this show and think about what others have done and it's motivated me to do more.
Raul Lopez:Um, not only have I been doing more with work and becoming more successful in my job, my day job, you know, I've even gone as far, as you know, obviously, expanding this podcast to more than just my podcast, you know, adding the Palanta series and the spotlight series and hopefully a couple more things when I get to next season. Um, and building more, and then also taking the experiences through here and my experience with time and I've actually started a company with my cousin that I'll be presenting, uh in the near future, uh to kind of um present to the world, and so stuff that I would never, I've always would have been afraid to do I've kind of gained that motivation to be like you know, you know, do it now. You know it's like that's funny, shoe dog, nike, just do it, you know, and I'm no longer not that I'm not afraid of stuff, but I'm willing to take more risks and it's been as positive for me that I hope it's been for some of y'all, and I do appreciate a lot of the feedback, you know. And so I kind of wanted to go through some of the things I think I've learned from this past year, and hopefully these are some of the lessons you'll learn, and obviously this is stuff that will get tweaked. Hopefully I can come up with a better way of presenting this in the future so that you know, through what we're doing here, what I'm doing here at how Do you Say Success in the Spanish we can, you know, create a good work frame for us and something to believe in ourselves to help us all.
Raul Lopez:You know I'm a big proponent of all. Ships rise with the tides and I want to see all of us do better. I don't believe that I got to get mine, you know, screw you. So I hope that I'm presenting and providing enough resources and I'm always open to hearing more. So if anybody ever wants to come and tell me hey, this would be great, that would be great. I, you know, a lot of what I've been doing has been done by discussions with other people. Someone says this hey, wouldn't it be great if you did this? You know, I really would be great if you did this, and you know, and so I'm trying to take advantage of that. Um, it's not enough time in the world for me to do everything I want to do yet and I hopefully we'll keep just adding, little by little, incremental increases, incremental improvements in life, um, as well. So, um, you know, I'm a big proponent of the idea of little, little bit of progression will take you a long way. So, um, some of the things I think are important that I've learned through this year have been I think the first thing is believing in yourself.
Raul Lopez:Um, I think we deal with a lot of imposter syndrome, I think. Um, I think a lot of us have been dealt rough, rough cards in life sometimes that we we tend to be. I think it's also a cultural thing, but I think we tend to just kind of be like this is where we're at accept it and be grateful for what you have and not thinking you can do more. And you tend to take what you've been given as opposed to expecting more. And what I've noticed is a lot of people who have been successful have either overcome that or never had that. And I think for a lot of us we might know that one person at our job that just keeps failing up you know someone who keeps isn't the best. Somehow they're confident enough to think their shit don't stink and they keep moving up and you just don't know how. But they're three times more successful for you and have the work ethic and so, um, you know, believe believing in yourself, I think is important, man. I think being able to come and say you know I deserve more, I deserve what I want, um, you know, whatever that is, um, because obviously success is different for everyone.
Raul Lopez:One of the amazing things that I've noticed from all my interviews and I know early on I wasn't asking people how do you say success in Spanglish at the end of all my episodes. But you know, even within then and people who I have asked, you know nobody's ever said more money, nobody's ever said being rich, nobody's ever said buying rich, nobody's ever said buying everything you wanted. It was always something else, something deeper, something more fulfilling. You know, whether it's community or doing your best or making a difference, or you know success has never really been a never had a monetary factor, at least towards my guests that I've had on here Maybe someday I'll have one They'll tell me yeah, dude, get all the money in the world, but you know, nobody's ever came here pushing hustle culture and making all that money. And you know, screwing the world and get yours. You know it's been more, and I think the reality is that, yeah, there are going to be people that are going to be super successful, but not all of us are going to be, you know, billionaires, bill Gates, and trying to achieve an unachievable goal is going to drive you insane and make you feel horrible, and so finding that purpose is going to be important. So finding your why, you know, and so that's kind of what I think.
Raul Lopez:The next part too is, you know, having some sort of preparedness of knowing what you want and what you don't want. You know, understanding that. You know I want this in my life, or even I don't want to work where I'm at now, or I don't want to keep doing what I'm doing, which is a difficult thing to admit sometimes. Sometimes it's hard to say and tell yourself you don't want to do something, than it is to tell you what you want to do, because we all want to be rich and live on the beach and, you know, do all this fun stuff. Sometimes, um, and sometimes it's harder to say you know, I don't know if I want to keep doing what I'm doing now, um, or I want to keep doing what I'm doing now, but maybe I don't want to do it here, you know. And so those are things I think are important for us to ask.
Raul Lopez:Those are things that I think we don't tend to ask ourselves enough, um, and then once we kind of learn that and we've asked ourselves you know, what do I want and what don't I want, and we got to kind of find out, you know, what do I need to do to get there?
Raul Lopez:You know, what do I? What will it take for me to get to the job I want, or the type of job I want? Or, you know, do I need to go get more education or some training, or maybe take a risk at a different job that might teach me those skills that will round me off to. You know, that's kind of what I did. I knew I wasn't happy where I was at, I wasn't really sure where I wanted to go, but I knew I wanted to go something different and I took an opportunity to take a job as a consultant. That rounded me enough to get me to where I'm at now, in E, f, g, and that's going to help add to what I don't have right now in my career, in my skill sets, and it helped tremendously. You know, the job I have now I would not be able to do as well as I did there if I had not taken that job because I learned so much in those two years working with that company.
Raul Lopez:So, but obviously, once you learn that and you know that and you're prepared with that stuff, you know, I think the next step is, um, not being afraid of risk. Um, there's a lot of risk that we uh, we tend to be very risk averse. We do not like the idea of scary changes. Sometimes some of us will not apply for the job because we think, once again, going back to believe yourself, that we're not going to get it right. Um, or we're afraid to switch out because I know what life is like here. I don't know what is going to be in there, you know. And so, um, regardless of whatever you do and yeah, there's always going to be situations where you might make the wrong choice but the wrong choice is just an opportunity to learn more about how to do the right choices. You know, failures are just learning lessons to success. And so I think not being afraid of risk is really important.
Raul Lopez:And not every risk is big. Not every risk is I'm going to leave my job and go work at a different company across the country. You know um little risk. Like, you know what, maybe I'll ask my boss for a raise this time around when I go for my review, or I'll ask my boss for a promotion. You know you deserve it. Sometimes, believe in yourself, you know, um, but you know, don't be afraid of risk. Don't be afraid of saying and telling yourself hey, you know, maybe this opportunity could be worth it. Sometimes you don't know what you have to lose and sometimes you won't even realize how much you can handle.
Raul Lopez:Tell me five years ago that I'd be working full time sometimes more than full time for my day job, running a podcast with two other series, interviewing people on a regular basis, doing socials, posting this, while also trying to start a new business and go to most of my daughter's soccer practices and games, be an active dad and an active husband in my life, like I probably would have told you. I'd never be able to handle that and sometimes I feel like I don't know if I am handling it all the best way. But I've taken that risk and I feel like I've done pretty well so far. And so not to pat myself on the back because I'm not perfect, but you know, I feel, you know I try to teach my daughter to be okay with risk and not be afraid of trying something new, and I've had to start listening to my own advice and, like I said, the show's kind of helped me with that.
Raul Lopez:So you know, don't be afraid of risks and you know, as we start progressing through this, you start believing in yourself and you're getting yourself prepared, knowing what you want and not being afraid of it. And, like I mentioned, you know, start advocating for yourself. Start being vocal about what you want at your job or what you want you know in your life. You know advocate. You know speak it to the world, speak it to your job, speak it to your boss. Let the world know who you are and what you want. You know, be open about it. Don't hide back what you want. You know things won't change if you don't say something.
Raul Lopez:You know if you want a raise, ask for that raise and if they don't give you that raise, well then you know where you stand and you know what your next moves are. You know either you stay with no raise or you do something else. Right, my previous job that I was at for years, I I wanted a raise. I would have been happy with like a 10 increase. You know now I'm making almost more than double that I was making at that job. And when I started this job they tried to get me back for a new position that opened up and the salary they wouldn't give me with a much bigger um title you know, a nice manager title was still like 30k less what I was making at that time and uh, you know, had they given me that 10%, I probably would have still been there. You know which would have been good, which would have been fine at that time, you know.
Raul Lopez:So you know, know your worth and advocate for yourself. And sometimes companies do not, will overuse. You know companies are busy. They're there to make money, not to be your friend. They're not your family. They don't really care about you, you know, not more than what you're able to provide for them. So don't get that twisted, don't get confused on that. So you have to advocate for yourself, because they won't. They will not have your best interest in mind and they would fire you if it helped them save money. They will replace you if you had to leave. And you know they might come back a few years later and say, damn, I could have had a great employee if I would have just gave you a little bit more. But they won't do that at that moment, you know. And so you have to advocate for yourself, whether it's within your company or outside. You know you have to be your own advocate.
Raul Lopez:And then also, you know, don't be afraid to accept help. You know also, don't be afraid to ask for help if you need it but don't be afraid to. You know, accept help. I think one of the great things I've read, especially my last episode with Dr Arlo Fernandez, where he talked about, you know, this gifted program that he was in and I've talked about with my other friends where it was the upper bound program. And then you know, early on my interview with Dave Landon, where he he mentioned that you know he can't take the credit for the opportunities that that were opened up for him, but he can take the credit for recognizing those opportunities and taking advantage of them. You know, like sometimes help is being presented to you and we don't take it. Someone would say, oh, I know someone that you could talk to and they can help you with your resume. Okay, I'll see, I'll see, I'll see. You know what I mean. Those are opportunities for you. Sometimes the world, you know, is giving you these situations and we're too proud to take them. Accept the help, ask for help. If it's something you really want and you want to make changes, don't be afraid to accept that help. Sometimes that's all it's going to take. Sometimes that's what we will. You know we all sometimes don't get there on our own.
Raul Lopez:I'm proud of how Upper Brown has helped me and how my fraternity has helped me shoot. Almost a good portion of the guests is from our fraternity. You know, because I take advantage and I ask for that help and I ask my brothers can you jump on this show and tell me about your life and tell me about your story? Because I'm, you know, I envy a lot of my brothers and I'm proud of a lot of what they've done, and you know I look at them as not just for guidance sometimes and, you know, for help, and I I wouldn't have taken the last job if I wasn't for one of my brothers telling me hey, you know, this is what you would have to do if you took this job, but you can do it and I believe in you and it made it a little easier for me to be like maybe I can. So, you know, ask for help, seek that advice. You know help can be big or small. You know sometimes just talking to someone is what you need and that help can really set you aside. Look for resources and hopefully I can start creating more resources, that where people will be a little more able to jump on and say, hey, I'm looking for information on this and hopefully this podcast can provide some help for you as well. But you know you can contact me as well if there's something, and I'm always happy to try to see where I can help out. So you know, same thing, don't be afraid to ask for help.
Raul Lopez:And then another thing that I think it's important to me as I've gotten older and something that keeps popping up is taking care of yourself that have jumped on my podcast, that have talked about the importance of their mental health and how getting a therapist has really changed their life and how things were difficult or they wish they would have started seeing a therapist sooner, or things have gotten really bad for them, or things like that. And you know taking care of yourself mentally is really important just as much as taking care of yourself physically. You know I talked about my physical health and the stuff that's gone in my life that have completely changed my outlook and makes me wonder, you know, how much time do I have left in this world? And will I look back at what I've done on my deathbed and say I gave it my all? And I want to. You know, and that's also you know, why you need to be able to take care of yourself mentally and physically, because if any of that derails you, it derails you from your success and you want to be around for your success. You want to enjoy your success and so take care of yourself. You know, and with that you know, work life balance. You know that's become so important for me as I've become a father and my daughter gets older and she's a few years away from hating me and never want to talk to me when she becomes a teenager. So I'm accepting the fact that I got to take as much advantage now to be a big part of her life and be involved with as much as I can.
Raul Lopez:And it's hard for a lot of people, you know, sometimes. I've gotten lucky that I work from home and can have the flexibility with my job so I can make it happen. You know, and I even get asked sometimes like how do you find the time for something? I try to make the time can't make the time for everything. There's a lot of things I I push off to the side because it's just not on the top of what's important sometimes. But I do try to have, try to maintain some level of work-life balance and I think that's really important for us.
Raul Lopez:You know I I was reminded of a quote that someone told me. You know, when you're on your deathbed, about to take your last breath, the last thing you're going to think about is, man, I wish I would have worked more hours. You know it's it's never going to be about how much time you put in at work and how much money you made from work, and you're going to remember the other things how much time you've been with your family, how much time you put in at work and how much money you made from work. And you're gonna remember the other things how much time you've been with your family, how much time you were with the people you love and being surrounded by those that make you happy. So you know, take care of yourself. You know, take care of yourself mentally, physically, and you know, get that work-life balance that you can, because you don't want to burn out as well.
Raul Lopez:So you know, coach mark, will be jumped on and talked about burnout a bit, and I think it's important, I think it's really relevant and I think there is a lot of things that can burn your eye and sometimes, with everything that I'm doing, I feel I'm getting close to burnout and I gotta take some time. I gotta say, hey, you know what, I think I'm not gonna do anything today, I'm just gonna veg out and play some video games or watch a movie with my wife and kid, you know. So, um, it's always a balancing act and you got to take care of yourself, um. And then I think ultimately, um, you have to progress and then recognize progress. Right, you have to make the moves and the changes to do better. You're going to, as you recognize things and start doing stuff and actually being taking the actions to get what you want, you're going to progress, man, it's. There's this I'm blanking out on the book's name, but it's a book that really I really like and it's not a talk of my habit. I'm confusing it now, but it's Compound Effect Sorry, the Compound Effect and I really love that book and I really enjoyed that book and what it talked about, because it talked about incremental progression.
Raul Lopez:You know how little changes eventually add up to a lot of changes. If you think about it as weight loss, losing 35 pounds is really difficult, but losing half a pound here and then another half a pound or another half a pound, you know, with time you'll get to that 30 pounds. You can't just come and lose 35 pounds in one night. And so you can't run a marathon until you learn how to run a mile, and you can't learn how to run a mile until you learn how to walk a mile. And so it's incremental increase. You know the idea that if you improve yourself by 1% per day by the end of the year you improve yourself by 365%. You know.
Raul Lopez:So it's little things add up and so you have to recognize that. You know you are going to progress. You know, and you are going to progress little by little and that's okay. You know, sometimes you might make some big jumps, sometimes you might have a little bit of a setback, but at the end of the day you're going to keep progressing. And then you have to recognize that progress. You know. You have to remember progress is progress. You know any little progress is good. You know if it's a 5% increase in your raise or 2%, you ask for more. Or maybe you get more PTO, or maybe you're able to convince your boss to put you on the list of potential manager. You know all those little things are better, or even recognizing that, hey, my job is not going to take me where I want to go here at my job. That's progress. You've learned something new. To take me where I want to go here at my job, that's progress. You've learned something new. You've obtained some new knowledge that you can use to make better decisions. And so recognize that. Tell yourself, hey, I'm progressing, I am making progress, and be proud and happy of what you're doing. You know, it is not a fast race to the end. It is a. It's a marathon. You will take your time, you build up, you will train and you will get there eventually. But you have to just keep working at it and you just have to recognize that the work is becoming positive, that there is action occurring and you're progressing. And so you know.
Raul Lopez:I think that's one of the things that I've had to kind of look at sometimes, where the truth is as you get more successful from where I was in my early career. The amount of money I make now was the dream, and I make a lot more than what I was my dream of what I wanted to make. And I still sometimes feel like I'm not there yet. I still don't feel like it's changed my life. Why? Because it's not going to. I'm still me. I'm still my life.
Raul Lopez:You know the things that are here and there are still a part of my life, and making more money isn't going to fill the voids or whatever feelings I feel, and I have to recognize that, be proud of where I'm at, be proud of all the little things I've accomplished in my life and all the big things and all the successes in my life, because the monetary aspect of that was driving me insane, because I felt like I wasn't where I wanted to be. And then I took a second and took a step back and I recognized what I've achieved, you know, and so recognize your progress, recognize what you've accomplished and be proud of yourself for any little change you've done, because change is difficult. You know I work IT. I do a lot of stuff where I'm introducing new products and stuff, and people hate change and people hate learning how to do new things and drag it out forever as long as they can, and so being open and honest with yourself, to be able to make change is is very difficult and you should be proud of yourself for being able to accomplish that. So I mean I think those are some of the things that I've taken away from this year.
Raul Lopez:I hope to expand on this with more time as I interview more people and I learn more lessons. There's a lot of things that people have mentioned on this podcast that I tend to vote now and when I talk to people who've listened to an episode and different aspects of what people say and how it goes into play and it's opened up my mind a lot and I hope for a lot of y'all too, and I know everybody comes in with different perspectives and have come in with different industries they work at or jobs or different things are doing in different stories and different journeys and things like that. But I feel like each one of them have provided a lot of good lessons and, like with that compound effect, all those little lessons add up into big lessons and I think for me, having to listen to all of them, it's have. It has made major impacts on me and so I hope at least it's making some impacts on some of y'all, even if it's a small incremental impact. So but thank you guys for a great year so far.
Raul Lopez:It's been a lot of work and I'm excited to be able to provide more. But thank you guys for a great year so far. It's been a lot of work and I'm excited to be able to provide more in season two. I'll be taking a little bit of a break to decompress for a little bit, take a little bit of enjoyment of my summer and plan and prepare for some hopefully bigger and better things for the new year. And, as always, thank you guys for all the support. I really appreciate you guys listening in and I look forward to season two and continue to give you guys a lot more stuff. So I hope you join me again as we continue to learn how to say success in spanglish. And thank you for a dope year. Peace out, guys.