36: Dustin Hogue
“At this point we had been sitting for hours, drinking water, and then abruptly started training. I had to pee so bad.”
About Dustin
Dustin Hogue, a man whose journey has taken him from Kansas to Iraq, cooking shows to underground dinner clubs and much in between.
Growing up in Kansas City, Dustin was familiar with the back of the house from an early age. With a mom that worked two jobs and still found time to prepare family meals, he was the prep cook to her simple but love-infused dishes, chopping onions or bell peppers and preferring the Food Network to cartoons.
At the same time, Dustin was obsessed with fitness and competition, running track and playing basketball in high school. Growing up humbly, he joined the military to pay for college and deployed to Iraq twice. After his first tour, he worked as a bartender and server in KC restaurants, opening his eyes to the wide world of culinary adventures. He would cook for himself in college as humbly as his mother used to cook and with the same passion for the art.
Dustin’s second deployment brought him closer to his passion for fitness, helping soldiers pass their physical fitness test and falling in love with the impact he was having on their lives, seeing them live healthier and perform better. Knowing that he was helping others live a better life pushed him deeper into the fitness world and training others became a big part of his life, first as a personal trainer, then as a rowing and cycling instructor. In the meantime, he decided to jump into triathlons, landing a first place finish in the charity division of his first race and ramping it up until he qualified for the International Triathlon.
Meanwhile, with his passion for food having become a big part of his life, Dustin was selected as a contestant on the Food Network’s The Julia Child Challenge, bringing his love of seasonal ingredients, culinary experiences and storytelling to millions of viewers. It was a fitting twist to his story arc. Perhaps, somewhere, glued to their TVs were other kids who, like Dustin, dream of someday bringing their own culinary creations to life.
And as for storytelling, well… Dustin is no stranger. At a recent private dinner, every dish on the tasting menu was accompanied by his visit to the table to regale diners with a tale of its origins, woven expertly to highlight the history, the ingredients, the ethos.
-
Max Chopovsky: 0:02
This is Moral of the Story Interesting people telling their favorite short stories and then breaking them down to understand what makes them so good. I'm your host, Max Jepofsky. Today's guest is Dustin Hoog, a man whose journey has taken him from Kansas to Iraq, cooking shows to underground dinner clubs and much in between. Growing up in Kansas City, Dustin was familiar with the back of the house from an early age, With a mom that worked two jobs and still found time to prepare family meals. He was the prep cook to her simple but love-infused dishes, chopping onions or bell peppers and preferring the food network to cartoons. At the same time, Dustin was obsessed with fitness and competition, running track and playing basketball in high school. Growing up humbly, he joined the military to pay for college and deployed to Iraq twice. After his first tour, he worked as a bartender and server in KC restaurants, opening his eyes to the wide world of culinary adventures. He would cook for himself in college as humbly as his mother used to cook and with the same passion for the art. Dustin's second deployment brought him closer to his passion for fitness helping soldiers pass their physical fitness test and falling in love with the impact he was having on their lives, seeing them live healthier and perform better. Knowing that he was helping others live a better life pushed him deeper into the fitness world, and training others became a big part of his life, first as a personal trainer, then as a rowing and cycling instructor. In the meantime, he decided to jump into triathlons, landing a first place finish in the chair of the charity division of his first race and ramping it up until he qualified for the international triathlon. Meanwhile, with his passion for food having become a big part of his life, Dustin was selected as a contestant on the Food Network's the Julia Child Challenge, bringing his love of seasonal ingredients, culinary experiences and storytelling to millions of viewers. It was a fitting twist to his story arc, perhaps somewhere glued to their TVs where other kids who, like Dustin, dream of someday bringing their own culinary creations to life. And for storytelling. While Dustin is no stranger, at a recent private dinner, every dish on the tasting menu was accompanied by his visit to the table to regale diners with a tale of its origins, woven expertly to highlight the history, the ingredients, the ethos. Dustin traveled through many arenas of life humbly, diligently, passionately, and maybe because he enjoys the dichotomy of allowing himself to make mistakes while pursuing greatness. As for what's next for him, well, whatever it is, he will give it 100% Dustin. Welcome to the show, brother.
Dustin Hogue: 2:37
All right. Thank you so much for having me. I gotta say you are an expert at the introductions. Thanks, man.
Max Chopovsky: 2:44
Thanks, it's the least I can do. So you are here to tell us a story Before we start set the stage. Is there anything that we should know about the story before we get into it?
Dustin Hogue: 2:57
Well, you alluded to my time in the military, so this story goes back a lot of years to the younger Dustin, and it's kind of the setting for this is starting off that journey with the military.
Max Chopovsky: 3:09
Oh, I love it. Let's get into it. Man, All right, tell me a story.
Dustin Hogue: 3:13
All right. So I joined the military at 17,. As you said, to pay for college, you can't go to basic training until you're 18. So the day after my 18th birthday I got on a flight. I flew to South Carolina to start basic training and upon arrival you start with about a week of in-processing. So you're not really getting into the meat of being a soldier training until you get through this week of standing in lines, getting shots, filling out paperwork, setting up bank accounts and amassing a ton of army gear and uniform and protective wear. This is the first kind of introduction to the common thread in the military hurry up and wait. A lot of moving with urgency to stand in the line and wait. So at the end of this five days of in-processing and accumulating all this gear, they get ready to ship you to like actually start basic training. This is the summer in South Carolina. It's extremely hot. Before you get on the bus to go start training, they have you pack up all your things and this is about two huge green army duffel bags. I'm sure you've seen these things before. They're like tall and cylindrical and then a rucksack just full of equipment. They sit you outside for hours. Again, we hurried up to pack everything up and now they're like all right, wait. Every 10 minutes or so a drill sergeant would yell hydrate because it's hot and they know what we're getting into. So the drill sergeant yells hydrate. Everybody calls back beat the heat. Drill sergeant, beat the heat. And you're supposed to finish your canteen and they check after everybody drinks. They make you hold your canteen upside down If you didn't completely finish. They make you do pushups or whatever and then finish your water. Long story short, after a couple hours of this sitting, wait, drinking water over and over, they finally put you on the bus. You are stacked with all your gear, your head is down and they drive to your training site, probably about a 45 minute ride, which I later learned was that just driving in circles, killing time. But so they pull up to this field. A new drill sergeant, with even more intensity, hops on the bus and immediately is just screaming, yelling in your face, rushing. Everybody's running off the bus with their equipment. They're pointing go this way, go that way. They're telling you to line up your equipment. Dress right, dress, which means just everything. They're very, very consistently lined up. Nothing you do is going to be correct. They're like no, terrible, move it again screaming. But at this point we had been sitting for hours drinking water and then abruptly having to start this training. So I had more and more been getting to the point of just complete discomfort with how much I had to pee and it didn't seem like there was any end to this chaos of running around moving bags arbitrarily. Turn to this other soldier next to me who I had gotten to know a bit through the end processing and he was a bit older Most of us were like 18, 19 years old and this guy had played football in college and decided to join the military a little bit differently. He was a huge dude. He came in at a higher rank because he had already had some school. So kind of looked up to this dude right, and so I turned to him like man, I got a pee, so bad. And he turns to me in the midst of all this chaos and is like I peed twice before we even got off the bus. And I see this guy that I've been looking up to and knew that he was just standing there with piss in his boots because he had peed himself several times before we even got off the bus and it just made me feel so much better and I just stood there and I peed. And what's funny about this is as soon as I finish peeing it culminates and they're like all right, good, everything's lined up, we can go Right after I give in and I pee, we're done. So then we pick up our bags and march to our barracks for the first time and I'm just sloshing my whole way to the barracks and it's not like we get there and get to put the things away and reset. We spent another hour or so getting smoked, which is being told to do pushups, and getting yelled at and moving things around and yeah, so I spent hours in pissy boots to start off my journey in the military. Oh my God.
Max Chopovsky: 7:53
And did it just smell like piss in those barracks?
Dustin Hogue: 7:57
At this point again, it's hot in South Carolina so we're sweating. I'm sure several people probably peed, I don't know, but yeah, everybody was just wet and there was no telling what was peeing, what was sweating at that point probably.
Max Chopovsky: 8:11
Did anybody ask to go to the bathroom?
Dustin Hogue: 8:13
Oh yeah, I'm sure. Actually, before I peed, I did try to ask a drill sergeant if I could go to the bathroom. He's like fuck. No, what do you mean? That's not what's happening right now. Oh my.
Max Chopovsky: 8:22
God, did you get to wash all your clothes at some point?
Dustin Hogue: 8:26
Yeah, actually probably not until several days later. You had the weekends to do your laundry, so that pissy uniform probably sat in my wall locker for a week before we got to wash it. And then those boots I mean, they continued. I wore those through basic training, oh my.
Max Chopovsky: 8:43
God, what a way to start basic training.
Dustin Hogue: 8:49
Yeah, this was my first time leaving Kansas City and leaving home and being away from the comfort of family, and to start it off like that was certainly a bit humbling.
Max Chopovsky: 9:03
Now my understanding is during basic training. All of that sort of chaos is intentional. All of the conflicting directions are intentional to simulate the chaos and disorder of war, and the discomfort that they put you through is just practice for the substantially worse discomfort you are going to have during battle when you're actually deployed. Do you feel like that was a part of it? They were just like hey, if you have to go, you got to figure it out. It's not like you can go use a porta potty when you're in the front lines.
Dustin Hogue: 9:42
Oh yeah, for sure, the entire point of basic training is to get you well for one, to kind of beat you down and then build you back up, but also, yeah, get you thinking on your feet. Getting you figuring out how to be resilient and adapt and overcome is what was said a lot Adapt and overcome. As situations arise, you have to figure out how to navigate through those situations in a smart way, because people's lives depend on it.
Max Chopovsky: 10:11
Do you feel like basic training prepared you well for your deployment?
Dustin Hogue: 10:16
Everybody's first job in the military is to be trained to be an infantryman. No matter what your job is, if you're going into accounting, or if you're a mechanic or a truck driver or whatever it may be in the military, your first job is to learn those basic soldier skills. So to a certain extent, yes, I feel like it prepares you, but there's only so much that you can simulate and it's hard to know exactly what you're getting into when you deploy or go overseas and go into war zone for the first time. We spent so much time training. So in the early 2000s a lot of the war was fought in convoys on the roads IEDs, roadside bombs. So you spend a lot of time going through this counter IED training, learning how to notice if something is a signifier of a potential IED or roadside bomb right so stacks of rocks, tires, displaced dirt, whatever it may be. But I remember driving into Iraq for the first time and just being overwhelmed with the fact that all those things that we had spent so much time training to look for were just looking littered everywhere. So you're trained to find these things, but then, once you get there, you have to go through this whole another level of training yourself to edit and to decipher what actually is a threat and what isn't, because you could spend the whole time literally just going down the street thinking every single thing is going to be a threat.
Max Chopovsky: 11:52
That's crazy. I'm sure that that was far from your mind when you were standing there pissing yourself when you first arrived.
Dustin Hogue: 12:03
Yeah, that was survival of the bladder at that time.
Max Chopovsky: 12:06
I mean, what was going through your head when you were like well, I guess this is it, I guess this is how it's going down. Do you remember what you were thinking when you did that?
Dustin Hogue: 12:15
Well, I grew up with a single mom. I always considered myself kind of shy and timid. I was always very athletic but my timidness kind of kept me from being great. If I got basketball game, I was nervous about screwing up and then inevitably I'd make a mistake. And that shy timidness stayed with me through high school. And you know, joining in military kind of seemed uncharacteristic for me and I wanted to show that I could be strong and brave. And so, yeah, I think initial thought when that's happening is like you can't piss yourself on your first day of basic training, like get it together, man up, make it through this. But having that other soldier who I had kind of, over that short period of time, grown to admire and look up to kind of give me the green light to be like it's okay. You know there's no perfect way to do this and you can't take yourself too seriously.
Max Chopovsky: 13:24
What a humbling experience too when you first show up and I think there are probably a good number of people that show up to basic training thinking I got this. You know there's going to be a walk in the park and this is such a humbling experience. When up front you're like man, they want to even let me go to the bathroom. It's like some basic needs shit and I can't even go pee and it's just a humbling experience and it almost plays into the narrative of, like we call the shots around here. You're going to have moments when you feel weak and that's the breaking down before we build you back up. It's just part of the process.
Dustin Hogue: 14:04
Yeah, exactly, I always considered myself athletic. I knew that I was going to be able to do well with the physical parts of basic training. But that was just kind of eye-opening and like it's not just about the physical, it's not about how many push-ups they're going to make you do you have to deal with the fact that you no longer have control over simple things Like when you go to the restroom or how long you get to finish a meal, what time you wake up in the morning?
Max Chopovsky: 14:30
It reminds me a little bit of my very first day in Chicago when I moved to Chicago. I moved from Cleveland and I put my 96 Toyota Camry on the back of a little trailer behind the U-Haul truck, packed all my stuff, and I drove to Chicago and I pulled into the U-Haul facility in Chicago and parked the U-Haul trailer and then I went to go get my car off the back. I got in my car, I pulled it off the trailer and ran into a pole immediately and I remember looking at two guys that were sitting kind of off to the side and they didn't do anything. They were workers at U-Haul and they just watched me pull off. And as I hit the pole, the first thing I did was I look at them and they were like, oh shit, they were just laughing at me and I was like welcome to Shytown, the first humbling moment of my tenure in Chicago. So let me ask you this what is the moral of that story that you told?
Dustin Hogue: 15:42
For me, that moral that day was you can't take yourself too seriously, because if you try to control every single thing, you're going to be disappointed because, like you said, with your car on the U-Haul, unexpected things are going to come up and you've got to find a way to find some positivity in it and push through.
Max Chopovsky: 16:07
I also feel like the lesson that many of us don't learn until we're much later and until we're older, is people don't care as much as you think they do 100%, and I've spent a lot of my life worrying what people think and how much they care.
Dustin Hogue: 16:27
And that's the case. They don't care as much as you think they do.
Max Chopovsky: 16:30
Sometimes that's right. They don't notice the small things that you think they do and we all kind of think like we're living in our own Truman Show, but in reality they actually are going through the same thought process you are. They're so focused on themselves and you're not thinking about some little thing that they did right, Because you're focused on yourself. So it's really interesting. Why did you choose to tell this story? I know you have so many to choose from. Why was this the one that you selected?
Dustin Hogue: 17:01
I like to laugh. That was a big part of it. I wanted to have something that meant something to me but had a bit of lightness and levity and could just make us laugh a little bit, which I think we did, which was nice. I don't know there's so many little pieces of this story of why it was impactful. I grew up not with my father in my life, so I often have found myself, especially as a younger person, looking for those positive, strong male role models, especially as a black kid, without growing up with that. So being able to find people like that throughout my life in different chapters, who have taught me something in little ways that maybe they didn't even notice, it's just been a very important thing in my life. It's funny how something like Pee and Yourself can show you the impact that somebody else can have on you.
Max Chopovsky: 17:57
Especially because that football player, the ex-football player standing next to you, he kind of showed you that it was okay, the world is not going to end, just get it over with and move on. And you sort of were looking up to him. You're like, yeah, it's not as bad as I think it is.
Dustin Hogue: 18:19
You know, we create stories about ourselves and we create stories about other people and those stories are powerful in how we move through life and how we interact with people. But sometimes those stories we create are just so fucking wrong about ourselves and about other people. And so you look at somebody and you think that's the epitome of strength, and there's no way he's going to give in and pee himself or whatever it may be, there's no way he's going to show weakness. And then you realize that story is wrong. Everybody has moments in which they are vulnerable.
Max Chopovsky: 18:58
Most importantly, good for him for being vulnerable, right, because you looked up to him and he could have been like man. You just got to hold it. He could have lied and he led by example and he was like I don't give a shit, like I have no shame. We're getting into hell effectively and I'm not going to die on this hill. Have you tweaked the story over time? I'm sure you've told it a million times. Were there any sort of changes that you've made to it?
Dustin Hogue: 19:26
No, honestly, I don't think so. I think telling a good story has a lot to do with how you deliver and the enthusiasm you put into it. So maybe that energy behind it has changed a little bit, but the meat of it is always pretty much the same, yeah, so let's talk about that a little bit.
Max Chopovsky: 19:46
So you've heard many, many good stories, I'm sure, between the military and the hospitality world. What do good stories have in common in your opinion?
Dustin Hogue: 19:58
Yeah, I think they elicit some kind of emotion. I think they make you feel something, and that doesn't necessarily mean you have to learn some life lesson from it. But we read books and we watch movies and we interact with people to have connection and to have feeling, and I think those stories that can make you feel something and reconnect you with the humanness of things are the most impactful. We spend so much time thinking of how different we are and what separates us, and so the stories that pull us together and show that connectivity are always super impactful for me.
Max Chopovsky: 20:39
Definitely. Now what do you think makes for a good storyteller?
Dustin Hogue: 20:43
Vulnerability and I mean, I guess, a little bit of an ability to be a performer. You have to. You got to deliver. You know, a good story can be a good story, but a good story can be great when it's delivered with some passion and enthusiasm, totally.
Max Chopovsky: 20:59
I learned that the hard way over and over again when I would tell one of my buddy's stories. I used to work with a guy who was an incredible storyteller and he would tell the simplest story but he would have the crowd in stitches as he would tell that's so impressive, right, yeah? And then I would go and try to tell the story and I got no reaction out of it and I was like, literally I'm telling the exact same story. What's going on? And it took me a while to realize it's his delivery. He's so animated when he tells the story, he's so lively and the way that he delivers the punchline and that is actually a way, bigger part of it than I ever thought.
Dustin Hogue: 21:38
Yeah, 100%. I mean, comedians are the perfect example of this. They're storytellers, but they figured out just how to deliver in such an impactful way.
Max Chopovsky: 21:47
Now, how do you? Use storytelling in your personal life.
Dustin Hogue: 21:50
Going into this, I thought so much about the act of storytelling because I don't necessarily think that on a day-to-day basis, I'm the one that's going to regale people with my stories. But I do also understand that the things that I do for a living now, the journey that I've been on, just puts me in a position of telling a story. A perfect example is what you mentioned in sitting down and experiencing my supper club. The food is the story. The ability to tie a story into your craft and your art and the thing that you're giving people makes it so much more impactful. I can put a good dish down in front of somebody, but every time what people say that they remember and what they enjoyed so much was that I related it to something in my life and talked about how I was inspired to do that and what it meant to me, and that's really what got me into food. I think food is such a story about people and our shared struggle and, again, what connects us rather than separates us. We all have to eat. We've all had to figure out how to conserve our resources and make food last longer, and that's a shared struggle that we've always had and, when it comes down to it. We all need that and we all connect through that struggle. And the food and the feeding of people is the biggest way in which I tell a story, and it really is a story.
Max Chopovsky: 23:26
I mean you can tell the tasting menu that we did was a journey, and it was a beautiful journey because of the way that you guided us on it. What I think is so interesting about food is it's on such a spectrum. It goes from the simple end of the spectrum. It's the most basic sustenance that we need. We have to have it to survive. So there are just simple. You have to have these calories, kind of like MREs, right, they're not made to be delicious right.
Dustin Hogue: 24:04
Yeah, for people who don't know what MREs are, it's meal ready to eat. It's a terrible meal and a bag basically, Exactly.
Max Chopovsky: 24:12
So that's the basic part of the spectrum, the easiest way to get the calories you need to stay alive. And then, on the other end of the spectrum, it's elevated to an art that people experience, and they experience it with all of their senses. And it's the difference between an MRE and sitting down at Jiro's restaurant and eating one piece of fish while he watches you so intently and knowing that the amount of effort that went into crafting that one piece of nigiri was monumental and built on decades of passionately pursuing his craft. It's the same as breathing. You know, you and I breathe. You were breathing. Right now we have to breathe to survive, and so on one end of the spectrum, it's the simplicity of just taking a breath without even thinking about it. On the other end, it's therapy and mindfulness and focusing on the breath and being more consciously aware of it. I think it's fascinating that food holds such an outsized plays, such an outsized role. That can be art, if you want it to be.
Dustin Hogue: 25:28
Yeah, it's become a bit of. I mean, I feel this kind of way about a fitness too. It's like as much as we need it and it's positive for our bodies. It's also just kind of entertaining. Most weekends, if you're going out with your friends, you're talking about where are we going to eat, where are we going to break bread and share a meal together? Speaking of the MREs, it's funny like they had vegetarian options and the vegetarian options were not good, like not good at all. Not that any of it was good, but the vegetarian options are the ones that always came with candy, which was kind of like contradictory to me. It was funny. So, depending on how hungry you are, if you've gone some days with no sugar, you're like I'll suffer through the terrible MRE with the vegetarian main course so I could have some skittles, oh that's funny.
Max Chopovsky: 26:19
That's like the military recognizing that they're so bad that they have to give you candy. Yeah, exactly, it's like flavoring kids' medicine because they're like it's so terrible, we have to help you. Yeah, that's right. Now, when we talk about morals and stories, do you think that every story has to have a moral, and if it doesn't, is it still a good story?
Dustin Hogue: 26:42
Yeah, I don't think every story has to have a moral. I think stories can absolutely be impactful without that being a characteristic of them. But I do think that stories can mean different things to different people and I may be telling you a story because I want to get across some moral that I found from it, and you may interpret that completely different and find something else that you're able to take from that. But I also think a story can just be a good story if it again, if it just makes you feel a certain way, if it can make you laugh or it can make you understand a person more. I think that's just as strong. The morals are kind of in us already. We just choose things and stories to relate to the moral.
Max Chopovsky: 27:29
Well, that's an interesting approach, yeah, and I suppose that makes for an even better story when the audience can draw conclusions depending on kind of their own philosophies on the world.
Dustin Hogue: 27:46
Right. It's like if you read your horoscope right and you're like, oh man, that makes so much sense, but you're interpreting that in the way you needed to interpret it that day, right, like anybody can find that connection with that statement you taking it for what it's worth, where you're at in your life in that day and that instance.
Max Chopovsky: 28:04
Totally. I mean, I think that's how they write them Like to think that that's the brilliant Whoever writes horoscopes. I need to talk to them about copywriting. What's one of your books that you think does a really good job of storytelling?
Dustin Hogue: 28:17
I spend a lot of time reading cookbooks. Surprisingly, and when people are asking me about you know what cookbooks to read, I always suggest Samin Nosrat's cookbook salt, fat, acid heat, because she does such a good job of telling a story that teaches you and makes you feel emotion and connects you with what you're, with the dishes and the things that you're trying to cook. It's not just a book full of recipes, it's the story of why we do things in a certain way and how she got to the point of where she is in her food journey. So that's one of the spectrum for me. And then I can tell you're a hip hop fan. I listened to one of your episodes and you referenced the end of 2014, forrest Hill Drive, where J Cole goes on a rant about his credits, and so, first of all, as soon as I got done listening to that episode, I put that album on and listened to it front to back. But Michael Eric Dyson wrote a book about I mean, he's wrote a book about a lot of hip hop artists, but Jay-Z is one of my favorite rappers ever and Michael Eric Dyson is just a fantastic writer and storyteller and he finds a way to kind of meet you where you are, while trying to get points across about about race, about social injustices, about black people's impact on American society, just in general. And I think it's when you can tell stories in a way that meets people where they are, you're able to express your point a little bit more, and you're able to.
Max Chopovsky: 29:55
It's not a preaching it, it's a telling of a story that can help you understand things that maybe you are afraid of or don't understand much, and I think it's important to have that perspective, because it's easy to sit there and listen to a song by Jay-Z or by Biggie about how they were just trying to make some money to feed their daughter and it's not that they're romanticizing it, but it's part of a song. You're being entertained. But if you really sort of stand back and think about what they had to go through to survive, you grew up with a single mother and it was hard for her and it was harder for you than it would be for somebody who grew up with two parents right, a two parent household that's nothing compared to what these guys had to go through to survive when they would. If they're out on the corner on the wrong day, they might get shot. I mean, I think there's a part in Jay-Z's story, the story of his life, where he was in London very early in his career on a day that the cops raided his block and had he not been there, the world would have been different, not just for him, not for his story, but for everyone else that's been able to enjoy his art. So it's really fascinating. Do you have Jay's book that he wrote about his lyrics, for he breaks down his songs, yeah, it's very good.
Dustin Hogue: 31:34
I mean, he's a poet. It's amazing it's his art has been so impactful to music, to pop culture, to black society, just generally. But yeah, you make a statement about. They're not glorifying this lifestyle, they're telling a story. They're telling their story, but they're telling a story of like that's the reality for a lot of people. A lot of people have to. You know cause Jay caught hustle, you know, and spend every day figuring out how to survive, and I think we kind of lose sight of that from our apartment buildings with amenities and safeties and luxuries, and so we need storytellers like that I actually think that is very true.
Max Chopovsky: 32:18
I also think what Jay does really well is something he mentioned in one of his songs where he talks about you have to treat every song as if it's your first, and that keeps you humble, because I think when you become successful, the pressure is off a little bit and you feel less of a need to push because you don't have to push. And the artists that have become successful and have stayed successful whether it's Jay-Z or Taylor Swift they've been able to keep pushing as if their back is up against the wall every single day, and that's what sets them apart.
Dustin Hogue: 32:56
It's growth, it's refusing to be stagnant. That's always been important in my life, and it's probably one of the only reasons that I've been able to do. The cool things that I've been able to do is I'm continually looking for ways to move forward. I'm 36 years old and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, but I feel very confident that, as long as I keep moving and following things that I'm passionate about and just striving that, things will present themselves. Yes.
Max Chopovsky: 33:28
And it's being able to have faith that they will, and being able to have the willingness to continuously be humbled when you try something. Now, a lot of the time people, the older they get, the less willing they are to sort of show their vulnerability, show their weakness, show that they're new or not good at something and the ability to be humbled and show the world completely to be out of your comfort zone. So I normally ask this last question by structuring it as one thing you would say to your 20 year old self. But I'm gonna ask you a slightly different version of that question. If you could say one thing to the Dustin that had just peed himself on that line and felt maybe shamed relieved definitely, but also just shamed and confused what would you say to that kid?
Dustin Hogue: 34:31
I would say there's gonna be a lot of moments like this. In the grand scheme of things, they matter way less than you think they do, so just keep going. Don't compare yourself to anybody else. Don't take life too seriously, because it's when you can fail and make a fool of yourself that you see the most growth.
Max Chopovsky: 34:49
Damn right, damn right, just keep going. Well, that does it, brother. Dustin Hoge, chef, fitness instructor, storyteller, Thanks for being on the show man.
Dustin Hogue: 35:02
Oh, thank you so much for having me. This was a blast.
Max Chopovsky: 35:04
Awesome For show notes and more. Head over to maspodorg. Find us on Apple Podcasts, spotify, amazon, wherever you get your podcast on. This was Moral of the Story. I'm Max Dripofsky. Thank you for listening. Talk to you next time.