Ahead of The Holidays. Teaching My Kids The Joy of Giving

[00:00:00] Entertainment. Insight. Don't take life too serious. Welcome to Brainsky Unleashed.

[00:00:03] Hello everyone and happy holidays. I just wanted to talk to you today. I had Christmas with my family. It was fantastic. I hope everyone else did as well.

[00:00:12] And I was thinking about it as my kids were opening gifts. And my kids are young. So every gift that they would open, they'd unwrap and they'd unwrap and they'd unwrap and then they'd look at it and go, ooh, ah, and then they would like throw it to the side and then, ooh, I want another one. I want another one.

[00:00:27] And then wrap and wrap and throw it to the side and ooh, what's next? And then they might play with something for a few minutes, but then it's time to unwrap another one and they'd get all excited.

[00:00:38] I thought about that. I was like, you know, I mean, I'm sure I did that when I was a kid. I'm sure we all did. But how much do you really value those gifts, right?

[00:00:45] And how much do we actually value anything that's like a material thing? For me personally, I've always been one who enjoys giving more than receiving.

[00:00:54] Receiving gifts is nice. And my daughter asked me, she's like, daddy, aren't you excited? Are you excited to open gifts? I'm like, yeah, yeah.

[00:01:04] I mean, okay. Opening gifts is fun, but for me, I'd rather give.

[00:01:09] And so I decided to do a little something different. I thought I would share it with everybody in case you're interested, because I wanted to try and teach my kids the joy of giving.

[00:01:17] And this suggestion actually did come from someone. And I'm not going to name the person because they kind of wanted to keep their giving private.

[00:01:28] And I understand why. And I mean, I'm not trying to do this to make myself look like super giver man.

[00:01:34] I mean, that's not why I'm doing this. But really, I just wanted to kind of share what I did with my kids.

[00:01:39] And I thought it was kind of a neat idea to try and teach giving, you know, to teach the joy of giving.

[00:01:46] And so I was told recently about a service. And no, I am not a paid sponsor. I am not paid by them.

[00:01:53] I have no relationship with them. I just simply use the service. But the service was called Kiva.

[00:01:58] That's K-I-V-A, Kiva, K-I-V-A dot org.

[00:02:02] And it's a microloan service. So you can do microloans to anyone throughout the world. I thought this was really neat.

[00:02:10] And so I wouldn't necessarily recommend doing more than, say, $25 for a loan.

[00:02:15] You know, you can do multiple loans to multiple people. So that way, more people can benefit versus, say, giving somebody, you know, $100 or $500 or anything like that.

[00:02:25] So I decided I was going to my children, $25. And each of them could then decide where that $25 was going to go. Who were you going to loan it to?

[00:02:35] So I said to my, it was my daughter first. And I said, hey, you know, I want to give you a gift. I want to give you dollars.

[00:02:41] And she got very excited. Oh, I'm so excited.

[00:02:43] And then I said, but it's not for you to keep. It's for you to give. And her face was just washed with disappointment.

[00:02:53] And I kind of didn't expect that, but I sort of expected it because she is a kid.

[00:02:57] So we went through the filters on Kiva to try and find things that maybe she'd be a little bit excited to give.

[00:03:04] You know, whether it was for agricultural reasons or to help people put a toilet in their house or to help improve their house or buy things for their business, help things, you know, help with things like farming and things like there's all kinds of things that you could do.

[00:03:21] She decided after looking at a few things that she kind of wanted to help somebody in, and I'm going to, I might even blow the name, in Vanatu.

[00:03:31] And I think that's how it's pronounced. She wanted to help them put a toilet in their house and be able to buy food.

[00:03:37] And I thought, well, that was, that was very nice. We were one of the first people for this person to make a loan.

[00:03:41] And then I went on social media after that and I said, hey, you know, my daughter just did this.

[00:03:46] And, you know, if like 39 other people do this, this person can complete their project.

[00:03:52] And all of a sudden there was a few more people that donated.

[00:03:55] So even though my daughter wasn't excited at first, a couple of hours later, I suppose, I looked at it and I went, oh, my gosh, look at that.

[00:04:03] There's more people who've donated.

[00:04:06] And so then she got excited and said, look, you know, because you gave, more people gave.

[00:04:11] And so that, that made it much more rewarding for her and hopefully down the road, she'll be excited to do it again.

[00:04:16] You know, I'm hoping that this $25 comes back when this person repays the loan and then we'll be able to loan it out to somebody else.

[00:04:23] And so then I did the same thing with my son and he ended up giving $25.

[00:04:29] And because he wanted to be just like his sister, he gave $25 to somebody in Vietnam so they could put a toilet in their house.

[00:04:36] And of course, anyone that knows me would probably find that to be very fitting.

[00:04:41] And he was kind of excited about it too, although not as much as she was.

[00:04:44] But I figure this is probably not a bad habit to get into around the holidays or around times of giving because it makes a difference for people in the world.

[00:04:54] We're not talking about something that will break the bank.

[00:04:56] If you don't have $25 that you can possibly part with in case it doesn't come back, then this is obviously not the best idea for you.

[00:05:04] But if you have $25 and it won't break the bank, just think about how much good you could do in the world.

[00:05:10] How many countries that your money can be helping people in.

[00:05:13] It's kind of fascinating when you think about it.

[00:05:15] So I wanted to pass that along.

[00:05:16] And the other thing I wanted to just kind of talk about briefly is what's in the news lately.

[00:05:21] And that's what's going on with Southwest Airlines and all the cancellations.

[00:05:25] I've been in aviation my entire adult life, basically.

[00:05:29] And I really do feel bad for all the frontline employees with Southwest Airlines.

[00:05:33] I have been on the receiving end of tremendously aggressive passengers in my career.

[00:05:40] I don't really have to deal with that too much anymore.

[00:05:42] But at times it presents itself.

[00:05:46] And I've never been one to shy away from just getting yelled at and screamed at by people.

[00:05:51] It doesn't really bother me that much.

[00:05:52] Because I know at the end of the day I'm still going to end up helping them in one way or another.

[00:05:55] Whether they recognize it or not, that's kind of them.

[00:05:57] But I did want to kind of talk about this for a moment just because I know that a lot of people are traveling right now.

[00:06:04] And the only thing I could say is, please, for the love of God, be patient.

[00:06:09] None of the frontline employees, be it the people working at the ticket counter or the gate or the people who are checking the bags at the curb or the flight attendants or the pilots,

[00:06:18] none of them have anything to do with this mess that was created.

[00:06:23] They're all trying to get home.

[00:06:26] They're trying to get you home.

[00:06:28] They all, okay, most of them care about passengers.

[00:06:32] I have had my share of flight attendants and gate agents and people who are in customer service where I question whether they are in the right job or not.

[00:06:39] But that's beside the point.

[00:06:41] Be patient with them.

[00:06:42] This is an absolute nightmare that they are suffering from.

[00:06:45] Really, I think a lot of it comes from Southwest being ill-prepared over the years because they tended to put a little bit too much focus on their Wall Street performance versus a lot of heavy reinvestment into the people, into the softwares, into the infrastructure of the company.

[00:07:01] This is just my opinion.

[00:07:03] Again, I've been in the industry a long time.

[00:07:05] And I do recall when Herb Kelleher was in charge and he ran a fantastic company.

[00:07:10] But he was very, very engaged with the frontline employees.

[00:07:14] I've been able to meet him a couple of times in my career, even though I never worked for Southwest.

[00:07:18] I had a few instances where I got to meet Herb.

[00:07:21] And he was just a dynamic, amazing human being.

[00:07:25] He had just, he was so full of life.

[00:07:27] And he really, truly cared for his company.

[00:07:31] He cared for the people in his company.

[00:07:32] He cared about the operation.

[00:07:33] He cared about the passengers.

[00:07:34] He was an amazing individual.

[00:07:36] He did end up retiring and moving on.

[00:07:38] I believe he left in 2004.

[00:07:40] And since then, Gary Kelly had taken over.

[00:07:44] And Gary Kelly, I mean, the airline ran okay.

[00:07:48] Had a couple of hiccups every now and then.

[00:07:50] But they, overall, they ran okay.

[00:07:52] But it did lose some of its heart, some of its core focus.

[00:07:56] And since that time, things have developed into what basically snowballed into this gigantic crap storm that they're suffering from.

[00:08:03] And I mean, the reason that all these flights are canceled and delayed, and I mean, we are talking about 12,000 flights, at least as of this morning, 12,000 flights were canceled over the holiday weekend.

[00:08:18] And I mean, that is crazy for one carrier to suffer that badly.

[00:08:22] So again, as you're out there, as you're traveling, if you're on Southwest or any carrier for that matter, it is not the frontline people.

[00:08:29] They are not the ones who are responsible for the fact that you can't get home.

[00:08:33] As a matter of fact, if you make it home the next day and you are finally done with whatever nightmare part of your trip you've suffered from, just keep something in mind.

[00:08:43] The same people that are getting yelled at at the gate and at the ticket counter and on board, even though you're home, they're still getting yelled at.

[00:08:50] So be patient with them.

[00:08:51] A little bit of grace goes a long way.

[00:08:53] We have New Year's coming up.

[00:08:54] I figured I would probably do one podcast this week just because it's the holidays and I'm trying to spend some quality time with my family, just like I hope many of you are.

[00:09:03] And God willing, you're not stranded somewhere.

[00:09:05] So I will be speaking to you again.

[00:09:07] Make sure what you do is something you can achieve.

[00:09:09] And for the love of God, take action.