backpacking Tag

Welcome to Episode 232 of What’s Your “And”? Follow-Up Friday edition. This is John Garrett. Each Friday, I follow up with a guest who had been on the show a few years ago to hear what’s new with their passions outside of work, and also hear how this message has impacted them since we last talked.

I’m so excited to let everyone know my book is being published very soon. It’ll be available on Amazon and a few other websites. So check out whatsyourand.com for all the details, or sign up for my exclusive list and you’ll be the first to know when it’s coming out.

Don’t forget to hit Subscribe so you don’t miss any of the future episodes every Wednesday and now every Friday. I love sharing such interesting stories each and every week. This Follow-Up Friday is no different with my guest, Scott Gehman. He’s a retirement plan consultant with Conrad Siegel in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Now he’s with me here today.

Scott, thanks so much for taking time to be with me on What’s Your “And”?

Scott: Sure thing, John. Thanks for having me.

John: Oh, absolutely, man. I remember hanging out a couple of years ago when I spoke at the conference there and how much fun that was.

Scott: Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

John: Yeah, definitely. I’m just excited to connect again and bring you back and share your magic with everyone else who’s listening. Back from Episode 41. That’s crazy, man, how long ago that was.

Scott: Yeah.

John: But yeah, so I mix things up a little bit with the rapid-fire questions out of the gate now.

Scott: Okay.

John: So I know that’s very against anything actuarial.

Scott: I’m not an actuary. Let’s just keep that clear.

John: There we go. There we go. Awesome. But the ones listening are sweating bullets.

Scott: Right, right.

John: But here we go. If you had to choose, Harry Potter or Game of Thrones?

Scott: Game of Thrones.

John: Oh, nice. Okay, what’s a typical breakfast?

Scott: Oh, goodness. Right now yogurt because I’m trying to rehab my broken leg.

John: Yeah, yeah. I saw the pictures on that. Oh, man, I feel bad. How about when you read, more Kindle or real books?

Scott: Real books.

John: Nice. Okay. And if you had to pick, brownie or ice cream?

Scott: Oh, ice cream all the way.

John: Nice. Do you have a favorite flavor?

Scott: Mint chocolate chip.

John: Ooh, good answer. Good answer. When you fly, more window seat or aisle seat?

Scott: I’m a big fan of the window seat.

John: Okay. Okay. And the last one, maybe the most important one. Toilet paper, roll over or under?

Scott: Oh, I got to think about this. I think in our house, it goes over. I’m not usually the one who makes that decision.

John: Right. You just use it. Okay.

Scott: Exactly.

John: Fair enough. I can appreciate that. I could appreciate that, for sure.

Scott: And on the mint chocolate chip ice cream, just to be clear, it has to be the green stuff. I don’t do the white.

John: Oh, yeah, the white is weird, right?

Scott: Yeah. It’s like incongruous or something.

John: Right. Maybe the green is not natural, but it’s the way it should be.

Scott: Exactly.

John: I appreciate that. Yeah. And so a couple of years ago, when we chatted, we talked over camping and then your Mustang car and then camping with your Mustang. Those pictures were hilarious, how you had everything fit just right to go camping with your son. Are you still actively doing that stuff?

Scott: Yeah, absolutely. Now interesting about the Mustang. So the one I was driving last time we talked, I got rear-ended and pushed into the path of a semi-truck and absolutely totaled it. I mean, there was not a straight panel on the car and very fortunate to basically walk away with a couple scratches and bumps, but that one was toast. That was back in June. It has nothing to do with my broken leg. But yes, so that one unfortunately had to go. It was one of those where I stepped out and I looked at it. I could rest easy knowing my insurance company was not going to try to fix it up and give it back to me. There was a certain piece about that. It’s like, okay, this is okay. This is okay.

John: If you could go, just go with all the parts.

Scott: Yeah. So I got a new one, same car. It’s a black Mustang GT with the six-speed manual transmission, the nice leather and good stereo and stuff like I like it.

John: There you go.

Scott: And then a month and a half in, I cracked my tibia horsing around with my son’s Boy Scout troop, of all things.

John: Oh, my goodness.

Scott: I can’t drive. Everybody’s like, “Well, you shouldn’t have gotten a manual transmission.” I’m thinking, it’s my right leg, like what am I going to do?

John: Right, right, that’s the gas pedals there. What the heck?

Scott: So to answer your question, yes, still doing it. In fact, we did get a couple of trips late in the summer and we went in camp twice. But then thankfully, my wife can drive sticks, so she takes me out in it once a week to keep the fluids moving and make sure that it doesn’t just sit. But I had the passenger in it and haven’t done any camping out of it in good month and a half.

John: Oh, wow. But you still got to do it, so that’s great. And those pictures from Episode 41 are so great. The fact that you can go camping with a Mustang repeatedly is amazing to me. That’s really cool.

Scott: It’s getting a little more challenging because my son is — well, last time we talked, when was that? Two years ago?

John: Yeah, almost three.

Scott: Yeah. Okay, so he was probably like 10 years old. Now h e’s 13, and he’s like closing in on like 5’8″. So he’s now in the front seat. Before I had to put him in the back, Pennsylvania State law. Now he’s in the front. So we’ve actually reached that second phase of camping gear. We’re repurchasing everything we had before but in the smaller version so I can actually get it in the car.

John: Okay.

Scott: And then actually, interestingly, earlier this year we took a backpacking. It’s something that I hadn’t done in literally three decades, something he really wanted to do because of scouts and so let’s do this. So that has been perfect because they’ll just throw the backpacks in the trunk and that’s it.

John: Right. Yeah. And those are overnight backpacking trips or just like day hikes?

Scott: Yeah.

John: Oh, overnight? Great.

Scott: We’re just kind of dipping our toe in for now. I mean, I did it years and years ago. He’s still young. I don’t want to go out with just him on like a weeklong backpacking trip with no other adults. But unfortunately, it’s hard to find other people that wants to do this. Everybody thinks we’re nuts.

John: Right.

Scott: Including some of the Boy Scouts which troubles me a little bit. But we haven’t gone on like these excursions or anything, but we got out this spring and had some fun and survived. Actually, it is probably one of our best trips yet.

John: That’s fantastic. Where was that one to?

Scott: A lot of those pictures I sent you were from one of our state parks which is Pine Grove Furnace State Park, about 20 minutes from my house down in Michaux State Forest. Michaux State Forest is pretty big. They have the Appalachian Trail slices too. They have other hiking trails. They have a lot of neat places. So we just picked the route and figured out where we wanted to camp and set out. We just did one overnight.

John: That’s great though.

Scott: It was. It really was. Love that time. We’d do it again in a heartbeat, and I’m hoping to once my leg gets better.

John: Oh, man, that’s really cool because just camping just next level. Instead of just pulling up to the site, it’s let’s hike to the site.

Scott: Exactly.

John: It’s no different, but that’s super funny that some of the Boy Scouts think you’re crazy doing an overnight. I clearly just changed since when I was in the Boy Scouts myself.

Scott: To be fair, a lot of them do love it, but it’s just kind of funny, I think.

John: Right. Yeah. Why don’t you just sleep in your basement where there’s video games? It’s like, well, that’s not really the idea. That’s awesome though. And these are still things that you’re talking about at work? I mean, clearly with the car thing.

Scott: Well, and it’s funny about that, when I had my accident going back to June, I guess the car and the camping have become such a part of who I am that I had people come out to me saying, “Man, I know you have to get a new car. Do not come back you’re driving like an Accord or something.” There are people telling me, “We would be really disappointed if you got anything but another Mustang.” I’m like, “Don’t worry, don’t worry.” But it was one of those things that was just such a part of me by then. I mean, it’s my third one, going back to when I was 28, now 18 years ago. So they were basically just telling me, “Hey, you got to keep going with this.”

John: Right. “Don’t let us down.” And you’re like, “Can you help pay for it?” But that’s cool.

Scott: The other thing with the camping was I think when everybody heard I broke my leg, they’re just like, “Oh, my gosh!” because they just knew I was — I mean, nobody really said a lot about it, but they know I’m active. They know I like doing stuff. I have a scout troop. I happen to be doing something with my scout troop when I broke my leg, but that’s besides the point. I think people just know that’s one of the things I like to do and they were just like, “Oh, my gosh! That sucks.”

John: Yeah, especially the in the summer, that’s when most of this stuff is happening. It seems like, rrr. But that’s cool that they knew that about you and that they cared enough to be like, wow, that’s like really a bummer.

Scott: Yeah. So that was kind of interesting for me just to see how it played out when I had my unfortunate experiences this summer. We’re good. I’m almost six weeks into my healing process here, so I’ll get back there. So it’s still good. I’m feeling better.

John: So do you find that others around you are sharing as well, or is it just something that you do and maybe a few other people?

Scott: You know, it’s interesting. I’ve gotten to know here in the past few years, we’ve hired a couple of new folks that I found out, well, one really likes cars.

John: Oh, great.

Scott: One really likes outdoors, experiences and such. So I’ve had the chance to talk to other people. I don’t know that as a professional service firm, it’s the thing we most naturally do, but I’m a huge networker. I love going to networking events. In fact, that’s one of the things that’s killing me right now with being laid up like this is I can’t just plan to go to a networking event. Now I did speak at that conference last week, but that involved my wife driving me up to the Poconos.

John: Oh, boy.

Scott: She’s basically my handler for the day. I told my audience, I said, if you see this woman dive at me to prevent me from falling over, that would be my wife. She was kind of sitting there to make sure I behave myself, didn’t start to fall over. I can’t do that stuff. One of the things I love about networking is you get this chance to connect with people on the basis of their interests, not necessarily what they can do for you, for your job, or what you can do for them. One of my favorite questions to ask people I meet for the first time is like, what do you like to do when you’re not doing your regular work? And I found out so many great things like that. And interestingly, one of the more common answers I’ve heard is somebody involved with Boy Scouts or camp. It’s interesting. Yeah. I talked to a lot of other dads because I tend to gravitate towards people who are my age, so they have a son who’s in Scouts or maybe they have experience with that. So I’ve heard that more times than I can count. Every once in a while, I run into somebody who’s into cars, but that’s a little less. It seems like that’s less of a popular thing these days although it’s surprising.

John: Yeah. Well, I think they’re harder to work on nowadays.

Scott: Well, yeah, that they are. I used to love spinning wrenches on cars on the weekends. And now it’s like, I could pour a bucket of water on top of my engine. I wonder if any of it would hit the ground. All these wires, it’s like, I used to be able to pull off a carburetor and rebuild it. Now it’s like, you know.

John: Or even change your battery now. That’s nutty. But that’s so cool that you’re able to make those connections. I have to imagine that those connections with the people at camp and Boy Scouts go to another level than just another person that also works in the insurance industry or what have you.

Scott: Exactly. I find that one of my principles of networking, if you will, and I’ve tried to share some of these with others in my office who are getting to networking, but one of my principles is to go in there just to be friends with somebody, not necessarily to close a business deal or make the connection, but go in there with the opinion that you’re going to try to make friends with these people that you’re networking with, like find out what interests you share. The business part, I think, follows from that. It’s kind of hard to measure, but if you can connect with people on the level of your interests, people often overlook is the whole family thing. You might have nothing in common. I don’t follow sports anymore. I did back in the ’80s. My dad and I used to follow football. I just don’t have time anymore. So I’ll run into somebody who follows sports. I think I wouldn’t have anything in common with them, but turns out we both have families so we can relate on that level. We both have kids that are into stuff. So sometimes you can dig in into that angle. There’s just so much that you can have in common with somebody you meet at a networking event.

John: I love that concept of just go in to be friends. It’s not getting something out of it, or it’s not weird. It’s just go in and just become friends with someone. And even if you don’t have the exact same passion, you can still understand who that person is and where they’re coming from and what’s important to them. It’s like, wow, I don’t watch sports anymore. Last time was Terry Bradshaw was the quarterback or whatever, but at least you can relate to them on some level or at least understand who they are as people. I love that concept. That’s really fantastic and what a great takeaway for everyone listening. That’s perfect. I’m so encouraged to hear that you’re still taking the Mustang out there and that’s great. That’s very cool. And soon enough, you’ll be back out driving it yourself.

Scott: I’m hoping so. This new one is a little bit more ferocious than my last one. It’s the same model, but the exhaust is louder and stuff. I love keeping the neighbors guessing. It’s a lot fun.

John: Right. Well, this has been really great, Scott. And it’s only fair that I open up the opportunity for you to rapid-fire question me since I fired away right out of the gate. So if you got anything to ask me, I’m ready to go.

Scott: Okay, cheeseburger or pizza.

John: Oh, man. That’s a hard one. I’ll go pizza, really good pizza. Yeah.

Scott: Okay, good stuff. What’s your favorite car?

John: My favorite car? I would have to probably say I’m more of a Ferrari, I guess, although like a real car that I would probably actually buy and drive would probably be a BMW M series.

Scott: Oh, yeah, those are great.

John: I’ve always enjoyed those cars for whatever reason, but I’m sure that they require a stupid amount of maintenance.

Scott: I understand that about them. Okay, TV series you could binge watch all weekend?

John: That’s a really good one too. I’ll press a two. More recently that Jack Ryan on Amazon I think it was, Amazon Prime, that was a pretty good one. And then I don’t know, Breaking Bad is always my go-to as far as like — because the great thing I love about Breaking Bad is that the main character, he’s good and bad at the same time. So you have to decide, do you like him or not like him? It depends on the episode. Where a lot of shows, it’s the bad guy and here’s the good guy and whatever. That’s what I love about that is just the yo-yo of that. That’s a great question though. Really good ones, man.

Scott: I would binge watch — did you ever hear the series Chuck?

John: You know, I’ve heard of it, but I haven’t seen any of it. It’s good?

Scott: That one I could binge watch all weekend. That one my wife and I followed for all however many seasons, five seasons. That was a great spy comedy/thriller, if I will. I don’t know how to qualify it, but that was a great series.

John: I have to check that out. So thanks, Scott, for taking time to be with me on What’s Your “And”? It’s so great to catch up.

Scott: Oh, you’re very welcome. Thanks for having me.

John: Yeah, this was awesome. And anyone listening, you want to see some pictures of Scott out in the outdoors and maybe see his new car or connect with him on social media, be sure to go to whatsyourand.com. While you’re on the page, please click that big button, do the anonymous research survey about corporate culture.

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