The Starting Line

Josh Felgoise (00:00.204)

Welcome to Guy's Set, a guy's guide to what should be talked about. I'm Josh, I'm 24 years old, and I'm here to find all the tips, advice, and recommendations for everything you're wondering about. Let's get into it.

Josh Felgoise (00:17.902)

Hi guys, welcome back to Guy's Set, a guy's guide to what should be talked about. First and foremost, I did get a haircut. Thank you very much for asking. It's been about two months. I am very in between the time in which I get my haircuts. I feel like I used to, as a kid, get a haircut every single month or so. And now that I'm an adult, if you can call me that, I feel like I forget to get a haircut a lot of the time or I just don't prioritize it.

And then I look like a mop and I'm like, I should probably get a haircut. And the place I go to only takes cash and I don't carry cash who carries cash. And I also don't carry my debit card around, which would probably make this whole situation much easier. But I realized that my debit card was expired recently. So I went to the ATM by the haircut place before I got the haircut and my ATM number wasn't working because I didn't know my pin and I didn't have my debit card. But there's like a way you can there's a way like you can put your credit card in from the same bank.

And if you put the pin in, you can take money from the machine. I sound like a fucking idiot, but like I am sometimes. And I didn't know the pin number, which I've now learned because I had to reset it. I had to call the bank. And I now I'm going to carry my debit card around because that would make this whole situation easier if I had that and if I had the number. So the haircut place only takes cash, cash only. And they just raise their prices.

That's not relevant to the story. just that's just a fact. yeah, so thank you for noticing long winded way of saying thank you so much for the comment. And I recently watched a movie. I watched a movie this past weekend called Saturday Night. And I did an episode like this on Goodwill Hunting a few months back. And one person commented on it saying they were one or two people. I lied. It's one person commented saying.

that they liked the episode and that's enough for me to come back on here and talk about another movie I really liked and why it inspired me and why there's enough of a reason for me to come on here and make a whole episode about it. And it may not be exactly what you're thinking I'm going to talk about about it if you know what it is I'll explain it if you don't I'll also explain it and tell you why. So this movie Saturday Night is about the making of Saturday Night Live.

Josh Felgoise (02:37.998)

covers the hour and a half leading up to the first ever Saturday night live in 1975. I believe it was October 3rd, 1975. And the movie just covers the hour and a half before it. It's like the time is ticking down the entire time. And it is a fucking disaster. Like that's the whole point to show what it was really like back then, how much of a shit show it was, how kind of like makeshift and thrown together the entire thing was and how the

how all the odds were stacked against them from making this show a success and making it successful. And they recently just celebrated the 50 year anniversary of SNL and they did like a bunch of different celebrations, but you don't really spend a lot of time thinking about the first or how it came to be. I mean, you think about the first cast, but you don't think about how,

much work and hard work and dedication and belief in yourself it had to take to get there in the first place and how many pieces had to fall into place and how many people you had to convince to let you have this show and that is the my one of my biggest takeaways probably the biggest takeaway I had from the movie was the creator of the show his name is Lauren Michaels he's still with the show after 50 years 50 fucking years of a show like that is so crazy

That's such an amazing feat for anything to last for 50 years. just learned that my the mini golf course, like the little ice cream place by my house is closing down after 53 years. And I was like, honestly, that's my mom told me on the phone today earlier. And I was like, honestly, that's amazing. Like any business that thrives for 50 plus years is a success. Like you have to look at that as success and not something to be like sad about. But it's it's still, of course, Wow. ADHD today. But

50 years of anything is absolutely incredible to have something run for that long and be so successful for that long and be so at the center of culture and pop culture and who is successful in terms of artists, in terms of actors. The biggest actors go on there to promote their shows. The biggest musicians go on there to promote their new music. I believe this past weekend is Lady Gaga, who's on there to host and do the music. So she's like double duty.

Josh Felgoise (05:02.558)

Everybody, they call it double duty if you're like hosting and musical guest. Everybody who's on there, they just, they pull the biggest talent. So if you made it on SNL as an actor, hosting or as a musical guest, that is success. You are successful, deemed as successful in the industry. And the fact that they still carry that weight and that, I was gonna say precipice, but that's not the right word. I don't know what that means.

that they carry that like that power 50 years in is unbelievable. And what the movie did was really showed you what it took to make happen. So this guy, Lorne Michaels, who was probably in his 20s. I'm actually Google that while I'm here in his 20s when he started it. I feel. Yeah. Hold on. Lorne Michaels age when he started SNL. I need an assistant.

He was 30. No, that can't be. OK, yeah, he was 30. He was 30 years old when he started the show in 1975. And literally all the odds were stacked against him like nothing was supposed to work out the way it did. The way they explain in the movie, I don't know how true it is, but I do believe this. I could also probably easily Google this and give you a concrete answer. But the way that they explain how it happened.

was there was kind of a beef in the network. I think it was like a husband and a wife or something. And it was kind of like a ratings beef and Johnny Carson, who was like the Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel of that time on NBC, probably like one of the biggest ones, David Letterman. Like his show had some sort of ratings beef with the network.

and they wanted to give somebody else the 1130 slot on Saturday night because he I think only did Monday through Friday and they usually run reruns on Saturday. And in the movie they make him out to be kind of a bad guy calling Lorne Michaels being like you're gonna fail you're gonna fucking fail like they're gonna run my show and not yours like you fucking suck. And it was also about this one guy who pulled together a cast of talented actors and comedians all from New York.

Josh Felgoise (07:23.544)

cameraman, crew, lighting, everybody that makes a show happen and had a vision for what this could be. He kind of called it like a revolution in the TV industry or something completely new, something never before seen, revolutionary. And he had a vision or a half-baked vision or a half-assed vision, whatever you want to call it. But he had an idea of something that nobody had done before, a sketch comedy show for an hour and a half that

he believed was going to be successful. And with all the odds stacked against him, the idea that you are you are supposed to fail was put into his head by everybody around him. A lot of the network didn't believe in him. Literally. I mean, I'm sure they made it like a little bit more dramatic for the movie's sake, but like until a minute before, they didn't know if they were going to run the show or rerun of the Johnny Carson show, which is the Jimmy Fallon type show.

everything was pointed to you are going to fail and he was going to go back to his day job, whatever it was, every who's doing before and he had such a belief in himself and such a belief in his vision and what he was doing and guided everybody and let them know that like nothing is anything until you believe in it or until you get people to back you and believe in it and

That is my biggest takeaway from the movie and that's kind of my biggest takeaway when I was sitting back and watching it last night. I was like, this was destined to fail. Like nobody beside this one guy, if he didn't push for it, it was not gonna happen. And that was 50 fucking years ago. And now that show is such an institution all because of this one guy's belief in himself, this one guy's idea that I am going to succeed.

and I'm going to make something of myself and I'm going to be somebody that people look up to and are inspired by and I'm gonna make this show a success or I'm going to go down trying. Those two things. I believe in myself so much that I'm gonna make it happen or I'm gonna go down trying. And they kept saying in the movie, you're not ready for it to go live tonight. Shit was falling out of the sky like there were fires, shit was breaking.

Josh Felgoise (09:41.582)

actors were leaving, people were getting in like fistfights. It was it was mayhem. People were doing immense amounts of drugs, which I know is true, by the way, about SNL. Like people are just doing cocaine everywhere. Like there are it's it was crazy. was SNL used to be. I mean, I'm sure it still is, but like was like drug drug city. Like it was just like Clown Town actors and people who like just wanted to be somebody and trying to put on this show. It was literally literal Clown Town.

And I forgot where I was going with that because the drugs distracted me. no, I don't know. Fuck, what was I saying? I have no idea. I'll just continue something different. I know, I forgot what I was saying because of the drugs, but he was rallying, not my drugs, the drugs, he was rallying these people around him, around this vision that no one even knew what it was. They were like, you have this show, you have an hour and a half, how are you gonna do live for an hour and a half? And he did it, and he made it happen.

And that that became what we know is Saturday Night Live. Obviously, it's a well-oiled, well-run machine now, but everything is scrappy to start. Everything is nothing until it becomes something. Everything is half-assed, half-baked, not ready to go until... this is what was going to say, that they kept saying to him, like, it's not ready tonight. Let's put it till next Saturday. Let's try again next Saturday, next week.

And if he had done that, who knows if it would have ever gone live if he had said, you know what? Like, you're right. Let's try again next Saturday. Let's scrap it for tonight and we'll try again. A thousand other things could have happened in that time that led to it not actually ever happening. So the fact that he pushed through and was like, no, we have to make this happen right now. He told them that they never, they never prerecorded the tape so they couldn't actually ever run the other show, which I don't know if it was true or not either, but

It kind of reminded me that like so many of us are hesitant to start and put ourselves like take ourselves off of the climb before we've even started climbing. We take ourselves off of an idea or out of an idea before we've actually dove into it or yeah dove into the idea. We tell ourselves so many things.

Josh Felgoise (12:01.41)

and speak so negatively to ourselves about an idea we have or about a passion we have or about something we want to do and tell ourselves all the ways we are going to fail that is not going to be successful, that it's not going to happen, that people aren't going to listen, that people aren't going to believe in it, that people aren't going to believe in me, that we end up not believing in ourselves and we take ourselves out of the idea before we've actually even tried. And that reminded me that really

stuck with me from watching the movie last night that if he didn't believe in himself and he said you know what let's try next week and he put it off then it would have kept getting put off and if he had said you know what like everybody else doesn't believe in me so like why should I believe in myself it wouldn't have happened and if he had said if he had said any of those things if he had done any of those things that everybody else was saying don't believe in yourself because you're not

You're not anybody. You're not a success. Like, why would you be a success? How can this little kid, this 30 year old kid who has done nothing, who seemingly put nothing together, how can that person create something? And if he had listened to all of those voices, the actual people telling him it's not gonna work, and not his own, his own intuition, his own belief, his own confidence in himself, he would have never made anything.

and we would have never heard of SNL and it wouldn't become what it is today. It wouldn't be at the center of all of culture. And if he had listened to all of those voices and everybody around him literally telling him you are going to fail, this is not going to succeed. You are going to be nothing. Why would you be something if he had listened to all of them? All these external sources and people.

and not believed in himself and had the confidence in himself to do it, we would never even have heard of SNL. It wouldn't have existed. Nothing is anything until somebody believes in it, until somebody has the determination and the passion and the belief to make it. And I think that is true for everybody in anything they're doing. It could be looking for a job and taking yourself out of that.

Josh Felgoise (14:20.716)

Because you don't believe you can find a new job and you have such an imposter syndrome about your success and about Your skill set that you don't believe you're right for that job So you don't even apply you take yourself out of it before you apply Because of all those voices in your head of the people telling you you're not good enough for it You don't end up asking that person out on the date because you've told yourself. They're already gonna reject me they

don't like me, I'm not attractive enough for them, they're too attractive for me, they would always say no, why would they even ever say yes to me? So you take yourself out of the situation to ever ask them out and you never know. And all these things, we don't follow our passion. We don't start playing guitar because we think our friends will judge us for picking up a random passion or hobby and judge us for trying something new and potentially failing.

We don't start an Instagram account of things we want to post or a TikTok account of videos that you want to post because you believe your friends are going to judge you before they even ever judged you before you even started it. So you never start it. You don't start putting your thoughts out on the Internet because you think people are going to judge you for them and read them the wrong way and talk about them behind your back and talk to people about them. So you never put them out.

before you've even done it and people have done anything about it. Like, what I'm saying is a little bit different than the movie. So in the movie, he had all these people telling him you're gonna fail and this is gonna be a fuck up. But we do that to ourselves so quickly and so often, every single day about so many different things, without the external sources, without the people saying it to us, we say it to ourselves.

So how can we do anything and believe in ourselves and be confident if we always have that negative voice inside our head telling us that you're gonna fail and they're not gonna like you and you're not gonna be accepted and you're not gonna get the job and all these things before we even actually try. And it inspired me a ton. It inspired me a lot last night watching it because if that kid had stopped believing in himself, it would have never happened.

Josh Felgoise (16:43.854)

Similarly, when I was watching the Bob Dylan movie with Timothy Chalamet, it's called A Complete Unknown. I highly recommend both of these movies, by the way. I really loved both of them. If he hadn't believed that he had any talent, we would have never heard of Bob Dylan. If he had stopped playing in small bars in the East Village and the West Village, where the audiences were 20 people less, and said,

I don't have a big enough audience. Nobody's listening to me. Nobody likes me. Why should I even try? We would never hear of that person. And I think I'm so attracted to these things that are like the start of successful things because we don't hear a lot about how somebody became the person they are. And you don't see that picture painted a lot of how that person started. Even when you're hearing a successful person talk about how they became successful or how they got to where they are.

They're already in a place of success. It's hard to look back at that person. When you're already successful, it's hard to look back at that person who's podcasting from the couch or who's writing songs on the floor or who's typing a book on their computer while sitting on their bed or who hasn't had that success yet. It's hard to put yourself back in that mindset of when you were grinding and when it was a constant like back and forth of will this work? Will this not work?

Should I try? Should I not try? Are people going to judge me? Do people like this? People hate this. Like all of these thoughts back in your back and forth in your head. And I believe that everybody listening probably has something that they've wanted to try that they haven't because they've told themselves they can't. And that's why I love these stories so much about the start of it all, because it puts you back in that perspective of the person who

might have thought they couldn't do it or probably didn't think they could do it, nevertheless persisted and kept going even with that thought in the back of their head or even with those thoughts of it's not gonna work and I'm still gonna try regardless. I'm gonna try and I'm gonna try and try until I can no longer try. And...

Josh Felgoise (19:04.3)

I can almost guarantee that every single person listening right now has something that they've wanted to do that they have stopped themselves from doing because they got the idea that they were going to fail or they were going to be judged for it or people were going to look at them differently because of our laugh at or or talk about behind their backs and all these things that we think about and we put our put in our own heads before we even do it. And those two movies really solidified that for me and

are kind of like North Stars to keep going. I'm at a point in my career right now in terms of my real job, not the podcast, in terms of my actual day job, that I work at a startup. And the nature of startups is volatile. You kind of never know what's going to happen with a startup. Like, you know the runway, which means like how much time the company has left before the CEO or the team has to like find more money or get more investors.

to have more runway, to have more time that the company can try to succeed. And where we're at in terms of the company, like it's a startup. I'm not gonna, I don't even actually know the answer to that question of like how much time the startup has until they have to raise more money. I wish I knew, but that's kind of what I'm trying to say is that like you never know at the company I'm at, like if it's gonna be a, if you're gonna have your job in a year or two.

And I kind of got a little like anxious about that recently where I was like, shit. Like I was like, I left my last job after about a year and a half to join this one. And I don't know if it's going to be like a long haul job. I don't even know that want it to be a long haul job. like, I think at the point we're at, I think we're at the point a lot of us are at in our careers. We

are at the stage where we don't know if we are a success or not. And most of us probably feel like we're not yet and are not at a place where we feel successful yet or feel like we have a path yet or know what the fuck we're doing yet. watching these two movies helped me

Josh Felgoise (21:26.946)

have a little bit of a clearer vision about that and that it's okay not to know and it's normal not to feel like you know what you're doing or have a clear path ahead or feel successful at this age yet and I don't think we have to feel that yet. We're young and I think about this stuff a lot probably more than I'm supposed to or should about the starting line and about where we are currently at in our careers. Whether you're listening and you're still in college

or just out of college or in your mid 20s or late 20s or early 30s. I think this applies to everybody in that group. And I still believe that we are all at what I'm calling the starting line. And what that means is we're early in our careers or early enough that it's still okay not to completely know what you want to do or who you want to be or what career you want to go into or

if you're successful or not, or if you have been successful or not. And I think, as I said before, nothing is anything until people believe in it, and nobody is anybody until you believe in yourself and convince others to do the same. You are the only person that can measure your success or determine your success or decide your success.

If you believe you have been successful in your career up until now, great, then you have been. Like if you feel at this point in your career that you're in a job you're happy in, you're in an industry you're happy in, you feel like you're progressing toward where you wanna go, I think that's successful. And if you feel the complete opposite, that you have no fucking idea what you wanna do and you feel like...

You're completely lost and you think everybody else has it around you and you're still at the starting line. Like, how am I still at the starting line when it seems like everybody else is moving and everybody else has started to run and I'm still here? You can look at it two ways. You can view this time, the starting line as shitty or cool. You have the opportunity to view this either way, shitty or cool. We can look at it as how will I ever get to where I want to be from where I'm at right now?

Josh Felgoise (23:44.462)

How will I ever be successful? How will I ever find what I want to do? How will I ever find the career or the trajectory or the path I want to be on? Because I feel so far off from it right now. What the fuck am I doing? I feel like I'm going to lose my job. I feel like I'm going to get fired. I feel like I want to quit. What the fuck am I doing? Like, how am I going to how do I know what I'm going to do? What am I going to do? Like all of those thoughts. You can choose to live in that or you can look at it as.

I have the opportunity to try right now. I have the opportunity to figure out where I want to go. I can go anywhere from here. I can start running and then I can decide that that's the wrong path and run back and go back to the starting line. I can start running and then take a different path from that run and that's great too. And you can live at the starting line in two ways. You can say,

Am I always going to be stuck here? Am I always going to be at a place where I don't know what the fuck I'm doing? Or you can live there thinking, all right, cool, I have an opportunity to try now. OK, like, let's see what this does for me. Let's see if this kind of invigorates me and I feel excited about what I'm doing or I feel like I at least have a path. There's two different types of people at the starting line. And you have an opportunity to pick which one you are.

You can be both of them at different days, at different weeks, at different months. You can be both of them today. But just know that you can pick one of them. And you don't have to live in either of them. And you have the choice. It all kind of comes from within. That belief thing I'm talking about from that movie and that belief and that confidence in yourself that I'm talking about in general, it all starts from within. It starts from you. And...

I think Lorne Michaels and Bob Dylan are incredible examples of that it all starts from within and it all starts from you. If you believe in yourself, others will too. If you see yourself as confident and successful, others will too. But if you don't, and you don't believe in yourself, and you live in this land of, don't know what the fuck I'm doing, I don't know who I am, I don't know what I'm gonna do, I don't know who I'm gonna be, I don't know any of these things,

Josh Felgoise (25:59.422)

you will come off that way and people will see you that way. And you have a choice to be either of those people and live at the starting line as either of those people. Because right now where we are in the trajectory of our lives, whether you like it or not, you're still at the starting line. From the ages I was just talking about, if you're before college, if you're in college, if you're sometime in your 20s, early, middle, late, beginning of 30s even, I'm gonna extend it as far as that, you're still at the starting line.

whether you like it or not. And you have the choice to live in shitty or cool. You have the choice to believe that you can do whatever the fuck you want and figure it out and that it's going to work out and you're gonna be successful and you're gonna be confident and you're gonna believe in yourself, the choice is yours. And I think I'm comparing those two people because they're so incredibly different and because their career trajectories are so different.

One guy went on to create the most successful sketch comedy show in history and the other guy became one of America's most successful artists. And it both stemmed from believing in themselves stacked up against all the odds and with everybody else telling them that they can't and they're not good enough and they don't sound like everybody else and that what they're doing isn't going to work. It all came from within.

And I look to those two people as big sources of inspiration and watching these two success stories or you can't really call them success stories at the beginning because they're not, especially Saturday night, the movie. It is not a success story. It's a fucking mess. And that's why I loved it so much, because I think a lot of us, most of us, all of us are in that mess right now. And that is kind of like what the starting line represents. It's not supposed to be perfect.

but you have to start before you're ready. You have to start at the line and just go sometimes. And you can stay at the line and stay back there and stay anxious and worried and not knowing what's gonna happen or what you're gonna do and just stay there. Or you can go and think, all right, I'm gonna try. And I'm gonna try and I'm gonna fail and I'm gonna do it and whatever happens next happens. Those two guys.

Josh Felgoise (28:20.942)

those two movies, Saturday Night, A Complete Unknown, are the starting line, but those two guys said, all right, I'm gonna go against all odds, against all you motherfuckers, I'm gonna go. And I love it, I love those types of stories. And if you haven't watched either of those movies yet, I highly, highly recommend watching them and.

Let me what you think right into me and let me know you think you can DM me at the guys at th e g u i s e t on Instagram and let me know your thoughts or you can email me. It's josh at guys at dot com j o s h at g u i s e t dot com. I'd love to hear what you think and who else inspires you who else has the has those stories at the starting line and goes and you look at as a source of inspiration or somebody that you want to be like and inspires you to keep going and do your thing.

Even when people don't believe in you even when you don't believe in yourself. They show you that you can you should That is the episode. Thank you so much. Listen to guys said a guy's guide to what should be talked about I'm Josh I'm 24 years old and I'm here every single Tuesday to talk about what should be talked about for guys in their 20s If you like this podcast, I really hope you did. Please like subscribing this podcast five stars leave review That's one two, three, four five not four not three not two and one five stars Thank you so much. You follow me on guys said at the guys at cop wait What you can follow me on guys said Instagram shit you follow me on Instagram at the guy said oh my god, Jesus

You can follow me on Instagram at the guys at T H E G U I S E T. You watch this full episode on YouTube. It's guys said everything is on my website guyset.com G U I S E T dot com. If you've any much of that should be talked about for guys in their 20s, send it to my email. It's dear guyset at gmail.com D E A R G U I S E T at gmail.com and I will add it to my next dear guyset episode or I'll make it a full episode like this. Thank you so much. Listen to guyset a guys guide to what should be talked about and I will see you guys next Tuesday.

See you guys.