Taught: The Podcast
Taught is a podcast where educators and others discuss how they really feel about education, burnout, and strategies to make the world and education burnout-free.
Taught: The Podcast
From Burnout to Portugal: Rudy's Rebuilt Life
What's it worth to reclaim your happiness? For Rudy, it meant leaving behind a prestigious tech career and the only country he'd ever called home.
Tech burnout has reached crisis levels, with nearly 60% of workers reporting feeling overwhelmed by responsibilities beyond their capacity. Behind these statistics are real people trapped in unsustainable cycles of overwork. Rudy shares his personal experience of working seven days a week, often 15 hours daily, for years while watching his joy and personality outside work slowly disappear. The turning point came through a simple question: "Why am I living in a state where I am always tired, always unhappy, not seeing my friends, not spending enough time with my family?"
We explore how unrealistic expectations flow downward through organizations, with inexperienced managers setting impossible goals that burden their teams. This toxic environment extends beyond tech, reflecting broader American workplace culture where stated values about work-life balance often conflict with the actual treatment of employees. The contrast with Portuguese workplace culture couldn't be more striking.
After moving to Portugal, Rudy discovered something transformative – a culture that genuinely values human connection and family life. From strangers extending unexpected trust to simple everyday kindnesses, these experiences have allowed him to rebuild his relationship with work while being fully present for his family. Despite challenges like missing friends back home and learning a new language, he calls the move "the best decision I've made as an adult."
His journey has come full circle as he now uses his tech skills to help others escape burnout through Ask Rudy, an affordable AI tool guiding potential expats through the relocation process. Whether you're contemplating a similar change or simply curious about different approaches to life and work, this conversation offers both practical insights and profound inspiration.
Have you ever wondered what life might look like beyond burnout? Listen now and discover how one decision can transform everything.
Want to contact Rudy?
Website: https://askrudy.ai/
Season 1 :
Join the Conversation: https://taughtbymelef.blogspot.com/
Interested in being a guest on the podcast? Email promelef@gmail.com. Include your name, role in education, and a summary of your story.
Here's the book that started it all:
Taught: The Very Private Journal of One Bad Teacher
Available @ Amazon in ebook or audio:
https://a.co/d/1rNZ84h
For immediate help use link for resources:
https://www.healthcentral.com/mental-health/get-help-mental-health
Other resources:
Amy Schamberg Wellness: https://www.amyschamberg.com/about
NHS - Resources for Grief and Burnout
https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/feelings-symptoms-behaviours/feelings-and-symptoms/grief-bereavement-loss/
Melissa Anthony MA, LPC Trauma & Grief Counselor
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/melissa-j-anthony-grand-rapids-mi/944381
I was always talking about work. You know I had lost like my joy and my personality outside of work, and you know it just became. It just became just too much. What was the point, right? And you add that even though I was making good money at the time, the cost of living was is pretty high. And so I kind of got to a point where why am I doing this? Why am I living in a state where I am always tired, always I'm not happy, I'm not seeing my friends, I'm not spending enough time with my family? And this is what's the game here. What's the purpose? After asking myself that for a while, I just I started wondering what is the alternative here, like, well, what's the exit strategy? How much I miss not knowing that we're all screwed.
Speaker 2:A few years ago, I started writing a fictitious story based on my time as an educator. It is called Taught, and the story was partially inspired out of anger and frustration fueled by burnout. Okay, actually, it was more than partially inspired by anger and frustration fueled by burnout Okay, actually, it was more than partially inspired by anger and frustration. But taught has also become a vehicle for me to tell what I thought at the time and in some ways continue to think was and is the real story of teaching. I now realize that my perspective is not everyone's perspective, but there are some pieces of taught that resonated with many educators perspective, but there are some pieces of taught that resonated with many educators.
Speaker 2:This podcast is an extension of that story and I, a former teacher, will interview other educators, asking them to share how they really feel about the current state of education. Why are so many teachers burnout? Why are so many like me leaving the field? We likely won't solve any problems or come up with any solutions, but we can create a community of voices that maybe begin the conversation around how educators can take back teaching. I'm Melissa LaFleur. Welcome to Taught the podcast I like to be educated, but I'm so frustrated.
Speaker 2:Hey, adventurers, today we're going to talk about when burnout leads us to take big leaps. We all know the feeling of being overwhelmed, but what happens when stress becomes unsustainable? Our guest today, rudy, experienced that firsthand in the tech industry. After hitting the burnout wall, he decided to rewrite his story. He packed his bags and moved his family to Portugal, not just for a change of scenery, but to build something meaningful. He's now developing a tech tool to help others. Inspired by his own journey to recovery, he is also hoping to be a bridge for those wanting to take this leap by making their adventure more straightforward and accessible, with the guidance he wishes he had had. Rudy, thank you so much for being here today.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, Melissa, for having me. It's an honor to be on your podcast.
Speaker 2:It's an honor to be on your podcast. It's my honor and I have to let you know. You are my first tech burnout interview and so for every interview I do a little bit of research. And so I started reading about burnout in tech, and actually you're not the first person that's approached me. I met a guy in Madeira on a gondola ride who just heard me talking about the podcast the top podcast is about burnout and he said hey, you know, you should get some people from the tech industry to come on and talk about burnout because we're on fire, lady. So I did some research and I was shocked.
Speaker 2:In an article and I'm going to have to read here because I don't want to mess up Sarah's words, but in an article written by Sarah White for CIO, which is a website for business technology executives, she shares some pretty alarming statistics.
Speaker 2:She says more than half of tech workers 58% say they feel overwhelmed by their daily responsibilities and tasks. With the average tech worker reporting, they only have the capacity to support 85% of the tickets they receive each day, and those tickets, I think, are in relation to their job tasks for what they need to do. Tech workers also report finding themselves responsible for a range of tasks outside their job description, such as cybersecurity. 39% of their job they feel is cybersecurity issues. Cybersecurity issues, internal security issues 26% of their job. And lack of budget and them having to figure that out 25%. This increased workload is contributing to tech worker burnout, leaving them with little time to get caught up. So, rudy, your journey with burnout and to Portugal has had two phases, and the first started back in the tech world. Can you walk us through how your job led you to burnout and then, ultimately, the decision to come here?
Speaker 1:Sure thing me. And I think it is true that folks there's so much demand being placed on the average team that it's just unrealistic, I think. And when I look back at my personal experience in tech, I think about just the overall flow and the infrastructure of our teams. Right of our teams. Right In tech, it is common to have a young person leap into a managerial role without much experience, right, and I think what happens here is often and I talk to a lot of folks about this is when you have someone that goes into a managerial role without having done the job themselves.
Speaker 1:They tend to have unrealistic expectations, right, and these expectations happen in meetings without the team and they then set the goal like they set unrealistic goals for their teams to their managers and their managers report this to the CEO and the CEO makes that promise to the board and now the whole company is accountable for something that just doesn't make sense, that just will not happen. Rather than the manager acknowledging this and kind of tweaking the expectations, they tend to put a lot of pressure on their teams and that's when the burnout starts to unpack. For myself, we had these goals that just didn't make any sense at all and it was a very similar situation, where my managers didn't have hands-on experience with the project and so they could say well, you know, this seems easy enough, let's do, let's all do this. And I we tend to especially high performance workers we tend to put the burden on ourselves, right, we want to own the task and we want to do a great job, but not just a passing job, but we want to do a great job. And so we take all this burden on ourselves and we just kind of burn out For myself.
Speaker 1:I was working. It got to a point where I was working seven days a week, I was working over 10 hours a day. Sometimes I was working 15 hours a day for weeks at a time, and that went on for years and it just became miserable. I just was unhappy with my work, I was unhappy with the place I was in, I was unhappy with my leadership, and unfortunately, that translates into a culture that everyone then feels burdened by right, because if I'm working seven days a week, I'm answering emails on Sunday, I'm answering Slack messages on Saturday night, my colleagues feel that they have to do the same thing just to keep up, just because they don't want to look bad, and it's just, it's toxic you know this has come up in a couple of other podcast episodes too which is something about just the work business culture in the United States has, because you were working in the United States but it has gone through a really big shift and this had even started before the pandemic, I think.
Speaker 2:But we kind of have this business model of I don't want to call names, but it's almost like everybody's lying to each other.
Speaker 2:So you have these companies that hire people that say we value you and here are all the perks that show that we value you, and so you go in thinking that you're valued and then your kid gets the flu and you find out really quickly that the value is in your productivity, is in your productivity and I mean it is toxic, is putting it mildly, you know, because it's almost like you're being lured in and to your point.
Speaker 2:There also are people who are considered qualified, because I feel like there is such a especially in tech jobs, such a resume padding that happens because you can go in and get certifications and qualified yeah, yeah, yeah, and put that on your resume and it sounds really good when really it was a two hour free course at the library where they shot you a little certificate, you know, that said you could do these things, and those people then pad that with their college education and do get those managerial positions. And to conclude my little soapbox rant here, I also think that in general throughout the United States we have a lack of people learning the basic skills to do any job. People are just thrown in and we call it on the job training it is you know we call it also building the airplane while it's flying.
Speaker 2:That's not safe and it's not good and it's not productive for anyone and it contributes to all of this.
Speaker 1:I could not agree with you more. It's an unfortunate environment that we find ourselves in and you know, much of it is, you know, to your point. I remember when my son was born. You know now it's like in tech, you see an unlimited time off, right, it's how they get you. Always like in tech, you see an unlimited time off, right, it's the. It's how they get you.
Speaker 1:But when my son was born, my supervisor was calling me like, hey, how is this going? This is this. And well, you know, I I had folks covering where, where coverage needed to be, I had things going. I had, you know, all this automation, all this stuff working, but and I was still meeting my goals but I still had someone calling me asking me for more when I should have been at home with my kid. This was the week my kid was born, and so it's unfortunate, but unless the C-suite executives start to apply pressure on the managers to say, hey, this is the culture that we want and if you do this, you will no longer be with us, um, it's going to continue to happen right I believe that, uh, it will eventually get to that point.
Speaker 1:Because it's just, it doesn't make much financial sense, right? Even if you're the coldest person in the world, right? So you're a cold-blooded person, you're like I only care about the numbers. Every time someone leaves, that burden the work that they do falls on the rest of the team that is already at a point, at a breaking point, and when that person leaves, you have to find someone, which is expensive. You got to hire them, train them and hope they can get up to speed with all of the work. That's expensive. You miss a lot of opportunities. It doesn't work. However, people haven't yet gotten the message, but I'm hopeful.
Speaker 2:Well, I think they're going to have to, because we've had this AI push and actually that same article that I was quoting out of. It seems like a lot of tech sectors are wanting to be able to say, oh well, we can pad our workforce with AI and we are finding out really quickly. I actually saw it was on Facebook, so it's not like it was anything professional, but we're finding out really quickly that AI still has limitations. And this thing that I saw on Facebook was this woman standing on two horses. She had a foot on each horse, but you could see in the picture there were feet in the stirrups on each horse. So clearly AI had generated this from several different pictures.
Speaker 2:But AI is only as good as the tools that it's pulling from the stuff that we are generating and creating, and it hasn't yet I mean, I'm who knows where we're going with it, but it hasn't taken the place of human beings yet, and they're finding out that this padding to your point point is probably creating more havoc than it is help yeah, yeah, I agree, and research shows there was a, a I think it was a, not a firm but um, the other pay, pay late by now, pay later company who just went bold on ai and fired, you know, most of their team.
Speaker 1:They, you know all of this can be taken care of with AI and blah, blah, blah. You know he had to eat his words. Now they're hiring back folks, they're trying to find folks to come in and they're publicly stating AI cannot do this yet and for those folks, they are having a hard time finding qualified, you know, rockstar team members to join their company because they have that terrible reputation that once they know, right, you know if you're a rockstar, you know that once they get rid of you as soon as they can.
Speaker 2:Well, and we should all be wanting to have a trust contract with our employer. I think this is another thing that is sorely lacking in the business sector. It's not just the business sector. Most companies have some sort of business model, including education, which is my field of expertise but we have lost our trust in our leadership and the way these systems are being run. At the end of the day, we need our employers, because this is a value for me is that every human being should be valuing every other human being, and just because we work for somebody and we have that contract that says I'm going to do this work and you're going to pay me X amount of dollars doesn't mean that you're not a human being unworthy of value, and that seems to be questionable in some companies.
Speaker 1:I agree, and we've seen this movie before right, when all of the manufacturing jobs were shipped outside of the US and a lot of folks were left destitute and their kids grew up remembering this and the loyalty that you have at a company. Folks remember there was a time when your first job out of college you retired there right, or you know you spent 30, 40 years at one single company. That was not uncommon back in the days. Now it is encouraged that you leave your employer within five years because you got to get a better opportunity elsewhere, you got to get more pay elsewhere. So people job hop and the culture is just no longer that. That trust that you had with your employer is no longer there because it's a two way street there, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it is, it is. So you were in this dog eat dog world. You know Pac-Man tech, eat tech. And what got you to your? I don't want to call it a breaking point, but to the point. Well, first of all, tell us what did burnout look like for you?
Speaker 1:Well, burnout for me, you know as I said earlier, I like to be, I like to deliver.
Speaker 1:I like to be accountable for my, for my actions. I like to. When I'm, when I have a task, I want to attack it and I want to be, I want it to be great. Um, and you know, over after you know, a few years of just inconsistency and just unrealistic demand and what became a really toxic environment, I just kind of realized that I was not spending time with my friends, I was not spending enough time with my family. I was just not a pleasant person to be around. I was always tired. I was glued to my phone checking emails. I always think, okay, what can I do? I was always to my phone checking emails, always thinking, okay, what can I do?
Speaker 1:I was always talking about work. I had lost my joy and my personality outside of work and it just became just too much. What was the point, right? And you add that, even though I was making good money at the time, the cost of living is pretty high. And so I kind of got to a point where why am I doing this? Why am I living in a state where I am always tired, always I'm not happy, I'm not seeing my friends, I'm not spending enough time with my family. And what's the gain here? What's the purpose? After asking myself that for a while, I just started wondering like, what is the alternative here? Like, what's the exit strategy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know this resonates with me. I remember when my daughter I think she was six she was describing me to someone else and she said oh, she doesn't like to have fun, she's always tired and she just wants to sit on the couch. And you know I wanted to protest that, but from a six year old standpoint. I also was working, you know, 1213 hour days and when I came home I was exhausted and I just definitely was not my best self.
Speaker 2:Um but that's kind of a wake up call, you know, when you realize you have no life. And you were in California, I was in Washington state, the Seattle area, and at some point I realized that we wanted to buy a house and that I was going to have to work a lot, of, a lot of years because we would be working to make that house payment. The cost of living was just so outrageous that it would take both of our salaries to to make our house payment. So so when did you decide Portugal?
Speaker 1:So when did you decide Portugal? Two years ago, for my birthday, my wife organized a dinner for me and she surprised me by inviting one of my best friends and his wife to dinner with us. We had the talking, we were there for hours and it just felt good just to be talking to friends. Right, it's an odd thing to say, but it just felt good to be talking to friends and sharing stories, sharing lives, sharing some wine, and we started reminiscing about our previous trip to Portugal that my buddy and I had a few years back when we did our thesis abroad, after we did our thesis in Czech Republic, and we just traveled around Europe and we landed in Portugal, because he's from Portugal or he's from Angola, but he, he lives in Portugal. And we just talked about it and we just kind of reminisce about the culture, the food, the people and the weather and all of this. And he just asked me why don't you move to Portugal? And it dawned on me that why not?
Speaker 1:And so after that we, my wife and I talked about it and we just kind of got obsessed and we started researching and watching a bunch of YouTube videos and we watch our rich journey guys and just kind of research, research, research. And we, you know we did that while working work was still unbearable. You know we did that while working Work was still unbearable. And now that there was a light, like a flicker, at the end of the tunnel, I started asking myself like why am I putting up with this? Why, what's the point? What's the goal here? Why, what's the end game? Why? And that light at the end of the tunnel started getting brighter and brighter and brighter. And so one day we just decided.
Speaker 2:This is enough. We should go. So you got started with your paperwork two years ago, or how long did it take you to get the paperwork portion done?
Speaker 1:The paperwork portion. It took us about three months to get all of the paperwork and all of the research together and all of that getting all out of line. Fortunately for me, my wife is meaningfully smarter than I am.
Speaker 2:I don't know if she's smarter, but she is definitely very organized and she's your go-to person if you need to get something done.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. She is just a rock star. She's so organized. She got all of us, she got herself a folder and everything was just kind of you know. She told me, go do this and I would just go ahead and take care of it and bring it back to her. And then she had, she was organized and figured it out. We worked together on getting things done and three months later we had all of the paperwork. We knew what we were going to, what visa we would apply for. We had a path forward.
Speaker 2:That's amazing, and how long you've been here. You've been here almost two years, yes.
Speaker 1:We've been here almost two years, so we made that decision a little bit. What two and a half years? Or yeah, just about two and a half years ago?
Speaker 2:I think sometimes that's how it happens, though, right, I mean like, when the thing hits you and you start moving forward, it goes quick.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Once you've decided, that's it. I know some folks who haven't yet decided they're exploring, but they haven't decided. I had a great motivation which my work environment was a disaster. I was completely burned out from work and the folks there were just it wasn't working. So it was almost as if it motivated me to attain my goals yeah, well, it definitely.
Speaker 2:It helped me too that last year teaching was almost torture, but at the same time it was like, okay, but I get at the end of this, I get to leave you know I don't have to come back and teach anymore and I I admire teachers. I don't want to make it sound like teaching is a bad profession. It was, but I was burnout. I needed to go.
Speaker 2:So, you guys got. You got your paperwork done. Did you have to have a place here? How did you get here? What did the process getting here look like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we definitely. We had to have a signed lease in order to apply, and so, um, it was. This is a long list of things. Uh, that part of it was an assigned lease. We had to find a home. We had to. We work with um I don't know if you're familiar with them Porsche with a place, um, they helped us find this apartment, which is an amazing apartment. We love it here.
Speaker 1:We worked with, we met with PAX consultants. We met with a relocation specialist Wow, which is an interesting story, kind of which led me to ask Rudy, we I don't know if you did the same way, but we essentially wrote a letter of our situation and we sent it to different relocation specialists with the intention to kind of get some feedback and then schedule a meeting and have the conversation and so forth, and every single person that we spoke with, they had the exact same profile of our family. They all gave us a different recommendation. Like literally every single one gave us a different recommendation for a visa where we should move to. Everything was different, yeah, yeah, and so, after getting all of our paperwork together and we decided you know what, we need to do this ourselves because the feedback we were getting just was not aligned with our goals and it certainly was not aligned with what we have learned just by doing our own personal research right, with what we have learned just by doing our own personal research Right.
Speaker 1:And making a mistake can derail your our objective of moving as soon as possible, or it could end up being very expensive. We don't apply for the right tax applications and we don't follow the correct rules. Making a mistake on your taxes can be extremely expensive, and so we decided to go and do it ourselves the correct routes. Making a mistake on your taxes can be extremely expensive, and so we decided to go and do it ourselves. We got the paperwork together and we moved. We actually we moved out, spent a few months here and went back to the US to do the final application because we had to be in the US to get our visa, to ship our visa, our passport, and once we got it, that was it. We never looked back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I think that your path is very similar to what I hear from a lot of people. One of the reasons that I started this podcast is because my path was was different. Um, I'm married to a Portuguese citizen who got his citizenship through lineage, and that's a path that's not available to everyone, but it's funny. That led me to do the podcast and your journey led you to do Ask Rudy, which we haven't talked about yet. But you have not completely left the tech sector behind. But you have not completely left the tech sector behind Now that you're here.
Speaker 1:Tell us a little bit about Ask Rudy and how that came to be? Absolutely yeah. So you know, as I mentioned earlier, we've gone through. We ultimately decided to go through the process ourselves after meeting with so many folks and getting different, conflicting advice or recommendations, and really that leaves you feeling insecure, like it's nerve wracking to that the experts seems to give, seems to not be aligned, even though it's the same user profile, the same person. It's just us. We have the exact same information. We join all these Facebook groups and you know, and all the recommendations that we got from folks on the and the groups, they were based on their personal experience.
Speaker 1:Like you said, you know, your journey is different than mine, even though the destination is the same, and so you, your, your expertise relies within your journey, and I we also noticed, just speaking with friends and folks, that the the biggest deteriorated. What, what keeps people from moving, is just the amount of work and costs involved and moving abroad and the fear that is attached with not knowing if you're making the right decision, just the feel of not having the enough knowledge, and so, for those reasons, I just felt like there had to be a better place, a better way to do this, and so I created this application called AskRudyai where, no matter what your profile is or where you want to move to, you can have a conversation just as if you're having a conversation with a friend, and it will give you the correct information, based on the latest government rules and data Right, and so you're not just kind of flaring about, you feel confident, knowing that you have the right information, you can make your move as soon as possible.
Speaker 2:You're essentially giving people that friend that can advise them that already lives here. Because that's what we did Once we got here. Lucas had a cousin that lived here and we relied heavily on them because, speaking to your point, you went to all these different people and got all of these different answers, and this is not an uncommon thing to happen in Portugal, where you think you're going into I'm not going to name any names, but let's just say an institution and you think things are going to go a certain way and they don't, so you kind of have to expect the unexpected.
Speaker 2:but what you do rely on is other people and asking them questions and getting that guidance from those that know how these systems work. So you are offering that to people without them having to do the hours of deep diving and going down rabbit trails, that dead end because that happens a lot too, which I think is amazing.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely, you nailed it. It's so difficult to get the right information and sometimes you don't have that resource Right. Sometimes you don't have the resource or the advantage of having someone that is local to the country that you want to move to. Yes, right, and so having someone who knows the rules and so having someone who knows the rules and can answer you, answer all of your questions, no matter how good or bad you think that question is, is really helpful.
Speaker 2:And is Ask, rudy, just for people moving from the US to Portugal.
Speaker 1:No, it is wherever. If you want to move is for anyone who wants to move, relocate to a new country, ok. It's for anyone who wants to move, relocate to a new country, okay. So if you want to move from the US to Japan or from the UK to Mexico, go to Ask Rudy and it's got you.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. So Ask Rudy provides the app. Is it an app?
Speaker 1:Yes, it's a web application.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So is there? Is there a component where people can ask you questions if they want to actually talk to a person?
Speaker 1:Absolutely my. My phone number is listed on the website, and so you can just pick up the phone and give me a phone call.
Speaker 2:You can literally ask Rudy.
Speaker 1:You can literally ask Rudy, but you know what that speaks to?
Speaker 2:the confidence of your tool, because I'm guessing you have the confidence that people are going to get their question answered without having to call your number.
Speaker 1:That's right. I am 1000% confident they can get the information that they need. And, to be honest with you, yeah, it's yeah. My phone number is on there. My email is on there. Feel free to call me, send me an email and we can talk, Right.
Speaker 2:And, for the record, all of the contact information, the links and everything are going to be in today's show notes and they are on my website and anything I put out in the I'll put a blog out that goes along with this. You'll be able. So, if you are interested you are listening right now, thinking I got to have Ask Rudy you will have access to Ask Rudy if you go to any of those locations.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So we're going to come back to Ask Rudy towards the end here, but I want to backtrack just a little bit and ask you. So you've been here for a couple of years. You were in this space of burnout. You came here. It seems like you kind of devoted your time into becoming an entrepreneur and developing the Ask Rudy. It's been a couple of years. How has life changed for you?
Speaker 1:It's, I don't look back. It's the best decision I've made as an adult. The ability to live in an environment where people matter, where people matter, where I can be productive in life while being a great parent, a great husband, being a valuable member of society without detriment to myself. Right, is the best decision I could have made. Right, and it's like.
Speaker 1:It's not like I'm no longer working, right, I'm still working. I have a passion project. I see a problem out there that I want to resolve for folks, and so I'm ended 100% and I'm someone who gives it my, gives it his all. So I'm working hard, but there is no, there's none of that toxicity around anymore. Right, my kids are. See, I think my kids to school, I pick them up from school, I think I'm out. A different event. We go and play, I teach them things, and the same thing with my wife. We spend time together, we go out together. It's, it is my life has improved because, you know, in Portugal, as it is in many countries out there, you know there's this focus on human beings, right, and that work-life continuity not a balance but a continuity. Right, Because you know, in my personal life, with my wife and my friends, I still talk about work, but it has a different tone.
Speaker 2:I'm happy and we are excited it certainly is the best decision of my adulthood. You know, I felt it took a while for me to get Well, I had a really hard time adjusting to this lifestyle because it was slower paced. But I mean, I'm an American and I have grown up with the pressure to perform, yeah, and the pressure to produce, yeah, and it was really challenging for me to transition to a space where I didn't I felt comfortable not having that pressure. I mean, I didn't want that pressure.
Speaker 1:But honestly, I didn't know kind of who I was if I wasn't pushing, not keep myself busy, right.
Speaker 1:I intentionally said you know what, I'm going to take a month or two months to really allocate and really focus on what the next chapter of my life is going to be.
Speaker 1:So I didn't want to be constantly busy and running around and just packing my calendar, right. And because of that I was able to kind of reconnect with myself and with my true self and what makes me happy and the things that I kind of buried while I was kind of drowning in work. And it also allowed me to see that, allowed me to talk to a lot of my friends and like go online and go to the websites that I found interesting right, and read the things that I thought was kind of cool, right. And I uncovered this particular need that folks have and it allowed me to create this website that helps people and that need that you're talking about right To busy, to achieve and to kind of hustle I have. I still have it and now I'm doing it, but now I'm much more happy doing this. I imagine it's probably you feel that same kind of passion with the podcast and the other thing that you're doing.
Speaker 2:I do. I'm doing things that I want to do for the first time in my life, to be honest. But there was a lot of guilt and a lot of struggle to get me there, and I'm really good at if there's no work, I will create some for myself. So I've had several starts and stops on my journey where I'm like okay, you are creating the exact environment and you're doing it. Nobody's paying you to do it, you're doing this to yourself. So it's just amazing how those cultural patterns were deeply ingrained in me and it's taken a bit to shift.
Speaker 1:Yes, I agree, I've been there. I've been there and I've done it myself. That time of figuring it out, I did a lot of false starts and I agree, I've been there. I've been there and I've done it myself. That time of figuring it out, I did a lot of false starts and I agree with you it's hard because it's ingrained in you and you got to and it.
Speaker 2:Maybe you don't have any, and that's okay too, but I personally had challenges, especially the first year. What have been your challenges? Making the move or adjusting to the move?
Speaker 1:I think the biggest challenge that I have is I miss my friends and family. That's by far right. There are friends, people that I'm close to that I love, that I had to leave behind or that stayed in the US, and I miss them. I miss them a lot, and the time difference makes it brings a new challenge, you know, just talking and doing that kind of thing. However, we, we, we, because we care about each other. We've turned that into a positive. When they come over, they stay for a week or two and then we travel and we experience all kinds of things that we never had the chance to experience in the US. Yeah, and we schedule weekly phone calls so we can talk and reconnect and we play video games online. I know I'm a guy and I play PlayStation. It's OK.
Speaker 2:No judgment. This is a podcast of no judgment.
Speaker 1:And so we do these things and it's a lot of fun. But when I think back, I spend more time talking to my friends, to my loved ones now than I did in the last few years at work in the US. So it is better, it's just hard. And the next thing I say is learning a new language when you're not, you know, a child.
Speaker 2:It's much easier for the kids. It's much easier for the kids.
Speaker 1:It's so easy for the kids Learning a new language. I'm learning, I'm working at it. It's important to me that I learn Portuguese, but it's not easy. It's not easy at all.
Speaker 2:I hear, and I don't know if this is true or not, but it takes about five years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can see that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1:I can see that.
Speaker 2:Me too. It's a big challenge for me too. That is, unless I think, if you already have another Latin-based language in your repertoire in your repertoire, it's easier. But I didn't.
Speaker 1:And it's been hard for me too. It's really hard and, fortunately for us, the Portuguese people are incredibly kind and incredibly patient and as long as you're trying, they'll work with you.
Speaker 2:That is true.
Speaker 1:I'll try my Portugueseuguese and you know, sometimes they get a chuckle out of it, um, and it's a. They're patient, they'll teach me and they're they help me out, and many portuguese speak, uh, english, so it does help. It's been, it's been an interesting experience. Here's a funny story my family and I we went to this restaurant and I was struggling and this group of guys came in and they kind of helped me out and they helped me practice a certain word that I won't say here, but it turns out it was not a very nice word, it was one of those, it was a joke. And so I went around saying this thing for throughout the whole restaurant and I'm like, why is everyone kind of looking and chuckling to themselves? And the waiter told me what was up and we all had a laugh.
Speaker 2:You know, this is where it does help when your kids learn it, because how old is your oldest Second?
Speaker 1:grade.
Speaker 2:Seven. So at school I've noticed over time they learn the words that they're not supposed to use. So my daughter is great at correcting me. She'll say you know, you're saying that incorrectly. Stop saying that. You know, when you say that that's not the same thing, all those kinds of things which is helpful. Yes, we sometimes can't trust the Portuguese love a good joke, so you know, and sometimes we play right into their hands. But they are kind people, but they do enjoy. They laugh at each other as much as they do us.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, for sure it's in. Good fun it's in good fun, that's right. So my kids. Now they speak to each other in Portuguese.
Speaker 2:Isn't that awesome.
Speaker 1:It's amazing, but I know I'm in trouble.
Speaker 2:Rather than the adults talking about the kids in the language they don't understand. You've got the opposite the kids are going to be talking about you guys, and you're not going to know what they're saying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh yeah, I'm in trouble.
Speaker 2:So what have been your biggest surprises? Like things you didn't expect and you're like, wow, who knew?
Speaker 1:I think there are two things that really stand out to me. The first one is the Portuguese people. When they say, when they talk about family values, they mean it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They absolutely mean it and you know I'm an American, I love the US, all of that right. But in the US you can immediately see the difference and in Portugal if a pregnant woman is in the back of the line, everyone will encourage her to move to the front of the line. No issues there. In schools the teachers embrace the children with big hugs and kisses and they cheer them on. That kind of love and passion they have for people is just incredible. Love and passion to have for people it's just incredible. I've never experienced that in the US back home, so that was a huge surprise.
Speaker 2:That was one of the things that made us want to move here. When we came to visit, we were in a restaurant and this little old man came up and stroked Camille's cheek and did that and kissed her on top of her head and walked out of the restaurant. We didn't know him, but it was obvious how caring they were towards children. And you know, there's I think maybe it was, I don't remember who said this quote, so I'm not going to say who I think it was, but there's a quote that's something along the lines of you can tell a lot about a culture of people by the way they treat their children and their animals.
Speaker 2:And now some could argue some of the treatment of the animals here is questionable. But there is the fact that most of the time you can find these little places for cats. There's a lot of stray cats in Portugal and people don't own them, but they will put food out for them in little places for them to be, to stay warm. So I think, speaking to your point, there is this warmth and this. It goes back to what we were talking about earlier what's missing in the business portion of the United States, that value for people, simply because we are human beings and we are all worthy of value. They have that here, that's right.
Speaker 2:They have that here.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah, 1000% yeah, worthy of value. They have that here, that's right. They have that here. Absolutely yeah, one thousand percent. Yeah. And the.
Speaker 1:The second thing that really surprised me is when I moved to portugal. Everywhere I go, I am a black man, and that's clear, right, and you know, there's certain things as a black man that you worry about, that you cannot do in certain places, right, and I will never forget this. The second day, the morning after we moved into our home, my wife she wanted some coffee and that kind of thing, and there's a local cafe to us. And I went to the local cafe, you know, ordered two coffees and some pastries and so on, and when I got ready to pay they told me, hey, we don't take American currency, which I didn't. Just, I just didn't have a chance to go to the bank. It was literally my second day, less than 24 hours into the country.
Speaker 1:We don't think I'd say, oh, shoot, sorry about that. I try to pay with my credit card, but I know we don't take credit. I'm like, shoot, what am I going to do here? And I'm like that's all I've got, that's all of my currency. And the guy said, oh, don't worry about it, let me pack this up for you. They just paid me tomorrow, yeah, what? This is something that has never happened to me, ever, right. And so the idea that someone, a business, would just say never have met me, they don't know me from anything. They say, hey, let me pack this up for you, pay me tomorrow, yeah. And so I took everything and I'm like, are you sure? Yeah, I took everything and came back later that day and paid for my food and paid for a few other customers that were there Just as a big thank you, and I was that kind of yeah.
Speaker 2:So we had a similar, again a similar experience. Lucas is not on here, he's Brazilian, so for anybody that sees this, he's very dark, complected, and so he gets mistaken for a lot of nationalities that he's not. But, um, the first time we came to portugal. So two things happened lucas got searched at the airport, going through back through us, which we I never get searched, but he always does. They actually used a razor, they had a razor thing and actually cut the strap on his backpack and it was just ridiculous. Yeah, but I mean, like I said, many border crossings in our lives and many times we've, because he's in my opinion and it's my podcast, I can say whatever the hell I want to. It's because his skin is darker than mine and he gets pulled and he's very gracious about it. So we kind of expected certain things when we got here. Also, and Brazilians, they're a little lower on the pecking order amongst the Portuguese, so sometimes there's a little bit of racism there. So we expected some things.
Speaker 2:So we were in Evora I don't know if you've been to Evora, it's a beautiful walled little city it's in the Alentejo, and we were visiting and I wanted to get my hair done because it was much cheaper to get it done in Portugal than it was to get the same services in the United States.
Speaker 2:And so we were in a shoe shop I was also trying to find a pair of Portuguese shoes and the lady's talking to us and Lucas asks her if there's a place I can get my hair done. So she tells us like three places, but she really wants me to go to her friend and she leaves Lucas in charge of her shoe shop while she walks me maybe four or five blocks away to introduce me to her friend. Wow, and I think that was the first time we were like I want to live in a country where it not just because he is a Brown guy who had somebody trust him, but because people are willing to trust anyone to that level. And you know we have problems here. Right, it's no utopia. There are there's, there are issues here as well as well, but some of those things that, at least for our family and I'm going to guess, perhaps for yours as well cause us a lot of fear.
Speaker 1:We don't have here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I love that too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just being being treated like a person, right, not assuming the worst of you is. You know, as we talked about earlier, right, culture and environment is important. If the culture is toxic, you know it has an impact on you, it weighs on you, it does. Culture is positive and uplifting. Guess what? You will be positive and you will be uplifting. You don't have that burden on your shoulders anymore and it makes for a happier person and a happier culture and a happier country.
Speaker 2:And studies show it improves your health.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:I mean significantly. So, dude, we could do an entire at least hour long podcast on this, because I've got lots of thoughts on all of this, but I'm going to move us to the next question, which is you know, I think for myself, I wish that we had had something like Ask Rudy whenever we were in transition. So tell us a little bit about how Ask Rudy can help people out there that are listening to you and I today and they're thinking maybe I do want to investigate this.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I think if you are thinking about moving abroad, if you're just considering it, you should look into AskReady, right? Even if you're not, I think AskReady is created to make the transition abroad. Even if you are a retiree, if you're a family, if you're a study abroad student, it's created to make that transition seamless, right? And I think A lot of us fall into the fear of not knowing, not having the right answer or being judged. I see, sometimes when someone asks a question on a Facebook group, they get pounced on. Why All of that? Right, you don't have to go through all of that to get to the answer, to get to your next destination. Right? Ask for these literally designed to help you go from, to help you move abroad in a matter of weeks, not months or years as I'm seeing some folks go through. Yeah, and making a mistake is more costly than you think right, mistake is is more costly than you think. Right, if? Because, when you make an appointment with um, with, with some for, with the ambassador or the ambassador, what I'm looking for here?
Speaker 1:embassy the embassy. Yeah, when you make an appointment with the embassy and you don't have the right paperwork with you, it's gonna going to take you. The next available appointment could be months away, completely derailing your plans, right, and so and we created this to be absolutely affordable. It's only 14 bucks, right, yeah, the consultant a consultant will charge you $100 just to meet with you, right, yeah, the consultant a consultant will charge you a hundred dollars just to meet with you. Yeah, right. So invest in yourself, take the leap.
Speaker 1:You know, worst case scenario if you don't, if you don't like the new country that you're in, you can travel to another country. And if that, if you want to go back to the U? S or go back to your home country, you can always do that. But I think regret is the biggest burden anyone can have, right, the regret of like, oh man, I could have done this. Or I could have lived in Japan, I could have lived in France, I could have lived in the UK, I could have moved to Thailand and, you know, live on the beach and all this stuff. I could have had that dream life, but I never did it because I was too afraid or I just didn't have enough time to do the research. Don't wait. Even if you don't have to use Ask Rudy don't. But I implore you to take that leap of faith and live a better life.
Speaker 2:I agree with that 100%. And you know, there's a couple of things I know I would have used Ask Rudy for had it been there for me. The first one is when you're back in the US and you are coming up, I would it's a big, big move, a little bit of stress there. I would wake up in the middle of the night and be like I wish I could ask this question. I could ask this question and you're not getting paid. You're not having to pay extra money to ask ask Rudy, whatever questions you have at three o'clock in the morning. You know it's it's the same price either way and but it's there for you.
Speaker 2:It is that friend to talk to when all this stuff is going around in your head and you're like, oh my gosh, but what about this? What if I want to bring my cat? What if I don't have their shots up to date? Or you know, whatever the thing is that hits you at 3am. And the other thing that I thought of um Rudy is that once we got here, the questions didn't stop. I mean, it wasn't like we got off the plane and everything settled into place. We probably, had we been one of your customers current customers we probably would have used you for the next year as well. Yeah, because there are so many things. Systems are different from country to country and we just assume that they're going to be like the systems we're used to.
Speaker 2:But when they're not Ask, rudy would have given an amazing helper feel to having someone be there for us. So I 100% agree with you that if you're listening to this and you're on the verge, you know, go down the rabbit hole, man, see, see what's there for you. Because I think that the regret that I hear the most is I wish I had done this sooner.
Speaker 1:Me too. Me too, 100%, 100%, 100%. And I'll add you know, ask Rudy is more than your best friend who can help you travel, but it's also you can use it to translate documents. So, for us, we had to have a lease signed before we moved, before we could apply for a visa, right, and so our landlords can understand, at least in portuguese, which I did not understand right. So, and I try to use google translate, but google translate only translate based on words, that it doesn't take account of context.
Speaker 1:So we built askudy as well, so you can upload your lease or upload your PDF and translate it in the language that is comfortable to you. You can also use it to have a conversation with your documents. And so if, for example, our lease was five years long, and so I'm like, well, why is this five years long? And so like, well, why is this five years long? And like, if I want to cancel my lease, how can I, what do I need to do to cancel my lease and how much notice do I need to give? It just gives you that information and I can also ask. It's like I can also ask hey, what is not in there but should be in there to better protect myself and my family, and it gives you a list of suggestions of what you should implement into your lease, and he'll tell you exactly where these things should go or where you pull the information for us. He gives you all the resources as well. It is an incredible tool.
Speaker 2:I keep calling it a friend, but you're right, it is a tool. It's a little bit of like the Swiss army knife, only for moving. It's got all the tools. I really appreciate you coming on here again. All the stuff we talked about today will be linked in today's show notes. Is there anything else that you want to say before we bring this to a close?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I want to thank you for taking the time to have this conversation with me. I had a lot of fun chatting and I hope a lot of folks find this helpful. If anybody has any questions, feel free to call me up or send me a WhatsApp message or an email whatever works for you. I'd love to help folks however I can. So I'll see you in the show notes, as they say.
Speaker 2:All right. Thank you, rudy. So much for coming on the podcast. It has been my pleasure and joy as well.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, see you soon.
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Speaker 2:Coach, speaker and author Rashid Ogunlaro said it may take many voices for people to hear the same message. Join me in being one of the many voices rising up to get the message out around educator burnout. This is Melissa LaFleur. Thank you for listening to. Tot taught the podcast. I wish I knew I have an important reminder. Slash disclaimer to share. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company. Content provided on this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be taken as professional advice. We encourage you to do your own research and consult with qualified professionals before making any decisions based on the information discussed in this or any other episode. Additionally, any opinions or statements made during the podcast are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company or individual Listener. Discretion is advised. Thank you for tuning in.