Bernie Borges [00:00:00]:
Tom, welcome to the Midlife Fulfill podcast, a vulnerable conversations episode.
Tom Schwab [00:00:05]:
Bernie, I am thrilled to be here and and share my experience.
Bernie Borges [00:00:09]:
Well, I’m thrilled to have you, and, can’t wait to dive into your experience. So a little bit of context, for the listener. You and I met, we were talking, off camera, so to speak, I think about 15 years ago at a conference. And you and I have been in the podcasting space. I’ve been in it for about 11 years, so you probably outdate me a little bit on the podcasting space. So you are, an a professional with tons and tons of experience, your own podcast. You run a business, around getting interview helping podcasters get interviews for pod podcasts. However, what I invited you to to join me and discuss today is a recent experience that you had that I can’t wait to hear about because even before we started recording, I even had to kinda ask you to slow down because I wanted to hear it in the recording.
Bernie Borges [00:01:01]:
You said you had a life changing experience. I’m not gonna give any more detail. I’d I invite you to give that detail. Tell us about that life changing experience. We’ll have some conversation around it.
Tom Schwab [00:01:11]:
Yeah. And it’s how to how to frame it. And now it was a month ago, so I’ve had some time to think about it. But just I had to ask myself, when was the last time I had a month off work? I think it was probably when I was about 12 years old mowing lawns, right, and shoveling driveways. When was I that I took a month just to focus on myself and my wife and my relationship and, and my health? And we did this in the month of September. My my bride, my wife, I call her my bride, I’m a and I, we hiked the Camino de Santiago. So we started in the Pyrenees mountains of France and we walked over 500 miles in 26 days, with everything we needed on our back. And people are like, that’s amazing.
Tom Schwab [00:02:01]:
And it’s like, no, it’s just one step after another. Really what’s amazing is that I didn’t do it before before this. And, it’s I I wanna go back and do it again because I’m sure I’ll learn even more lessons.
Bernie Borges [00:02:16]:
Well, Tom, the first question that I wanna ask you is why? Why did you
Tom Schwab [00:02:21]:
and your wife do it? We watched a movie about a decade ago called The Way, and there’s a a movie about the the Camino. And we watched that and, like, that would be great to do someday. Right? And then during COVID, we started to walk a lot because there wasn’t a lot else to do. We live out in the country, and that used to be our time to talk with each other, right? We’re both busy. We’ve got lives and, but we would go for a walk and we’d walk to the restaurant. We’d we’d walk to breakfast And we live in the country, so we’d walk for a beer. Right? The closest brewery is 3 miles away, so that’s a 6 mile walk.
Bernie Borges [00:03:02]:
You don’t
Tom Schwab [00:03:03]:
have to worry if you have more than 1. Right? So we got to enjoy really walking because there was no cell phones. There was no distractions, and, life seemed to slow down during that. And we also realized it was good for our health. So it was one of these things. And then finally, sort of the forcing function is I had already talked about this. Right? I’m gonna do this someday, and we’re gonna do it in September. Well, my number 2, my chief operating officer took maternity leave in February, and she came back from maternity leave.
Tom Schwab [00:03:38]:
And she said, if I can take time off for the baby, you can take time off for the Camino. And so we worked together to get me to that point. And I’m so glad I did because I came back a new person, a person that I like a whole lot more to.
Bernie Borges [00:03:54]:
Okay. Well, I certainly wanna get into that. But I wanna ask you. You said that it took you 26 days. Is that right? Correct. Okay. Is that what you anticipated? Did you kind of map it out in advance and plan that it would be a 26 day adventure?
Tom Schwab [00:04:09]:
Yes and no. Right? You you plan it, but we figured we’d do it somewhere between 30 35 days. Right now, we got some great weather there, but we would just keep walking, right? If we still felt good, we’d walk a little bit more. And it’s such a great trail. It’s been there since the the middle ages. It goes through small communities. It goes through big towns. There’s there’s hotels.
Tom Schwab [00:04:34]:
There’s hostels. There’s what they call albergues, which is like college boarding house, if you remember those. And so there’s always places to stop. And, there’s a phrase called the camino provides, and so we never wanted for anything. Right? If we were tired, we found a place.
Bernie Borges [00:04:54]:
So I would imagine that along the way, you had some encounters with other people and just encounters. I mean, what are some of the I would imagine you had many. What are some of the memorable, many or meaningful encounters that you had during those 29 days?
Tom Schwab [00:05:10]:
You know, that was the most powerful things was the people. The scenery was great. The food was great. But the conversations with the people. And I remember hearing that all these different saints throughout the ages had had walked the Camino. And I remember talking to my mom from the Camino, and she pointed out that the phone reception there was better than it was in Western Michigan. And I said, all these saints have have walked it. And she’s like, did you run into any saints? And I said, no, but I’ve run into some angels.
Tom Schwab [00:05:43]:
And you never knew who you’re gonna run into. The vast majority of the people there for the 500 mile hike were people that had recently retired. Right? They had this opportunity. They still had their health and the couples would go and and walk it. And so I would we’d meet people that had just recently retired and were in a similar stage of life from Karen and I. Right? Empty nesters. And you never knew who you’re gonna run into. And you’d walk along in the trail, and maybe you’d see him again, maybe you wouldn’t.
Tom Schwab [00:06:17]:
I was energized by the older people and the younger people that I had met. So we met, 2 great people. It was Scott and Carol from St. Louis and Bernie. I had a hard time keeping up with them. We walked with them for an entire day, and he was 70 and she was 68. And they were telling me all of the different places that they’d hiked and different things. He told me what the decade of his sixties look like.
Tom Schwab [00:06:48]:
And I was asking him, you know, what he learned from that. And it was almost like this angel or a mentor that came into my life, and same way with Karen. Right? She was talking to this woman about what did that next decade look like for her. So that was, like, at one extreme. And then the other extreme was there was college students there. And some of them, I can think of, one group that was doing a study abroad. And here are kids that were 19, 20, I don’t know, maybe 21, and they’re walking along. And talk to them and thinking, wow.
Tom Schwab [00:07:23]:
What would my life have life had looked like if I had this experience when I was their age? And hearing about their dreams and their passions and their excitement, that just energized me energized me. I I can’t say that, I met a rude person in Europe. Right? They always talk about the French being rude. We flew in and out of Paris. The the first rude person I met was when I came back and had to deal with the TSA. So it was just angels along the way.
Bernie Borges [00:07:55]:
Well, that that is that is fascinating. So what about the trail itself? How crowded is it? I mean, you are you walking among a lot of people, or is distributed and sparse or all the above?
Tom Schwab [00:08:08]:
It varies. Right? There are certain times where you’re walking and you don’t see anybody for hours. Right? There’s a a place called the Meseta. Think of Saint, of South Dakota, and that’s what it looked like. Just wheat fields and hay fields forever. There were other areas where there were lots of people. Right? You go through towns, like, Pamplona was my favorite town in Spain. And people realized you were a pilgrim, but you were walking through a town with lots and lots of other people.
Tom Schwab [00:08:37]:
And and, how do you know that somebody was a pilgrim? Well, they look like a foreigner with everything they own in a backpack. They get lost, and there’s a little shell on the backpack. But some of it was, like very little of it was walking through alongside a road. Most of it was paths, some uphill, some downhill, walking through a forest. Right? We walked through one forest, and it was magical. There were horses in there. Like, somebody just let out probably 2 dozen horses, and they were just grazing in this forest. And so each day, you didn’t know what you were going to see, and that was sort of the magical part of it.
Tom Schwab [00:09:19]:
Because I’ve been I’ve been on this, Earth for 59 years. And after a while, everything looks about the same. Right? I know what Southwest Michigan looks like. Today is gonna be similar to yesterday. And there, you weren’t quite sure. And that excitement, that stretching of your brain, is something that I hadn’t experienced in a long time. At times, I felt like, one of my grandchildren. Right? Just so excited for a new experience.
Bernie Borges [00:09:51]:
Okay. So, Tom, let’s talk about impact. Because you said at the beginning of this conversation, you’re a different person, you you like the this version of you better. When did you begin to even know that you were having an impact? Was it while you were there, You know, when you return, you know, comment on that.
Tom Schwab [00:10:12]:
My wife calls it Camino Tom. Right? And, she’s like, I I love Camino Tom. I hope he sticks around forever. I think it was probably honestly probably about 2 weeks in. Right? It took me that long to let go and de stress. Right? I’m I’m an alpha type person. I control everything and wanna plan everything, and just realizing I didn’t need to do that. Another thing was the creativity that comes back.
Tom Schwab [00:10:43]:
We have a a client that in our business, and she is a executive coach, and she tells the story. She was an MD, a PhD. And she said once she got out of medicine, it took her a couple of months to have a creative idea because she was so stressed. And all of a sudden, I actually talked with her when I was on the trail. And I think it was about 2 weeks in, and I started to have dreams like I hadn’t since I was a kid. Right? And they weren’t the stress dreams, that I would normally have. They were just creative dreams and happy dreams. And, so I think that that lack of stress and I think the exercise and the fresh air helped a lot too.
Tom Schwab [00:11:29]:
So I I started to realize something is changing here. The things that used to stress me out or I’d worry about didn’t worry me as much. Right? I I had Internet there on my phone, and my team knew that if they really needed something, they could always reach out. I would check things and things that would get me stressed in the past. I just looked at it and said, I’m in good hands, right? They’ll take care of it. And just realizing that I didn’t have to control the entire world. Before that, I I felt like I had to control the entire world. And now one of the things that I look at it is I don’t.
Tom Schwab [00:12:10]:
And another thing that I learned on the Camino was that there’s no bad news. Right? No matter what happened on there, something good came out of it. Like, before that that couple that I mentioned that I, met from Saint Louis, I had forgotten my hat in one of the churches. Right? I had the St. Louis Blues hat on. I grabbed it as we were going out of the house because I needed a hat. And, you know, respectful, when I go into church, I take my hat off and I dropped it. And I didn’t realize it till about a half mile later.
Tom Schwab [00:12:41]:
And I’m like, yeah, don’t worry about it. And Karen’s like, no. Let’s go back and get it. We walked back and got it. And as we walked out and I was putting my hat on, they said, are you from St. Louis? I’m like, no. And that started the conversation. So it’s like no matter what bad thing happens, something good’s going to come out of it.
Tom Schwab [00:13:03]:
And I’ve talked about that. You know, I’m I’m on my second marriage, and while as painful as that was the first divorce and everything, something good came out of that. And so now that’s how how I frame Camino Tom looks at looks at it. Right? Alright. It it seems like a problem, but what is this gonna make possible?
Bernie Borges [00:13:23]:
So I would imagine that as you were before the trip, as you were anticipating the trip, you were anticipating that it was gonna be a memorable experience, that there’s gonna be something really meaningful happen for you and perhaps for your relationship with your wife. So, what I wanna know, Tom, is is the reality what you expected, or is it different in terms of the impact that it had on you?
Tom Schwab [00:13:51]:
I’ll be honest. Before we left, I expected it would get canceled. Right? Something is gonna come up in our world. Right? Either with business, with family, geopolitical. It’s like, oh, we’re not gonna be able to go. So when we got there, I was like, wow. This is really gonna happen. And I tried to keep an open mind on it.
Tom Schwab [00:14:14]:
Karen and I met running marathons many, many years ago. And one of the things that I noticed there when I was running marathons is right around mile 22. I get some understanding or some some new thought would come in my mind that was so powerful. And I think, you know, God tries speaking to me in life, but, I’m too busy to listen. So sometimes I just gotta get tired through 22 miles of running before I start listening. And so I thought that entire thing, something’s gonna come to me. And I can’t say there was a few things, but it wasn’t like a stroke of, you know, of lightning or anything. But there was different things that came to me that I saw, and I just tried to be open to them, and not stress it too much of, like, oh, I’ve gotta figure this out.
Tom Schwab [00:15:06]:
When people would say, why are you going there? I would jokingly say, and I think I said this to you before I left, that I’m going there to figure out what I’m I wanna do with the second half of my life. Right? I’m 59. I hope this is I hope this is the midway point. But, you know, regardless, I was just trying to figure out what what the future is gonna look like, and I found that.
Bernie Borges [00:15:30]:
You did? Okay. So keep going. What what did you what did you discover about the second half of your life?
Tom Schwab [00:15:36]:
I met a lot of people that I admired there. Right? And I would say the difference is is they were elders, not elderly. Right? Some people get to a certain point and no judgment or anything like that. But, you know, they sit down, they put their feet up, and they become those elderly people. The people that I met were the elders. Right? They were excited. They they were sharing their wisdom. They were sharing their lessons.
Tom Schwab [00:16:08]:
They wanted to be there with other people. And that was so inspiring, and that kept them that kept them youthful. And I’m like, that’s who I wanna be. I wanna be an elder, not elderly. There’s something else that that struck me. This is probably like one of those lightning moments. On the Spanish flag, there’s 2 words, and it’s plus ultra. Right? And you say it in Latin.
Tom Schwab [00:16:36]:
It’s I probably butchered it. But with Chat GPT now, you can translate anything. If you’ve got a question on the Camino, just ask Chat GPT. It’ll tell you. So I asked it, what does plus ultra mean? And it gave me this entire thing that during the the Roman times, there was something written at the Straits of Gibraltar, and it was something like non ultra or something like that, where it meant nothing is beyond this point. Right? It’s sort of like in the maps where they say, there be dragons. And Spain, when they started to do the the conquests, the explorations, all the rest of that, the world went from there is nothing beyond this to plus ultra means basically more beyond. And they said, no, there’s a whole another world for that.
Tom Schwab [00:17:29]:
And that that struck me like, I even now I get shivers when I start thinking about how I read that on chat g p t. And it’s sort of I I looked at life and it’s like, okay. So once you hit a certain age, there’s nothing beyond that. Right? All the best is behind you. You know, nothing beyond this. And that’s not the way you look at life. Right? The they proved what’s what’s more, what’s beyond this. And so this is why I’m sort of looking at it.
Tom Schwab [00:17:59]:
It’s like, what’s beyond this? Right? The what’s beyond this this world that I’ve lived in already? And it’s exciting to me.
Bernie Borges [00:18:06]:
And you said earlier that the new Tom, as your wife calls it, the Camino Tom, you like better than the old Tom. So if I was to ask you to how to, you know, frame that up or what describe the new Tom.
Tom Schwab [00:18:21]:
Yeah. And before I left, I was I was burnt out right at work. I remember the days where I’d get up early, I’d work late, and the days went so fast. And I find that I didn’t work run out of time in a day. I’d run out of energy. Right? I drag myself downstairs to the office. I work in my home, and I wanted to put a good face on for my team of 22. But I felt like I was probably working at about 60%.
Tom Schwab [00:18:51]:
Right? Even if I put the time in, everything when a problem came up, I viewed it as a problem. Right? And I’d clock out at 4 I I was gonna say 5. Let’s be honest. It’s probably 4. And I was like, I’m beat. Right? I don’t have time to to go I don’t have the energy to go for a walk and do other things. And I was just I was burnt out. And going on to Camino, it was like, do I is it time to retire? Is it time to sell the business? You know, I I don’t want to I didn’t wanna do that.
Tom Schwab [00:19:25]:
And so I came back reenergized. Right now I’m I’m waking up at 4:30 thinking, I’m excited. I wanna get to this stuff. Right? And now granted, I’ve been back 2 weeks, but I’ve had 5 AM calls. And when people are like, you’ll do that, and this is for, like, people that are in Europe or Australia, our clients, I’m like, yeah, I’m up having coffee with that time anyway. And now Karen’s, you know, coming in at, you know, 5:30 at night. She’s like, when are you gonna be ready for dinner? And I’m like, it’s only 2:8 or 2 pm. And I looked down and just like, the time is just going faster there.
Tom Schwab [00:20:03]:
And the team has has recognized it too. They like you’re happier. You feel less stressed out. And I don’t know if this will last forever. But I tell you what, Bernie, when it starts to leave, I’m not going to push through it and work through it. I’m going to figure out what can I do to reset that? Maybe it’s not another 30 days away, but maybe it’s, it’s a long weekend. Maybe it’s just a good walk someday. Mhmm.
Tom Schwab [00:20:33]:
You know? There is forget medicine and pills. There is nothing in my mind that a good walk can’t can’t solve. Right?
Bernie Borges [00:20:42]:
Right. Right. So you’ve shared how you’ve changed, like, the new Tom in terms of how you’re approaching your work, your business. Tom, this is a Vulnerable Conversations episode, so I’m gonna ask if you don’t mind. What impact has it had on your marriage?
Tom Schwab [00:20:59]:
We were always very, very tight. Right? Karen and I spend we work together. We spend a lot of time together. But it drew us even closer together, and it gave us time to talk, gave us time to dream. It gave us time to think about what this next version of our life looks like. And Bernie, I gotta tell you, I fell in love with Spain. The only thing that really brought me back was family. Because we’ve got 2 little grandkids, and we miss them so much.
Tom Schwab [00:21:36]:
And they missed us. And so coming back, that is so much more special. And it’s sort of like when they’re always here, you know, your family’s always here. You don’t appreciate them as much. And, so I think it it gave me new appreciation for for family too.
Bernie Borges [00:21:56]:
If I can take you back to the actual Camino adventure, there’s a beginning and there’s an end. Is that right? Correct. Okay. So and you said that on average, it takes, call it 30 days, give or take. Mhmm. So have you had this kind of conversation with anybody outside of this podcast, of course, where you mentioned that you did this and you start to kind of sell the idea of, like, you should consider doing it, and here’s why. Have you had those conversations where you’re you’re kind of, like, encouraging others to do it?
Tom Schwab [00:22:31]:
I I am. And you don’t have to do the entire thing. Right? There’s certain people that go for a week and just do, what, the last 100 kilometers. Right? So 60 miles break it down into, what, 10 miles a day or something. So it’s it’s more manageable. You don’t have to do the entire thing. I’m a member of an organization called Entrepreneurs Organization. And the thing that I’ve learned from that more than anything is that nobody wants to be told what to do.
Tom Schwab [00:22:58]:
Right? No business owner, no adult, and even my grandkids. Right? You’re not the boss of me. Don’t tell me what to do. So I’m trying not to tell people, oh, you should do this. You need to do this. I just try to share my experience and have them ask questions and answer it. And let them connect the dots. Because if you if you send somebody there as a homework assignment to do, if you don’t wanna be there, it’s gonna be hell.
Tom Schwab [00:23:28]:
Right? But if you wanna be there, it’s gonna be magical. So I I just look at it. It maybe it’s not for everybody, but this is what I got out of it. So I just I’m trying to share my experience when people ask for it.
Bernie Borges [00:23:41]:
Okay. Fair. And and and I think it’s a great approach, Tom, to your point. Nobody likes to be told what to do. And and it’s not for everybody. It’s somebody that just may not wanna do it no matter what a great experience you had. So I I like your approach.
Tom Schwab [00:23:54]:
Yeah. Yeah. Somebody somebody came up to me and they’re like, wow, you lost a lot of weight. What’d you do? And, you know, I would have lost a lot more weight. I lost £12 in a month. And if I wouldn’t have been drinking so much cerveza and drinking so much vino, I probably would have lost 20. But that was sort of my lead in to say, oh, I did this. And they started asking and going, man, that makes so much more sense than a crash diet.
Tom Schwab [00:24:24]:
So if you wanna do it, you know, to lose weight, sounds to me like a lot more fun than, than eating salad.
Bernie Borges [00:24:31]:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I like that. I like that. So, Tom, as you may know, my Midlife Fulfill podcast is really based on seeking and finding fulfillment across what I call the 5 pillars. And the 5 pillars are health, fitness, career, relationships, and legacy. And so I’d like to ask you, what do you think this experience has been across those 5 pillars? Meaning, where which of those 5 pillars do you think it touched the most? So again, health, fitness, career, relationships, and legacy.
Bernie Borges [00:25:08]:
Wow.
Tom Schwab [00:25:09]:
I if you put a gun to my head, I don’t know which one I would say.
Bernie Borges [00:25:12]:
Well, I won’t put a gun to your head. I promise
Tom Schwab [00:25:14]:
you that. Yeah. I would say it’s it’s it’s it’s definitely impacted all of her. Right? We talked about the health and fitness. Right? That goes without saying. Relationships, to me, relationships are the the ultimate currency. Right? The relationships, the people that I met out there, how it helped my relationships with my wife and my family, I would say that’s gonna have a meaningful one. Professionally and my career, boy, it it gave me, I would say, another 15 years on my career.
Tom Schwab [00:25:44]:
Right? Because if I can come back like this, I don’t have to retire. Right? Just let me go away and do something like this every now and then. And also with the team. Right? Man, I have got the greatest team. They stepped up. They made me proud. Right? At times, I thought I gotta get back so I get a job. Right? If not, they’re gonna just say we don’t need you anymore.
Tom Schwab [00:26:07]:
So on the career there, I think that was very powerful. And then finally, the legacy, We got so many great pictures from the Camino. And when we got back, we we ended up going to a a a funeral. And you know how when people at funerals, they put the pictures up and everything like that. Karen and I mentioned, at our funeral, decades decades from now, we hope there’s a lot of pictures of the Camino. Right? Because that was a memorable time. I can’t say there’s gonna be pictures of me at work. Right? Closing the deal, having a record week, all the rest of that.
Tom Schwab [00:26:44]:
But it’s gonna be the memories there. And I think there’s also the legacy of what it’s gonna do for our family because Karen and I loved Spain so much that we came back and we we told the kids, Right? You go there sometime, not all the time, but, we’ll come visit you. And so whereas it used to be, we would talk about, wow, how can we get down to Florida for a couple of weeks in the winter? Now we’re looking and going with the cost of living. How can we just go to Spain for a couple of months and rent a 2 bedroom place and invite friends and family to come visit us at a week at a time? I think that’s gonna be a legacy thing too.
Bernie Borges [00:27:32]:
So it has touched each of the 5 pillars. I love that. That is that is really terrific. I I don’t think I’ve heard that before about one experience. So I’ll ask you for a closing thought, Tom, as we as you reflect on this conversation, the impact that the Camino has had on you and your relationships, really across all five pillars. What’s a what’s a closing thought that you’d like to share?
Tom Schwab [00:27:57]:
I don’t wanna tell everybody they should do it, but I do wanna tell them you can do it. And on so many different ways. The oldest person to ever complete the camino that we did, I wanna say is 94 years old. Right? And people would say, how did you train for that? I’ve been training for it for, what, 58 years walking. Right? That’s all it is. Some people would do it very, very slowly. Right? The young people could do it a lot faster. Right? It’s it’s just walking.
Tom Schwab [00:28:24]:
So from that standpoint, you can do it. The other thing is that there’s the financial thing. Right? How can you go to Europe for a month? Right? The cost of living, especially on the Camino, was so affordable. Right? If you wanna stay in one of the boarding houses at night, it’s $13 or €0. So about $15 a night. And and meals, you probably budget another $20 a day for that. So it’s very inexpensive. We recently went to a Hampton Inn and Suites off the turnpike.
Tom Schwab [00:29:00]:
And I told my wife, this is the most expensive hotel that we have stayed in the last 2 months. Right? It was like $110. We need to
Bernie Borges [00:29:10]:
spend money. You’re talking in the US.
Tom Schwab [00:29:12]:
This was in the US. Right?
Bernie Borges [00:29:13]:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Tom Schwab [00:29:14]:
So even the real nice hotels there, you can afford it. And then the other thing is just I always told myself, well, I can’t afford to take 30 days off. Right? Oh, the world would come to an end. My family would, my business would, all the rest of that. Well, you know what? If I drop dead, the world would go on
Bernie Borges [00:29:30]:
without me. If,
Tom Schwab [00:29:30]:
if I, if I had a heart attack, I would have had to take more than 30 days off. And a friend of mine helped me about a month before I left. I was so stressed out on it. And I’m like, well, what if something happens? And he’s like, what’s the worst thing that could happen? And I’m like, well, something at business happens. He’s like, well, what would you do if you were at home? I said, I’d get on the phone and and talk to the client or whatever. And he’s like, you can do that from the Camino. And I’m like, but family, what if what if one of my family members, you know, got sick, got hurt? And he’s like, they’ve got these things called airplanes and American Express cards. Right? You could be home at their bedside, what, in probably under 24 hours.
Tom Schwab [00:30:16]:
So I just looked at that, and it’s like, I told myself all of these reasons that I couldn’t do it. Maybe you’re saying the same thing. I can’t do it. You decide whether or not you should, but I can tell you, you can.
Bernie Borges [00:30:27]:
That’s fantastic. And it sounds to me while nobody can guarantee it, it sounds to me like for a lot of people, it can be life changing for their own individual reasons. And, of course, I think your story is a good, testament to that, Tom. And I wanna thank you for taking the time to join me here today on, a vulnerable conversations episode here on the Midlife of Phil Podcast. If someone wants to follow-up and, you know, just connect with you, what’s a a good way for someone to connect with you?
Tom Schwab [00:30:55]:
I was gonna say, you can either go to interview valet.com, which is, my company, or I’m I’m most active on, LinkedIn. I’m the only Tom Schwab in all of Kalamazoo. So, you know, if you have any questions, if you’d like to connect, please reach out to me. And for my international listeners, where is Kalamazoo? Kalamazoo is halfway between Chicago and Detroit. It’s about 2 hours from each. It actually does exist.
Bernie Borges [00:31:27]:
And this is you’re talking Michigan. Right?
Tom Schwab [00:31:30]:
I’m sorry. Kalamazoo, Michigan. Yes.
Bernie Borges [00:31:31]:
Okay. Gotcha. Great. Fantastic. Well, Tom, again, thank you so much for joining me today. Really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you, Bernie.
