Gratitude "Podcast" Interview: Steve Hilbert

Well, hi, everybody. It's David George Brook, that gratitude guy with another special guest on my gratitude podcast interview regarding the pandemic. And I was thinking about my guest today about when I first met this young man, and he's about half my age, so of course he's a young man. And when some about three or four people said, you've got to meet this guy. And I finally met him. And we became fast friends, very, very smart, gosh, just all over it type of jungles, a ton of balls. My good friend, Steve Hilbert

Steve, welcome to the podcast. Thanks. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah

You bet. So as I've mentioned on several of the podcast interviews is that this is really about kind of picking people's brains in some way

So I've got four or five questions for you. And my first one is, is right off the top, it's been five or six weeks now

What's been your best coping mechanism to deal with this pandemic we've all been dealing with

That's a great question. Yeah. It's interesting. I think just being able to get outside

our yard a little bit and get some fresh air has been really helpful. Making sure I'm taking

breaks is also very helpful. Before this pandemic, I was working from home quite a bit anyway

So from my perspective, it's actually normalized a lot of and justified a lot of my behaviors

before. So for us, it's been pretty interesting to sort of like allow the world to sort of come to

like, this is a homework environment. From that perspective, I guess keeping that positive attitude

was also been pretty helpful for us. Yeah, and you've always had that positive attitude

I think, before, after a pandemic and so forth. And as that gratitude guy, that's kind of my middle name

in terms of what's really important to me, did you notice, since this has happened in terms of what you're grateful for

Has it changed to what you were grateful for before to what you're grateful for now

Yeah, it has, indeed. I think it's actually refocused what's important to our family

So I've actually, I'm one of these weird ones that have actually really enjoyed the pandemic

I guess, I don't know if you can really say that. They didn't know completely correct about it

But what it's done with my family is we've really talked about what's important

which is spending time together. And what do we do in that time together? Coming up with games, ideas, figuring out ways we can't be social to interact with people using technology

Yeah. Having, you know, having people to just talk to, reading more books, things that you put off

You can fill your day pretty quickly But also getting a lot of work done in the process They found that we very productive as a virtual team And there a lot of time wasted in commutes So it pretty nice to be able to not have to commute

go upstairs, grab food with your family, spend time with them and get back to work

So I've kind of like this life balance, I think, has really come into play during this pandemic

And I think for us, after this pandemic, we're going to really question, like

what was important before that we thought was important? and maybe we can cut some of that out because we don't necessarily need it

That's a good point. That's a good point. One of the things I mentioned to somebody is it really forces you to realign your priorities

Right. Sometimes maybe there's a lot of silver linings in this whole thing. And I know there's a lot of bad stuff and people are dying and we're shelter in place and so forth

But there's a lot of silver linings that have come up spending more time with family

with you and Lisa and the baby and all these different types of things, which are cool. And speaking, as somebody that I've always kidded you about, I got a hard stop at 330

I got a hard time. I got to do this. You have a ton of things going on. Any thoughts or ideas or tips maybe for somebody who's stuck at home about things that they can do

You mentioned a couple of things. Exercise was certainly good. But other things that they might

be doing as long as they're kind of housebound and maybe stuck that might be helpful to them

Yeah. I mean, like I said, maybe open the door or if you've got a balcony or a ability to just

open a window even, just get that fresh air and that really helps. I've found that meditating

and yoga actually helps, and morning routine for about 30 minutes really helps

between workouts. Yeah. So finding, I do a P90X, but I don't only need about this much space to do it

Maybe double the space, like about 12 feet. You can get a really good workout

And I think keeping that and going, you don't need to go to the gym. You can do it at home

Saying, keeping exercise focused and meditative, I think is very helpful to kind of keep yourself

You'd mention reading. You'd mentioned reading too early, earlier. What a great way to catch up on reading or kind of cleaning things up

or getting some things organized and that type of thing too. Yeah, learning new skills too

We actually, my wife and I, we developed a garden in our back of food garden

So we have been planting. Now we've been harvesting like crazy from it. And that's been a lot of fun

Taking the time to learn new skills, ordering things, you can do some honeydew chores around the house

All of this has been a lot of fun. I've learned quite a bit from just taking some time that I would have normally been traveling to say, well, what can I do to learn something new

And another question I have and I don know if this applies to you as much because again you already quite motivated and always moving in a hundred directions But is there anything that you kind of thought right now that well boy once this is over I mean we know it going to be over We don know when it going to be in and if it a vaccine or what have you

But at some point, it'll be back in stages or it'll be over. Have there been things you've thought about, boy, when this thing's over, I'm going to kind of hit the ground running and maybe do things differently in my business or even personal life that you might

as you had a chance to think about it as we're all kind of at our homes? you know no actually for me i mean i thought about it and we looked at each other and said we're

kind of living our lives and this pandemic we can't the one thing we've missed is we're very social

people we miss being at the club we miss being out with friends you miss going to theater um so those

i think we'll make more time to go to theater and go out uh that's something that we you know

we would definitely do but from a business and life perspective i think we were fortunate to be

we planned ahead we you know for situations like this or earthquakes. So we were ready when it happened to shelter at home. We're

fortunate that our remodel has been done. So we've got space in our home to move around

So we're really blessed that way and I think very fortunate. But we have some friends that have

been in small quarters and that can be difficult, including my mom who's in a small condo

in Seattle. So we've been keeping her busy and keep her online and every so often she'll come

by and just come from the house to our to take care of our 15 month old. So that's good to get

that social interaction if you can. Yeah. But looking forward, I would say, you know, I think

it's a good time, it's a really good time to think, you're right, this will come, we will come

through this, but there will be another time where this happens again in our future. So it's good

to reassess what's important to your family. It's good to start planning and good to have an

idea of what you really want to do. And then see how you might go about getting it

There's an example, Steve, of a great point that nobody has mentioned, which I'm so glad

you did when I talk about nuggets or tips or whatever, but nobody's mentioned this is

going to happen to it. This is going to happen again. There was the Spanish flu in 1917, and here we are in 2020

And I haven't even thought about it. You're exactly right. This will happen again

So what does that tell me in terms of realigning priorities? Maybe people will be ready next time or ready er

and then 80% of the country won't be living paycheck to paycheck. They'll realize they've got to get some savings or whatever

So because the way this whole virus thing goes, as I understand it, it's not a matter of if

but it when it will happen again So that a great point That true I in the biomedical industry as you know and it interesting I been really involved with it because one of our sister companies is working on a vaccine as we speak And what really neat about this is for the first time

I think, in recent history, the whole globe is collaborating to fight this pandemic

which is really cool to see that open source on every data set that's coming. No one's concerned

about intellectual property rights. They just want to solve the problem. So it gives you a hope

as a species, no matter where we are in this country or this world

we can come together to fight things and it makes the world a bit smaller

I'm hopeful that in the future we'll be able to tackle these much faster for better protocols in place

And maybe we'll just realize the world's a little bit smaller than we thought. And that's a good point

That's a good point. Whoever thought that open source would be something that could be worked to our benefit

when people are so concerned with IP and all that kind of thing. So that's a great point

So last question. And again, I know you're pretty well. but I like this question as my last comment question is

do you have sort of a quote or a thought or a mantra

or a way of thinking that is kind of your overarching thing

that gets you through life that you think, I always go back this, now we go through a tough time

I mean, I've heard people say this too shall pass, but do you have something that kind of represents something

that helps you just normally in life and then through a tough time like this

or a challenging time like this? Yeah, I think there's three quotes really that stick to my mind that are kind of define it

in our household we have a thing that's called positive vibes only and it's kind of you see it in an accent

you know like like from the islands because i you know i've been to st thomas quite a bit in that family

there so positive vibes only that we just go back to that mantra hey you know we'll get through this

positive vibes only is number one number two remember that my dad was saying there's no disaster

so great you can't turn it into some kind of an advantage and like i said in this pandemic i'm

seeing a lot of things happening it's very stressful for a lot of workers out there they're doing an

amazing job combating this. Health care workers, first responders. It's amazing what they're going through

And my heart goes out to them. And it's great to see all the collaboration, all hands on deck across the globe to try

to fight this thing together. So that's been really cool. And then the final one for me is life's a voyage to be enjoyed

And there will be problems to be solved along the way. But just make sure you're enjoying the voyage

Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. Well, just as I suspected, many good nuggets there from Mr

Gilbert. So I appreciate it so much, Steve. Thank you so much for being part of this podcast

It's a pleasure. Thank you, David. I'd like to see you soon. Take care