#64 - I Needed That: An essential listen for anyone with a cell phone and child with Joey Odom

Joey Odom (00:00):

Here's a stat that sucks, and you guys may have heard this by the time our kids are 12, we've spent 75% of the time we'll ever spend with them. You got another year to wait. I've

Mathew Blades (00:09):

Heard said that before. Hold on a second. I'm having a panic attack.

Joey Odom (00:12):

What? 75% of the time you'll ever spend with your kids happens by the time they're age 12 90% by the time they're age 18. Welcome back to The Aro Podcast. Hey, it's your good friend, Joey Odom, Co-Founder of Aro, and today you're going to make two more good friends. In fact, you're going to meet two of my favorite people in the entire world. These guys are absolute studs. It's Chris Powell and Matthew Blades. And if those names sound familiar, they should because they have both been guests on The Aro Podcast. Chris Powell. Chris was the former host of ABC's Extreme Weight Loss. Matthew Blades was this world-renowned radio host and a motivational speaker, and we've gotten so much feedback on both of their episodes. They're just so real and transparent. I know it's going to sound weird, but we had so much friend chemistry out of the gate with both of those guys.

(01:06)
And so what we're doing today is something kind of unique. We're doing a podcast swap with their podcast. They have a podcast that is incredible called I Needed That, and we're doing a swap with them. So what that means is we are airing one of their old episodes on ours and they're airing one of our old episodes on their podcast. So it's a swap this week. It's so much fun. So lemme tell you real quick about what I needed. That is their podcast. It's those two guys that's two mindful fathers. They're very transparent and I think it's unique the way that they view the world, the way that they're able to kind of express their thoughts and feelings in a very practical way, but also a very relatable way, and maybe even putting words to things that other guys feel but may not know exactly how to communicate it.

(01:53)
They're just awesome and it's one of those things, and I needed that. The name comes from this feeling of when you have a good conversation for a friend or even just had a good cry or a great meal or a meaningful conversation or great workout, whatever it is, and you just say, oh, I needed that. That's the feeling you get listening to. I needed that with Chris and Matthew. The, I needed that episode that we're playing on our feed this week is when I joined them on their podcast and we had so much fun. We played name that tune, which is middle of the fairway stuff that I love to do, played some games and movies. We also got real, we talked about being a dad. We talked about being a parent. They draw out some real candid moments, which I love. That's just who they are.

(02:33)
They draw real authenticity. I think if I were to say something about both of them, they're so authentic that they draw out authenticity from others. And on the, I needed that podcast, they ran the episode where we had Sean Johnson and Andrew East. If you've not heard that one, it's such a great episode. Go listen to that one on. I needed that. I love this conversation. I believe at the end you will say, I needed that. You're going to fall in love with Matthew and Chris. Please go subscribe to their podcast, follow their podcast for now. Sit back, relax, enjoy an episode of I needed that with Matthew Blades and Chris Powell.

Chris Powell (03:09):

Oh yeah. And

Mathew Blades (03:10):

We have one incredible podcast for you guys today.

Chris Powell (03:16):

Two words, helicopter

Mathew Blades (03:17):

Par. We're going down the road.

Chris Powell (03:19):

Yeah, it's that time and I'm guilty, are you? Yep. Yep. I could learn a few lessons from you, but I'm really working on it. I'm just so

Mathew Blades (03:29):

Serious. I understand why and I'm going to try to help you understand why too. It makes a lot of sense to me why you do what you do. It does,

Chris Powell (03:37):

For sure. Yeah.

Mathew Blades (03:38):

And you probably see it too. Oh, 100%.

Chris Powell (03:41):

It's kind of like being a coach. This stuff, you can help other people through it, but then when it comes to actually applying it to your own life, that's a good No. You need a coach to actually coach you through it. Coaches need coaches, right? Yeah, buddy.

Mathew Blades (03:55):

Yeah. So we're going to get to that on today's podcast. Would you rather name that tune? We're going to be bringing in Joey from Aro, and we'll explain a little bit about that in a couple of minutes. I have to start today's podcast, Chris, with an unbelievable review that we received this week. Oh yeah. Not always do we read these reviews, but this one is so unbelievable. She came across your Good Morning America clip.

Chris Powell (04:20):

Oh wow. This is like

Mathew Blades (04:20):

Four months ago, right? Four or five months ago. She says, I got in the car and I listened to the first podcast. This is after seeing you on Good Morning America. I didn't know where to start. So many questions. What if I can't lose weight? What if I can't journal? What if I'm not a writer? So she's got this five hour ride back from where she lives in Arizona to California. Okay. Yeah. She says, you have given me hope that I can do this 85 pounds to lose. And overall, no more excuses. I'm onto the next podcast. It brings me to tears as I write this because I believe God put this podcast in my life at this moment. Wow.

Chris Powell (04:57):

Wow.

Mathew Blades (04:57):

Wow is exactly

Chris Powell (04:59):

Right. That's amazing.

Mathew Blades (05:01):

She says, no more excuses. Claire.

Chris Powell (05:03):

Claire, you got this. Yeah. And we are cheering you on every step of the way.

Mathew Blades (05:07):

Unbelievable. That's amazing. And then literally 13, 14 minutes later we get another review from Terry who says that she highly recommends episode eight. That was the one that we had on with Dr. Todd Hurst, the cardiologist, because he talked about insulin resistance. And Terry says, I've been a huge fan of Chris for a long time, but this is next level.

Chris Powell (05:32):

Nice. That was the next level podcast, by the way, doctor. That guy is such a wealth of information. So good. Oh man.

Mathew Blades (05:39):

She said in this podcast has introduced me to Matthew Blades, who is so inspiring. So maybe she's on the wrong podcast.

Chris Powell (05:45):

No, she's on the right podcast, my man. I'm inspired every single day. I'm just lucky I get to sit next to you. I

Mathew Blades (05:51):

Feel the same way, man. That's so very mutual. It's not even funny. So anyways, yeah, A couple of great things to get into today, and we're going to get into it with Joey. He's one of the founders of this thing called Aro. So here's what I think, and he is not here yet, so let's talk a little bit before he gets here. I think he's probably created something that's really cool, that's really useful. And if you use it, it's probably going to be a game changer. Yes.

Chris Powell (06:19):

But the

Mathew Blades (06:19):

Question is, will people use it?

Chris Powell (06:24):

And again, spot on. There's a lot of things that we know we should be doing that we don't do.

Mathew Blades (06:31):

Right. Speak for yourself.

Chris Powell (06:34):

I spent 25 years working with people that know what they should be doing and they don't do it. I think it might be one of those things that if you just, again, don't try to take on too much too soon. I think just like with any kind of transformation, we're changing behavior here. If you make it too difficult and you're like, oh yeah, you got to put your phone down for two hours at a time. I'm sorry, it's not going to happen. But what if it's just, and what's really cool about what he did is he's gamified it. So it's like what if you just put it away for five minutes? And so long story short, guys, it's this cool little box you actually put your phones into and it's for families to connect to spend more time together and actually put the screen time down.

(07:14)
And so they've actually put 'em into a box and it knows when they're in there and it gamifies it based on the amount of minutes that you guys are actually, all the phones are in the box and you guys are connecting together. So it's a cool concept and I think if you just, what if you actually put your phones away for 10 minutes? That's a win in my book. If you actually got you and your kids to put the phones away and connect with each other for 10 minutes, who says you need more than that because it's 10 minutes more than you probably would've done anyway.

Mathew Blades (07:44):

Yeah. We can all agree. We need boundaries around technology. We all know that it improves our mental health if we're not on this as much. We all know that being on our devices for X amount of hours in a day isn't so great for us, but why do we keep choosing it? The answer, like we said in a couple of podcasts before is the same people who make social media are making the games at casinos. These are genius people who have figured out how and why we do what we do, and then they have designed technology to absolutely capitalize on that. Yes. Alright. That's step number one, right?

Chris Powell (08:21):

You nailed it, dude. There is a process in which they use, and by the way, it's also, it's interesting because a lot of these game makers and app makers, it's a little bit controversial because they'll utilize these different behavioral tools in the way that they generate these apps or in the app experience that will elicit dopamine releases and surprises and certain things that they just keep you digging and digging and digging and digging and digging. And so I'm preaching to the choir. We all know this nowadays. Yes, it's a big problem. So yes, we should do something about it, but we'll be, but we'll be, and Joey, he's trying to solve that problem. Let's find

Mathew Blades (09:05):

Out. Yeah, let's bring Joey in right now. He looks like he's ready to go. He's backstage and he's got a very similar backdrop to us. Joey, what's up dude,

Joey Odom (09:13):

Fellas, what is happening? It's so good to see you guys

Chris Powell (09:16):

To see

Mathew Blades (09:16):

You too, brother.

Chris Powell (09:17):

Good to see you brother. Man, look at

Mathew Blades (09:18):

Him. He's got his wood background. We got our wood background.

Chris Powell (09:21):

Yeah.

Joey Odom (09:22):

Oh, I thought that was stone. You guys said that's good. Faux wood. You guys got or faux stone. That's nice.

Mathew Blades (09:27):

It's real

Chris Powell (09:28):

Wood, bro. Yeah, come on.

Mathew Blades (09:30):

Went down, chopped that tree to ourselves while we had our phones in our Aro boxes and we got to work.

Chris Powell (09:39):

Bro, you were

Joey Odom (09:39):

So present. Chopping that wood. I like it. You're chopping physical and metaphorical wood. I love that.

Chris Powell (09:44):

It's

Mathew Blades (09:44):

All we do, man. It's all we do. Joey, welcome to the I needed that podcast. How are you

Joey Odom (09:50):

Man? I'm great. It's so good to see you guys. Yeah,

Chris Powell (09:52):

Good to see you too. Good to see you.

Mathew Blades (09:53):

We're a home for you.

Joey Odom (09:55):

Home is Knoxville, Tennessee, east Tennessee, and I've been here, I was in Atlanta for a decade and moved to east Tennessee about a year ago, so I'm enjoying it. You got a big truck to match here, so I'm good.

Mathew Blades (10:05):

What do you mean you got a big

Chris Powell (10:06):

Truck?

Joey Odom (10:07):

Well, in East Tennessee, everybody has to drive a big truck. I mean, you have to if it's just Do you have

Mathew Blades (10:11):

A dually?

Joey Odom (10:13):

I don't have a dually. Gosh, you just immediately emasculated me.

Chris Powell (10:17):

Dually. You only get a dually if you're hauling like a fifth wheel or something, right? Or horses or

Mathew Blades (10:24):

You just want to show off or whatever.

Chris Powell (10:25):

Exactly. Hold on. How big are the tires?

Joey Odom (10:29):

You know what? I should know this answer. It's big. I'm six five and it requires me to grab the handle and step on and jump. I mean,

Mathew Blades (10:39):

You've had it

Joey Odom (10:39):

Lifted. I've had it lifted, yeah. It was pre lifted, so I just grabbed it. Yeah, it's It's a climb for me

Mathew Blades (10:45):

Guy. Six foot five, bro. That is a big, big tall guy. He's

Chris Powell (10:49):

Got you beat. You're six four,

Mathew Blades (10:50):

Right? I'm six three. So he's got smoked.

Chris Powell (10:53):

You guys got me beat by about a foot and a half. I know I'm five eight, but we won't

Mathew Blades (10:58):

Rub that in

Chris Powell (10:59):

At all. I promise I don't hear it enough. I

Joey Odom (11:02):

Bet you can bench quite a bit more than I can.

Mathew Blades (11:04):

This is what I tell him all the time when it comes to the gym, Joey, bro,

Chris Powell (11:07):

He's got us all beat, right? Come on. Of course. Well, the secret is I've got short levers and so it's true. It's

Joey Odom (11:15):

True. Short levers and ins, sizeable muscles. So it's not just the levers.

Chris Powell (11:20):

Fair

Mathew Blades (11:21):

Enough. You can't really tell underneath this shirt, Joey, but I'm fricking ripped too,

Joey Odom (11:25):

Actually. I can tell I was very intimidated. I can't

Chris Powell (11:28):

Tell.

Mathew Blades (11:30):

This is my duly right here. Brock,

Chris Powell (11:32):

Your

Joey Odom (11:33):

Duly. I

Chris Powell (11:33):

Love it.

Mathew Blades (11:34):

These are my IES right here. Alright, so we're going to talk about technology. We're going to talk about fatherhood, we're going to talk about boundaries. But first I want to talk about movies. Do you like movies? I

Joey Odom (11:43):

Love movies.

Mathew Blades (11:44):

Really?

Joey Odom (11:45):

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Mathew Blades (11:46):

You're a movie guy.

Chris Powell (11:47):

I am a, well, yes and no. I kind of went through a phase where I was working a lot and I fell behind, but I did go see a movie with my son on Friday, the Super Mario Brothers movie.

Joey Odom (11:59):

Oh, nice.

Mathew Blades (12:00):

Was it

Chris Powell (12:00):

Good? It was good. It was really enjoyable. It was super. Was it as

Mathew Blades (12:02):

Good as we thought it

Chris Powell (12:03):

Was going to be? Here's the thing, the critics didn't love it, but the audiences do. And so for me, just being an audience, I'm not a critic by any stretch of the imagination, but I really enjoyed it with my son because he is learned enough about Mario, even though he'd never played the game a whole lot that he knows a lot about and he was so into it and we were laughing together and high fiving. We both got into it. It was a blast. That's awesome.

Mathew Blades (12:30):

Alright, so I stumbled on this list and what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you guys the year and I'm going to give you the starring cast and then you're going to have to tell me the movie I

Joey Odom (12:37):

Love.

Mathew Blades (12:38):

Okay,

Chris Powell (12:39):

Joey, you're going to have to help me out here buddy. I'm

Joey Odom (12:41):

Excited. Now

Chris Powell (12:41):

We can do it.

Mathew Blades (12:42):

The first one is 1995. It's Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman and Gwyneth Paltrow. Famous line. What's in the

Joey Odom (12:53):

Box? What's what's in the box?

Chris Powell (12:56):

Seven.

Joey Odom (12:56):

Seven.

Chris Powell (12:58):

So he He's really good. Did you know that? No. I told you he's a rock star though. No, I didn't know that. So Joey, thank you, man. 1997.

Mathew Blades (13:07):

1997. Okay.

Joey Odom (13:08):

Actually, do me a favor. How about, I want to put a little twist on it. Don't even give me the line yet. Let's see if I can name the line and then the movie. Let's just see. Hi

Chris Powell (13:16):

Ryan. I can't believe he just said what's in the box.

Mathew Blades (13:19):

This guy is like me with music.

Chris Powell (13:21):

Yes. I don't know.

Joey Odom (13:23):

You're strong with music.

Mathew Blades (13:24):

Okay. 1997. Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet. Billy Zane.

Joey Odom (13:29):

Oh, I'm on top of the world, baby. Titanic. You

Chris Powell (13:32):

Knew it too. King of the world. Yeah, that's it. Titanic is

Joey Odom (13:35):

Our king of the world. I even got the line wrong. No,

Chris Powell (13:37):

It's all good. It's all close enough, brother.

Joey Odom (13:39):

My partner took care of me though. Yeah,

Chris Powell (13:40):

I got you. I got you. That's teamwork right there.

Mathew Blades (13:44):

Alright, here we go. 2001. Ben Stiller. Owen Wilson. Will Ferrell.

Joey Odom (13:51):

Oh, that could be a couple. I mean, I think that's probably Zoolander.

Chris Powell (13:57):

Oh yes, of course. That's exactly what it's, it is Zoolander. It's exactly

Mathew Blades (14:00):

Zoolander. You guys

Chris Powell (14:01):

Are amazing at this case. And the line should be, Hansel is so hot right now.

Joey Odom (14:09):

My son and I, we just watched that a month ago and it holds up. It's hilarious. Really? That is awesome. So great. Wow. You

Chris Powell (14:15):

Guys are

Mathew Blades (14:16):

So good at this. Okay, here we go. 2009. Zoe Zana. Sam Worthington, Michelle Rodriguez,

Joey Odom (14:25):

Partner.

Chris Powell (14:27):

I'm thinking Avatar.

Joey Odom (14:29):

There

Chris Powell (14:30):

You go. I'm thinking Avatar.

Joey Odom (14:31):

That fell off there. I think

Mathew Blades (14:32):

You're right. He's exactly right. It's Avatar. Wow.

Chris Powell (14:34):

Nice work. Yes. Go team man. That was impressive. Test bump. There it

Mathew Blades (14:38):

Is. All right, last one. 2013. There's Adina Menzel, Kristen Bell and Jonathan Groff.

Joey Odom (14:45):

We got that. Sing it. I mean, should we sing it? Chris? We, yes.

Chris Powell (14:49):

Here we

Joey Odom (14:49):

Go. Oh gosh. Hold

Chris Powell (14:50):

On. This brain. Let go. There you go. That was a good one. That was fun. Yeah, you guys are on it, man. That was fun. Joey, you rock was fun.

Mathew Blades (15:06):

What's your all time favorite movie, Joey?

Joey Odom (15:09):

I got to go Braveheart. I can't get away from it. It's so good. Really? You two cp.

Chris Powell (15:15):

So I got three and Bravehearts, one of my top three. Always Gladiator, Braveheart Top Gun. Where's Paul

Mathew Blades (15:21):

Fiction in the mix?

Joey Odom (15:23):

That's a good one. Listen, I, my friend Chris Hart, he talks about this. He talked about you have your top 20 movie, he puts it in tears. Like I got my top 20, but your top 20 could actually include 50 movies. Oh, that's a top 20 movie for me. Or even this is impressive. Like, oh, that's a top 200. That's still pretty high for the number of movies that we've seen. So my son and I, who's almost 15, we have our list of, it's probably up to about 400 movies we want to watch together. And so we have him categorize and so we check 'em off the box and having him go back and watch those movies is the Tommy Boys of the world like that. We haven't quite watched Shan Redemption yet, which is another epic one. It's a good one. So many good ones. Hoosiers, if you think like basketball is a good one coming up. So love the movies. Yeah,

Mathew Blades (16:07):

For sure. That's so cool. We've been taking our boys down memory lane with very inappropriate movies like old school. What's the other one with Will Ferrell?

Chris Powell (16:17):

I'm not there yet. You're my boy Blue. What's that movie?

Joey Odom (16:19):

That was old school. That's

Chris Powell (16:21):

My guess. So

Mathew Blades (16:22):

We've taking 'em old school, we've been watching super bad. We've been watching super inappropriate movies. Hangover Hang and listen, Les, anybody judge me. The reason that I do it, it's super intentional. It's because they talk about things in those movies that are excellent conversation starters for teenage boys

Chris Powell (16:39):

Specifically.

Mathew Blades (16:40):

Right? That's so true. And we were watching Super Bad, I may have shared this with you on a previous episode. We were watching Super Bad one time and the deal was super bad. And so the next day I was out with my son and his buddy and I literally turned in the back and I said, don't try to get chicks drunk so you can sleep with them. Okay.

Chris Powell (17:01):

They talk

Mathew Blades (17:02):

About that in Super Bad. They talk about getting 'em all wasted so that they can sleep with them and they laugh. But we've planted a little seed.

Chris Powell (17:10):

Yeah. Why?

Joey Odom (17:12):

How old is your son, Matthew?

Mathew Blades (17:14):

So mine are close to yours, Joey. I've got a teenage son who's going to be 17 here in a couple of months, and then one who will be 15 in a couple of months. I love it. I'm right in the thick of it. And

Chris Powell (17:25):

Joey, you've got one.

Joey Odom (17:27):

I have a son who is almost 15 and a daughter who just turned 13.

Chris Powell (17:31):

Yeah.

Mathew Blades (17:32):

We'll pray for each other.

Chris Powell (17:33):

Yes, exactly.

Joey Odom (17:35):

It's just great. I'm finding, I found that I say this, wait for the punchline here. I found that from zero to 10 I was great. I was freaking the best dad in many, I'll tell you in a few minutes ways I was not. But in terms of behavioral control, it was very rigid and hey, here's how you did. I think that built a foundation. When I got to 10, I realized I got to transition away. I got to get away from, and I've heard someone say that you need to begin the releasing process. I think it's like 10 or 12. It's very young. And so what you're doing, Matthew, I love, and I'm a big proponent of that exposure therapy to some degree of, Hey here, let's talk about this. Let's introduce this talk. My son asked, there was an office line that I won't repeat here on the show, but one the other day. And my son said, Hey, what does that mean? And so we had a very, very detailed anatomical discussion about what that meant. But I'm with you. They're going to learn all the wrong things somewhere else with a bunch of misinformation. And so if we can actually control that process, it's a lot better. And if you can do it in such a way that it's not just a one-time talk, it's an ongoing discussion where you have the door open and he can talk about anything is really, really fun.

Chris Powell (18:47):

Go ahead. Sorry. Sorry to interrupt.

Joey Odom (18:48):

No, I just love your approach.

Chris Powell (18:51):

What kind of dad are you going to be with cash and robes when they come to you with the hardcore stuff? I'm extremely open about it. Okay, good. Actually, I throw it out, but I'm learning from you guys is what I'm doing because I'm still in the nine 11 stage, nine years old and 11 years old. Not the nine 11 stage, but the 11 years old, nine years old. And so I'm paying attention and I listen carefully to what you guys have to say, but so far I've just been extremely open and honest with them. So we actually had some conversations over the weekend about what?

(19:25)
Okay, so well, it was about, I'm just going to throw this out there. It was about masturbation actually, and not with my 9-year-old, but with your 11-year-old because he's got an older brother and he hears these things, but there's things that he doesn't know there's gaps in there. And so because he was, let's just, you know what? Let's get real. Let's go full kimono. He was talking about sperm and everything. He's like, but I don't get it. He's like, you pee, how does that happen? And I was like, okay, different canal, bro. Yes. And so I kind of explained it was like, and I explained, obviously there's a bunch of nerves under there and it's like if you pump a shotgun and then you pull the trigger. So I put it in gun terminology and I was like, but just think you kind of have to pump the shotgun 50 times before you pull the trigger. Right? Hey, Chris supposed to have a high opinion

Joey Odom (20:29):

Of himself and he calls it

Chris Powell (20:31):

A shotgun. You know what I mean? I trying to love this. So trying to explain it as best as I could. And I think it landed, hopefully it won't make sense for about two more years, but again, he knows enough. But there's these huge gaps and he's coming to me with all these questions, thank goodness. Okay. I love that he came to you, man. So good enough about me. Enough about me now, Joey. No, wait, we're just getting started with you. We're clearly just getting started with you. So Joey, tell me, I'm sure, I mean obviously you've got a 15-year-old boy. So how did you have these conversations, brother?

Joey Odom (21:12):

Bro, that my son is going to freaking kill me because hey, we're just going to, God, I love

Chris Powell (21:17):

You. Thank you

Joey Odom (21:17):

For that. We're just going to, I love that you said it. I had that talk with my son three months ago for the first time. I probably waited too long. We started and my classmates, we started talking about it in eighth grade. I remember the day that we all started talking about it at school. And I've been very deliberate because in some ways I didn't want to introduce it before he asked about it. I've heard someone say in parenting, tell them what they need to know, but not more. Don't do more or less necessarily. Yeah, just

Mathew Blades (21:48):

Answer the question. Nothing more, nothing less kind of.

Joey Odom (21:50):

Yeah, exactly. So I had that conversation with 'em with the goal of this is me opening the door. This is not the one. And once and for all conversations, this is just us being able to have an open dialogue about it. And I was very open with me. My experience I told him about when we all talked about it when we were in middle school and we were riding in a car, we had a two or three hour car ride. And he said something at the end, my son is the boy, few words. And so at the end of it, he was kind of thinking, and I said, Hey bud, and this was neat. I said, do you have any thoughts about it? What do you think? And he said, Hey, can we listen to Smartless now? Please. There

Chris Powell (22:30):

It's man, nothing.

Joey Odom (22:32):

He was just like stone face. He was like, I'm not going to tell you about that

Chris Powell (22:35):

Dad. But it landed. It landed, right?

Joey Odom (22:39):

Yeah, I know it landed. And I hope that it's the beginning of more conversations and something that my wife is great at, something that my business partner is great at also as a parent, and I'm not good at this naturally is just not being reactive. They tell you something, just stay chill about it. And my kids are very open, my wife. And as I've adopted that, I've found that my kids are coming to me with more things and talking about things like masturbation or talking about with sex questions or anything like that. They're more open because I'm not being reactive and there's no shock factor. And just telling him like, dude, I've been through all of this. Believe me, we will. We even, here's more openness. Chris. I was telling him all the fun names we had for it too. You know what I mean? Cock the shotgun's a new one for me.

Chris Powell (23:23):

Put cock the shotgun, bro. We're running parallel paths. I did the same thing with cash. Literally. We were rattling off all the different things that you could call it. Oh wow. That's hilarious. It's so funny. Yeah, those

Mathew Blades (23:36):

Are good connection points though. And those are the things that make it so that he'll feel more comfortable coming to you later on, for sure.

Chris Powell (23:45):

Right? Absolutely. Yeah. No, I feel good about it because

Mathew Blades (23:48):

What's the alternative, Joey? They look on their phone and they get that version of it, right? That's what you're in the business of.

Chris Powell (23:55):

Yeah, that's right. That's exactly, and we need to talk about this. But that's the thing. You got to get ahead of it because now they have access to all this stuff. And so yeah, he's got an older brother, but you better believe he's going to Google it right afterward. Sure. And then before you know it, then he's talking with his buddies about it and he's like, his friend's like, oh yeah, I heard about this and check out this meme and check out this YouTube. And it's like, oh man, you got to get ahead of these things. For the

Mathew Blades (24:16):

Sake of our conversation today, I think it's worth asking yourself as a parent, would my children prefer to come to me or go to Google? What would they prefer? Would your children prefer to come and ask mom and dad what's going on? Or are they just going to be the kind of kids who I'm just going to sit in my room and Google this thing and figure that answer out themselves? And I think you can literally design it any which way you want, but it does really start with that super unnatural conversation. Yeah. It's weird to be talking to your 11-year-old about masturbation. Everybody can agree that's not the comfortable conversation that you want. Right? But you got to

Chris Powell (24:58):

Have it. Well, I think deep down, most parents, it's important for us to control the dialogue based on how we want to raise our children, which of course brings us around to, I mean, Joey, what you've done and what has really inspired you to create a really ingenious product. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. So if you don't mind, I would love just jump in. Yeah, I'd love to talk about it. So Joey, you created a product called Aro, and so essentially it's, well, why don't you explain really quick what, I

Mathew Blades (25:32):

Just got into the elevator with you and you're like, hi, I'm Joey from Aro, and I'm like, oh yeah, what's Aro?

Joey Odom (25:38):

Yeah, absolutely. Well, the very short version is we're a tech company that is using tech to make it easy to put down your phones and focus on the relationships that are most important to you. So there's my quick elevator pitch, but the premise of it is, is that our relationships with our phones, and by the way, I just listened to Dr. Morgan Francis who was on the episode and she talked a lot about relationships with every relationships with food and relationships, anything. It's our relationship to our devices and our devices are with us all the time. The relationship with those are damaging the relationships that are most important to us. And so I'll tell the story to illustrate that. So my son, as I mentioned, Harrison, when he was five years old, he was playing soccer. And Harrison's a great kid. He's a great student, he is a great tennis player.

(26:22)
He was not a good soccer player at five years old. And so everybody on the team had scored a goal except for Harrison this season. And so typical Saturday afternoon, we're on the sidelines, we're watching watching a game. And so the magical moment arises q, the James Horner music in the background. He wears back his leg, he kicks the ball, goes into the back of the net, and it's amazing magical moment. I almost get chills talking about it. The coach lifts him up, the crowd goes wild. Everybody's going crazy. And what does a five-year-old boy do when he scores his first soccer goal? He looks over to dad to share. We share this magical moment of his eyes locked on mine, but I missed the entire goal. I didn't see it, what I just described, I didn't see with my own eyes because they were down looking at my phone.

(27:09)
And there was one of these moments where I thought this thing, this relationship I have with this phone, this phone, that's amazing, this phone that's incredible that I'll never get rid of. My grandfather passed away a year ago in Arizona, and we were on our phones. He was telling me he loved me. He was telling me he proud of me. He died later that day. He was in the hospital. So our phones do incredible stuff. And so it's not a demonizing of phones. What it is, is us taking this assessment of our relationship to them. We've had them for 15 years, fellows, like that's all we've had. And so it's so new, it's hard to believe. So we're taking a different look at our relationship to them and how we can change that. Because when you change your relationship with your phone, you change your relationship with everyone around you.

Mathew Blades (27:51):

Right? Man, what you just said, I just saw on an Instagram reel or something a couple of weeks ago, it was this dad talking and he said, I went to my daughter's gymnastics practice and I'm sitting in the crowd and I had forgotten my phone at home. And he said, and while we were at practice, she must have looked at me 25 times during practice to see if I was looking at her while she was doing her thing. And he said, that was my light bulb moment for me. He thought to himself, how many times have I been right here in this chair watching her practice? And every time she's looked over at me, I've been buried in my phone. So similar to you, Joey, that's such a big moment for somebody, but it will probably take somebody that moment before they make a big change is the truth of the matter. Right?

Joey Odom (28:45):

That's probably true. And the good news is, you said before I came on, you were talking about we all know the damage. We all know the damage maybe. I don't know that that's a hundred percent true. I think we know that it's a problem, but do we really know what's at stake? That's the question until we understand the gravity of what's at stake. And it's very similar to 30 years ago when we started realizing, holy crap, this secondhand smoke thing, the cigarettes, they're not just impacting me. They're not just impacting my lungs. I'm blowing secondhand smoke out to my kids and it's affecting them and it's hurting them. And we're starting to learn as a society that this is digital secondhand smoke that our kids are taking in. They're taking into their, to your point, do they see the gymnastics practice or into their persona?

(29:32)
And as a result, we're seeing things like teenage unhappiness is off the charts. It's off the charts, and it is. And the easy one, and all the studies are going back and saying, this has been around for 10, 15 years when smartphones became ubiquitous. And it is true, certainly that it's social media that's impacting it. Absolutely. Teenage girls and body image, it's really, really at a fever pitch. It's terrible. But even more than that, I take it back even more to us as parents and the opportunity that we have because if you have a whole generation of kids that has grown up with their parents looking at a screen instead of their eyes, their sense of worth and value is going to be very, very low. So then when you encounter body image stuff online, what the heck happens to you? You got no foundation.

(30:19)
And so you absolutely freaking crumble. And that sucks. But here's the cool thing is it's the greatest opportunity that we have as parents right now. It's the greatest opportunity to get ahead of it. Chrisy said earlier about getting ahead with your kids on difficult conversations. You can get ahead of it right now. And that's what's so cool. And it's absolutely not hopeless. People say it's hopeless, it all sucks. There's a bunch of bad stuff right now, but there's so much hope. And the great news is, and here's a little hot take for you, it's not the addiction monster that we all think it is. For some people it is, but it does not carry the characteristics of addiction. This is according to Dr. Maxey Meyer at the London School of Economics. It doesn't carry the characteristics of addiction. What it does carry the characteristics of is habit and environment. And that means, and when you're addicted to something, what do you do? You can't have it. It's gone. You can't have, and you're completely powerless right here. We do have the power. We do have the agency to make changes in our environment and our lifestyle that will very quickly make an impact on the relationship with the people around us.

Mathew Blades (31:22):

Wow. How does the box work that you guys, you created something called the Aro box, right? A-R-O-A-R-O. Yeah. Yeah. What does the box do and how might it help families get closer to each other?

Joey Odom (31:33):

Did you plan out, by the way, the seven movie? What's in the box? What's in the box? Did you

Mathew Blades (31:37):

Plan that out there? Couldn't have been anywhere. Perfect. Yes, of course. Every detail has been planned out here. Man, it is

Joey Odom (31:46):

So curated. You got so curated. So the premise of it is this is that 91% of us have our phones with us 24 hours a day. 91% of smartphone users. We don't have to move our feet to reach our smartphones 24 hours a day. Wow. So let's just think about

Mathew Blades (32:04):

That. Oh, feel so gross inside now. Right now. So let's just think about it. Hold on. Where's your phone? I can't reach it.

Joey Odom (32:11):

You can't your phone. There you go. There you go. Nice. It's right with

Mathew Blades (32:14):

Us. Of course. Of course.

Joey Odom (32:15):

So stupid. It's right with us. So it's with us all the time. So let's think about this in food terms for a second. I have a sweet tooth for sure. And if I were carrying around chocolate cake with me all day long, I'm probably going to eat it. If it's with me, I'm going to eat it. But if it's not with me, if it's not in front of me, I physically can't eat chocolate cake. Right? So it's not with me. So because it's with us, I'm going to use it. And here's the interesting thing on phone stats. This is one that's been shocking for me to learn is that 89% of our smartphone usage is self-inflicted. So that means that an incoming call or text or notification, that only accounts for 11% of my usage, of our usage as society of our smartphone. So when we have it, it's us going back to them to go think of something else because our brains can't focus on anything for too long. So the very easy, and this is the biggest duh thing I'll say all day, is that we got to get 'em away from us. Obviously people don't have, if we're not going to get it done,

(33:19)
If we don't have it, we can't use it. And so we need a place to put it. But everybody that I've met so far in life typically either has a shoebox or a drawer. So that's with us at that moment. In the same way I can go burn the same number of calories by doing pushups and running on my own for free. I can do that on my own for free, yet I belong to a gym. I need help removing that friction. So we have to have a system that helps us put down our phones. So the Aro box itself, it's a called the Aro box, but it's really a platform and system. It has a companion app. And I know it's ironic, but we're using all of the same tools and tricks that the tech companies you're talking about have used to get us on our phone. We're doing all that. The gamify getting away

Chris Powell (34:01):

From your phone, it'll be used for good, man. It's like anything, it can be used for good. Absolutely. That's the beauty of it. Yes, you can absolutely utilize that little dopamine rush and everything to get people to adopt habits that will improve their quality of life there. That's what you're doing.

Joey Odom (34:15):

A hundred percent. So the app itself does two things. It has two main functions. One of them is it's a companion that nudges you towards putting your phone down. It says, for example, my wife, it says, Kristen has just started an Aro session. So I know when my wife puts her phone in Aro, it sends me a notification that she started one, that she's put her phone in and when you drop. And so for me, that's a quiet invitation to say, okay, I'm going to start one too. I'm going to join her. And so when you put your phone in the Aro box, it automatically connects to the app and it starts to quantify the amount of time that you're away from your phone. And that's the key. We all get our Sunday screen time report from Apple that says, here's how much time you've been on your phone.

(34:52)
Well, we need to gamify the experience of being away from your phone and giving you that reward system of what you've done away from your phone. So the app itself nudges you towards putting your phone down. And then when you're done with a session, when you're done with your phone being away, then you could do a couple things with it. One, you see the amount of time that you've been away from your phone. And that in and of itself is all based on the science of habit formation and the habit loop, the reward at the very, very end. And they say, dang, that feels really good that I just had 47 minutes away from my phone. When you can do with that, you can even tag that session and say what you're doing similar to a fitness app. So I had 47 minutes of family time, let's say for example.

(35:26)
And then over time you start to see those results of what you're doing. So I could go on my Aro app right now, and I would say that I've had this year, it's something like the equivalent of seven days of family time so far this year, apart from my phone, fully focused. And so it's building those habits to get you to the point of putting your phone down and down in game. Then you have the streaks and you have all that stuff, but gamifying the experience of being away from your phone by having that physical place that you put your phone and then the app that reminds you to do it, and the app that rewards you for doing it.

Chris Powell (35:57):

Do you ever get competitive with your wife where all of a sudden you get a notification that says, oh, your wife, she just accrued 15 minutes. You're like, ah, F that. Hold on. You get 16. Yeah, exactly. Throw your phone in the box. You're like, I got this.

Joey Odom (36:13):

We have the score. We have the leaderboard for the families. So families see their leaderboard. Here's how much time everybody has been away this week. And so you get your Monday report that shows, here's the leaderboard, here's who won. And we're starting to build in challenges of who can get the most reading time this month, for example, or who can do whatever that may be. There are a bunch of different ways you can gamify that, but we can have even daily, we're going to have one for Mother's Day in a few weeks of who can aggregate the most mother's day time away from their phone to make sure that you're telling the people what happens when you put down your phone. Then here's what's cool. You're telling that other person, when you put your phone down, the physical act of putting down your phone, this is especially important for young kids when you put your phone down, what you're communicating to them is there are 8 billion people who can reach me on this device, and you're more important than every single one of them. It's that physical act of putting down your phone. It's more than turning out the screen. It's morning than turning your phone over is the physical act of putting it away and then having the reward system around it makes it very powerful for you to go. Repeat that again. Absolutely.

Mathew Blades (37:13):

I was opening up my phone just a second ago when you were saying that. I was going to try to find that little thing about where it says how much time you've been on your phone. Oh yeah. Whatnot. But I have heard what Joey's talking about as the truth. As a matter of fact, I used to work for somebody who didn't allow us to have our phones even on the table when we were in meetings because they were such a distraction. They had to remain in your briefcase or in your pocket or something like that. They could not be visible on, and it's probably because of what you just said, there's nothing more insulting than you're talking to me. Oh yeah. And I'm like, oh yeah. Right. Yeah,

Chris Powell (37:48):

Totally. Matthew,

Joey Odom (37:49):

I'll go a step further than insulting what that actually is, especially with your partner and with your kids. It's not just insulting. It's actually a killer of intimacy. So if my daughter who's now 13, if she came to me, and this has happened plenty of times when she comes to me and she says, Hey, dad, can I talk to you about something just that, I mean, that's a trigger right there. It should be a trigger for all of us to go put your phone down. But if she went and opened up and said, Hey, dad, can I talk to you? And she starts talking about her day. Some of that's going hard for her in a relationship. And I pick up that phone that has just killed intimacy, not only in that moment, but it's beginning to hardwire her brain through the concept of neuroplasticity.

(38:27)
It's starting to rewire her brain, her neural pathways to say that I can't open up to dad because last time it sucked last time. And that's the 13. And so that begins at a very, very young age. And we think it doesn't matter, but it does begin. It does matter. Eye contact is so important from a very, very young age. And so if we have a generation of kids, like I said earlier, who have had intimate moments derailed every single time they stop asking for your attention. And that's when we need to be worried because they think, oh, I've conditioned them. The best thing a kid could say to you is, Hey, put down your phone and be with me. Because here's what that means. That means that they trust you enough to say that. Number two, they believe that you're going to do that. And three, they value themselves enough to demand your attention. And when they stop asking for that, we need to be really, really nervous.

Mathew Blades (39:18):

Joey, do you have an opinion on then in that same vein, are we kind of teaching them behaviors? Are we sort of teaching our kids that it's okay to be on your phone while somebody else is talking?

Joey Odom (39:29):

A hundred percent. Yeah. It's two things. I mean, that's why if you get back to the smoking analogy, that's why those same kids who ingested secondhand smoke became smokers themselves because normal. And so we are absolutely training in the next generation of digital smokers here. By the way, this began, I said earlier, this began in my own failure. This began in me showing really, really bad habits to my kids and teaching them poorly. Now the opposite of that, and we're learning this from Aro members, they're saying this from one of them, and a girl by the name of Jennifer in Colorado, she said, oh, what I've been doing with my kid, who's my child, who's four, instead of me putting my phone in the Aro box, I hand it to my four-year old and ask them to do it for me. So that does two things. That tells the 4-year-old, Hey, you're more valuable than this phone. And secondly, it begins to train that muscle memory. This is muscle memory. It begins to train the muscle memory of you putting away your phone. My kids 15 and 13, they've never slept their phone in their room, ever. And by the way, we prescribe very little, and that's one thing we prescribe. Kids should not have their phones in their rooms at night. I

Mathew Blades (40:32):

Couldn't agree with you more. We don't have them in our room at all anymore. We have a charging station out in the kitchen, and that's where every phone has to go.

Joey Odom (40:39):

Yeah, absolutely.

Mathew Blades (40:40):

So does Chris.

Joey Odom (40:43):

But for kids, I mean, I do really do believe that. And again, we really don't get preachy much, but that is one where we say like, Hey, that should be a must. But when it's family dinnertime, they don't even think about it. It's a Pavlovian response for them. They just go put their phone down. They just know, oh, it's dinnertime. We're going to have a conversation. Oh, it's family movie night. We're going to go put our phones down. Even things like as basic as watching a movie without a second go, watching a filthy movie at the Blades household without

Mathew Blades (41:09):

A second dirty, disgusting down, a second screen, dark film.

Joey Odom (41:15):

Even that, because if you're all sitting on a couch and all of you, you're looking at your phones, you're sharing four different experiences

Mathew Blades (41:22):

Versus

Joey Odom (41:22):

One, even a screen itself, you're sharing one experience together. That drives

Mathew Blades (41:26):

Me nuts. That's the thing for me too. It's like, why are we not having this shared experience? Yes. It's like if

Chris Powell (41:32):

We're going to at a screen, we're all going to look at the same screen and look at the same jokes. I literally just went nuts about that this weekend because cash is on his phone. Ruby's on her phone and the TV's on. I'm like, guys, we're watching a movie. This is like a movie on Dad says right here, dad. And it drove me nuts. It's funny, you were talking about the whole concept of when your kid is talking to you and all of a sudden you pick up your phone and I'm just going to talk about some things you've already talked about masturbation. Nothing left on the table mean. Where else are we going to go? My kids? So here's the thing is they're so aware of that though, is that they'll actually, it's reached a point though, where it's like, so say cash will be talking to me and there's a call or something or a text. All of a sudden my phone vibrates and there's a text coming to me, and if I pick up my phone, he goes, oh wait. I go, oh, I'm sorry, but he's 11. And then Ruby's learned that from him, my 9-year-old. And I was like, wow, okay. I need to do something about this. Because it's so obvious to them. Have you heard about Aro? Yeah, exactly.

Joey Odom (42:41):

Well, the cool thing, the cool thing is the hope in it, Chris, it is a today thing. Kids are so freaking resilient and they will absolutely respond to that. And the cool thing is you begin to model it. I model it poorly. You begin to model it well yourself and then just see that it'll change the environment. It'll change. And again, I'll say it again. When you change your relationship, the phone, you change your relationship with everyone around you. I have a

Mathew Blades (43:02):

Question. Okay, so we're going to talk the phone away. We're going to say that the phone goes away. Well, it's not to say that we don't replace it with an iPad or a laptop or just some other device.

Joey Odom (43:13):

You might. And that is the reason we're focused on phones right now is because of the relationship we have with them. There are distractions available otherwise, but it is that the constancy of it being with us. And so we don't have iPads 91% of the time with us, and it could happen to that. But what will generally happen is you'll forget and then you start doing something else. Especially if you on habit stacking, you start stacking habits with it. When I put my phone down, I go outside and play. When I put my phone down, I go do this. So if you start stacking with some other habits, it makes it even more powerful. But even the physical act itself is enough. And by the way, I'm guilty of that. Put my phone down and then I'll pull up my laptop. And luckily I have a wife who will just relentlessly make fun of me and call me a hypocrite, which is great. And so she'll just say that you need a

Mathew Blades (44:00):

Good cheerleader in your life.

Chris Powell (44:02):

Yeah, that's right.

Joey Odom (44:04):

And so it can happen, but, and it's a lot harder to sneak a glance at an iPad, that's for sure. It's a lot harder to sneak a glance at a laptop, especially at a family dinner, for example. That's a lot harder to do those things.

Mathew Blades (44:16):

So would you say Joey, at a minimum, I'm just trying to pick up on maybe some of the goals that you have with aro is at a minimum, are we trying to say, okay, at mealtime zero phones, Friday night movies, zero phones, does someone put the phone in the Aro box before they leave the house or does the phone come with them? What are some of the goals? And then also I think maybe while you're answering that, talk to me about some of the actual real time usage that you're seeing from it.

Joey Odom (44:49):

To the first question, again, we prescribe very little, but one of the things we prescribe is find a little bit of time every day to have your phone in Aro. That's it. People can set goals in onboarding. You can go screen time neutral, for example. And you can say, my screen time on according to Apple is four hours a day. I want to match that in time, physically distant from my phone. And we said earlier. And then the key is physical distance and out of your visual line of sight, when your phone is present, you are interacting with it. You're anticipating something. So even if the screen's off, you're anticipating something. So you are interacting with it. So our goal is spend a little bit of time every day, and everybody's goals are different. If someone lives by themself, they may just want to read a little bit more, or they may want to have a little bit of mindfulness time.

(45:33)
They may want to go through some breath work or something like that. So that could be one For families, it's typically family dinners are the prime time for it. We've found the highest in terms of usage trends, we're seeing the highest amount of usage is six to 9:00 AM and six to 9:00 PM. So those are the moments. So even as dads, here's what I would say. Even if any dads listening, just go take back six to nine. You know what I mean? Just go take that time back. You got a lot of other stuff you can do afterwards. The kids go down. Go ahead and do that. If you'll do before, if stuff during the day, go ahead and do that. But you can take back six to nine. Or how about this? Six to six 30. Start there. Start very, very small.

Chris Powell (46:10):

I like that. Knew you were going to say that. We were just talking about that. Because sometimes you tell me you got to put my phone down for an hour a day, it would give me anxiety. Of course. Yeah. Even though I'm like, okay, I need to be present for my kids. I know this. Gosh, there's all these things I should do that I know I should do, but I'm not going to do it because it's just That's too much. Tell me. Put it in the box for 10 minutes. Okay? And it's really interesting you put that in the box, go have a conversation with your kid and look 'em in the eye for 10 minutes. Guess what? That's 10 minutes more of connection time with my kid that I would've never had otherwise. And holy smokes, does that make a difference? I'm telling you, it is funny because Joey, after you and I actually connected for the first time. Oh

Mathew Blades (46:54):

Yeah, I forgot you were on his podcast. How'd that go? Was it as fun as this one, Joey?

Joey Odom (47:00):

I mean, not nearly. Well, you weren't here, so it couldn't have been

Chris Powell (47:03):

We went deep though. We went deep. But Matthew always brings the laughs. I

Mathew Blades (47:07):

Would love to go deep.

Joey Odom (47:08):

No, we went really? We did go very deep. Well, I'll come back to that. Chris, you finished. I want to go back to when you were on

Chris Powell (47:15):

Yeah, I was going to say that. But even after you and I connected, I thought about, and just as a father, I've thought about this multiple times, but I've actually found myself looking at my kids in the eye, being more present with them. I can, by the way, I have an incredible skill as a parent where they can be talking to me and I could be doing something totally different. And it's like my responses are just on auto response. Like, oh, no way. Really? Oh, that's cool. Tell me about that. Oh, sweet. And I'm not listening to a word they're saying. And the moment I'll turn and just look 'em in the eye and they'll say something and then I'll ask a question about that. And now there's an interaction and it's like the magic that can be done in just 10 minutes if you better, man. But yeah, you put the phone down for 10 minutes and you connect with them. Holy smokes. You know what's interesting? I did this intentionally with Ruby. I've done this a few times, but it's really wild when I do that with, and I'm telling you, just five to 10 minutes, I'll sit down on the couch, she'll come over and she'll come sit on my lap afterward, mic drop. I'm telling you, that's everything right there. Because she felt the connection. So now she wanted to get closer with me.

Joey Odom (48:26):

And

Chris Powell (48:27):

That says everything.

Joey Odom (48:28):

And is there anything greater than that? When you talk about, yeah, we know the stats. Yeah, we know we felt it, but man, and then you could even say, what's at stake? What's the negative? What's the positive? What about Ruby sitting on your lap. Your little girl coming to be coming to have a moment with you. Bingo. Because here's a stat that sucks, and you guys may have heard this by the time our kids are 12, we've spent 75% of the time we'll ever spend with them. You got another year?

Chris Powell (48:52):

Wait, I've never heard that before. Hold on a second. I'm having a panic attack. What?

Joey Odom (48:56):

75% of the time you'll ever spend with your kids happens by the time they're age 12 90% by the time they're age 18. So let me illustrate that for a minute. So what if, so Harrison and I do get emotional talking about this. I was there, I was there outside. My wife had to be put under when Harrison was born. So I'm, I'm in the hallway before, luckily it was right before phones came out. I didn't have a smartphone and it had been an 18 hour labor for my wife. It had been one hell of a day. It was a brutal day. And I'm sitting in the hallway, they just told me I couldn't be in there. I had to put her under first C-section after 18 hours. And I'm sitting in the hallway and I said, quick prayer. I said, God, it's been the hardest day of my life. I just pray. Will you show me your goodness?

(49:46)
And two minutes later I heard my son cry for the first time in the next room. And so there's God's goodness to me. When I look in my son's face, I see God's goodness that God is good because I have Harrison. Now, if someone came to me right now and they said, Joe, you have 40 days left with Harrison, I would be heartbroken. I said, oh, what can I do? Give me another hour. And they said, well, here's what I can do for you. I can give you another 10 days, but you can't check text on the weekend or after six o'clock on the weekdays. I'd say, yeah, of course I'll do that. Is there anything else? Yeah, I'll give you 10 more days if you don't check emails on the weekends or after six weekdays. So the math works out here. He's about to be, I have about 40 days left with him until he leaves.

(50:34)
Until 90% of my time with him is up. I can increase the time that I have with my son. That little boy that I heard cry, that is the goodness of God that I kiss all over the face when he is sleeping still at 15. This is my boy. And I can increase that time by putting this damn thing down just for a few minutes just by reducing that time. And so the opportunity we have is extraordinary. And so that's at stake, you know what I mean? And so we do have that opportunity. And what's cool about it, you said when you turn toward the love, you said this, Chris said, you turn towards Ruby. The term Aro means to notice, to turn towards, to take heed. Oh wow. So that's what we want people to do. We want people to notice. We want to turn towards the people that are most important. We want 'em to take heed of the things that are important too. Because when you do that, everything will change. And it's a lot simpler than you think. It's a lot easier. We make it easy for you to put down your phone so you can focus on the most important relationships in your life.

Mathew Blades (51:30):

Amazing.

Chris Powell (51:31):

Yeah, you just said it all, man. You

Mathew Blades (51:34):

Did. That's huge. Yeah. Joey, thank you for joining us. I feel like any other discussion we would have after that moment would just be filler. Would be pure filler. That's a

Joey Odom (51:43):

Pro that Matthew bla is a pro. I'll tell you,

Mathew Blades (51:45):

I mean this is such a great convo and I love the analogy of putting 10 more days back into our days. Genius. That's everything man. We'll connect to you, we'll connect to Aro and our show notes, so make sure everybody knows how to get to you. But if they just cannot wait any longer, I'm sure you guys are set up online. If people want to sniff this product out a little bit, where do we find you?

Joey Odom (52:09):

Yeah, it's at goaro.com. G-O-A-R-O dot com. And on Instagram, we're @goaronow.

Mathew Blades (52:17):

Awesome.

Chris Powell (52:18):

You're doing great work at bringing families back together using technology to actually reconnect us again

Mathew Blades (52:27):

Or, but I will say, and all of it on the heels of his own mistake and then recognize it and then do something about it, which is all we're asking everybody to do who listens to our podcast. It's like, well, hold on. Maybe take a little mental note. Maybe you have some of the same stuff and now you have an opportunity to do something about it.

Joey Odom (52:46):

Yeah, yeah,

Chris Powell (52:47):

Absolutely. And there's something really valuable at stake and that is our children and our relationship with our kids and our ability to teach 'em and guide 'em and connect with them and build those relationships already. Just keep up the good work, my man.

Joey Odom (52:59):

Well, I appreciate it. And by the way, the show is freaking, I needed that as freaking great. I mean it is great, great, great. So valuable. I got my blood work back last week and I was looking at my insulin levels. I was mean, I was looking at all the stuff from stuff. Listening on your show of the health benefits and things from the cardiologist who was on Dr. Francis was great today. You guys just keep bringing it. It's awesome. I love the show and obviously you are hilarious and great, but deep and meaningful. So, so good. And I did need that. Every time I listen to it, I said I needed

Chris Powell (53:31):

That too, man. I needed that thing, bro. I needed this conversation, man. And I cannot wait in a big way. Can't wait for my kids to get out of school. I'm going to sit down, look when I connect with them and

Joey Odom (53:43):

Tell 'em, make a production out of putting your phone down. Tell them that, Hey, I'm going to put my phone in the drawer and just tell, Hey, I'm going to put my phone. Hey dad, say, Hey first, can I put my phone in the drawer? Is that okay? You start doing that and making that because it is bestowing value and you put your phone down, you bestow value on the people around you. So keep doing that and again, do it in a drawer. And if that's, again, I'll use the gym analogy again. If you can do it on your own without a gym, you can do that stuff for free. But if you need that friction to be removed, we're here to help. But I want to encourage everybody to just do it. Just do something every single day.

Chris Powell (54:16):

Amen.

Mathew Blades (54:16):

Do we want to play Name that tuner? Would you rather, would Joey or just Joey have to leave?

Joey Odom (54:21):

I didn't want to ask myself, but I would love to be able to be part of that. I love to name that tune. I would love to.

Chris Powell (54:29):

Okay.

Mathew Blades (54:29):

Joey's not going

Chris Powell (54:30):

Anywhere just yet, bro.

Mathew Blades (54:32):

Alright. Name that tune. You're going to get yourself queued up. Yep. Okay. Go. And I've got myself ready with the song. So you tell me when you're connected to our machine and then we will put Joey from Aro through the Ringer on name that tune here on the I need of that podcast.

Chris Powell (54:48):

Hold on. Here we go.

Mathew Blades (54:48):

Here we go. Is it Recognizing it? And while you do yours, I'm happy to lead with my song.

Chris Powell (54:53):

Go ahead. You lead the way.

Mathew Blades (54:54):

Alright. You know how this works, Joey. You only get the first couple of seconds of the song and if you can name it, then we're really excited for you. Here you go. Song number one.

Joey Odom (55:07):

Got it. Got it. Can I say, I mean, I want Chris to put No, I got it. I got

Chris Powell (55:15):

It. I know the artist You do. I know the artist. The song is, or the name of the song is Joey, can you help me with the name of the song? I'll Do the Artist. You do the name. Can you

Joey Odom (55:25):

Do that? I like it.

Chris Powell (55:26):

Yep. Imagine Dragons

Joey Odom (55:29):

Believer.

Chris Powell (55:35):

Yes. Let's go. Yes, let's go. Let's Pure Gasoline right there. You guys are on fire, man. Amazing. One more piss puff. Alright, one more. Piss

Mathew Blades (55:44):

Puff. All right, Chris, you got a song

Chris Powell (55:46):

For him? I do. You only get the first couple of seconds. All right, ready? All right. I am ready. Here we go.

Mathew Blades (55:52):

Is going to be some weird eraser song from the

Chris Powell (55:53):

Eighties. 2000 tens here. Here we go.

Mathew Blades (55:58):

Okay, that's all I need.

Chris Powell (55:59):

Get out of here. That's all I need.

Joey Odom (56:02):

Hold.

Chris Powell (56:03):

Hold on. Okay.

Joey Odom (56:06):

Think you

Chris Powell (56:07):

Don't ask What? You guys are insane. Do you know it?

Joey Odom (56:12):

I think I did.

Mathew Blades (56:15):

It's called Carly Ray Jepsen.

Chris Powell (56:17):

Carly Ray

Joey Odom (56:17):

Jepsen. I wrote Carly Ray Jepsen. Let the record show and it's, Hey, it's Matthew. This is crazy. Call me, maybe call me maybe.

Chris Powell (56:26):

Yes. Call me maybe. Right? I love it. Yes. Call me. Maybe this true. Yeah. Joey's got a voice too. I know you're downplaying it, but you got a voice.

Joey Odom (56:34):

Oh, come on. Oh,

Chris Powell (56:35):

You're making melu. That's Tennessee for you. Everyone. Everyone. Anyone. Within 200 miles of Nashville. It is like crazy talented. They got a voice and everything. Good.

Joey Odom (56:45):

Can I tell? Lemme tell a great story about when Chris was on our show was our producer, said Caitlin. She said after she goes, you guys had some chemistry. I mean, I felt it. And I had been telling my daughter all, I was like, Hey, you do a good job putting yourself out there, putting yourself out there. And it was that week. And so then Chris, we exchanged numbers after and I shot him a text within my mind and Chris, I've never done this, but not weird like this. I was like, pull yourself out there. And so I said to Chris, I was like, Hey, I'll just be weird. Hey, do you want to be friends?

Chris Powell (57:20):

That's awesome.

Joey Odom (57:21):

And he goes, heck yeah, you got to paycheck. Yeah, dude, it was hilarious because I was like, what a freaking kid thing to do? But I said, no, let's be

Chris Powell (57:27):

Friends. I love it man. And honestly, when I got it, I was like, bro, I definitely felt the connection.

Mathew Blades (57:33):

He told me about it right away.

Chris Powell (57:35):

Amazing. I was like, dude, he's like, he's one of us, man. He's awesome. He cares. He's passionate. And so I was telling him all about it. And so yes bro. Now you've got two friends in Arizona. I love it.

Joey Odom (57:45):

Yes.

Chris Powell (57:46):

And

Mathew Blades (57:46):

We have one friend in Knoxville.

Chris Powell (57:48):

Yeah, you do.

Joey Odom (57:49):

You gotten right. You do. He's excited

Chris Powell (57:50):

People. Tall. Son

Mathew Blades (57:51):

Of a gun too, man. I'm excited

Joey Odom (57:53):

About it. I know. I can't wait. Come see you guys

Chris Powell (57:55):

When we all hang out. Can I walk in the middle of you guys?

Mathew Blades (58:01):

Hey and Joey, we'll swing 'em like we got little kids here.

Chris Powell (58:04):

Yes. And when you guys swing me out, I'll kick my legs like that.

Joey Odom (58:11):

Amazing. It's incredible. It's cool. And then we can do, go talk crap to anybody. Chris will just beat 'em up for us. Right? That's

Chris Powell (58:19):

Exactly right.

Joey Odom (58:20):

Exactly.

Chris Powell (58:21):

I don't know about that. Oh my god.

Mathew Blades (58:22):

Joey, listen, thank you so much for being a guest on our podcast. Dude. Chris was right. You're awesome. You are a friend forever, man.

Chris Powell (58:29):

Thank you my man. Thank you

Joey Odom (58:30):

Guys very, very much. I loved it. Please keep doing your doing. It's such an incredible show. Thank you. Likewise

Chris Powell (58:35):

My

Mathew Blades (58:35):

Friend. Cool. All right man. We're going to punt you from our broadcast, but it doesn't mean we don't love you. Alright

Chris Powell (58:39):

Boys. Love you back. See you buddy. Have a great day. I'll see you next

Mathew Blades (58:41):

Time, dude. Later. Wow, that was just incredible, man. I love that guy any great. It was amazing,

Chris Powell (58:48):

Right? Yes. And boy, man, he drops some really stuff. Wild stats and that's the thing, everything he does, it's all science backed and it's all behavioral backed. It was like really? I mean just the concept of saying, hold on, let me put my phone down. The kids pick up on that.

Mathew Blades (59:07):

Yeah. And well, and that idea that we can get 10 days back in their life, that whole thing, about 90% of our time, by the time they're 12, that freaked me out.

Chris Powell (59:17):

Oh man. But if you do the math, you think about it because I mean, I don't know about you, but Cash is my 11-year-old. He's reaching that point where it's like he just wants to hang out with his buddies all the time. He still wants to spend time with me and I'm loving it. But I know this isn't going to last long. I remember when they start to transition into 12, 13, 14, it's all friends. And then from there off to explore the world.

Mathew Blades (59:40):

We're certainly going through that right now. And my oldest is hardcore looking for a car right now. He wants us to buy him a car so he can. And I know a piece of me is fighting it because I know it's a moment he gets a car game over.

Chris Powell (59:56):

Yeah. Yeah man, it's

Mathew Blades (59:58):

Crazy dude. Alright, well we didn't get to, would you rather we can do that. I know you wanted to do a deep dive today.

Chris Powell (01:00:04):

Boy, the deep dive I was going to talk about. It's a heavy one too. It's not so heavy, but there's a lot to talk through.

Mathew Blades (01:00:12):

So do you want to wait until next week's episode and do it there? Go with your

Chris Powell (01:00:18):

Gut. Go with your gut. Yeah. Are you sure?

Mathew Blades (01:00:20):

Yeah.

Chris Powell (01:00:21):

Okay. But boy, I can't wait to share this with everybody now. It is going to be really good. Alright,

Mathew Blades (01:00:26):

Well then we'll end with would you rather, and then we'll get the hell out of here. Let's

Chris Powell (01:00:29):

Do a little would you rather?

Mathew Blades (01:00:30):

Let's go. People enjoy their days. Yeah. Alright, so would you rather lose all your teeth or lose a day of your life every time you kiss somebody?

Chris Powell (01:00:43):

Oh man.

Mathew Blades (01:00:44):

That's a tough one,

Chris Powell (01:00:45):

Huh? I'd lose a, hold on. So if you lose your teeth, can you get dentures or something or no? Yeah, you probably could. Okay. Maybe I'll take out the teeth. I don't know. That way you can

Mathew Blades (01:00:53):

Keep kissing people.

Chris Powell (01:00:55):

Yeah, there you go. How about you?

Mathew Blades (01:00:57):

I don't know. That's a weird one. I am somebody who comes from a long history of not good teeth. I was just having this conversation with my children yesterday. I was the kid who had cavities all the time.

Chris Powell (01:01:09):

I've had

Mathew Blades (01:01:09):

Fricking more root canals than the average human. I've got more fake teeth in my mouth than real teeth. Really? Yeah. And none of it from hockey, which would be super cool. Yeah. I'm one of those people who have always had just kind of crappy teeth. But then you have to think about the kissing thing.

Chris Powell (01:01:31):

I wouldn't be losing any days of my life these days, these days. You wouldn't. I was going to say no, dude. I would live forever. But you do kiss your kids. I do. Yes. You

Mathew Blades (01:01:38):

Kiss your kids. Maybe you could kiss your mom or something when you see her

Chris Powell (01:01:42):

Or kiss my

Mathew Blades (01:01:43):

Dogs. Yeah, you kiss

Chris Powell (01:01:45):

Your dogs. I actually do.

Mathew Blades (01:01:46):

People dunno this, but Chris and I kiss each other when we see each other, but lose a day of your life. Okay. How many times do you kiss in a week? Five,

Chris Powell (01:01:58):

Six? Yeah, but if I kiss my kids, it's on the forehead. I'll kiss my dog on the forehead too. Maybe. I dunno, five or six.

Mathew Blades (01:02:06):

So yeah, you'd be taking years off your life.

Chris Powell (01:02:09):

Yeah, this is true.

Mathew Blades (01:02:11):

So I think I'm just going to lose all my teeth and get some veneers.

Chris Powell (01:02:15):

That's what I did. Dude, these aren't real. What not. One tooth you see is real. You're

Mathew Blades (01:02:22):

Shing

Chris Powell (01:02:22):

Me. Isn't that dude? Tops and bottoms. Tops and bottoms. Well, it works out really well when one of your best friends is an incredible cosmetic dentist. Yes. And so he's like, dude, we got to get your grill totally decked out. Especially as you start getting older. I was like two years back, I'm like, let's go. Let's just do

Mathew Blades (01:02:40):

This. How long did the process take? I'm fascinated by this. I literally said to my kids yesterday, I want to rip up all my teeth and get veneers. Oh

Chris Powell (01:02:46):

Bro. About two months. But here's what you do. They put temporaries in and then you kind of see how they work, see how they feel, and then if the temps work really well, then they'll just go ahead and put the straight veneers on. But

Mathew Blades (01:02:57):

But what is the process? They have to shave down the

Chris Powell (01:03:01):

Tooth, dude, they grind 'em down. I'm going to show you a picture and you got nubs if these teeth came out, you got nubs. I've got straightened nubs. It is. I've got the funniest picture or so of me and I got a piece of straw and a cowboy hat and I'm like, it's literally me with just straight nubs all the way through. There's only a few people in this world that have that picture and it's hilarious.

Mathew Blades (01:03:24):

Okay. Yeah, you'll have to show that to me at one point. Yeah. Because I have somebody who's had a lot of root canals and that's kind of like what they do before they put the crown on, they shave the tooth down, they make it into a little nub and then they adhesed the crown. And I got a little crown in the back left of my mouth right now Wednesday I'm going to go in and have to have it adhesed or

Chris Powell (01:03:42):

Ahe.

Mathew Blades (01:03:44):

Such

Chris Powell (01:03:45):

A pain dude. It sucks, bro.

Mathew Blades (01:03:47):

But with the veneers it's like permanent, right? It's on

Chris Powell (01:03:49):

Straight. Dude. My teeth are titanium and

Mathew Blades (01:03:52):

You have to clean 'em and floss.

Chris Powell (01:03:54):

Yeah. Yeah. You absolutely have to floss. Oh yeah, absolutely. In fact, I floss twice. I dunno if I should, but I floss twice a day. Well, you had

Mathew Blades (01:04:02):

A little floss stick in your hand when I got here this morning.

Chris Powell (01:04:05):

I know. It's just kind of become a thing. I just like, you know. You know what though? It's kind of like the mindfulness around putting your phone down. When I got veneers, I never took care of my teeth that much. And since I've gotten them, I take care of 'em all the time because I'm aware of them. Now is

Mathew Blades (01:04:21):

It expensive?

Chris Powell (01:04:23):

It's not cheap, but for me it's worth it. It's been

Mathew Blades (01:04:28):

10 to $20,000.

Chris Powell (01:04:32):

It depends on how many you get. So typically you'll pay by the tooth and it could be like 1500 a tooth.

Mathew Blades (01:04:38):

Yeah, that's what I've heard.

Chris Powell (01:04:39):

Yeah. Yeah. So you get like four on the top for one on the bottom and sometimes six up top or something. And sometimes that's all you need. Here's smile real quick. Okay, so normal smile.

Mathew Blades (01:04:51):

My lips are dry. Here we go. Okay,

Chris Powell (01:04:54):

Normal smile. Nah, I messing. I totally messing with it.

Mathew Blades (01:04:57):

That I narrow

Chris Powell (01:04:58):

Saw. So when you smile, if you see the tops and the bottoms, whichever ones that you actually see you'll want, you might want to get most of those done. See? Like see

Mathew Blades (01:05:08):

My tops. So are actually these teeth are actually okay.

Chris Powell (01:05:12):

Yeah, they're

Mathew Blades (01:05:13):

Good. And the bottoms are okay. It's my molars. It's always the teeth in the back. You

Chris Powell (01:05:17):

Don't want to veneer those though. No, no. You'll veneer the fronts, but not so much the backs.

Mathew Blades (01:05:22):

Yeah. All right. I'll think about

Chris Powell (01:05:23):

That. Yeah, think about that. But so for me, fortunately when I smile, it's mostly all my top teeth. I did get the bottoms one. Just the bottom four done. Yeah. I get,

Mathew Blades (01:05:33):

I guess you're right. I just see the tops of my bottom teeth. Yeah. Everybody do this thing. Go. Go look in the mirror and smile and see if you're a top or you're a bottom.

Chris Powell (01:05:40):

Yeah. You might not have to touch the bottom teeth if just the top ones show, but if all of them show,

Mathew Blades (01:05:48):

Okay, would you rather do out

Chris Powell (01:05:49):

The wallet?

Mathew Blades (01:05:49):

Would you rather, and I love this question. I don't my answer. Would you rather have all the traffic lights as you approach be green or,

Chris Powell (01:05:59):

Which would be amazing.

Mathew Blades (01:06:00):

Never have to stand in line again. So easy for me, this is drop dead. Easiest question on the planet Earth.

Chris Powell (01:06:10):

Yeah, I take the green lights. I think well, hold on, hold on. Well, just because you made that look. Now I have to think about standing in line for

Mathew Blades (01:06:19):

Me is never stand in line again, ever. This is

Chris Powell (01:06:22):

True. Ever. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. I'm totally

Mathew Blades (01:06:26):

Comfortable with the red light. Yeah. Somebody told me a long time ago, red lights are God's way slowing you down.

Chris Powell (01:06:31):

That's actually where I floss most of the time also. So it's so true though. Okay. Okay. Okay. Think

Mathew Blades (01:06:37):

About that. You go to the movies, you never wait in line. You go to a sporting event, bro, and you never wait in line. Oh dude, go to the grocery store. The checkout's always open. You go to Target, it's always open.

Chris Powell (01:06:48):

Go to Disneyland,

Mathew Blades (01:06:49):

Never waiting in line at Disneyland. Could

Chris Powell (01:06:51):

You imagine that alone would be worth it right there.

Mathew Blades (01:06:55):

I will take every red light if I never have to wait in line

Chris Powell (01:06:58):

Again. That would be pretty incredible. I'm not even kidding you. Yeah. How about you guys? What do you think? Yes.

Mathew Blades (01:07:03):

This is a good question to ask folks.

Chris Powell (01:07:05):

Yeah, I like it. Okay,

Mathew Blades (01:07:07):

So are you changing your mind? I

Chris Powell (01:07:09):

Am. I am. Well, now that you've shed some light upon the subject, now that I put myself in that position, yes, I agree. Okay. Yeah, dude. No,

Mathew Blades (01:07:17):

I love it. I'm looking forward to it.

Chris Powell (01:07:19):

I'm looking forward to

Mathew Blades (01:07:20):

Seeing what happens here next.

Chris Powell (01:07:21):

Good rationale there. All right,

Mathew Blades (01:07:23):

Well that was a fun podcast today. It

Chris Powell (01:07:25):

Was. And I'm a better dad now because of it.

Mathew Blades (01:07:28):

I think I am too. I'm going to look into the Aro box. I'm going to try to do it by myself for a second, but I think most things in life, I know I'm going to need a little bit of help.

Chris Powell (01:07:39):

Well, and you know what that's kind of devoted his life to is just the awareness. Just create the awareness and just the little nuggets of information that he gave and just the going back and forth between all of us. I got some good stuff, man. Me too. I needed that. We always do. I needed

Mathew Blades (01:07:55):

That too. Next week on our podcast, homeboy is going to do a deep dive on what,

Chris Powell (01:07:59):

It's something we call falling without failing.

Mathew Blades (01:08:01):

Falling without failing. We all

Chris Powell (01:08:04):

Mess up on the journey. If you saw what transformation really looked like, it'd be a picture of a yard sale. You ever hear the yard sale where you're face planted and you got your shoes over here and you just like, you get up and you fall and you get up and you fall. It's like, so I want to talk about how to fall without failing because there's a actually tried and true formula that we utilize. And I've done this in transformation for over 10 years now. And it's probably one of the most powerful methods that we can use to keep going in our transformation, to keep getting up and not just getting up, but getting up and moving forward with more enthusiasm than you did before. And it might sound difficult to conceptualize there, but it can happen. And that's actually what I've done with all my people going through the journey of transformation. I cannot wait to share this with you guys because it's something we all need to know if we are looking to change our lives for the better.

Mathew Blades (01:08:56):

Okay, see you next week for another episode of Would You or I Needed that? We're going to play, would You Rather we're going to have name that tune. We're going to be talking about the best trilogy movie series ever. And of course, he's got his deep dive. See you next week on the I Needed that podcast. Have a great day everybody.

Joey Odom (01:09:22):

The Aro Podcast is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod co. Special thanks to Emily Miles for video and digital support and to our executive producer Aro's own, Katelyn Farley.

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