Transcript of Episode 5 Season 2

David Pérez:  That’s I guess what we are celebrating now that we realized that things are not going to be the same, things are not going to be the same forever anyway. So why try to force it?

LaMondre Pough: That’s right.

David Pérez: Let’s try and walk through, walk towards better change now that we are here now that we can do it.

And I guess that’s the big, the biggest thing that COVID gave us.

LaMondre Pough: And I’ll tell you that the connection of that is, if you’re not willing to change, that’s a surefire way to die. And right now the mode is to survive and to survive well.

Welcome to 3DVU one conversation, three different perspectives. I’m a LaMondre Pough.

David Pérez:  I am David Pérez.

Richard Streitz: And I’m Richard Streitz. Thank you for joining us.

David Pérez: Welcome to 3DVU. It is March now, and we wanted to take at least an episode to, to go over what has been a year with COVID-19, living a year, a full year with COVID-19 because even though it’s hard to actually pinpoint the specific moment that it all started for everyone, I’m sure that by March, every single person in the world knew what COVID 19 was and was starting to see the effects of COVID-19 in their houses, in their work.

And basically everywhere they looked. I can recall being watching the news, basically 24/7 for the whole month of March last year and we now have been with this a whole year and things have happened. Cool, amazing things have happened. And I really want us to discuss what happened and what’s coming and what can come out of this?

The floor is open guys.

Richard Streitz: I think one of the things that that’s propably an obvious I think at this point in time and something that no one thought of or could project at the beginning was just from a business and corporate operational standpoint, the dramatic effects it’s had on a sort of a paradigm shift to how business operate.

The fact that everyone’s working remotely now, that was even though there was a lot of individuals that were doing it, it was not commonplace still in, in larger corporate America the old traditional financial businesses and so forth that was still not common. And and this forced the shift of that.

And from a corporate standpoint, not necessarily having brick and mortar, an office space and supplying coffee and air conditioning and so forth they, they didn’t mind that so much. And they saw that it people actually worked longer when they were working at home. The working day actually actually ended up getting stretched.

Yeah, there were more interruptions in between which is actually not too dissimilar from a European model, by the way, the European model has a much longer day than we do, but they have longer, they have a couple of breaks in between that are a couple hours. And and as a result, productivity, even though there was an initial decrease, it did ended up picking, picking up.

And so I think that’s a side effect that we’re not going to go back from. I think that train has left the station and the idea of going nine to five to an office, I think that the days of that for the most part are behind us. And that we’re going to be looking at newer employment models employee, employer models.

LaMondre Pough: Yeah, I agree with that wholeheartedly Richard. And what I remember distinctly when I realized how serious this was, I was at a doctor’s appointment. It was probably late February. Like the last week of February and I was at a doctor’s appointment. And it was with my cardiologist and, he said, so what do you have going on?

I said I’m preparing for a trip. Because before all of this happened, I traveled quite extensively. And he said, A trip and I was like, Yes, I’m going on a trip. He was like, Cancel it. Don’t go. And my cardiologist is a joker. He’s like just hoops, but I looked at him and I said, Are you serious?

And he looked at me with a straight cold face was like, Cancel it. Don’t go. And that was the first time I realized the seriousness of this. And shortly after that is when everything shut down. And that was like the marker for me of Whoa, there’s something really going on because you saw certain things on the news and you heard certain things, but it still wasn’t at, world changing levels as of yet.

But the seriousness in which he approached it changed it for me. So let’s fast forward a little bit, as you say, Richard, the world changed and the way that we see business, the way that we work, all of that changed, here’s one of the cool things I think that happened. As a result of that people who were typically marginalized because of things like transportation and because of environmental things, like people with disabilities and accessibility issues, all of a sudden, many of those things cease to become a barrier or people without disabilities had the same issues. So now we’ve got to do something about it. So what did it do? Honestly, in many levels, it leveled a lot of playing fields.

David Pérez: Yeah. Yeah, no, it’s been a trip being involved in this world when COVID happened, because it’s historic.

It has been, it’s something that will be probably, live in history books for a long time. And as, a cataclysm as an event of such importance, moe, a lot of things have changed. Of course, the way we work has changed, but there’s also other things that have changed. Like the way we see our friends, most of the time, the way people celebrate marriages, the way people get together.

And with that there’s also the thing that, that became political in the U S for some reason. And that’s wearing masks. Yeah. Which I wonder if, if it’s something that we’re going to be, we’re going to keep doing after we were actually done with COVID-19 specifically. Do you think it’s something that we can keep because it’s good.

I haven’t been sick in the, in a whole year and I know it’s because I’ve been using a mask every time I go out, washing my hands being healthier.

Richard Streitz: Yeah. You know what? I think those are habits that are now ingrained in to our day to day. Into our day to day routine, one of the, from a subconscious level anything that you do for 30 days or more becomes a habit, it becomes then a subconscious habit.

And this is, this is just a proven fact this is just why it’s the pop love the the bell with feeding, the dog routine, this is just. It’s just something that we, as a species we we fall victim to. And so as a result, after a year of getting used to washing hands and wearing masks it’s now become a habit.

And I don’t think, there’s certainly some people will, and it may fade off, but I, it’s not going to be a one day to the next sort of thing. I think it’s just it, if it does fade off, it’s going to take many years and it may never fade off. There’s a lot of cultures that do it right now.

The Asian culture, Japan and China, it’s common, very common to wear masks. It’s a matter of respect and showing showing that you care about your about your fellow in  persons if you’re not feeling well, for example you put a mask on before you go outside, that’s just, it’s just what you do.

And some people, especially the older generations in those cultures wear a mask going out, period, because of a pollution or not wanting to breathe things in that could harm them. I could see how we We could follow suit. As you said, you don’t get sick, you’re staying, you stayed healthier, longer.

I think that’s a..

David Pérez: Longer than ever in my life.

LaMondre Pough: Yeah. And I tell you that really is a testament to which your mother always said, wash your hands. It’s one of those things where’s some very basic things that we were taught and told as a child. It’s really making a difference now.

 I’ll tell you one of the things that I hope does die with the passing of, of COVID-19 is the politicizing of health care issues, particularly something like this, the stupidity that was associated with the concept of, wearing a mask is a issue of freedom. And it’s slavery to wear a mask.

When I heard that garbage about it being slavery, because you’re asked to wear a mask because you’re asked to simply do the right thing in terms of protecting your fellow human being, you make it about slavery somehow. I wonder what the whip would have been like on your back then. I really wonder because you certainly would not have been able to deal with that.

So I hope that portion of it, I hope we’ve see how foolish and how dangerous it is to equate those two things or to make to make things like science, a, a political issue, you know.

David Pérez: I don’t think that’s going to happen LaMondre. I don’t want to be..

LaMondre Pough: Come on, man

David Pérez: I

LaMondre Pough: am

David Pérez: an optimist.

I just saw this week, a lot of people blaming clean energy for what’s happening in Texas.

LaMondre Pough: I saw that too.

David Pérez: So it’s not going to happen. They’re going to keep blaming the things that are science proved. Because it validates their points .

LaMondre Pough: So the idea

David Pérez:  for what they want their agenda.

LaMondre Pough: So the idea is to perpetuate a narrative that is filled with falsehoods. It’s not even an opinion thing.

It is simply a lie. It’s wrong when they blame this on, on, on clean energy and the issue in Texas, they said, this is all because of clean energy when only 10% of that grid relied on clean energy. What about the other 90% that failed?

David Pérez: Yeah.

Richard Streitz: That’s not important.

LaMondre Pough:  So it’s so one of the things that I hope that it did though, when I and I swear David, I know I hear you, man.

I hear you, but I’m again, man, I’m really trying, I’m trying to stay optimistic about this. I hope that the hypocrisy and the foolishness that we all see that everyone sees it that people will stand up and say, wait a minute. One plus one is still two. And if that is true, let’s look at what other facts bear out.

And accept that as truth as well. We got to get back to really thinking, man.

Richard Streitz: We, you know, I, yeah, I don’t want to get too political but I think the age of reason is still a little bit beyond our grasp in the short term. Unfortunately I think we still have some. There’s still some hard road to cover with that’s residual. It’s residual zaniness and that’s only because that that group was given such prominence and and such relevancy that they’re not going to let go too easily of the opportunity, that, that type of thinking. And it will change because I think all things nature takes its course in, in finding the middle finding the balance.

The pendulum had swung so far to one direction that it’s actually broken off its arm and landed on the floor now. And that’s it’s got to get repaired before it can start swinging back there the other way. It will, it’s just a matter of how long that’s going to take.

David Pérez: Yeah, but let’s stay away from, that topic.

Richard Streitz: I do want to pick up something that David, that you mentioned, and that’s the idea of. What’s become more socially acceptable as a norm. and the idea that you can attend event remotely, imagine five years ago saying yeah, I’ll go to your wedding. I’ll call it in.

I’ll just, hold the camera up and we’ll be good. It’s eh, Yeah. Not socially acceptable, really? You know that wasn’t, now absolutely. Now you don’t get a cupboard cut out of yourself. And have it in the thing. And that’s very socially acceptable. So what we’ve done is shift our values of what is normal or what’s not normal, what’s accept, socially acceptable and what’s considered a, good, polite to be able to host a party. And have, some of the quote unquote ‘attendees’ be virtual in that process is is innovative is is okay. And that brought families together as a result, it’s done tremendous things with actually bringing families together.

LaMondre Pough: You know what, and just to give an example of that, I was recently first of all, I am worryingly single. Okay. Notice I said worringly. But of course that would happen in the middle of a pandemic. So it’s not like I could go out and meet new people, but I was recently invited to a speed dating event.

That was all virtual. It’s all virtual. It hasn’t happened yet. So I’ll have to give you an update on how that goes, but it was so interesting to, to get that invite. And it’s because of, we really can’t get together face to face like that and meet new people, but people still want to experience that.

And so I thought this ought to be interesting, so we’re going to do speed, a virtual speed dating situation. So yeah, I’m ready.

David Pérez: Oh, yeah. And it’s so much easier to be on those events when you’re not ‘live’. Like it makes it easier for everyone, I think as well. I don’t know if that’s true. I might be some sort of introvert.

LaMondre Pough: I think you might be the introvert, I think you might be.

David Pérez: But I, I do find it easier to connect with a lot of people, given the fact that I just pick up the phone and video call them. Which is, it has been good for me. I don’t know if it has been good for everyone, but I did reconnect with a lot of people and found myself talking to them for one hour or two, just because we haven’t talked in a while.

And it was good for that at least the fact that we were isolating and we were talking about it as it already happened. As if it’s over, but it’s not, Covid’s still, it’s still here and it’s still around everywhere in the world, but situations are different depending on where you are and basically on the weather, because we, here in Costa Rica, we’re doing fantastic.

Like really we’re on almost 300 cases a day.

Richard Streitz: Wow.

David Pérez: Like we are, we don’t have many people in severe conditions from COVID and we’re already starting to rolling out the vaccine. So we are very good while at the same time in, I know that in the U S and in Europe, things are not that great. And I guess it’s because of the cold.

Richard Streitz: Yeah some of the new strains as well, which has thrown some of some of the second and third go rounds now are including the newer strain, which is complicating, especially over in Europe. But that’s found its way here in the States as well now, also. And so that, that certainly is complicating.

Travel is certainly something that’s also been dramatically affected, travel and tourism in general, the tourism industry is is unfortunately a casualty right now of this process. It’s interesting that some groups have adapted as best they can. And were quick to and I’ve got to say one of the groups that I saw that was right off very quickly adapting was Viking.

Viking Cruises with taking their tours virtually, right? So they have the long river boat tours throughout Europe and so forth. And popular travel group. And and what they’ve done is they’ve leveraged right away and embraced the virtual medium and have provided virtual tryptics that you could share with people and with and with leaders tour leaders that, that take you through processes, routes and whether it’s like a museum, like a walking tour or something like that. And it’s all virtual. So they’re still providing that travel tryptics experience with, without leaving your room and and still being able to share that experience in a group environment, which is, what people like to do when they go on those sorts of on those sorts of trips.

So I thought that was clever of them to quickly adapt. It was fairly quick that they turned that around and did something like that. It’s interesting how some do and some haven’t right. Some tourism organizations have not done any of that. And it’s, and it does dramatically affect economies that are, especially in regions that are very much tourism based.

LaMondre Pough: Yeah.

David Pérez: Costa Rica is picking back up, just so you guys know, because we are doing so well in terms of cases that tourism is picking back up,

Richard Streitz: Opening borders back out.

David Pérez: At a very healthy pace, yeah.

LaMondre Pough: No, that’s pretty. That is amazing. And that’s wonderful. That’s wonderful to hear. That things are picking back up because I know that the Costa Rican economy relies on tourism very much size as its major source of velocity, honestly, but some, something you said, David, that I think is important, you said we, we’re talking about this as if we’re, as if we’re through it.

And there’s a reason for that. It’s because we’ve settled into the fact that this is the reality. And so you kinda think, you remember when when you could fly out of the U S without necessarily having to give up your first child in order to do that. But now it’s and the truth is when 9/11 happened, all of that changed and we’re now just relegated to a world of this is the reality.

Of how we live. And so I think that is why we’re speaking almost in past tense because we’ve settled into it. Like I, I thought about it. I’ve only left my house three times since March a year ago, three times. And normally I am like all over the place. I’m they used to call me the mayor, because don’t be the stranger.

And, but now just, I haven’t left my house, three times since March. So I think we’ve gotten settled into, okay, this is the, this is what reality is now. And I think once the world open backs, opens back up, fully, I know we’re still going to have a lot of that residual. A lot of that residual leftover, but then that’ll be something new to get used to again, there’ll be something new to settle into. And I think that, especially the tourism industry, especially the cruises, if you remember, cruises were a hotbed for COVID-19. And I remember we had ships that were just off the coast that just had to sit there. Because it was running through the ships.

So I would imagine that they had to, in order to survive, they had to do something that would offer an alternative.

Richard Streitz: One of them did anyway.

LaMondre Pough: At least to keep people interested at least to keep people interested. No, it does not replace the experience, but it certainly hopefully engages people enough that they don’t forget.

You can, cuise, and eventually you will again,

David Pérez: Yeah. Yeah, but there’s actually a quote from Alvin Toffler that came to mind when you were talking about that. And it was, it’s pretty old that quote, I bet you guys have heard it more than once. I know I’ve used it on my articles more than once, and it’s The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.

And that’s what we had to see. People had to basically reinvent themselves to survive. Those were the ones, the companies that actually were successful during this pandemic and are going to be successful because innovation is not just a buzzword. It’s something necessary for corporations, for governments, for businesses, for religious organizations to actually survive in, in the post COVID world, it’s just a reality.

LaMondre Pough: And that is something that has had a drastic shift in terms of faith-based organizations. Because particularly in, in my community, congregating is an important piece. Of that being able to come together and not being able to do that, I’ve seen churches pivot and now they’re, running online services and how that content has changed, how the delivery has changed has really been amazing to see. But what that’s also done is it’s also allowed it to open up to so many more people. Than they would have had before. Like for example, my church, I know we were already streaming our services out, every Sunday or what have you.

However, when COVID-19 hit that effort became so much more robust and honestly it’s grown. It has grown incredibly and, and honestly I, it will be interesting to see what it looks like when things open up again to see if we’re if we’re going to have the number of people sitting in the chairs that we did prior to, or will that increase with the stay the same, or will it decrease?

It’s going to be a really interesting thing to see.

Richard Streitz: Yeah. You’re obviously right. And it brings up the idea of convenience of participation, right? The idea of wanting to participate, but, it’s a process, right? To go from point A to point B. If I can do that, where point a and point B is my bedroom to the kitchen.

I’m going to be much more willing to participate in that type of experience. And and that actually transcends not only from faith-based organizations, because you’re, you’re absolutely right, certainly my brother’s involved with the church over in Cali, in California at an administrative level with his church.

And they’ve seen that same process where the pews were getting less and less filled. You know, for a number of years now, the trend was not great. But as a result of this, suddenly the number, the participation numbers shot through the roof. And so that, that provides, and that also carries over to to other organizations, participatory type organizations and nonprofits and so forth.

I know I I’m the president of a board of a nonprofit and the board meetings used to be tough to get three or four people and there, and now the board meetings are, I have the full very rarely is one or two individuals missing. And now I have the full compliment of the board, every meeting, because we’re, we’ve been doing them virtually now for the past year.

And so it’s, again it’s the convenience of participation is much easier now.

LaMondre Pough: Right, right, right, something else that..

David Pérez: Yeah, I’m not involved in any of those organizations in the administrative level, but it would be interesting to see if it has affected their finances in a negative way, because you don’t have people in there, coming with their wallets.

Which might be interesting to see how that trend happened or if it, if something happened, it changed or if it was better, I would be fascinated to know.

LaMondre Pough: Yeah, I can, I can tell you from our perspective, a lot of, especially faith-based organizations lost a lot because they pass the pan, they lost a lot.

However, there are some that have been able to maintain because the level of engagement was already there. The engagement was already there. It wasn’t a situation where we just thought about it as when you come you give, but it was about really already being engaged fully in that process. And so some have really thrived during this time, but others have found it very difficult to keep the lights on.

Richard Streitz: It’s interesting. Cause my brother actually happens to be the the treasurer of of the church. And so he’s seen a cycle of this, actually. So initially it was a very sharp decline. But then it picked up as they’ve made an implemented systems that allowed, provided tiding and so forth to be again, convenient using, using PayPal using other sort of what have become typical financial tools or transfer tools that has, they, they’ve now seen it, an increase, an uptake up to almost about where they were. So it’s interesting. And some of that may be geograph ethically based and so forth, different communities will have to responses to it, but it’s interesting that was the experience that he’s seeing.

David Pérez: Yeah. Yeah. It’s gonna vary from place to place. Some countries didn’t actually have lockdowns downs and things happened different but one thing that remains truth, and that’s that reinventing was necessary and they had to change the way they were doing things to actually be able to still be here.

We had to, everyone had to, so that’s I guess what we are celebrating now that we realized that things are not going to be the same, things are not going to be the same forever anyway. So why try to force it?

LaMondre Pough: That’s right.

David Pérez: Let’s try and walk through, walk towards better change now that we are here now that we can do it.

And I guess that’s the big, the biggest thing that COVID gave us.

LaMondre Pough: And I’ll tell you that the connection of that is, if you’re not willing to change, that’s a surefire way to die. And right now the mode is to survive and to survive well. So having that adaptation, being able to change and adapt to the situations that I think has been a lifesaver. One of the things that I have found really interesting is that even though we cannot necessarily meet as much as we would have in the past, sometimes these virtual connections allow you to see into someone’s environment. So you see who they are, or at least what a, or at least like where they are, where they’re most comfortable typically in their environment.

And I’m looking at the screen right now. I’m looking at the three of us and I know that that David loves coffee. I know that I can see it in the background. And that’s a wonderful thing because that’s a part of who he is. And the thing is,  I knew that even without seeing that, but seeing that kind of boom that’s David, Richard has such an incredible, vast of experience, and it’s such a vast array of experiences and.

And Richard is one of these guys who was like a Swiss army knife, except he’s actually effective. Cause some instances Swiss army knives or not, but he is. And so he has all these different tools and kind of a global perspective of things. If you look behind him, You’ll see the map and you’ll see the whole nautical thing.

And it’s just amazing. With that, and behind me right now is a painting because I’m really into the arts and I love culture and that kind of thing. And and this was not, this is not something that we did for the show, but there’s certainly something that allows people to get a glimpse of who you really are.

So even though we might not be able to get some of the cues that we would have gotten if we were actually face to face, there’s still other ways to see who people are. And this is a part of what I think this has led us to is that we’re starting to look a little deeper into people and really realizing that the human connection is much more than just who’s across the street from me, but it’s who can I really connect with?

And I believe that’s one of the blessings that has come from this. Yes. We’ve had a lot of hardship. Yes. We’ve had a lot of a lot of loss during this time, but we’ve learned a lot of lessons as well, and we’ve made connections on levels that we might not have before. I loved hearing David talk about I talk to people that I hadn’t spoken to in a long time.

And we’ll talk for an hour just because we have not spoken for awhile in, in actual, real contact kind of things. Most of the time, Well, I got to run got to go meet somebody else. And so we don’t take the time just to actually share that cup of coffee or to express the experiences that you’ve had from around the world or just to gaze on a beautiful piece of art.

So I think that’s one of the things that this has allowed us to do. And honestly, for that, I’m thankful.

Richard Streitz: Absolutely. Yeah.

David Pérez: Yeah. I guess that’s the best way to end the episode. Thank you guys.

LaMondre Pough: Thank you.

Richard Streitz: Thank you.

LaMondre Pough: Thanks for joining us this week on 3DVU, make sure to visit our website, ruhglobal.com/3dvu. That’s RUHglobal.com/3DVU, where you can subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts or join our YouTube channel so you’ll never miss a show. While you’re at it, if you find value in the show, we appreciate it if you would leave a like or comment or simply tell a friend about the show that would really help us a lot too. If you would like to join our conversations, you can join our Facebook community 3DVU, three perspectives, one conversation.