We are back once again on the Legal Intake Experts podcast presented by Answering Legal. I am one of your two hosts Nick Werker joined as always by my co-host Tony Prieto and there is an invisible man. His name is producer Joe. He is here producing, watching over all of us. But I have done something terrible to producer Joe. Uh I will get to that shortly, but I’m going to ask you my favorite question for the third time today. We are recording our third episode today. Uh, how are you, Tony? That’s a good answer. Uh, well, I don’t even know how to uh broach the subject, but I have usurped this episode like Robert Baratheon uh and the Iron Throne. I have duct taped producer Joe metaphorically to his chair. And now I suppose you are my second hostage. Yeah, I’m I’m here under duress. When Nick slides his chair back and then moves it forward, it’s it’s like someone cocking a shotgun. That’s what that was. That’s amazing. Okay. Well, what I mean by that is I wrote the segment for today’s intro and for the the idea for this episode and I sprung it on Joe and Tony. Um, and so if this stinks, I have no one to blame but myself. And so I wrote a segment. This segment is called Mistakes. I am a mistake making machine. And so Tony, I charge you to tell me about a mistake that you’ve made and what you learned from it. Um, but I really want it to be something good. Not too good, but good. Uh, yeah. I’m perfect. I’ve never made a mistake in my life. No, I uh I went to visit my brother uh last weekend with my family. We went up to Mackinac Island in Michigan. It was a beautiful vacation. And um at the end of that, we went to one of my favorite restaurants in in Ypsilanti when I’m up there um which is called the Bellflower. It’s awesome. They had a delicious cake and then better than the cake was the ice cream on top. And um my brother ate all the ice cream. Uh there was one last bite of the cake. I said, “Hey, Pete, you want to split it?” He ate all the ice cream. He gave me the cake. I thought, “Wow, that wasn’t the way I wanted to split it, but okay.” And then everyone said, “Hey, that’s not fair.” I said, “No, I could never be mad at my brother.” And one of the mistakes I made when I was younger was I had a friend who was an a to my little brother. And we’d been friends for a long time. And uh my parents would be like, “Bring your brother along, go hang out with this guy.” And I would say no. And it really hurt my brother’s feelings. And it took me years. I had at this point, I think I’ve been friends with this kid like almost 10 years. um when I realized, oh, I just you’re just you’re an a to my little brother. I’m just I’m just not going to be friends with you anymore. You know what I mean? And the mistake that I made was being scared of losing one relationship that I’d had for a long time. Uh and in in that damaging another one, although, you know, my brother and I are great. He you know, I hurt his feelings when I was 16. People make mistakes when they’re 16. Uh but that one haunts me forever. It’s a very sweet but also kind of sad story. I… What kind of mistake have I made? I am going to say that the lesson that I learned recently is that I for better or for worse do too much for people and I will go out of my way. Um, which is really like a people pleasing dishonesty thing because I want you to like me and when I do that I inevitably raise some expectation of your response in order to me like trying to help you or go out of my way or whatever and that breeds a resentment. And also um I have found that I often get disappointed because people don’t go the same distance out of their way for me or for anyone else. And so I I just like had to wrestle with that. Um and so I have tried to rein that in. I have a newish rule. It’s that I won’t meet you more than halfway. If you meet me halfway, I will go as far as you want to go. Right? But yo
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