Andrew Hilts is a senior front-end developer at Konabos Consulting Inc. Andrew talks about growing up in New Jersey, being a project manager for big construction jobs as a teenager, emigrating to Canada, finding his place in technology, his mental struggles during the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns, and much more.
Akshay Sura
Welcome to the Konaverse podcast. This is Akshay Sura
Matthew McQueeny
and this is Matt McQueeny.
Akshay Sura
With us today is Andrew Hilts, Andrew works with us here at Konaverse. He is by far the most cheeriest, bubbliest, fun guy you could have on any other project meeting calls, because he's always pumping up the rest of the team with his energy. Morning, Andrew.
Andrew Hilts
Morning!
Akshay Sura
How's everything today?
Andrew Hilts
Good, woke up, took a shower, now I'm here.
Matthew McQueeny
Cool. So Andrew, I have talked with you a bit here and there, but this will be a nice get to know you for everybody listening and for me as well. So you're in Canada, right?
Andrew Hilts
Yes, Toronto
Matthew McQueeny
but you're from America? Is that correct?
Andrew Hilts
Yep. Born and raised in New Jersey, and lived in Virginia for a bit.
Matthew McQueeny
Nice. Where in New Jersey?
Andrew Hilts
Somerset County, right in the middle.
Matthew McQueeny
Wow. Wow. So I'm in New Jersey as well. So why don't we start with...so you were in New Jersey for a certain amount of your childhood?
Andrew Hilts
Yeah, most of my childhood. We moved in middle school to Fairfax, Virginia for four years and then move back.
Matthew McQueeny
You moved back, so what was your, what was your childhood like? Especially with tech? I know you're into gaming. How did tech catch you? It catches us all right, when we're a certain age, because there's no way around it, but why dont you walk us through that a little bit
Andrew Hilts
Well, I was really young, and my parents were upper middle class. So they had access to you know, all the new toys and all the new fangled gadgets. So I grew up with a Texas Instruments, ti 81 I think cartridge computer. It was mainly used for accounting, but they had made games for it. They had made, you know, silly little programming languages. And so you know, at the ripe old age of eight years old, I was hooked. And I couldn't drag me out of a room to get me away from the thing.
Akshay Sura
Nice. So and then Andrew, I know that your family's into construction. Right? Like so how, how were you introduced over a period of time, I guess, in your childhood, into the business? Can you give us a little bit more insight of? I know I've heard some fascinating things about you remember, the at&t Center with the freakin screen is like five stories of logs? Can you can you share some stories? Like how you got into the construction business? And what do you feel about it?
Andrew Hilts
Oh, yeah, so my dad was a construction manager when I was a kid, he moved his way up to you know, executive of a global construction company. So, you know, with a little help of nepotism, you know, to keep me out of trouble, he would give me jobs. So most of my jobs started with, you know, architectural drawing, sorting, putting them in an order. When everything became digitized. I was the guy for the job. I was hooking up networks in the field. It was, it was amazing. I you know, my dad was always building things with his hands. He was always reconstructing something on the house. And I was his helper. So you know, handing over the tools watching him do it was amazing that you could create, you know, something out of nothing, I guess, was really What amazed me the most. So when, you know, when I got to high school, it was you know, here, go work in this architectural firm, go, you know, help them out setting up networks or drawing blueprints, or you know, anything that was technology related. Everybody kind of pointed at me and was like, hey, do you know how to do this? And I was like, No, but I'll figure it out. And I guess that's kind of how I've always been, as you know, I've always been interested in everything. I've learned as much as I could about absolutely everything. Just to get, you know, this worldly knowledge that I didn't know. And I figured it would help in any career which it you know, it definitely did. After being in construction mananagement, you know, making my way up to an assistant project manager in high school. It was, you know, every kid's dream of building, you know, multi million dollar projects and, you know, overseeing construction projects on massive scales. You know, that got me hooked into business and the way things ran, you know, how things actually worked in the real world. So, yeah, it was just a new thing to me that, you know, just amazed me.
Matthew McQueeny
Did you feel like a, an amazing, almost responsibility that you were kind of being swept in with this? Did you ever get like, you know, from your, from your dad was, did you ever get a sense where it's like, oh, my gosh, you know, you're really moving up here. You better deliver for us.
Andrew Hilts
It was a very strange thing, you know, because when I first got into it, the first thing people notice was how young I was. And I couldn't understand how somebody young was giving them orders. So I had so much pushback from contractors and owners and architects, you know, they treat you like a kid because you are one. And the minute I opened my mouth and started talking about the stuff I think that's really what shut them up and was like "Okay, well, I guess we have to work with this kid now".
Matthew McQueeny
Did you have any Doogie Howser jokes?
Andrew Hilts
No, no Doogie Howser jokes, it was just you know, the minute they found out who my dad was, the sense of fear was invoked in them. Which to me was hilarious because, you know, I've always kind of been a defiant kid and always push the limits of things. So to think of my dad as this, you know, power figure was so absurd to me, because, you know, he's the same guy that comes all my soccer games, and, you know, busting jokes in the car and helping me build things. So, you know, to me, it was it was really funny, I found a lot of comedy in that.
Matthew McQueeny
So, I actually growing up I was I worked with my father a lot in communications. And the one thing I always felt was that you almost had to do maybe twice as much in order to be seen as not maybe in their, in their shadow
Andrew Hilts
Oh God yeah. Oh absolutely.
Matthew McQueeny
What did you think about and I got to do that when I was more in my, you know, 20s, late 20s. Like when you're a kid, could you even since that psychology at play? Like, what was what was going on with that? Did you feel like it was hard?
Andrew Hilts
Oh, yeah. Like, the unrealistic standards you set for yourself go skyrocketing, like, you know, it trying to achieve, you know, executive level as a teenager, probably not the best mindset, but it does, it pushes you super hard. It gave me such a strong work ethic, to the point where like, now I can't even work like that it was too much.
Akshay Sura
Yeah, and the other question I had for Andrew and you know, I always get fascinated by this. So based on the builds, you were part of, I don't know if you were part of that at&t building build, but it from the outside perspective, you know, when you see these projects, which are massive, which have hundreds and 1000s of people working logistics up the wazoo, right? And then I always used to wonder how do they coordinate that say, a concrete pour of kazillion metric tons? Whatever the crap that is, right. And then you're you're coordinating workers, you're coordinating other teams, you're coordinating the thing. But from what I get a sense of you, from you, it's very process oriented. The whole business is super process oriented, and journal logs and entries and stuff. Can you like? Is it possible for you to walk us through like a scenario and how process oriented it is how their checks and balances, like how do they manage such massive projects?
Andrew Hilts
Oh, man, it's it's scheduling. Scheduling is the biggest nightmare in construction. It's relying on contractors that are sending 50 guys to your site, and you only get two hours of them, you know, concrete floors, so they're just alone are a massive undertaking, the amount of rebar and support that you need to start the framing of the pillars like you guys, you got guys out there for weeks building these crazy elaborate, you know, structures of rebar and then putting the forms around them out of wood and making sure that they're level and straight. Then you're calling up the concrete delivery company, they're coming out you have a tester to make sure that the water to lime to concrete ratio is right. Otherwise, you know any one of the mistakes that go on and that's really what they teach you in the beginning is any one of these mistakes can be life threatening. You know, construction is dangerous. So my biggest job was to make sure everybody was safe. If I saw something wrong, I had to say something. You know, that's where being a kid really, I guess, hindered me is trying to tell people the wear their stupid hats, right? Wear your construction hat dude, like, if something falls on your head, you're gonna be glad it's there. And, you know, older guys would be like, "nah I'm sweaty, I don't want this thing. I'm an electrician, everything's already built. So what am I worried about." You know, understanding how safety worked and that was really kind of where my focus was as an assistant construction manager.
Akshay Sura
This is all like, like, cataloged and logged like,
Andrew Hilts
Oh, absolutely. And I think that's really where where I came in was the, they were upgrading the technology to do this, and updating the software to be able to track these budgets. I mean, I think I learned like more Microsoft Project than I could ever imagine in my life there because it had to be done, it had to be followed, it was very strict, because you know, you miss a week of a pour, you're done. Like, you got to wait two weeks for that guy to come back. And now you just delayed everybody on the project. And, you know, timelines were always tight. And contractors didn't always do a good job. So, you know, going out there and being like, Hey, you got to take this all down and repour it and that's a big deal. You know, that's millions of dollars flushed down the toilet. So understanding the importance of it gave me a new clarity to you know, the importance of managing and tracking. So yeah, all that stuff came into play and all at various times. And I guess you're right, that's why I am very, you know, straight and strict to everything that I do, because I know no different.
Matthew McQueeny
No, in being in a tech company, right, project, management's very important in its own way. But you're a teenager, were you basically like learning all of these project management philosophies. Are you like six sigma? Are you waterfall? Are you or it was it? Did you just follow kind of the templates and try to do your best.
Andrew Hilts
I'm one of those weirdos that, you know, never really believe that you need to sit down and read all this stuff. Like, I'd rather experience it. But I had this ability to make up for my shortcomings. You know, if I didn't know what something was supposed to look like, or how something was installed, I'd go out there with a camera and take pictures of it, and bring it back to the office and be like, Hey, this is what's going on in the project, talk with my co workers, you know, and get their opinions, oh, this might be wrong, this might be a little off, let's go out and check that, you know, I just followed people super closely, and tried to learn what they were doing, how they were doing it, and where really I could help. And I think that's kind of what led to this career was that I really just want to help I don't really need to know any of this stuff. It's just, you know, I want to be here, I want to be useful. And I want to be helpful. So I've never really put labels on things. I don't know what my job title is. I don't really care. That's, you know, I'm just here for the work.
Matthew McQueeny
Yeah, so I'm interested on that very point you were just talking about. In what ways was like, working in this career almost like putting on the similar glove? in the in the past one, like, how has it made your career easier, more efficient? You know, what I mean?
Andrew Hilts
It's a lot of it comes from that process orientated you know, the planning, the the analysis of where you're building the site, you know, from soil samples, all the way to what concrete you're pouring, and what climate what humidity. So when I got into tech in an early age, I never let go of it. That kind of was the same thing to me. Now, if you're building a website, this is what you need to do. I guess my biggest takeaway was more of the business aspect I have, to this day, I still don't know how these construction companies manage, but they do and it's all because of these business techniques, the ways of tracking, the ways of employing people. I mean, you know, this company was pulling people out of all walks of life, from every point of the globe to get the best people, you know, from architects to analysts to business people that could train people, you know, they were the front runners of train the trainer and they had adapted all these you know, like you said, the six sigma and all that it's just, you know, I never was at a point where I could stop and be like, Okay, I'm gonna try this course or I'm gonna learn this. It was go go go from the very beginning.
Akshay Sura
So, Andrew, you mentioned that your grandma got you into tech. How did that happen? I'm assuming grandma was back in Jersey when you were growing up.
Andrew Hilts
So she was in New York State, but she was working for accounting firms. And what she noticed was when they were upgrading technology, they were just chucking all these old computers and naturally, she's like, "Oh, I bet. You know, I bet my grandkid would love this." She bought me my first or brought me home. My first, what was it 186 with floppy drive, a turbo button, and DOS installed. And that was it. I love that thing. I couldn't get enough, you know, looking at a C prompt was basically how I, you know, clarify my childhood. You know, maybe it made me a boring person. But sure, as hell learned a lot, you know, from that first help screen and being able to write commands, it opened a world that I would have never imagined.
Akshay Sura
So like, how did Andrew transition from that into high school to assistant project manager in construction, which is pretty cool. So the trajectory would have been, you know, with your dad supporting if he was still working while you were growing up, right? Like you could have gone to a project manager would have followed a similar path to him. What path did you take? And why did he take it, what ended up? Which school did you end up and so on and so forth.
Andrew Hilts
For me it was the technology just was so fascinating. You know, this was the 96k baud days, and being able to hook a DOS based computer up to the internet and find things really fascinated me, you know, looking for text based games that were multiplayer back in, you know, the early 90s was insane. It was insane. And, you know, didn't exist, the telnet portals and all that kind of got me into the networking part. And then all of a sudden, Windows 3.1 comes out and, and then now you have a graphical interface can still do everything you were doing. But now everybody can see it. And then, you know, our big upgrade was 56k modem and I was like, this is so fast. Which brought me into gaming, which brought me into, you know, friends, playing the same games, us making maps, like, just controlling the environment around us is kind of how I look at it. And then from there, it was I needed, I needed to differentiate myself from my dad, I couldn't be an executive, I knew that I didn't want to, too many, you know, too many risks were in it. Yeah, it's dangerous. It's loud, like, oh, my God, I don't miss the noise. Computers gave me a nice quiet place. It gave me somewhere where I could actually sit and focus. And I started programming just on a whim because, you know, the first thing I ever wrote was getting rid of ads on Angel fire sites. Because I hated ads. I just hated that there was no purpose in my world for them. So what I had the choice of whether, you know, continue down the construction path or go into technology, I chose technology every time because I knew there was something bigger and better out there. I knew that my talents and you know, I've always been very focused on math and science. I loved it. I loved the complexity of it. I loved how it didn't make sense to me. I mean, you know, there's very little things that didn't make sense at that time. But math and science kind of led me down this path. So when I was applying to schools, I had a choice of going to Rochester Institute of Technology for Film, because I thought film was going to be awesome and that was going to be the way to go. I got into Savannah, Georgia for Industrial Design, which would have been really awesome. And then I got into Vermont for Web Design and Development, a brand new field and their school, you know, not many schools offered any kind of programming at that time. So I was like, Yeah, let's do this, let's do this. So I went up to Vermont, you know, found out that their course was about two years too late. So I kind of just partied through that didn't learn much but really got to show off my skills as a programmer then you know, I picked up JavaScript I picked up, you know, I was already a Flash developer at that time and charging people money for it. I love designing things. So Photoshop had been an expert by the time I even got to the school. So kind of, you know, was always ahead of the curve just because I wanted to know this stuff. So, school was kind of a joke to me, it was more, you know, my parents say at the best. They're like, we didn't send you to school to learn, we'd send you to school to grow up. And I really appreciate that. I think that's hilarious because they were right. I went there to learn how to budget money, and not die, right?
Akshay Sura
Yep. So what? How did you end up in Toronto?
Unknown Speaker
I followed a girl and a job and I still have a job. I had a girlfriend at the time, that was moving to Toronto and I had asked, "Hey, did you want company?" I didn't know nothing about emigrating. I know nothing about that but I know I can get jobs. So I got hooked up with this small record label and kind of made history there. Just because, you know, I started learning new industries other than construction, and started figuring out other businesses and where I fit in and what I can do for them and yeah, it worked.
Matthew McQueeny
So I want to go back real quick. Did you went to UVM?
Andrew Hilts
No, I actually went to Champlain down the street.
Matthew McQueeny
Okay, so in the last handful of years, like I personally have gotten really into that area, I think it's like such almost a hidden gem like this amzing beauty. The lake front, you know, it's got every, like, great part of in many ways, what the country can offer, especially in the summer. And you know, of course, what led me there was the beer for the heavy topper, the alchemist pilgrimages, as I call them, you know, basically put my whole family in a car, really under the auspices to get beer, but it's like, let's do a family vacation. But what did you, one, did you find heading up there? Because you probably didn't spend a lot of time there before. Did you find that it was like, Whoa, this is like a weirdly kind of special place. And two, is that kind of the entree into Canada as well, because it's right there.
Andrew Hilts
You know, that's the first thing I noticed when I went up there. I went up to orientation. And by the time we were like an hour into the orientation, I had like five friends. It wasn't a hard process. It was just talking about what fields we were in what we were going to study whether the school was right for us. And all the local kids that were from Vermont were like, Oh, yeah, this is this is where everybody should be. So the minute yeah, I fell in love with the people first. And then I started reading on why Vermont is so awesome and it's because they have zoning laws. They don't allow high rise buildings. They want to preserve nature. And I was like, Oh, well, you know, as a kid that always spent his time in New York City. This sounds like a dream. Like it's not dingy. It's not there's not a lot of sad people walking around, like nobody's going going going it kinda was the break. I needed to actually, well what I thought learn, but really have fun with people, you know, in a beautiful place, right? Like I've never seen the aurora borealis until I went there. And it's such a just a weird thing to see is you walk out your house and everything's green. It's just green. And that in the middle of the night, you're like, what is this? And you look up and it's just the most fascinating thing on the face of the earth. And at the time, I was, you know, racing cars, it was the perfect place. You could go anywhere on windy roads. They had the greatest mountain side roads I've ever seen. I got pulled over once for speeding there. And the officer asked me where I was going. I told him I was like, I'm looking for foliage. It was during foliage season, the guy laughed at me. And I was like, if you got to take your car like that. You got to find this one road down the street. It's amazing, don't go too fast you'll go right off the edge, but slow it down. I was like yes, sir. Found this road. It was amazing. It followed a river the whole time. You could barely hit 40 miles an hour on it. Otherwise, you're into a hairpin turn into the side of a mountain. Like I just loved everything about it.
Matthew McQueeny
Yeah. And so again, I'm interested in this piece too, like it's close. You know, it's so close to Canada that you're probably pulling in there's probably as many Canadians as there are US citizens at times. Right and so actually emigrating to another country, you know, like, I don't think many people in the US think about, like, Canada is amazing. I'm not saying it's not, but like, they don't think about going there. Like, what was that? What was that process? Like? And kind of, what was your first take of Canada? Like, did it feel like I always, I always like, Robin Williams always had the joke that Canada is like the, the second floor apartment on top of the really cool party. But I don't know if that's true, but just yeah, walk through those immigration and your first feelings on Canada.
Andrew Hilts
Well, so the girl I was dating at the time I brought me to Canada was living in Montreal at the time. So me and my buddies would always go up to Montreal, where the drinking age is 18 to 21. So we would go up there, get some crappy hotel in Montreal and go down the strip, you know, St. catharines was a basic, you know, the sex clubs everywhere, and the beer and the bars everywhere. There was just, it was an insane place that, you know, to me even me that grew up in New York City, how liberal and free everything kind of seemed, then how, you know, people didn't stress about the stupid stuff that we stress about here with these, you know, these laws where you can't drink, you can join the military, but you can't drink yet. Like, it just was, it seemed to make more sense to me. So when she was moving to Toronto, I was like, Hey, I'll come up, I'll check it out. I'll see what Toronto is like. And it just seemed like a cleaner New York City, it seemed like the people were nicer.The weather was a little weirder, just because you know, so much winter. But you know, I did, I've loved everything about the socialized health care, I think that's really what led me here was not having to worry about that stuff. I hate worrying, I worry all the time about everything. I don't need to worry about, you know, chopping off a finger and then having to choose whether I can afford to get it reattached. Like, you know, these are just weird things that always played in my mind. So when I found a place that, you know, had socialized medicine, I could check that off my list and be like, okay, you know, I think I could do it here. And then when I started looking for jobs, the tech industry was booming here. So I was like, yeah, you know what, I think I could do this. I didn't know that the immigration process was an eight year process. That was really about going back 20 years of your life, recording all of it, and then submitting it to somebody to judge you. I mean, I think I respected that even more that a upper middle class white kid is in now in the same boat, as every immigrant that's coming into the country, whether they speak English, Farsi, Spanish, French, everybody's lumped in everybody's the same, everybody's got to do the same process. There was no easy, easier ways to do it. I mean, I came in with a work permit, and just kept extending it until I could get permanent residents. There were other ways to do it through education. There were, you know, there were opportunities, you know, this big joke about the US is, oh, we're the land of opportunities, except, you know, Canada is really where it's at. They treat everybody equally, until you get past that point. And then then they accept you. And I felt the correlation between Vermont's people and Canadian people are very similar. It's, you know, lovingness, and openness and understanding and that's, that's why I came and that's kind of why stayed.
Akshay Sura
Yeah, so leading up to that, so we're falling as following a storyline now, Andrew, so you've gone through the college. You got a job now you're in Toronto. So a year and a half ago, stuff hit the fan, right, like so stuff happened and unfortunately, they happened at the same time. Could you share with us how leading into COVID how things change for you?
Andrew Hilts
Oh, man, yeah, you want to go to the dark days? I see. All right. So October of 2019. I had just been laid off from Bell, the largest telecom in Canada. And the way they laid me off was they were trying, it was a unionized position, it had great benefits now decent company to work for in that sense got laid off because they were trying to get rid of dead weight. So they were trying to get rid of two of these guys. And the only way they could do it is by getting rid of the last person that came in, which happened to be me at the time. So they laid all of us off, they gave us, you know, decent packages for it, I hadn't worked there long enough to really take advantage. Once I got laid off, I learned that the matching for all the benefits wasn't there anymore, because I didn't work there long enough, you know, these people basically ruined it for me. While I was doing great work, I was getting, you know, all the compliments and all the pats on the back, because I'm a hard worker, and I work overtime when these guys wouldn't. And, you know, and that, that set a really, you know, bad taste in my mouth for you know, and I, I had overlooked a lot of the bad things they were doing, you know, the taking advantage of people. So that really rubbed me the wrong way. I kinda, you know, I was angry at the industry because I had thought I had reached my high point I reached a giant corporation in technology, not construction. And, you know, I felt I finally made it. So once that happened, I was, you know, disheveled I couldn't do anything. I didn't want another job like that. I was really evaluating what I wanted to do. At the time, you know, React was coming to the forefront, Angular JS was dying off. I didn't want to learn anything new. So around December, Dennis approached me and was like, hey, do you know anything about SEO? And I'm like, absolutely not but I'll learn. So got hired by Konabos, started my own company in January, started making a lot of investments that I thought were gonna help my future and then COVID hits and everything tanks. And at the time, my grandma from my mom's side, died, couldn't go see her, I became, you know, ultra paranoid of the whole COVID thing locked myself in my house. So I'm in a major metropolis. You know, turns out I'm in a hot zone of infection rates and homelessness, you know, government prod home housing projects. And, you know, it took a really dark turn and it toke it really fast. You know, I was still working at Konabos I loved what I was doing. I thought I could make it through unscathed. You know, being kind of an introvert. I didn't think anything of it. I, you know, I knew how to order food, I knew how to get all the basic necessities into my life. And, you know, everything kind of just crumbled under me. It was too much. It was too much for one person to take.
Akshay Sura
And you say you're, you're an introvert, but I don't I don't believe you, not the way you are in our meetings anyways. So it was interesting, right? So during that time, you were working heavily with me. And here, here I am having this person who joins the call, cheers everyone up, like the first thing you're joining like, Hello, everyone, and then just just see one person being in a meeting who's very cheery and happy go lucky. Makes a enormous impact on the others. Whether the others are introverted, extroverted, it doesn't matter. It's just the mood setting thing. And most of the time we refer to it as Andrew, can you join this call so that you can pump up the people? Right? So it went from that to starting to notice that things were slipping, you are not as cheery anymore and things went pretty scary to the point where, you know, we were reaching out on the side, not on the meeting circle with other people just to find out hey, you know, are you okay? Are you you know, what's happening? So, when did you notice that there was a problem?
Andrew Hilts
I mean, I've always known, I've always known it, it'd be silly to say I didn't see all the signs, you know, from early childhood to now. It was it's blaring obvious now, but it really was when I just couldn't get out of it. It was I you know, I I find it really funny that one of the requirements to get into Canada is this adaptability criteria. Now they base it mostly off money, but to me, it took a different sense. So I'm adaptable, that's all I've ever been in my life is adapting to situations that most people either don't get the opportunity to have or just couldn't figure it out to be able to handle it anyway. So I adapt, that's what I do. And when things start going south, I kind of you know, pull myself away, try to reevaluate and see what's going on. And when all this stuff was happening, and I'm isolated, I can't go see my family, like that's, you know, normally I'll pick up and run down to, you know, Florida to go see my parents or Pennsylvania to go see my sister. So when that got pulled out from under my feet, I had no escape, I couldn't escape this box behind me, right. And it became to the point where I didn't feel like I could provide more work where, you know, this working hard mentality really wasn't making me happy. And it wasn't helping me in the sense that I'm still trapped in the box. And it took me a long time to even realize what was going on. I mean, you know, I put this front on as being a happy go lucky person, because that's what people like, that's what people need. I know people need that. Like I said, you know, I look for people that need me. That's what I do and when my brightness and cheeriness that is what people need, they need to hear whether I'm happy or sad. It doesn't matter. People need to hear it because a) I need things from them. I need them to be in a good spot so they can do their job. So I can do my job. And everybody's happy, right? Because at the end of the day, finishing the project is what we're trying to do.
Matthew McQueeny
Yeah, I think in life, often, you know, nothing's ever fully realized, right? That's one of the interesting things is like, the minute you think you have it, or you have the answer, the synchronicity has a way to kind of knock it back off. But I am interested in this, this period of time we're in now, you know, it's everyone's dealing with the COVID in their own in their own box in their own way. I always said I was lucky that just happened to be led into a world where I had two kids, a wife and a pretty big box. But But still, it's we're all just like, dealt with this. But I'm very interested in your perspective here. On again, knowing we're not fully realized, but like, what did you do? How did you pull out? was it? Was it time helping to heal it? Were there certain benchmarks that started to hit where you got that good feeling back about things? Like what was that progression like? and you might not be fully there yet.
Unknown Speaker
I mean, for me, it was so after that eight year relationship that got me to Canada ended. I started saying I psychologists, which in my family never really was accepted. It wasn't something people did, like, you know, that was admitting weakness or whatever, you know, silly trope about it is but you know, I started seeing a psychologist, I started talking to people and you know, I went through a bunch of them before I even got a sense of what was going on once that relationship ended. So when I started feeling that again, that's exactly what I did. I called up a psychologist, I was like, hey, I need somebody to listen to me. You know, things aren't going great. You know, and it's silly. I say, they're not going great. But I have a great job, I can work my own hours I can do literally whatever the hell I want. But it was, nothing was making me happy. There was no external forces. There were no internal forces that were, you know, making things all right in my mind. You know, being a smart person and looking around the world and seeing what an absolute trash show it was, you know, with governments getting involved in negligence, like blatant negligence, and, you know, I let the world get in, I guess is kind of how I describe it. I, when you're when you're smart, you see a lot of how these things work. And when I saw, you know, we were the Canadians were promised that we would be fine. Don't worry, guys, like we ordered enough vaccines. The stores will stay open and then the next week, it's like everything's on fire. Like we don't have any vaccines. Everybody's getting sick. We have no plan there. I still don't think we have a plan. So that's not great. But I started internalizing everything and not letting anything out. And, you know, at the, I guess halfway through it, I had just kicked my ex girlfriend out, I was like, you know, this isn't healthy for us. We shouldn't be living together. You know, we broke up a while ago. But you know, in panic, we kind of grouped together so that we didn't go insane and it was great. It was it was a good idea for sure. Because I needed that, that support in the beginning. But when it becomes, you know, she's not employed, I'm employed, I'm trying to get things done. You're just making a mess of the house and you just start fighting back and forth. I was like, Okay, I gotta stop this. But I think that's really when things started to send me off the deep end was, you know. I had just, for good reason isolated myself from everybody. And not being able to talk to anybody about it, and not being able to realize what was going on was really my detriment. So I took time that I asked Akshay for some time, I told them, I had no idea when I'd return, but I need I need to get my life together. Like this isn't I can't survive like this. So all I did, I mean, for the first couple of weeks, all I did was lay in bed and watch, you know, all the Netflix that I hadn't been watching. And then after that it was coming up with projects that were personalized to me things I wanted to do. started painting again, started drawing again, and they still weren't filling that need. So that's when I reached out to a psychologist again and I was like, Hey, you know, I'm really struggling, I'm finally doing literally whatever I want. And it's nothing's making me happy. I still feel the same way. I still feel trapped here and I'm sad. I'm just sad all the time. That was really all it was.
Matthew McQueeny
I'm pretty fascinated by this, one Jersey guy to another, very similar family. I didn't even know you could use health insurance until I got married to a woman who grew up using it and I was like, wait, you can like do all this stuff with health. Because my father was like, never, not never. But like, we just don't go you know, it's like you're basically hacking up a lung and it's like, it'll, it'll settle. Okay, we'll go to the urgent care. Like, I don't think we had primary care, you know, whatever. But I also majored in psychology for college. But I'm very fascinated in like, growing up in that, and then seeking psychological assessment, help. What that what that was like, and how you how your guard had to come down a little probably to be helped by it
Andrew Hilts
Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. Like I like you said, like, the first time I ever got laid off in Canada. I never did employment insurance never did it, never touched it, I thought that was a bad word that, you know, you go on the system, and somebody gives you free money. What I didn't realize was when I finally went on it is it's an encouragement for you to find a better job, you know, they'll give you a percentage of your old paycheck to go pursue a job in the similar or better field. And I had never used it, I thought that was great. And then I found out you could get a job in like three months, super easy from that, right? Because at the end of the three months, you want to work so bad, that you're willing to take anything, but you've also had the time to assess that how much you're worth what you're gonna charge what you know, all those weird things. So taking advantage of any system I wasn't, you know, very keen on in the beginning, but the search for a psychologist I had never done that before. And I had met with two of them charged an arm and a leg and I was like, Okay, this is gonna be really good. This must be quality service if it costs this much. It wasn't. I had one guy that just wrote in a notepad the entire time gave no insight didn't help at all. I was like, Okay, I'm done with this. I can't pay somebody this amount of money if I'm unemployed, went and saw another one. She was a nice lady. She didn't get tech. She didn't understand any of it. So I was like, Okay, I can't relate to that. Finally found this couples counselor. I was like, do you do individual sessions? Maybe that's what I need, you know, my love life a mess, my work life a mess, I need need something something has to be alright. And just through talking through it, talking through everything, right? Why I feel angry at everybody Why, you know, why I can't make decisions? Easy, easy decisions by myself. That's because you know, you, you learn that you've had the support structure your entire life and you kind of just did everything that society expected you to do. You know, if I hadn't done that I'd probably be an artist by now. You know, I be making pottery or sculpture. But the money was never there. So there, that wasn't an option. I just couldn't bring myself to do that. Because I was trying to live up to these unrealistic standards of you know, being an executive that I knew could be done, but you have to work your ass off to get there.
Akshay Sura
Yeah, so unfortunately, with this COVID stuff, it puts a lot of people in a lot uncomfortable positions, especially people who are single, right. So we know a lot of people from our work, who are similar situations to your and I think having a family helps because you see other people you have you sit at the dinner table, right? But being all alone, just locked up cabin fever, not being able to do things. And even though like you guys get on the same game and play, it's different than having human contact, which you're used to. Right, and it just threw a lot of people a humungous curveball. But lately, they've been quite a few like racing figures, very good sports figures coming out and saying, Yes, I do speak with a therapist, there is nothing wrong with it. I need to resolve things in my head space. If you think that makes me crazy, then that's your problem. But it helps me perform. It helps me perform better. It helps me compartmentalize things, right. But it's great. If you're a sports celebrity, you had unlimited cash.
Andrew Hilts
Thats exactly it right, right. If you could afford that $240 an hour shrink? Yeah, sure. Go for it.
Akshay Sura
For you, like did, you know you mentioned socialized medicine in Canada, were they of any help?
Andrew Hilts
No, absolutely not. So I went I originally went through because I thought, you know, maybe the drinking was the problem. Maybe I was drinking too much. And I drank quite a bit. But you know, not to the point where I'm blacking out and fallen all over the place. So I went to one of our like rehab centers and got an evaluation. And I come comes out. Like, they're like, Nah, we actually can't send you to any of these programs, because you'll be surrounded by people that are way worse. And we're afraid that they're going to drag you into their world instead of the opposite of trying to get out of yours. So I thought that was odd. So I looked into the psychology, the free government psychology, it would take three years to get a government psychologist and OHIP certified psychologists. I was like, how many people die every day, because of this three year waiting time? You know, I'm fortunate because I've made all this money. That's in my darkest days. That's what I do, I work, I work, I work, I work and I accumulate this wealth, and then I distribute it, you know, to, to meet my needs. So if I couldn't afford a psychologist, I don't know where I would have been, right?
Akshay Sura
So it's an Android, like, what would you if I was single, similar situation to you are? What kind of suggestion? Would you give that person? Like, how do I recognize that something's wrong? How do I know when to reach out? What is the like, how do I reach out? Who do I reach out to? Like, what do I look for in the person I want to speak to? Like, can you give us some insight into that? Because you've gone through it recently?
Unknown Speaker
I mean, I still struggle with that, right? Because, you know, I don't, a) I hate paying somebody to listen to me, I think that's obsurd. But you know, I have a lot of friends that could probably help. But I, I've always felt that's one of those Debbie Downer subjects that you kind of don't want to bring up with your friends because you don't want to bring them down. But the important part was talking about it, you know, expressing your feelings, being able to talk to somebody about how you feel and finding for me, it was finding people that didn't judge me that didn't give...what I was or who I was, they just liked me because. you're right I'm a bubbly person that has a lot of weird ideas and people like that. So and even if you're extremely introverted, there is somebody out there to talk to you, there's somebody that will get you, and it won't be a burden to them. I think that's really the thing that hit me the most was that friends that I would never expect to reach out to in the subject of, you know, sadness and depression and you know, crying every day were so supportive, like they didn't understand but all you're really looking for is somebody to listen. And, you know, one of my greatest things is, I'll listen to anybody I don't care. You know, I live downtown. I've talked to more homeless people in this neighborhood than anybody else. And it's because I'll sit there and listen, I don't care. I don't care. Whatever, you know, we're all trying to help each other. We're all trying to get better somehow. But definitely talk like the biggest thing is talk to someone, anyone, even if it's you know, the old duck syndrome, where you just talk to a duck talk to it, because you got to get it out. You can't sit on it. I sat on it for three months, and I almost crushed me. So, absolutely.
Akshay Sura
I know you're pretty close to your grandma. Like, how did your grandma, your sister, your parents, like how were they involved when you were going through the darkest times?
Andrew Hilts
I'm not really good at sharing. So they I mean, they could tell, like you said you could tell to like my parents could tell when the conversations were a lot darker, a lot bleaker. And it wasn't, you know, oh, I went out with all my friends and we had a blast. It was a I've been sitting in my apartment for about six months now I've seen the light of day, maybe a handful of times to go get groceries. Like, you know, they could tell. And you know, talking with them about it was great, too, because I didn't realize that, that stigma was long before them. Like that was their parents on them and their parents on them and you have to be tough. And, you know, for my mom, I love my mom, because she was she's always been a feminist as well as my grandma. And they didn't take from people. So when, you know, when they didn't even have rights. My my grandma was out there being like, yeah, you know, we're going to get these, we're going to get them and we can be vulnerable, and we can be ladies about it. But we're going to get this. And that kind of made me feel a lot better about it was that, you know, they didn't care. They didn't care. They cared that I was depressed. They didn't care, the external factors. They didn't care. I was seeing a psychologist. It's not like they, you know, ever openly said no, we can't go see a psychologist it just was we didn't do it. It wasn't talked about it was never discussed until I started bringing it up and then everybody kind of realized, yeah, you know, we're kind of going through the same thing. We're not, we're not feeling all that great either these days. And you know, just talking about it, everybody. I mean, I always go to humor, humor has always been my motivating factor. I love laughter I love smiles. So even in the darkest times, I'm cracking jokes, because to me, that's hilarious. The fact that you can be so severely depressed and not get out of bed and still crack a joke to make somebody else smile is really, you know, it's special. That's something you got to do that.
Akshay Sura
Yeah. And so one of the other things you mentioned, and I don't know how long this is gonna go for, but I'm gonna open the box anyways. You mentioned that you let things in you had to let things in, but not let them out one of the things which I can attest to because I have a similar problem, but maybe a mild one, as opposed to yours is all of the politics and media and stuff involved during the COVID period of time it affected you drastically. And I could tell that because we would have conversations and you'd get pretty riled up about certain things a lot more than myself, I would be like, I that's reality, we just have to deal with it. But you took it a lot more to heart than a lot more people I know. And it affected you in different ways, as well as it affected you in terms of how people in your life family, friends were distanced as a result of that. Could you I mean, and you had mentioned a little bit about, you know, Canada promising vaccines, so did this government on this side. So could you let us in a little bit about your thought process of why do you think it affected you? And how did it affect you?
Andrew Hilts
You know, and that all comes from childhood to like, one of the first things you learn as a kid is that life's not fair and being a curious kid, I was always asking why? Why isn't it fair? Why isn't it fair? Like, why can't it be fair, I thought, we're all here for the same purpose of, you know, living and making life better and I think that's kind of where I recognized my depression starting was when I started researching why things were happening, you know, going back into history to figure it out, you know, finding out why rulers rule and why religions are religions and who follows these people. And it got to a point when COVID came out, where you just, you realize that everybody was lying to you, you know, we had to deal with four years of an orange piece of --- as a president, giving everybody the wrong information and just being a lying piece of ---- and having people not realize that it's like blatantly obvious, and people still support and family, like you said, family members, I've distance every single one of them, because it's not worth my time. It's not worth my time arguing with people that are somehow either brainwashed or so much into their head and their mentality that they can't see the path of destruction this guy is leaving. And it didn't even start there. It was just, you know, I got benched in soccer, the my senior year or junior year of high school because I got sick and missed two practices. And I got benched for the rest of the season. And I didn't find that fair at all. And I asked why. And the guy's like, Oh, well, we need people that are team players. I was like, well, ---- this team then.
These are the people you're looking for. And I saw it in text, and I see it in racism. And I see it in everything that goes on in this world as why aren't there more good people? Why does everybody have to be a backhanded? And to this day, I can't answer it, I can't answer it. And I have found my only way to cope with it is to distance myself, not give them a voice, you know, and I feel a lot of guilt because I helped a lot of this. You know, I worked for ad agencies that were just filling the internet with false information. I worked you know, the OSI bury, oh, my God, the OSI bury. I did so many landing pages for that stupid product. And I learned about reoccurring payments and the marketing behind it, and how you just have to sign up once and then it'll your credit card will get charged every month. And I hated it. I hated it. It went against everything that I stood for in technology. And I do I feel guilt to this day for making those pages and perpetrating this just lie to everybody culture. And it just doesn't make sense to me. You know, the only way that I've seen progress in anything is people being open and honest. So when people are saying, Oh, you know, making jokes like oh, drink bleach, it'll get rid of it. The President, the President of the United States getting on live television, telling people to drink bleach, I lost it. I was like, you can't you can't do that in a civilized world. You cannot do that. And seeing the insurrection. I was like, yeah, we should. This was exactly what's going to happen when you let this keep going. And the fact that people are still following this man drives me absolutely insane, just beyond insane. Because I don't understand at what point, we lost our grasp on science. Did people just get too dumb? Did it get too complicated? You know, part of our job is simplifying extremely complicated things and we failed, we failed if people can't understand basic science. We failed if people can't do you know, can't see absolute corruption at its finest point. And I think the way I kind of dealt with that was I realized, maybe this is what the US needs. Maybe this is how things need to be to unveil. There's blatant corruption, this insanity of you know, people trying to rig elections and then saying, Now this guy didn't win, let's recount everything, and let's spend all our taxpayer but that's really what gets me is all this is funded by us. Like we fund every one of these ---- salaries and there and I feel hopeless, I feel that I can't do anything. I feel like there is nothing that I could possibly do to change any of this and it drives me nuts. So that's where most of my insanity comes from.
Akshay Sura
Yes, indeed. So we're gonna we're gonna start wrapping it up. So this is a final question, Andrew. And knowing what you know, having gone through what do you have, what would you give as an advice to the 18 year old Andrew Hilts?
Andrew Hilts
Oh, God, slow down. First off, you got to seek help. You have to if you if you aren't feeling good, if you are, you know, not getting out of bed, you're not doing the things that do make you happy talk to somebody you have to because the longer it goes on, the more alienated from the actual facts you become because you don't you don't realize what's going on in the moment. But when you're not feeling good, you, you can't be good to anybody else. And just be nice to people. If that's all that anybody takes away from anything, just be nice. Like, you don't have to be a dick. You don't have to be yell at people. I mean, I'm guilty of it all the time. I take my moods out on anybody, because I don't have anybody to listen to me. So. But yeah, just be nice. And seek help when you need it. Like, talk to people about it. Don't be. Don't be scared. Don't be scared to cry in front of people. Like it doesn't matter.
Akshay Sura
Thanks, Andrew. I think I knew most of most of this stuff. But I did get a lot of insight into it. I hope Matt kind of understood a little bit because he doesn't really work with us as much as I do. But he'll get to work with you.
Andrew Hilts
Oh, yeah. I'll join some meetings with you just invite me if you need anybody cheered up
Matthew McQueeny
Pump it up. But ya know, I think it was a really, you were our you were the first inside guest on this on this podcast. And we you know, as we think everybody, everybody has a story, and everybody has something that can help somebody or help many people, when we push our stories out there. So I think it was I think it was really well done. Thank you.
Andrew Hilts
Yeah, no, thank you. It's true. People need to hear it. Right. If, if anything, they need to hear that it's okay to do something else. It's okay to, you know, be somebody else. It's okay to work hard and cry about it at the end of the day.
Akshay Sura
Thank you so much, Andrew, for taking this taking your time. Have a wonderful rest of your day.
Andrew Hilts
You too. Thank you guys.
Outro
Thank you for entering the universe. We hope these discussions gave you something to think about, helped you learn something new and provided a window into someone else's story.
Everyone's story is worthy and important. Until next time, remember to be fair, be kind and never settle.