Transcript

Colin Uthe:

Welcome to Connected, a podcast about the operations and the people that make up Chamberlain Group. I am Colin Uthe and this month we're focusing on an individual that balances both his IT career with his music career.

Colin Uthe:

You're listening to a clip from the ADH experience, a local drumline that includes our very own Jason Givens, who has been with Chamberlain Group for nearly two years now. Last month, Jason messaged me stating that a few of his team members told him it's worth communicating to us that he performed with a world-famous drumline known as the Pack for America's Got Talent. I cannot overstate how casual he sounded giving me this information, but you heard me correctly, America's Got Talent. Today we're going to listen to Jason's experience as a professional in both the IT world and the live performance world.

Jason Givens:

I'm Jason Givens, I'm the lead Cloud systems engineering architect here at Chamberlain Group. I am the guy who helps steer and point companies in the right direction for their Cloud architecture, so I do a lot of lift and shift work, a lot of refactoring "The Five Rs of Migration" stuff, right? Don't get too technical from that perspective but I help organizations bring their on-prem workloads into the Cloud. Most of that being in the Azure space, but over the past seven or eight years at this point, it's been a combination of AWS, Azure, and GCP, Google Cloud Compute.

Colin Uthe:

Can you give me a few working examples of some functions that you've helped out through your work?

Jason Givens:

Oh, sure. I am most likely the infrastructure piece to whatever the operations are doing. So if you look at it from the standpoint of marketing, for example, they're trying to grab data, get it, use it for some type of campaign if they're doing or something like that. In the abstract, I don't directly contribute to that, but indirectly I am creating a lot of the source material that they're using. I'm helping do the collection. Think of event hubs or something like that. I'm helping grab the data, pull it in, and I'm helping corral the data and make it usable with, say, the advanced analytics group or the decision intelligence group as they're called now, and I helped that process.

Colin Uthe:

How did you get involved with this line of work?

Jason Givens:

I've been doing IT since 2010 I think, was my official thing? In high school I played around with it a little bit like that, did a little bit of college, did not do the whole college thing. Did a slight little bit of college and broke into doing cabling and entry-level IT support. But on the physical side, installing in ceilings with J hooks and doing different kinds of cabling jobs like that. And that eventually turned into me saying, "I hate this," but I like the computer aspect of it.

Colin Uthe:

Those jobs are very, very physical. Way more than anybody would ever think.

Jason Givens:

One million percent. Originally I thought it was going to be you get in, there's going to be some old guy that's going to be your mentor and grow from there. That eventually did happen but not at my first couple of jobs. I did ... There's a program called "Put Illinois To Work" back in 2010, and that spring-boarded me into doing some work for some of the churches that I grew up in originally. And I landed in my first official big IT gig in 2014. I was a help desk person but for virtualization software. So I did a lot of VMware work.

Jason Givens:

I came in as an entry level tech and I met my mentor there. His name is Lee Evans. He's still at the company. They're called Roadie now. He's been my mentor for probably, I don't know, eight or nine years at this point I want to say. He was like, "You don't want to do help desk forever." I said, "No." He's like, "Well, do these couple of things and you'll get promoted to the next level." And from talking to him over time, he's been like ... He tells a lot of people that story but they never actually do it.

Colin Uthe:

But it's a springboard, like you had said.

Jason Givens:

Yeah.

Colin Uthe:

Yeah.

Jason Givens:

And once I actually did it, he was like, oh, he's actually serious. I did it in two months. He's like, get your A Plus, study Net Plus. Whatever. He blew me off. He told me this after the fact, years later. He didn't expect me to do any of it. I knocked it out of the park. Actually officially got the cert in two or three months. He said, okay, cool. Next level for you. Let's get you moved up. But I think that I lucked up and that I picked a passion that I enjoyed to do for my career originally. Real similar to drumming. Even if I weren't doing it professionally, I would still probably be doing some level of computer IT work on the side. Just in the same way as how right now I do drumming on the side but I'm ultra professional from the drumming perspective.

Jason Givens:

I have credentials that are 15 years long from different things that I've been doing in the drumming space. So I took it serious but not serious enough to convert it into a job. Whereas the IT portion of it, I live and breathe it at this point. I'm the guy ... I don't consider it work. I'll put it to you like that. The stuff I do here, work. When I'm at home, I'm doing something similar, but that's just fun to me. I've just been that way since I was really young.

Colin Uthe:

I completely get that. It's funny how ... and I have context with this because I'm the same way that music and computer science have the same sort of romantics around it. It's really easy to fall in love with that and just in your free time, the rabbit hole is eternal with that kind of stuff.

Colin Uthe:

So when did the drumming start?

Jason Givens:

I can give you the exact time. When Drumline movie came out is when it happened for me. I think that was 2003. My freshman year of high school was 2004 and that's when I joined the drumline at my school. I went to King College Prep in the city, and prior to that, I had watched the Drumline movie and it was like, "I've got to do this. I've got to do this. I have to do it." I lucked into going to a high school that their band ... Most schools, the jocks run the school. The band runs King. It still does to this day, as far as I know, from talking to contacts that are still there. The band is the group that you want to be in at that school. They won All-City, different kinds of All-Star band things and stuff like that. But I got into the school. You have to test in. I tested into the school. Really enjoyed some of my time there, but that really opened up the drumming door for me where I was able to get education from people who had been doing it for a while.

Jason Givens:

Because I was trying to self-teach myself. Majority of my drumming career was self-taught. I did drum corps right out of high school. I marched the Racine Scouts, so DCI, Drum Corps International. Then you have DCA, like Drum Corps Associates. That's the music major leagues. You've probably heard of it. I don't know if the people on the podcast might've heard of it or whatever. It was probably one of the hardest summers of my life. Move-ins in May. You move into the group. You audition throughout the winter season. They give you a little bit of music to learn before you get there. But it's a purely physical activity. This is more ... Obviously the music is important. Obviously you're being educated by amazing, talented musicians that are teaching you how to do the craft. You're doing a marching percussion music sport. It was on ESPN for four or five years before they-

Colin Uthe:

Are you serious?

Jason Givens:

-dropped it off. It was definitely on there.

Colin Uthe:

That's cool.

Jason Givens:

I think maybe 2004 to 2008 or nine. I did 2009 singing with the Racine Scouts Open Class. It's May to August, with finals happening at the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indiana. You travel the country, you're on a tour bus the entire year ... summer rather. And I'll never forget those days.

Colin Uthe:

How does ... At what point do the computer science parts weave into this? Were you juggling both of these passions at once?

Jason Givens:

Sort of. So I did not finish high school. I did three years, dropped out, went to Job Corps originally to focus on getting a trade. Because I was like, I don't want to go the college route. I had seen a lot of people ... I'm from Englewood in Chicago. I'm from the south side of Chicago. I moved out of that eventually later, but I had seen a lot of people with the goal of let's just go to college and let's come back and you'll be able to do something with your life. But from watching people around me do that for generations, a lot of them came back and did not achieve what they originally set out to do. They came back with a degree but they didn't come back with a job. They didn't come back with any political savviness. No ability to make connections with people beyond where you live originally. And I didn't want to go that route, and high school was a bit of a crutch for me.

Jason Givens:

I was on 76th & Loomis traveling all the way to 45th & Drexel, which is an hour and a half on a bus every day, each direction. I gave up on that, dropped out, went and did this thing. While doing that, I'm still drumming the entire time. While doing that., I'm still focusing in on IT stuff the entire time. I'm just juggling both and doing all these different things. Eventually came back from there to here. Went to Richard J. Daley College for a community college because I was like, okay, I've got to get some type of education. Let's focus in on computer science stuff that they have there. Did that. Didn't like programming at all. I think I'm good at it now, 15 years later. Whatever it is.

Colin Uthe:

Okay. It's not a gateway way for everybody. No.

Jason Givens:

Yeah. But it definitely was like, okay, let's learn object-oriented programming and that was like snores-ville for me. I couldn't deal with that. I could not deal with it.

Colin Uthe:

Yeah. What's the matter? You don't like staring at lines of code for six to eight hours a day?

Jason Givens:

Exactly. It wasn't for me. Now? Yeah, because I have a really good fundamental understanding of it, so I enjoy it now. You know what I mean? But before it was like I couldn't tell you what a for-loop was. All the basic things that you probably should know now or figuring out what an array is or all kinds of things like that.

Jason Givens:

In 2010, I eventually got a job doing the cabling stuff that I was talking about and I transformed that into additional IT work. But while I did that, I had always had contacts with Adam Hill at Romeoville High School, and he's a professional educator, but he does the Chicago Bulls drumline. He did the Chicago Bears drumline. He did a whole bunch of other things like that. They eventually reached out to me after a couple of years, like, "Hey, Jason, you marched Drum Corps. You're really good. We're this exclusive group with the Bulls." Because they didn't even used to have open auditions. It was the people who knew each other, they're really good. We bring in other people that are good. They're like, "Jason, you're really good at this? Let's have you try it out." Prior to that, I had auditioned for the Bears, I think in 2011 to 2012, for their drumline. Because it had been going on for a while. Got cut. Which is, there's definitely failure in this story. It's not always been a good thing all the way through.

Colin Uthe:

Oh, sure. Yeah.

Jason Givens:

But eventually I got accepted into the group after a year or two of auditioning out. Most of it was the drumlines that are part of these professional sporting events groups, they want you to be able to move, and I was very rigid in the beginning. It's one thing to be able to go out and dance with your friends and have a good time. It's another thing to be able to put on a 30 pound drum and be able to dance and entertain and move the crowd. So got that experience and that skill. Transition that to the Bulls after being a part of the Bears at the same time, and we just grew that relationship. And all while doing this, I am trying to find an IT job the entire time that I'm there. Definitely more of a passion than a driving thing to get my career going.

Colin Uthe:

I mean, to take both of those things to the lengths that you did, you really have to be madly in love with both of those things.

Jason Givens:

I am.

Colin Uthe:

Yeah. And I can see that. I can hear that in your tone describing it to me. That's just really impressive. I also share a passion for computer science. I also share a passion for music. I have never in my life been able to balance them at the intensity-

Jason Givens:

Make it happen!

Colin Uthe:

-that you have. I mean, I'm happy where I'm at. I really, truly am. But that's just really impressive. So you said you took that experience from auditioning and then did you say you successfully made it onto the Bears drumline eventually?

Jason Givens:

It was the Bears first and then the Bulls afterwards. I auditioned for the Bears twice before I got in and took that into the Bulls. But I got invited into the Bulls. But it was a really good time. Both of those things are closed chapters in my book now in 2024. Through those connections back then, we've grown into different groups. Like Adam Hill has ADH experience right now and he runs a group where those of us who were part of the other organizations and groups, we join up with other events that are happening. So I've done probably over a hundred corporate gigs at this point. It's like if Chamberlain wanted a group to come in and entertain them, they would contact Adam Hill's group where he would reach out for this.

Colin Uthe:

Yeah. But careful saying that because someone's going to hear it and they're going to ... Yeah, you're going to work 101 shows.

Jason Givens:

That'll be an interesting one, especially because I work here. I did Aspen Dental, and there's no NDA for this. A lot of them do have NDAs. But we did an Aspen Dental gig maybe like three or four years ago right before the pandemic. We showed up, walked the CEO down an aisle, played some tunes for him, got the crowd hyped, and did a whole bunch of fun things for the groups there, and it's just a different experience. It's not at all the original... how I was originally drumming. It's evolved entirely to an entertainment thing. We still want to play clean, we still want to play well, but it's more about making a connection with the people in the crowd. If you ever had issues with having eye contact with somebody, it immediately disappears. We start to do this thing. Because it's a requirement for the group. I did ... Kygo was the last time I did Lollapalooza, which was phenomenal. We ended out the day on Saturday night.

Colin Uthe:

That's cool.

Jason Givens:

Probably 40, 50,000 people right there in front of us watching us perform. We have pyro everywhere going crazy. It was a really, really fun event. Those things for ... Most people probably find those more stressful. Those things I love. Those kind of events are always great because we can get in the crowd. The crowd loves us there. They're giving us the energy for us to perform well. So even if you're not feeling good that day, you just feel good that day.

Colin Uthe:

Like they make you ... Yeah.

Jason Givens:

Hundred percent.

Colin Uthe:

They cultivate that.

Jason Givens:

A hundred percent.

Colin Uthe:

It's already been mentioned but you have just gotten back from a taping of playing in Las Vegas with America's Got Talent.

Jason Givens:

No, no, no. Hollywood.

Colin Uthe:

Hollywood. America's Got Talent.

Jason Givens:

Hollywood, California.

Colin Uthe:

The Las Vegas of California, as they say. I want to hear all about it. I can only imagine that sort of feeling being in a production of that size and weight. So this was a fantasy league season, so it was people who have previously been on the show, sponsored by one of the judges. Back and even further, how did you get on board with the Pack?

Jason Givens:

Yeah, because I'm not ... So I'm a Pack member because you ... Pack for life. That's their whole thing. But my guy, Adam, who has been around my drumming career basically from the beginning at this point I want to say, he gave me a phone call, I want to say in maybe April of last year, and was like, "Hey, do you want to do a gig?" And I said, "No." Because most of the-

Colin Uthe:

End of story.

Jason Givens:

Yeah, most of the time, I don't know, especially now that my career has taken off in such a different direction, at one point in time, if you say, "Hey, you want to do a gig? It's paying 50 bucks. They want you for three or four hours." I'm like, yeah, let's do it. Now it's like, ah, you're paying 50 bucks? No, I'll pass. So I had been going through a period of declining a lot of gigs. But he called me and was like, "Jason, I want you for this gig." And I told him, no, like usual. And he was like, "Well, let me give you a little bit of a background. You know Perry?" And I'm like, "Perry Dante?" He's like, "Yeah, Perry from the Pack." I'm like, "Yeah, I know him." We've interacted with them over time. He said, "Well, hush-hush. We are doing a thing with their group and I want you to be a part of the two guys that are coming in. There's going to be just me and him."

Colin Uthe:

And so for some exposition, the Pack has been around for a while, right?

Jason Givens:

Oh, yeah.

Colin Uthe:

They're a Chicago based purebred Chicago drumline that has been performing pretty much all around the city, all around the world, for 10 years.

Jason Givens:

At least 10 years. They have the official numbers somewhere. Those guys reached out to Adam, Adam reached out to me. I eventually said yes when they brought up the America's Got Talent piece. And they want to fly us out to Hollywood at some point in the near future to do a taping for a show that doesn't exist yet and no one can know about it. And we're going to get you an NDA and tell no one.

Colin Uthe:

So they called you to join ... to play with a group that you haven't had the opportunity to play with yet on a televised event that they could tell you nothing about. And they just said, it's going to be awesome.

Jason Givens:

I trust Adam.

Colin Uthe:

Just trust Adam.

Jason Givens:

I trust Adam.

Colin Uthe:

And you did!

Jason Givens:

I did!

Colin Uthe:

And what happened after that?

Jason Givens:

It was a lot of conditioning. Due to the physicality of the show, you saw people flipping, we're doing all kinds of dancing, we're doing all kinds of things like that. We started out with a lot of regimented exercise courses while we were starting out the whole business. Then we pulled together a show. And I'll give you a little bit of the background here. We didn't know that this is a fully in AGT thing yet. We just had an idea that Universal was doing something. We also didn't know what group we would be a part of. We didn't know that it was a Fantasy League thing.

Colin Uthe:

Okay. Yeah. The whole sponsorship thing.

Jason Givens:

Yeah, we didn't even know that Simon was selecting us, for example. We just knew we were going to pull together a show. Which by the way, the show that we pulled together never ever made it to air, but we had a different mentality.

Colin Uthe:

How many hours did you spend choreographing?

Jason Givens:

Ohhhhhhh.

Colin Uthe:

I'm sure there's a graveyard of different acts that never made it to television.

Jason Givens:

There's probably dozens at this point. Because we showed up for I want to say maybe a couple of days out of the week, including weekends, from, I want to say maybe May until August-ish, right in that area, right before August. And then it was at the end of July, I think the beginning of August, where they officially gave us the information. We signed an NDA with Universal, which is "for perpetuity of the universe, we own your act," which is legal language, by the way. It's literally written into the NDA.

Colin Uthe:

Oh my gosh.

Jason Givens:

If you go to space, we own it there too.

Colin Uthe:

That is intense. Okay.

Jason Givens:

It's some serious business in that context.

Colin Uthe:

All right. So the Pack cannot play that same show on the moon. Got it. All right.

Jason Givens:

Never. Or we pay them. One or the other. One or the other. It was probably like the middle of July, end of July or something like that. We got a call. They wanted us to show up. We didn't know what group was going to select us but we knew it was Fantasy league. We found out it was going to be Simon. So we had a call with Simon for one of our rehearsals and he congratulated us. He selected us for his group. He really thought we were going to go far, which second place, not bad.

Colin Uthe:

Not bad.

Jason Givens:

Not bad. But it was a really astonishing time because while we were working on all of these pieces and they were making these decisions in the back end for how they want us to be presented on TV, we were sending them videos of the footage of what we were doing. And for months they were like, this is great. Two or three weeks before we went out there, they were like, it's not great anymore. Kill it all. Here's new music. We don't want you to use that music anymore. Because there's rights to all of this stuff. The political aspect for the music rights is insane. Because they had been on the show before, which makes a significant difference, you know what the audience is looking for. So when we performed the show, we performed the show in a way to have cameras fit into everything. Normally you're presenting the show to the crowd-

Colin Uthe:

Oh. You choreographed it so you can physically fit a camera in between certain-

Jason Givens:

Yes.

Colin Uthe:

Okay.

Jason Givens:

Literally. We opened up certain formations that we were doing to allow for a camera to fit in before we even got to Hollywood, which made a lot of the work so much easier. The first time the Pack went there, they killed the show the week of the show again, which is ... It's standard in this case.

Colin Uthe:

Because your act didn't work for television.

Jason Givens:

Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Colin Uthe:

That's amazing context.

Jason Givens:

Exactly. It needs to work for TV because that's the audience. The audience that's there, they're loving it too. They see what we're doing too. But the camera is the focal point for everything that we're doing. So normally if you do a gig, I'm picking people in the crowd, I'm looking at them in the crowd. I'm trying to make a connection with them. None of that matters.

Colin Uthe:

Camera.

Jason Givens:

Camera.

Colin Uthe:

Yeah. That's it.

Jason Givens:

Camera. One million percent, it's camera. Always camera. But since they did it before, we knew going in to expect this. So we did that thing once they ret-conned the show again, we got there, we got a new show. Finished out the show that for the first performance in a week I want to say or something like that. We're all really good professionals, so it's not the hardest thing for us to pick up a lot of that stuff. A lot of late nights, a lot of push until three o'clock in the morning to wake up at five o'clock in the morning to go perform for eight hours. A lot of rehearsals, a lot of good time. Went to Simon's mansion. Had a good time there. He offered us his swimming pool. A lot of really cool stuff happened during that time period. But yeah, we killed it on the show. I personally think that the first one that we did, best one. I'm in it. It was a good time.

Colin Uthe:

How do you make it all work? I mean, how do you-

Jason Givens:

Perry makes all of that work. Let me be clear. Perry is the leader of the Pack.

Colin Uthe:

I know, but just how does Jason do his job at Chamberlain group so passionately that as you do it-

Jason Givens:

Because I'm really good at my job.

Colin Uthe:

Yeah, I can tell. I can see that. So you do work remote and I imagine that probably helps with traveling and being able to handle gigs not in the immediate area.

Jason Givens:

Yeah, significantly. I think I've been doing it for so long, this is just cemented in who I am at this point. So when I'm at home, I'm drumming. I just am. And that's probably one of the perks of being at home, being a remote employee. I'll be working on some tasks. I'm doing some architectural tasks. Right now I'm building out an Azure DevOps pipeline and I'm thinking about how to do different things. And because I can hit that state of nirvana just from drumming, I can make my brain stop thinking from doing drumming. I can make it focus on that thing. I'll just pull out the pad and play for 10 minutes or something like that.

Colin Uthe:

For sure. Yeah.

Jason Givens:

I obviously can't do that here in the office. Productivity down. But at home I can just whip out the pad and start playing something and oftentimes it helps me focus a little bit more on what I'm actually trying to do for the job.

Colin Uthe:

Yeah. Loosens up your brain a little bit,

Jason Givens:

Literally. So I can work on different things that I'm doing from a music perspective at home. And I think I'm probably really good with time management. I often will finish my workday out, have an hour to plan for specifically I'm drumming today. I know that I'm doing that today. I have it regimented. I have it written down in my calendar or whatever. I'm getting that thing done. I have different tasks. I want to learn this thing.

Jason Givens:

I'm a big proponent of John Savill from Microsoft. I have a ton of Microsoft certs and I'll just have time in my calendar to do those things. And it normally just works out. And I'll have tons of time in the day for free time because if I'm done at work at five or four, whenever it is, if I'm at home, I don't have to deal with the commute. So by 6:30, 7 o'clock, I've done all of the things I need to do to keep my hands fresh for drumming or from a studying perspective. Then I still have six or seven hours left in a day. So it works out really well for me. From that perspective.

Colin Uthe:

Are there any elements that you can take from your music career and apply them to your job here?

Jason Givens:

Actually, yeah. When I first got into drumming, I just did it all the time and I didn't really have a structured approach to any of it. Most of the things I do now have a structured approach and I'll structure free time for four hours is fine too but-

Colin Uthe:

Mandatory, don't think about anything time, between the hours of 3:15-

Jason Givens:

Yeah. To me, that's not crazy. To other people, maybe a little bit. Maybe a little bit. But when I first started drumming, I had that mentality where I just did it. And then once I got into the drum corps part where I was getting ready to get into the real serious stuff, becoming regimented in my approach was way more important. And that's something that they teach you when you start to travel with these groups. Even in the lower level groups, you need to spend X amount of time doing this thing to make sure that you can get better. And from the beginning, I was doing it, but I got really serious about it. Simple stuff like eight on the hand where you play eight beats on one hand and eight beats on the other hand. Most people forego the basics and they just want to work on the hard stuff. I spent so much time in the beginning, and I'm talking crazy time where my mom would be pissed, yelling at me, "Stop doing the same thing for two hours."

Colin Uthe:

Oh, the woodshed?

Jason Givens:

Yeah. Literally. 100%. But you get so ... If you enjoy it and you have a passion for it, you can get lost in that. And I'm eight on a hand for 120 beats per minute, two hours. I knock it out and it happens. And then you start to build upon that, and then later on you don't have to do two hours of it anymore. You're really good at it now. You can do a five-minute warm-up session. You can play it like you were playing back in high school or something like that. So now I'm at that point where I've figured out how to isolate and do things, I don't want to say properly, but in a more regimented way, where I'm getting the best bang for my buck for my time. And I do that with a lot of my approaches when it comes to IT stuff in the same way.

Jason Givens:

So I took that to how I study. Before it was, let me just read this passage, just spend as much time as you can on it, blah, blah, blah. I do not do that anymore. Not even close. If I'm learning a specific task, I'll make it bite-size or CBT Nuggets is a company that does this kind of stuff. Make it a nugget sized approach. And I'll approach that one thing, do 20, 30 minutes of it, do an applied exercise for it, and then stop. And then the next day I'll come and approach it again. And I don't beat myself over the head with it at all. I used to do that. You can get results from doing that. I have way better results across the board from music and pretty much everything else in my life if I do a small amount of it and then take a break.

Colin Uthe:

I mean, our attention spans are not built to last longer than 15 minutes or so.

Jason Givens:

Maybe so.

Colin Uthe:

Yeah.

Jason Givens:

Maybe so.

Colin Uthe:

That definitely works.

Colin Uthe:

What is in the near future for you for both from an IT perspective and from a musician perspective?

Jason Givens:

Music perspective. So there's a group called Two Friends and they gig a lot. They just did the Big Booty Bash. That's literally the name of it.

Colin Uthe:

Ha ha, Elaborate.

Jason Givens:

Ha ha, it's a performance that they got together and did with a whole bunch of other groups. They're a combination of Tom Benko and Adam Hill. So the ADH experience. And Benko's from the Blue Man Group.

Colin Uthe:

Oh, cool.

Jason Givens:

And they get together and they do music gigs but not corporate. Think more like a, not Taylor Swift, but like a Taylor Swift concert and they show up and do-

Colin Uthe:

Like a big arena pop-

Jason Givens:

Yes. Yes. Literally. And they show up and do that. They were just in Europe a few months ago. They've got a couple of gigs going on here. And this summer they have a lot of stuff lined up and I've been like, Adam, I don't have an outlet for drumming anymore. Buying my outlets for drumming is dried up. If the Pack doesn't want me right now, then I need to do something. It's always falling back to Adam and he's like, we've got a couple of things coming up with Two Friends. We'll see about that. Some of the guys were just in ... and I can give you the link to this stuff too. They just did the commercials for ... I think the company's called Benefit, the mascara or makeup company. And they have big eyeliner pencils that are shaped like drumsticks. And the people from my group just did the commercial for that. So it's a really cool thing that's happening. But future from that perspective, probably doing more gigs there. I used to teach at Waukegan High School actually. I did a year there.

Colin Uthe:

Oh, no kidding.

Jason Givens:

I did a whole year there teaching the drumline. Some of those kids went on and did a lot of cool stuff in the music area. Teaching is tough. I don't know if that's for me.

Colin Uthe:

You strike me as somebody who operates at Jason's speed and you may not ... If somebody needs you to change up your pacing a little bit, that throws you off your balance a little bit.

Jason Givens:

Yeah. I won't disagree with that. I definitely can function at different speeds but you are 100% correct in that. I want to function at my speed. I don't want to have to adjust what I'm doing for you, which makes it harder to do mentorship things. Because there are certain people that ... Over time I've helped a couple of my guys break into IT. But I want them to do certain things and you can't force people to do certain things. I'm like, oh, your career can explode if you do this. And they're like, well, I want to just sit here for two years. And it was like, just do this thing and you can explode your career. And they're like, but I really want to sit here for two years.

Colin Uthe:

Wrapping it up, I am just wildly impressed with your discipline and your passion-

Jason Givens:

Thank you.

Colin Uthe:

-for both of these two things. And I'm really, really glad that Chamberlain Group sees the value in people like you with that kind of brain built to master both of those things and gracefully at that. So congratulations to you-

Jason Givens:

Thank you.

Colin Uthe:

-just for coming as far as you have, and I'm looking forward to hearing about what's next for you.

Jason Givens:

Thank you so much, Colin. I appreciate it.

Colin Uthe:

Thank you for listening. Tune in next month to hear more stories about all of us at Chamberlain Group are connected. This episode was written, recorded, and edited by me, Colin Uthe. Our producer is Jim Kozyra. Our music was provided by soundstripe.com.