Life, Values & Legacy: Our Chat with Michael Hunter of Burbank

Michael Hunter shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Michael, a huge thanks to you for investing the time to share your wisdom with those who are seeking it. We think it’s so important for us to share stories with our neighbors, friends and community because knowledge multiples when we share with each other. Let’s jump in: What’s more important to you—intelligence, energy, or integrity?
I am a big fan of the idea that you only have so much of yourself to give. Imagine that all of the effort, energy, time, emotion; all of that is like a full bucket of water. None of us have an infinite amount to give. You may have a big bucket, but it is still a limited amount of resources. Every drop of water you use, is important. You are important, and you are valuable. Therefore, we should be picky about how we give those resources. So when it comes to energy, intelligence, time, etc; to me all of these things have value and worth. It is my goal to be a deserving person, and to spend my resources on people and things that are deserving as well.

I think being a deserving person is having high integrity. To have the ability to take an honest look at yourself and to strive to be someone who you can be objectively proud of. I don’t think you should excuse yourself for your negative qualities. That is just ego covering for shame. I don’t think you should be proud of what you don’t know, or of your bad actions or thoughts. That is just a false sense of security; weakness masquerading as strength. I don’t think you should see yourself as the star of this life, and other people as extras or background actors. That just separates you from others and creates fertile ground for hypocrisy. You won’t treat people fairly if you don’t see them as equals. I also don’t think that you should approach other people for what they can do for you. This is a selfish way to view people. Often this is the result of you trying to fill an emptiness you feel in yourself through what you can take from other people. Each of these qualities makes you detached from truly connecting with other people, and makes it difficult to be honest and face your true self. When you can’t see yourself clearly, you can’t be honest with yourself about who you are. Therefore, you don’t see your own flaws, you don’t challenge yourself to improve, and you don’t become a better version of who you can be. This is the complete opposite of having integrity.

Ego can be a weakness, a defensive mechanism that tries to stop you from holding yourself accountable. Because ego is trying to protect you from self doubt. It is based in the fear that if you are not perfect, then you must be worthless. This is how ego stops you from questioning yourself at all. However, it also prevents you from honest self interrogation, and thus from accountability. On the other hand, the goal should be to put your ego aside, be humble, and strive to be honest with yourself. That is a path to growth, true strength, and connection with other people.

So question yourself. Be honest about what you see, and what you don’t like. Get comfortable self interrogating. Ask yourself why you think what you think, and if you like how you think and why. If you don’t like something about yourself; admitting that is the first step to becoming a better person. Open yourself to learning from other people. Get comfortable saying that you don’t know something. Because, we really don’t know anything. Not knowing is the first step to learning. But pretending you do know, when you don’t, will keep you in the dark forever.

I find that I am most proud of being just another person. I basically know nothing for sure, I am so small compared to the vastness of the universe that it’s like I am not even here at all. I am not the most or least talented, best or worst looking, I don’t have the most or least of anything, I don’t know the most or least of anything. That means I am no more or less valuable as anyone else. Nor more or less worthwhile than a lion or a tree. So now where does this journey of humility leave me? Well now that I know how small I am, how much I don’t know, how equal in value I am to everything around me; now I can decide who I want to be.

I can be accountable for my actions and my words. I can strive to be as proactive and positive as possible. I can be of service, and try to create joy and happiness in every interaction with other people. That is part of what makes me proud of who I am. I like when I can brighten someone else’s day. That is objectively positive. I think the more objectively positive you can be, the more proud you can be of yourself. That is what is most important to me.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Michael Hunter, I run a super fun activity company called Sunny Day Scoot! We provide tours and rides in our 2-seat cute mini-cars that look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book crossed with Mario Cart. The cars are fun and unique, and what makes our experiences special is that you get to drive! So you are in control of the action! All of our experiences guided and kept in small groups, so you get personal attention with top notch service. Sunny Day Scoot is open seven days a week because here in LA everyday is a sunny day! Our mission is to ignite and inspire a childlike sense of wonder and joy. So come be a kid again!

Get in touch with your inner child, come have fun, experience joy, and rediscover the adventure of driving by getting in our wild and silly little vehicles. You get to go sightseeing around Griffith Park, Hollywood, and the famous Studios of Burbank. Of course we share some history, as well as some hidden facts about the area and your favorite movies. However, as you can imagine, the best part is just jumping in these convertible type mini-cars and having fun together on the road for some open air driving! We really mean it when we say, “Life is short, Enjoy the ride!”

The best part of my job is spreading joy and creating a happy moment in peoples lives. I am a big fan of loving what you do. You spend so much time working in life, so it’s so important to enjoy that time. This company has allowed me to combine my love of people with my creative side. Interacting with people from all over the world, as well as being able to meet locals who can visit even more frequently, is basically the best part.

We are all about being a positive force in the community. We make it a priority to partner with local charities to help raise money for great causes including Haven Hills supporting survivors of domestic violence, CASA who advocate for children in the LA courts, LACMA who support the local LA art community, The Tailwaggers Foundation who raise money for rescue animals, One Generation who provide services for seniors and their caregivers, as well as helping local schools to raise money to continue to offer their amazing programs to their students and families throughout the LA areas.

Sunny Day Scoot has been proud to represent Los Angeles in the travel and tourism industry and we have been recognized as a leading experience and activity worldwide. We were featured as one of the most unique ways to experience Los Angeles on the TV Show ABC7’s Eye on LA, and awarded “Best Local Tours in LA” by Expertise.com for seven years in a row! We were recently awarded “Best in California 2023” by New World Report, as well as awarded “Best Tours & Outdoor Activities Provider in California” by Lux Life Magazine five years running! LA Unscripted KTLA channel 5 also featured us as a “Must-Do” outdoor activity in LA for the past four years. We are a top recommendation through Singapore airlines as well as major platforms catering to visitors from Asia and Australia. We were also extremely humbled to be featured in LA Travel Magazine in their Endless Summer issue.

If you are interested in coming out and enjoying the adventure yourself, you can visit our website at www.SunnyDayScoot.com and follow us on social media @SunnyDayScoot to keep up with all the fun, positive vibes, and news!

Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
I’ve always been an empathetic person. Someone who very easily leaned in when it came to trying to understand what other people were going through, and how they might feel about it. It was always my nature to want to help someone in need, to care, and to want to be a force of positivity. I remember a few early instances in my life that really helped focus this disposition into what now has become a pivotal principle of my character.

I remember during grade school seeing a classmate being beat up. It was during recess which was outside after lunch. At my school the first through third graders would have recess on the right side of the field and the fourth through sixth graders were on the left side. This was my fourth grade year so the first year on the left side of the field. I hadn’t seen how this fight started, but as often is the case, kids started to gather over to where the disturbance was.

As I made my way over, off of the grass, and got closer to the school I could see one of the kids in my grade on the ground, which was pavement. He was being stomped on by a sixth grader. But to be honest this sixth grader had been held back a few years, and he was very tall; maybe around six feet. He was just kicking the fourth graders head repeatedly. He was stomping on my classmates head. This was the first time I had seen any type of physical violence in real life. It was horrible.

My classmate was on the ground crying and getting kicked. I felt helpless. It seemed to go on forever before a teacher finally pulled the sixth grader away. I was stunned. I felt like I should have done something, but I was so small, and I was afraid. However, the feeling of shame for not helping while someone was being hurt; that really stayed with me.

I think that moment was a wakeup call. It showed me that safety is just an illusion. That at any random time on any given day, we are all at the mercy of the people around us. This happened in school, surrounded by other kids, and teachers. It showed me that I have a personal responsibility to do the right thing. That if I know something is wrong, or someone needs help, that I should be willing to stand up and help. I think that moment made me feel like I don’t want to be ashamed for not helping someone in need again.

Now of course that was my fourth grade mind, but I think that laid the groundwork for what later became my desire to be a force for kindness and positivity in the world. Though in a practical sense it doesn’t usually play out as heavy and deep as it sounds. I think it morphed into me just trying to spread joy and happiness where I can.

A few years later, in seventh grade, I was in science class; and one of my classmates began to have a panic attack. He started scratching at his hand feeling like he had ants crawling on him. He stood up and was loud which caused the teacher to stop the lesson and everyone to focus on my classmate. It was pretty aggressive and the teacher was clearly overwhelmed and had no idea what to do. My classmate told me that this is something that has happened before. That it is a compulsion, and that he can end up scratching so hard that he will draw blood, but he couldn’t stop. At that point when I realized the teacher wasn’t going to help, I ended up taking control of the situation. I told the teacher to get the nurse. I held my classmates hands and locked eyes and talked to him to calm him down. We did breathing exercises until his hands stopped scratching. Finally the nurse came and took us to her office. By then, my classmate was calm and feeling much better.

I think this was the moment that allowed me to feel like I could be the difference between someone needing help and someone getting help. I felt so strong in being able to help someone in their time of need. But even more than that, I was excepting someone at their most vulnerable. Meeting someone with understanding and kindness instead of fear or judgment made me feel like I was contributing real value. My classmate told me that it made him feel normal and cared about, instead of embarrassed.

The power of being kind when it is easy to lay judgment, and the strength to show compassion when someone else is in need; that is the kind of positive person I aim to be. Of course life isn’t always so dramatic. However, in a small way, we all have a choice at how we are going to interact with the world and other people in it. You can either ignore others, see them as hurdles to get around or enemies to compete against, even see people as opportunities to exploit for your own gain. Or, as my early experiences have taught me, you can see people through the lens of empathy and kindness. Every interaction is a chance to make a positive impact, bring a little joy or happiness to someone’s day, or even share a smile. It may seem unrealistically altruistic, or like way too much effort to put in. However, any possible way of being can eventually become second nature. It’s not really that complicated. Between having no impact, having a negative impact, or having a positive impact; I know what kind of person I choose to be.

When did you last change your mind about something important?
I have always had pride in the way that I allow myself to have emotions, yet not live through them. In my opinion, it is helps me to better see the world as it is, outside of my own involvement in it. This entire process allows me to relate to other people, and to better understand their point of view. In fact it helps me to take stock of many sides of an issue, and only then through critical thought, decide what my view is. By the time I have decided how I feel about a situation, I have gone through quite a lot of debate with myself and thoroughly worked to a well reasoned opinion. To be honest, even then, I still am malleable. I self interrogate whenever new information comes up, and rework my position and opinions. This keeps me humble, honest, and well reasoned.

However, there is a difference between a well reasoned opinion, as any valid position should be, verses an opinion that is simply objectively right. So that is a distinction that I recently learned. Just because you are considering other people enough such that your position is fair, doesn’t mean that it is automatically right for the other person.

I have learned that you should always be true to yourself, fair to others, and choose the path that leads to happiness. I mean that as one complete thought. You can’t let your ego get in the way and let being true to yourself be defined by not being critical of your own position. Because your ego will stop you from working through a well reasoned position. You can’t be fair to others without a well reasoned position. You can’t follow a path leading to happiness if you can’t tell the difference between compromising on a position and contradicting who you are.

Sometimes there is no objective right or wrong. Sometimes people are choosing what is right for them, and not for you. At that point you get to choose if there is room to compromise. Will you give up your position in order to honor theirs? Will they choose to give up their position in order to honor yours? Or is this an impasse, of which both parties can no longer participate?

I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. Is the public version of you the real you?
I don’t believe that you can be truly happy if you are not a consistent person. I mean that who you are from thought, to opinion, to action should all be in line without contradiction. When you pretend to be someone different in public view verses in private life, then that creates dissonance within yourself. You are putting up a facade in order to appeal to certain people or hide certain things about yourself.

If you think that you have to pretend in order to appear more appealing, then that means you are not proud of your true self. On the other hand you could be trying to perform for people that you do not think would value your true self. Either way you are insecure about the person that you feel you genuinely are. This is not the path to happiness. If there is something that you don’t like about yourself, then change it. Don’t just continue being someone that you don’t like, while pretending to be someone that you aren’t. Just work to change the things about yourself that you don’t like. I promise that other people will be much more supportive of someone who is actively trying to become a better person, rather than someone who is lying about who they are.

However, I also believe that measuring your worth based on other people’s opinion of you is a recipe for disaster. If you constantly change based on your assumption of what other people want or expect you to be, then you become a chameleon. An empty shell where a person should be. You will find yourself constantly bending to fit a different narrative at different times with different people. This leaves no room for consistency as you are in constant flux. You will end up disappointing everyone as they see you change away from their expectation while you try to fit others. When you try to contort yourself to please everyone, you end up satisfying no one.

Of course, maybe you are just hiding your true self. So what is it about yourself that you want to hide? I strongly feel that there should be nothing about yourself that at least one person doesn’t know. This is not to say that everyone deserves everything from you all the time. I definitely don’t think that you owe other people indiscriminate access to you. I am merely saying that for your own self worth, there should be nothing that you are so ashamed of, or embarrassed about, that you can not share to at least one person. Again, I am not saying that one person should necessarily know everything about you either. I just mean there should not be one thing that at least one person doesn’t know about you. Because the things that we are too ashamed to share or admit; are the things that we do not love or accept about ourselves.

You should aim to be in a place that you love yourself enough to admit that you are not perfect without allowing that to compromise your feelings of worth and value. There may be things that you are deeply ashamed of, like things that you have done or have been done to you. However by sharing them to at least one person, you take important steps towards healing. You take the power away from the self-doubt, regret, and disappointment. You create more acceptance and empathy about things that have been done to you. Conversely, you are able to use shame and blame as tools to keep you accountable, and help you process your own contributions in a proactive way. Therefore, you increase the odds that you will not repeat actions that you have done that you don’t want to repeat. This is how you face and accept your true self.

You should not be a character in your own life. Life is too short to pretend to be someone else or to hide from who you are.

I try to be a good person. I am not perfect. I don’t think there is such thing as perfect because everyone’s opinions and needs are different. What you might find perfect, someone else may find annoying. Perfect has no meaning to me. Kindness, positive, joyful, empathetic, humble, aware, consistent, reliable; these are words that have meaning to me. These are the things that I try to be both in public and in private. So my pursuit to be the things that I strive to be; that is the real me. The more consistent that I can be in that pursuit, the better person I will end up being.

Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What do you understand deeply that most people don’t?
I would say that I have a profound sense of perspective. It keeps me grounded, accountable, and present in my life. I understand that I know nothing at all. I only think I know things. Those things are based on what I have been told, what I have read, my personal experiences, and how I have internally reasoned through them. So all I really have are well reasoned opinions, but nothing more. That is why I know that I am not better than anyone else, nor are they better than me. We are all equally limited to our exposure and our opinions are shaped by that. A man in a chair sees the world as a man in a chair would see the world. While a fish in a pond sees the world as a fish in a pond would.

This is all to say that I know how small I am, how short life is, how life happens so fast; that it’s basically already over. By all accounts, there can be no measurable meaning, in the way that we commonly use the term, for any of it. Yet in spite of all of that, we still do get the opportunity to experience life. A bite of cheesecake doesn’t have to change the world in order for me to get enjoyment from it.

There doesn’t need to be meaning in everything in order for you to find meaning in something. That is what is amazing. Once you realize how little you are, you can then start to understand how much you can be. We do have the opportunity to experience. We get to use our senses, and our imagination. We can create. We can exist. To the degree that you are able to, and as long as you don’t infringe on anyone else’s ability to do the same, you should experience the world. Not because it means anything at all, but simply because you can, and that should be good enough.

There is very little true value in the stuff that you can find on a shelf. Don’t search for meaning in things. Find meaning in exploring your own thoughts, and connecting with other people. Your life is in this moment. You will never be this particular age, on this particular day, at this particular time again. Go out and experience something joyful, that makes you smile, and brings you happiness. Because your life is worth the experiences you can have, and the people that you can share them with.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sunnydayscoot.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sunnydayscoot/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sunnydayscoot
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/SunnydayScoot
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SunnyDayScoot
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/sunny-day-scoot-hollywood
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@sunnydayscoot
• Other: Tripadvisor: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g32655-d7261559-Reviews-Sunny_Day_Scoot-Los_Angeles_California.html