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You need to hear the bad news first. The results of STEM outreach to girls haven’t improved in 20 years. The good news, my next guest will tell you why, and how to fix it. Currently, dated narratives push girls away in fear and blind spots, resulting in missed opportunities to pull them in. While efforts to increase diversity in science and mathematics have succeeded, outreach has largely ignored engineering.

Welcome to the Author Hour podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty. I’m joined by author, Julie Newman, who’s here to talk about her new book called Pull Don’t Push: Why STEM Messaging to Girls Isn’t Working and What to Do Instead. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, friends, and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m here with a special guest. Her name is Julie Newman. Julie, thank you so much for joining me today. I’m really excited to talk about you and your wonderful new book called Pull Don’t Push. How are you feeling today?

Julie Newman: Doing great. Thanks so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes. I got to tell you, when I was doing a little bit of research about you, poking around the internet, and I was blown away as I shared a little bit earlier. I immediately – when I find remarkable people like yourself, I immediately send them to like my nephews and nieces because they inspire me and I think they’re beautiful human beings. They always love those little texts and things that I send them. You started off — this was earlier this morning — you started the morning off really strong. One of my nieces is getting ready to go into university, and she’s trying to figure out what to do. So I know your work will sort of enlighten her path, so I just want to say thank you for that.

Julie Newman: Absolutely. Connecting the content with girls like your niece who can utilize it to really learn all the information they need, to pick a really good path for them. That’s what we’re here for.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yes, I love that. Your book is filled with so many beautiful experiences and stories. But before we get into that, I would love for you to share a little bit about your personal background, perhaps where you grew up, and what got you on this remarkable path of becoming not only an engineer, but someone who is working at NASA, and SpaceX, and all the remarkable things that you’ve done. I want to know who inspired that or what inspired that. That’s beautiful to me.

Julie Newman: Absolutely. Growing up, I had interests in a lot of things like most kids. I super – I enjoyed school, I liked my classes in general, and then I like doing sort of crafty projects and things in school. That grew into – I didn’t actually know the word engineering, but knowing where I am now and what the problem I’m trying to solve is that, honestly, a lot of girls don’t hear the term engineering and so they don’t know to even look into it. Growing up, I expressed a lot of the interests that really align with a future engineering career, but no one was using the word.

Just going back to the beginning, I grew up in San Diego, California. Had two older brothers, lovely parents who were super supportive, grandparents that lived next door. Really a wonderful time growing up. One of my biggest activities, when I was younger, was a science competition called Science Olympiad. This is a nationwide competition where there’s a bunch of different events centered around sciences, and actually engineering things, even though it is called Science Olympiad and engineering is nowhere in the title of any of them. But building things like little robots, or model airplanes, or model rockets. That was my jam when I was little and really my entire extracurricular activity through both middle school and high school.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s amazing, yes.

Julie Newman: Yes, it’s a fabulous organization. One of my top blurbs on the back of the book is Jenny, who runs the organization today nationwide, absolutely love them. I’m actually now a volunteer for them too, and so I’ll be flying out there for the national competition in a month.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:So fun. What a full circle too.

Julie Newman: Yes, exactly. The point of this book really is to give back and to make sure that more girls do learn about engineering and make sure that they can make those connections. Because in all honesty, we look at the current landscape and engineering – you look at the sciences, and everyone here is like, “Oh, we need to get more women into STEM. We need to get more women in STEM.” Most people read into that and think it’s scientists, right? What does a scientist look like? All those sorts of things and that’s great. But if you look into the numbers of it, actually, we’re already essentially 50% in most science disciplines.

But by comparison, if you look at engineering; engineering, the workforce is still at 14% women. In all honesty, when you look at it, the characteristics of a career in engineering really align very well with what girls say they want out of careers, and it’s just that they don’t know that they can find that in engineering.

The Importance of Role ModelsHussein Al-Baiaty: That’s really powerful. In your opinion, what are those blind spots then in STEM, specifically around outreach? I know you talk a little bit about this in your book, which I thought was really cool. Those outreach efforts that result in those missed opportunities to pull those girls in. Where is the communication not happening and where can we strengthen that?

Julie Newman: Absolutely. The classic I like to point to is, all the kids have science classes in school, but very, very few of them have an engineering class, right?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes.

Julie Newman: So to that nature, they don’t, they simply don’t interact with it. But the strongest thing that we can do in this domain is the extracurriculars, is particularly these outreach events that are targeted whose goals, their stated goals are to help more girls find themselves in careers in STEM for their futures. These events can be so effective, and we’ve seen that – I work with the LA County Office of Education. We have an annual event called Engaging Girls in STEM Program, where we invite hundreds of girls from the local school districts.

What we do is help them interact with professional women in STEM, and less largely a lot of engineers. The irony is that we push a lot of girls towards the sciences, and in reality, there’s more than double as many jobs in engineering for them than there are in the sciences. Not to mention that girls really in today’s market are a really hot commodity when it comes to having companies want to hire them into these roles. It’s because they excel at them, and it’s a really good fit for them.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, that’s really powerful. I mean, I think in the idea of positioning the messaging in a way that gets through, like – I think a lot about how, for example, I was reading a few articles last week about just how TikTok looks different than it does for us here in the US, than it does in China, for say. I know you’ve heard these stories before, but it’s not just TikTok. It’s just our social media in general, and how we’ve sort of positioned men, women, girls, boys, just all the different elements in where we’ve seen.

I’ll be honest, as a young Arab kid growing up in America, and [being] very artsy I was like, that is how I communicated with people for a long time was art. One of my teachers brought me – I was literally in fifth grade, I barely spoke good – I came to America when I was in third grade and I didn’t know any English, right?

Julie Newman: Oh, wow.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: One of my teachers, because I was obsessed with drawing, and I would just doodle throughout class, because half the time I didn’t know what the hell is going on, to be honest. She was so cool in that she brought me this piece of paper that just said, “Write a book competition.” It was an illustrative, whatever, it was just this national – I didn’t even know that it was national. I thought it was just homework, you know what I mean? I literally made this book, drew out these kids, and character, and all these things. She even went ahead and submitted it for me. My book got chosen as like top 100 – it was crazy.

Julie Newman: Wow. Congratulations.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Thank you. I was very young, and I didn’t know what was going on. But that opportunity would have not happened had I not had someone sort of show me the way, at least put the piece of paper in front of me. “Take this home,” those kinds of things. Then when I grew up, I started speaking at different high schools and middle schools because I wanted to see people like me who look like me and sound like me also go in front of a class and show the kids in the back who are refugees and immigrants, that they too can start doing things, going architecture school, go into graphic design. It was just like, how can you present?

Julie Newman: Yeah. I love that so much.

How to Talk About EngineeringHussein Al-Baiaty: Yes. For me, it was all about who you see do that thing can inspire you. We want to see in-person talk to in-person who we could potentially be. Because then, you kind of see yourself in them. I love your positioning and that we want to get these girls around who they can be like, who they can look up to. That is really powerful. Can share a little bit about that? Can you tell me a story about maybe a woman who was successfully around you, in your life, in your career that kind of helped you get to thinking about STEM? I know you’re obviously already involved, but someone that really pushed that out of you, if you will in your career.

Julie Newman: Yes. I really want to bring it back to the importance of these role models, and the surprising impact that one interaction can have. You had your teacher helped you with this one task, and that really helped you along this path. That’s why I wrote this book – it’s not a book written to the girls. This is a book written to the teachers, to the outreach coordinators, to the school administrators, the museum coordinators, all that good stuff. These are the people where their efforts – if they can get the marketing right, they can have such an exponential impact on all of the kids that they interface with.

That’s why this book really is written as helping teach the teachers so that they can be effective. I see when I interact with so many volunteers, and I have so many great friends who – their career, right? I’m an engineer coming in and volunteering. But for all of these teams, where it’s their career is running these outreach events. They are in their working blood, sweat, and tears, and they care so much. What I want to do is to help them so that they can work smarter and not harder. It’s no fun to have to work, and work, and work, and not see the outcomes of it.

To give you some stories, we’ve been running these events and I have been involved in so many different outreach events. That’s what led to writing this book was, I saw what worked and what didn’t. Then I took that and I went deep into all of the academic research, that none of our overworked, and underfunded, and not enough time organizers have the time to read, because a lot of it’s so hard to digest. When you actually can take that information out, and putting it in a readable format, like I’m doing in the book, engineering just falls right out of all of the data. It falls right out of what girls say they want when it’s framed in the right way.

For instance, you brought up creativity. When you were younger, creativity was so important to you. To be truthful too, that was very true for me when I was little. I actually also, I really liked arts and crafts style things. I really liked building things. I loved cutting out things in paper and making little origami stuff or whatnot. Engineering is actually an incredibly creative path. That’s something that never gets spoken to. It’s a career that is all about creative problem-solving, working in teams, and really taking on these interesting challenges that help you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much. Yes. I just deeply resonate. Yes.

Julie Newman: When you frame it like that, exactly. Again, getting back to the motivation for writing this book, I saw too many outreach events where they would focus on the negatives. That statement of what engineering is, that’s something that people can get behind. That’s something that gets them to look into it more, which is what we really care about the most. But if instead you go in and say, “Everyone thinks that girls can’t do STEM, and we’re here to tell you that that’s wrong, and you can totally do whatever you want.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right. That framing.

Julie Newman: The number of events, where that’s the first sentence they say to a group of a hundred girls. And you wonder why some of the events really – they can’t see a measurable impact at all. When you focus on the positives and help give the highlights of why you would want to look into it, then that’s what resonates. I was at one of our events a couple of years ago, and I was the keynote speaker for this event. I was, of course talking to a lot of the topics in the book. This is actually predated me starting to write the book by about a month, was this particular presentation. But afterwards, and after speaking through the concepts in the book, it was actually a teacher who came up to me afterwards and she said, “Julie, absolutely loved your presentation. I never thought about it that way. Truth be told, I should have been an engineer. If I had seen your presentation when I was their age, I think I would be an engineer today.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow.

Julie Newman: That’s also who I’m writing the book for, is I don’t want there to be more women like her who, knowing the information realizes that it would have been a great field for them that they would have really enjoyed, but then to never have some sort of happy accident or interaction bring them there.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful.

Engineers and Space ExplorationJulie Newman: By contrast, I also have a really lovely story. This is actually something that came up during COVID. I’ve spoken to so many girls, I can’t keep track of them all anymore. Although I’ve had plenty of emails back and forth with a number of them. But one in particular stood out, I had talked to her at an event. She was really interested in space things and of course, my entire career is in space things. After talking to her, I gave her the quick breakdown of, if you want to work on these things, don’t become a scientist, become an engineer because there’s a 10 to one ratio of engineers working on space things compared to scientists. Probably more than that even. But that was at least the statistic I was able to pull out of NASA at the time.

I got a LinkedIn message out of the blue, just even years later, I think from her event, and she just said, “Hey, I came across and found you again. I just wanted to let you know that we spoke a few years ago, and I remember talking to you about thinking about which college major I wanted to pick. I’m enrolled to start a degree in mechanical engineering this fall.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Let’s go. I love that so much.

Julie Newman: Yes. That was while I was writing the book too. So I printed it out, I’ve had it on my wall ever since. It was just the sweetest thing. We get so many of those success stories with these events, formatted in the way that I talk about in the book. You can have those really good one-on-one interactions that get people on the path to being able to discover for themselves if it makes the most sense for them.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Right. That’s just one of the young women who reached out and decided that she was going to reach out, and just kind of say thank you. Think about all the others that are maybe shy to.

Julie Newman: They never did.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: But also made that choice, you know what I mean? In the back of their minds, you are the reason. I think that is for me personally hands down is one of the most addicting things in life and it’s the most beautiful, selfless things, but also very selfish things, because you’re out there talking about your life, and all these things. But it also deeply resonates with someone who is trying to figure out how to make a decision and how is really just – it’s just the information, and how it’s positioned to you. I love that so much because that’s how you get the messaging across. Obviously, you’re leading with your heart, and of course, sharing these stories that are so cool. I mean, how cool is it that –

Julie Newman: Yes. Well, I love my job. I get to work on such cool things. It’s fun to be able to talk about those things. I guess we never got into it. We got on a different track. But for my background, I did – it was actually when I was picking my college major that I finally really understood the word engineering and ended up picking electrical engineering. I went to CalTech, here in Pasadena, studied electrical engineering, had a fabulous time, made great friends, did some really cool and fun things. Spent some summers doing research, worked at SpaceX, then went and worked at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL. That’s the NASA center that is famous for the Mars rovers and many other things. But often, that’s the one that people know the most about. While I was there, I got to work on some great projects. First was an Earth satellite that launched this past year, SWOT, surface water, and ocean topography. A giant satellite that’s looking at ocean height very precisely to work on climatology bottles.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Amazing. That’s so cool.

Julie Newman: Yes. After that, I had the wonderful opportunity of working on a mission to Jupiter. This is the Europa Clipper mission, be orbiting Jupiter, particularly looking at a moon of Jupiter, Europa, that we believe is one of the places in the solar system, we’re most likely to find life if it’s off of Earth. I designed, and shepherded, and built, and led a team in the radar instrument on that spacecraft. Just the sense of, I had this built and I’m holding in my hands this piece of electronics, a circuit board with parts on it, and I’m holding it now. But then, it’s going to one day be millions of miles away floating around Jupiter. It’s absolutely phenomenal. That’s something I get to do because I’m an engineer. It’s just this sense of fulfillment that I like to speak to it.

One of the engineers I highlight in the book, this is Donna Shirley of JPL. She worked on many Mars missions, many things, wrote some really great books about engineering, and her time at JPL. One called Managing Creativity, actually. She has a chapter in her book, it’s titled – and I just think it’s so beautiful. She’s like, “What do you do after you’ve been to Mars?” She had effectively explored Mars because she was an engineer, she worked on these rover programs. It’s just that sense of achievement and that sense of wonder that is something that comes out of an engineering career, particularly – in aerospace, it’s easy to talk to, but so many other industries, the same impact.

Imagine if you were the engineer that works for a biotech or pharmaceuticals company, and you developed some drug that can save people’s lives, or you made the next piece of medical technology in hospitals. Or you made a better water treatment plant design, that means that less people in an underserved area will die of illnesses. It’s those really large-scale impacts that speak to why so many of us choose engineering.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes. I have to say, you have a very boring life, and it’s just insane. You don’t do anything.

Julie Newman: I didn’t even make it to my current job too.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Please share.

Julie Newman: Worked on the mission to Jupiter, and then now, I work at the Boeing Company as an engineer. I started working on the space launch system rocket, which also did finally launch and biggest rocket ever flown. That was a nice title to be able to put on the resume. For that, I can point on the rocket where the box that the team I was leading, the box we designed, where it goes. That’s just insane. I have two jobs now. I work directly under our chief engineer for all commercial satellites, really across different programs. Working on things like engineering culture, which is also a very fun thing that resonates very well with the girls, and I talk about a bit in the book. Then, I’m also now a chief engineer on one of our satellite programs. This is a satellite for an Indonesian communications company, and a giant, $100 million plus satellite. The body of it is the size of a school bus, and it will be orbiting the Earth, hopefully later this year.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Absolutely remarkable. I mean, I think those things where you take that arts and crafts all the way to the most extreme level, which is that journey in which you’ve been on of just continuously exploring your creativity. I think every human being is an artist, we are all artists, and I think creativity is how we solve the problems that we’re interested in. I think that’s the thing that, for me, coming from a refugee camp and then studying architecture in the United States was probably how you went from just tinkering with things, and wires, and stuff at school to working on this thing on Jupiter. It just feels like a leap, but there’s a journey in between that leap.

For me, studying architecture, it was like, I wanted to solve the refugee crisis. I thought about housing because that was how I was impacted as a young person, but in how to propel your energy, your creative energy towards problems that we have in our society and our culture, socios, whatever it is. It’s how do you apply this creativity and what tools do you sort of start to fashion in order to create opportunities to solve problems? Is the creativity – is the essence of art, I think. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking at a canvas or looking at a bunch of wires. You both got to figure something out at the end of the day.

Julie Newman: Exactly. Yes. Yes. It’s different constraints. Architecture in particular is one of those things that is just a hair’s breadth away from being an engineer.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Hundred percent, yes. It means to say like great architects are actually really good engineers.

Julie Newman: Are actually good civil engineers, exactly.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Exactly, 100%. Yes.

Julie Newman: The number of girls who have told me, “Oh, yes. I want to do architecture.” I’m like, “Okay. Do you know what civil engineers do?” They’ve never heard of it. They already, they come over, and they’re like, “Yes, I really want to build skyscrapers and bridges.” I’m like, “Okay, you need to learn about this career.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yes, I love that. Because living inside all of us is the mark that we want to make in the world. It is truly people like you who come along, whether it’s through a book or a talk or you coaching one of their teachers. That helps us, the young people get the opportunity to see our world differently through that information. It’s kind of back down to what you’re trying to express throughout your book, which I love, is the messaging.

Can we talk a little bit real quickly here, just a little bit about how you’ve turned that negative sort of story starting point into something positive? Maybe a piece of advice that you would give to people out there who want to open that conversation up with a student of theirs, or whatever it may be. What is that piece that you would want to part with?

Pull Don’t PushJulie Newman: Right, yes. Certainly, first and foremost is focus on the positives. Really, it actually comes down to the title of the book. The book is called Pull Don’t Push: Why STEM Messaging to Girls Isn’t Working and What to Do Instead. In that Pull Don’t Push, we want to be pulling the girls in, enticing them with all the good information so they can do it for themselves. We don’t want to be pushing them towards a path. These are all – they’re all individuals, and we talk about statistics, and the girls as you know, a population group. But at the end of the day, they’re each making the best decision for them as an individual, just as one girl wanting to have a career and a life that she’s going to love.

To that point, just put yourself back into the mindset of being a middle schooler, or a high schooler. You don’t have all the information, and you know that you don’t have all the information, but you also don’t know how to ask about it. Part of the messaging that works is helping to give them a little bit of a framework of what to think about. Some of that is the phrase, it’s follow your passion. That’s horrible advice because you can’t be passionate about something you don’t even know anything about. Also, following your passion like, well, okay, you can be passionate. I’m passionate about sitting on a beach in Hawaii with a pina colada. But that’s not a career, right?

Through the book, some of the topics I bring up are some of the more pragmatic ones and the things that come out very well in the balance when you look at engineering careers. One of those touchier subjects, and which actually, when you look into the research is the single most effective piece of information you can give the girls to help them consider engineering. That touchy subject is money. No one wants to touch it with a 10-foot pole, but it is so incredibly valuable.

For anyone who’s willing to bring it up, and we do find that with some of our – we call them ambassadors, our professional women in engineering who volunteer at these events. If you look at – there’s a really good study out of Georgetown University, where they did a very large dataset, a comprehensive study about, here are the degrees that people got, and here’s what their earnings are now. Then they ranked them just one to 1000 of who’s making the most money as a median. Nine out of the top 10 are all engineering degrees.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Of course, that’s amazing.

Julie Newman: Yes. Money is not a reason to pick a career, but it’s also something that’s worth considering.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Right. It’s right up there with air. I mean, it’s that important. I mean, it’s what we’re all thinking about.

Julie Newman: Exactly. That’s why you have a career, is to get paid, in addition to hopefully having something you enjoy. When we have a speaker up there, and she says, “Yes, I’m a hiring manager. Right now, I am hiring engineers out of school, just their four-year degree, no graduate education, four years of college, and I’m hiring them in at $100,000 salary.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Incredible.

Julie Newman: That’s just insane.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s incredible. Yes, it’s life-changing.

Julie Newman: That’s starting your career at double the median, and you’re only going up from there.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Right, and doing something fulfilling, like doing something that you are passionate about. And here’s the thing about what you were saying earlier. In architecture school, one of my favorite professors used to tell me, he’s saying, “Form follows function.” I love that so much, and I’m sure it applies to some degree or other parts of industries. But what I also found, later on, is that passion follows purpose. Purpose is really like – I feel like is this octopus that’s connected to your abilities, what you’re good at, what you’re interested in, what you think is cool, what you want to do. It’s all of those things compacted together. Once you tap into that, and really understand and trust it, then you can be really passionate about those things inside of the purpose.

Julie Newman: Exactly, yes.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Which then, the byproduct, of course, is saying, “I’m an engineer” or “I’m an artist” or whatever that external sort of tagline is. But you get to do X, Y, and Z with these abilities, right? It’s like being superhuman and having abilities, and then not using that. It sucks, you know what I mean. I feel like, that’s one thing. I always – I do not want to use my artistic abilities. If you take that away from me, that’s taking away who I am. You can’t have it.

Julie Newman: Yes. It feels so good to be utilizing all of your skills. That is something, again, going back to another one of my favorite studies. If you look at SAT scores, and here, we’re talking statistics, obviously. It’s not true for every girl or boy. But if you look at SAT scores, boys who do very well on the math section of the SAT, there isn’t actually a strong correlation for how well they do on the other sections.

However, for girls who do very well on the math section, it’s also highly correlated with them doing very well on the verbal section. What that means is that, statistically as a group, girls tend to be more well-rounded, so to speak. They’re good at communicating and they’re good at the more technical things. When we look at that, understandably, they want a career where they can utilize both of those skill sets. If the only thing they hear about is a scientist or an engineer, “Oh, they’re just sitting in a room by themselves all day doing math problems.” That’s not true at all.

In reality, engineering is so collaborative. But if they only see like, “Oh, if I want to use my collaboration and my analytical, my communication, I should be a lawyer or I should go be a doctor.” It’s understandable why they’re choosing those paths, because that’s where they see their skill sets being utilized. The irony is that an engineer who’s not good at communication is a horrible engineer. We need more engineers who are good at communication.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I would also argue, if you’re not good at communication, you would be horrible at anything.

Julie Newman: At most careers, yes, exactly.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:At most careers, yes. Engineering specifically, yes. Definitely. It’s so collaborative.

Julie Newman: Yes. The irony is that we see those, all those boys that got high math scores, they go into engineering or something like that. Then the girls, only some of them do. It’s because, they’re seeing their skills that’s going to be utilized there. But in reality, those girls with the high communication skill and the good math scores, they’re going to dominate all of the kids without good communication.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yes. Honestly, I’m talking to an example of that. I feel like –

Julie Newman: Thank you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:It’s not every day that I get to talk to one, a scientist and an engineer, someone who has worked deeply into really fascinating work. One of my favorite YouTube channels — I’m big on YouTube, I love YouTube— is the NASA channel, or the SpaceX. Usually, I’ll go on there and just kind of poke around. I’ve been obsessed with astronomy for a long time. I feel like it’s deeply, deeply woven into my heritage coming from the Middle East.

Julie Newman: Yes. Absolutely.

Writing the BookHussein Al-Baiaty: I just feel like it’s one area that I’ve always wanted to explore. I especially smack myself sometimes for not exploring it more in college. But at the same time, I get to talk to someone who is involved in that world but yet have a beautiful conversation. You’re not using crazy language that I don’t understand. You’re very human, down to earth. That is obviously woven with your ability to communicate, and how obviously you’re able to lead teams and organizations to do remarkable things. Of course, getting up there and speaking, giving back your time, which is so powerful. But I got to celebrate you for a second, because let’s be honest, you do all these difficult things. But then there’s a whole difficult thing over here, which is writing a book. I got to ask you about that. What was your favorite part of pulling this book together? What did you learn from this journey?

Julie Newman: What I learned is that, yes. Sometimes working on the book was harder than little rocket engineering.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Rocket science, yes.

Julie Newman: Oh, goodness. Yes. Yes. I have such a profound respect for every person who has ever written a book now.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, me too. It’s gut-wrenching.

Julie Newman: It’s just such a different style, right? It’s just such high-density information. When we’re in a world that has so much low-density information, now, and a lot of the YouTubes, TikToks, and BuzzFeeds.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, it’s too fast.

Julie Newman: Yes. When you’re working on limited time, and you need a solution that works, that is where books like these come in. That’s what I wrote the book for. You can read this in a couple of hours, and it can give you the tools you need. Actually, half of the book is filled with appendices of template emails and template questions to ask panelists, and a template speech, and handouts, and all this good stuff, which will also be available on the website, and that I want utilized.

People have already used them and told me that they’re super helpful, makes it so much easier, and it guarantees that their programming is effective. But yes, I think some of the hardest parts on the book for sure, it’s a labor of love. I went into this as – it was particularly, it was during COVID, so we couldn’t host many of our events anymore. They’re all very heavily in-person and they’re much more effective in-person. This was sort of my volunteering, while I couldn’t go out and do these things in person, and so really was a labor of love.

One of the most fun things too, which I realized, I’m going to have to write another book for now, was actually recording the audiobook. I’m the narrator on the audiobook, which is on Audible. That was just so fun. I wrote the book as if I was talking directly to our coordinators and educators. It was just so fun to actually speak it out loud in the way it was meant to be digested.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Love that so much, because your voice resonates deep. Honestly, just hearing you speak, it just – I’m so glad you did the audiobook, because we all – for me, I learn through hearing. I’m not very – I’m a good visual learner, and I’m a good – I can hear information and digest it well, but I’m not great at reading it, and remembering it. Again, knowing myself, knowing how things work, I’m glad you did that, and your voice is very powerful. I’m glad you live with that. I got to ask you one last question before I let you go. That is, what is the one thing you hope that your readers walk away with, what’s that feeling you hope to evoke?

Julie Newman: I want my readers to feel like they can really make a difference and that it’s because of them. If we can get people to adopt the strategies I lay out in this book, we could get millions more women into STEM careers within the next decade. I think that’s really powerful, that each person who reads this book will contribute to that massive global shift in the state of STEM, so to speak. It’s just one event, one conversation, one real helping at a time. I want them to get away that it’s all about pull don’t push. Just bring the girls in, show them what all the good things are, and don’t push them away. Don’t scare them with dated narratives. Don’t make them feel like they’re anything less, because they’re all wonderful, and so many more of them would make great engineers than ever learn now.

I just hope that we can increase those numbers, and I know that we will. We’ve seen strategies work and just implementing them on a larger scale, and making it easier. Just use the templates. They were made to be used and made to make your life easier. I just, you know, it really is the readers of the book, you can make so much impact, and I want to give you those tools.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Beautiful. Julie, it has been just an absolute pleasure having you on the show today. Thank you so much for sharing your stories and of course, your experiences with me. I’ve had just the privilege of just hearing not only your stories but really how incredibly passionate you are about what you do. It shows through everything you’re doing. I’m grateful that you’re here with us, sharing your work, inspiring others, of course, to continue that work and there’s just nothing better than that. The book is titled, Pull Don’t Push: Why STEM Messaging to Girls Isn’t Working and What to Do Instead. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you, connect with you, and reach out?

Julie Newman: Yes, absolutely. Best place will be going to the website, juliejnewman.com. Sign up for the newsletter and we’ll keep you connected on all the new content as it comes out. Then also, LinkedIn, same name, I’m very active on there.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Thank you so much, Julie. Congratulations again. This is going to be a fantastic book and I’m sure it’ll create such a huge impact. Hopefully, the next wave of remarkable women will take us way beyond our solar system as well.

Julie Newman: Absolutely. Thank you so much.

The post Pull Don’t Push: Julie Newman appeared first on Author Hour.

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My next guest has one simple question when it comes to the political and clinical chaos of the opioid epidemic and that is, “Is anyone protecting the patients?”

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by author Dr. Jay Joshi, who is here to talk about his new book, Burden of Pain: A Physician’s Journey through the Opioid Epidemic. Let’s flip through it.

Hello friends and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m here with a special guest. My man, Dr. Jay Joshi. Jay, how are you doing my friend? Good to have you on the show.

Dr. Jay K. Joshi: Thank you, sir. I’m doing well, how are you doing?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I’m doing well man, thank you for coming on the Author Hour. I know you just launched an amazing book, Burden of Pain, and man, I got to tell you, now I [was] just tell[ing] you before we got on here that I was telling my wife last night that this book is a little hard to put down. I just wanted to keep going into the story and really, in a way, watch you do the good fight, which I really want to talk about in the book.

Before we get into the book, of course, I really want to share with our audience a little bit about you, your personal background, perhaps where you grew up, maybe a person that inspired you or an event that inspired you to be on the path that you are on today. I’d love to hear a little bit about that.

Dr. Jay K. Joshi: Well, thank you. So as mentioned, my name is Dr. Joshi. I am a physician by training. I practice outpatient primary care in Northwest Indiana and I live in the Chicago suburbs. It’s one of those New York, New Jersey kind of things where people go across the state on a daily basis. I got the impetus to write this book, really, based on my lived experiences.

I was the first primary care practice in Northwest Indiana to implement telepsychiatry for patients in the primary care setting that had been a real help with complications and comorbidities. I was also one of the first physicians in the last five years to be targeted by the DEA and it was an interesting juxtaposition because NPR featured my practice just days before the DEA came and targeted me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow.

Dr. Jay K. Joshi: I thought about writing this book when I started to realize that this was starting to become very serious and that they were looking at this as though I were behaving as a criminal conducting drug dealing transactions when I was providing medications for my patients and that really triggered a cognitive dissonance in me because, for the longest time I almost felt that I was doing right for the patients and my patients felt, I was doing right for them.

But here we had the DEA coming in, making its own interpretation, taking their own actions, and in many ways, destroying the fabric of the patient-physician relationship. So to go to your original question about, “Who really inspired me?” I would have to say, it’s folks like Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, who through the perils that they went through, drew the inspiration to write about it.

I think, when I was going through everything that I was going, there was a massive propaganda campaign. I mean, just Google me and you’ll still see some of these crazy articles about me, apparently, imitating somebody, apparently writing all these crazy opioids but when I realized I could write, that’s when I found my voice and it actually gave me courage to stand up to what was going on because I was able to write.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s beautiful man, I love that. I mean, I know you’re going through some things and I’ve gone through a lot of things, we’ll get into it a little bit more, but what I meant by saying, that’s beautiful is that you found the courage.

Dr. Jay K. Joshi: Thank you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: In writing, I always feel like, for me, it was art. I always found [that] that’s where I found my voice. Whether it be through graphics and truly when I found writing that I was not afraid of it anymore, it was another way to express myself. I too found some liberation in that space too, man. So I’m glad you’re able to take your story and then of course, be inspired by the greats that lead us from the inside out, you know what I mean?

I feel like those greats when you hear their stories, you’re just emotionally changed and it’s like, whatever you’re doing at the time and moment you realize man, they are telling me right now if they could do it, you too can stand up and at least, bring your voice, bring your vision, bring your idea and not allow someone else to speak for you, right? Especially and put you in a negative light, that is not acceptable, right?

Dr. Jay K. Joshi: Exactly.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photo-of-a-stethoscope-40568/

The PracticeHussein Al-Baiaty: So I appreciate your courage man, I want to share a little bit more with our audience about the beginnings of your practice, and your work with your patients spawns from a place of really wanting to help. It spawns from a place that you see this epidemic happen all around us. Like I said earlier, I lived in Oregon, and man, it was exponential it felt like in the last five years, unfortunately, in so many ways.

But I know you feel this pain all over the world, and especially in your community and we all know what drugs do in our communities. However, there are people who actually need these things for all kinds of reasons — and that’s not for me to say, you’re obviously the doctor. Can you tell me a little bit more about your practice?

Dr. Jay K. Joshi: Certainly. One of the first things as a physician you have to realize is that is not your position to judge a patient.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Sure.

Dr. Jay K. Joshi: It’s your responsibility to treat him or her to the best ability possible. So when somebody presents with chronic pain or acute pain following a work-related injury as is common in Northwest Indiana, you follow the CDC guidelines for what is appropriate care. That could include medications like Tylenol, it can include certain non-steroidal medications that help with inflammation but it can also include opioids.

In fact, opioids are considered one of the most cost-effective forms of treatment for chronic pain and other forms of pain that do not have a neurological component and before the opioid epidemic and now as we call it, the overdose crisis, really changes your perception on these medications. They were considered frontline therapy for many patients. What I would focus on is really, the relationship with the patients.

Yes, if they had certain conditions, I would prescribe opioid medications but I would not simply provide the medication and leave it at that, which is why I incorporated telepsychiatry into my practice because if I were to prescribe these medications, I would also want to follow up with them. It is a balance between trusting a patient and verifying that trust and that’s a fabric of a strong patient-physician relationship.

A patient X presents with a chronic condition, physician Y treats that chronic condition. Anything beyond that is outside of the realm of what should be considered a proper patient-physician encounter. The situation that I found myself in is that you have this third-party entity, the DEA, looking at prescription medications as though they were drugs, as though the clinical encounter was a drug transaction.

So they’re not focused on the underlying pathophysiology, the underlying disease state. They’re not focused on what socioeconomic constraints the patient is facing as he or she has to work in pain because their union dissolved and now, they’re independent contractors. That doesn’t matter to the DEA. What matters to the DEA is that you wrote an opioid to that patient, you committed a crime and it sounds almost bizarre when I phrase it that way.

But really, that’s the genesis of the disconnect between the medical world and the legal world. In the medical world, you look at the patient holistically and provide medications as part of the ongoing relationship. In the legal world, they’re simply focused on, “Did you prescribe a certain medication and did you provide the legal documentation to justify that prescription?” It should be that those two align.

But when you have these different interpretations of what level of legal oversight constitutes the appropriate transaction, you find yourself at odds with what would be considered good medical care and I’ll give you a great example of this. The urine drug screen. You know how much a urine drug screen cost if you don’t have insurance?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: No idea.

Dr. Jay K. Joshi: Yeah, you wouldn’t believe it. It’s in the hundreds, 400, USD 800.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: For a pee test? That’s crazy. I was just like, you pee on a test and it tells you some stuff that—or like a little strip and it just—but I mean, I don’t know, what am I talking about? That’s insanity. Yeah, I didn’t realize it was so expensive.

Dr. Jay K. Joshi:Google it. Google the cost of a urine drug screen, it’s unreal. If I have a patient who, let’s say, lost her job and is now in transit working as an independent contractor, she has a shoulder injury, she can’t take time off because she’s the breadwinner but she can’t afford surgery because she’s not going to get paid for her rehab time.

If she loses her Medicaid because she’s no longer working and serving as independent contractor, am I to deny her continuity of care? Am I to deny her, her medications because she can’t afford a urine drug screen?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right.

Dr. Jay K. Joshi: So now the question becomes, how much does the legal oversight, a urine drug screen, checking the prescribed database, ordering imaging studies, outweigh the patient-physician relationship itself? Now, I get it, there should be certain oversights.

Like, every time a patient would come into my practice I would check their prescription database to make sure that they’re not doctor-shopped, meaning, going to multiple physicians and asking the same medications.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I see.

Dr. Jay K. Joshi: That’s easy, that’s free of charge. Anything that then subsequently requires a cost or a clinical barrier to accessing care for the patient, that must be weighed relative to what is good for the patient, and the moment those legal oversights overwhelm what is good for the patient, you are seeing a disconnect between the legal and clinical worlds.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photo-of-medicinal-drugs-159211/

Steps to Help PatientsHussein Al-Baiaty: That is really powerful, man. I mean, I don’t realize that. When I think [about] the DEA — and I feel like most of us out in the world who are just regular old peeps, that really aren’t in the legal or the medical world — I feel like has always been, I don’t know, I feel like there’s always been tension there, of course.

Like in most industries, but I always thought the DEA was more drugs that weren’t going through the medical world per se but I guess I can see the line in where it’s blurry but I thought that was your right as a doctor, as a physician. You’re obviously, you’ve worked really hard, you’ve practiced at this thing.

You understand your patient, what they may or may not need and you have, in a way, the law backing you up to help with those things but it sounds like that’s not obviously the case. It sounds like physicians and doctors out there, obviously, fighting this battle, trying to figure out where this line is.

So in your opinion, what are some of the most important steps that could be taken and addressed? I know you talk about this a lot, the root causes of addiction and prevent future epidemics because I feel like we can fight about the legal stuff all day and we can fight about the medical stuff, it sounds like in the world, right?

But the root causes are really what’s impacting your patients and those are the people that eventually got to this level of work and to serve, right? So how do we take these important steps?

Dr. Jay K. Joshi: That’s a great question and I want to break it down into three points because you talked about some very important things. You first talk about the DEA’s role inside and outside of healthcare, you talked about what protections physicians have, and you talked about the root causes of addiction. Let me go one by one because I think those are all three critical points to address.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful.

Dr. Jay K. Joshi: So true, the DEA is nominally understood to be the government agency that prevents drug transactions, whether it’s street-level drug dealing or whether that’s cross-the-border or international drug trading but they also have a role in healthcare. They oversee the prescribing of certain controlled substances. These can be prescription opioids, they can be prescription benzodiazepines, which are commonly used for anxiety and they can also oversee opioid abuse medications like Suboxone and methadone.

What the DEA does is that they schedule these drugs according to risk. So schedule one are illegal drugs, not permissible to be prescribed in any capacity, schedule two have the highest addictive potential, and schedule five has the lowest addictive potential. Opioids, like Norco, Percocet, what have you, are schedule two medications, and what the DEA does is that it monitors the number of schedule two, three, four, and five prescriptions that are being written and its current strategy is to examine — and I’m using that word nicely — examine physicians who may have higher prescribing schedules and then determine whether there are some sort of illegality or lack of legal oversight to justify going after that physician.

I think the DEA does have a role and should remain active in healthcare but they should focus on principles of harm reduction where the physician has the latitude to make the clinical decision, what is good and what is bad for the patient based on his or her clinical discernment and that’s where we get into the laws that protect physicians. I’m very passionate about this because I wrote a Supreme Court brief for a case involving a physician.

It was the first physician case in decades that addressed this very matter of good faith. Can a physician, if acting in good faith, be legally protected against the actions of the DEA? And when I was indicted, I did not have that good faith provision, believe it or not. As a physician, I did not have the right to defend my actions clinically as saying they were in the best interest for the patient and that I was acting in good faith.

Fortunately, in 2022, I was what is known as an Amicus party, meaning, a third-party advocate for the physician, Dr. Ruan and Dr. Couch and Dr. Khan, now established legally in the courts, federal courts that if a physician is acting in good faith, he or she cannot be prosecuted by the DEA, DOJ for prescribing outside his scope of medicine under the controlled substance act, which is the same statute that effectively all drug dealers at a federal level are target against and I think that’s very important because it transitions to your third point along the root cause analysis of addiction.

Addiction really is a series of clinical decisions and actions that culminate into patterns of behavior, patterns of thought that create dependencies and addictions and I think it’s very important to make that distinction because if a patient has a dependency, as a physician, it is your responsibility to still care for that patient but to identify what dependency the patient has developed and that requires honest conversation, a trusting relationship.

Now, if a patient has transgressed into the world of addiction, where he or she is behaving in ways that are harmful to society, then the clinical encounter has been violated because the patient is no longer acting within the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship and so when you start to look at the root causes of addiction, let’s start to focus on why are we, in the healthcare community, have failed to identify patients who are dependent and treat them properly.

It starts with de-stigmatizing patient care for those who have substance use dependencies. They are patients with chronic diseases just like any other chronic disease, whether that’s hypertension, diabetes. You would not, as a physician, stigmatize a diabetic for not taking his or her medications because they can’t afford it or not taking his or her diet seriously because he went to his niece’s birthday party and ate an extra slice of cake.

You wouldn’t tell that patient, “You know what? I can’t see you anymore. I’m legally at risk”. No, you would help that patient. You would explain to them, what are the pros and cons of that decision, of that action, and work to find solutions. You would potentially create an app, create a reminder system, something that can provide some level of interface, whether digital or analog, to help that patient.

Let’s do that for those that have substance use dependencies and when we start to de-stigmatize patients who have developed dependencies but genuinely want help or patients with chronic pain that genuinely want help that may not be able to function properly without certain medications, we have to realize that they are patients. They are not to be ostracized and eliminated from the medical community and the root cause of addiction really forms through that stigmatization by ostracizing those individuals.

Now, then once we start to realize that we need to implement principles of harm reduction, helping those patients while mitigating against societal risk that those patients could, those societal risk those patients could be, then we’re at a point where we found a balance between protecting the patient and maintaining some degree of regulatory oversight and my hope is that by writing this book that I can help the DEA and other policymakers in the legal world understand that good legal policy begins by de-stigmatizing patients who have substance dependencies or maybe in the verge of developing addictions and truly want help clinically.

Advice for Healthcare ProfessionalsHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man, that’s so powerful. I mean, you’re so deep in this world of where you’re trying to, I feel like, not only advocate for the patients but create an avenue where both parties can work together in really helping one another in a place where the overall the byproduct of all of this work could be the health and wellbeing of the patients. Because really that’s what it comes down to is that there’s no reason to create criminals, right?

Let’s be real, just because I’m addicted to something because of X, Y, or Z and this is my life, these are the things that I am going through, I am also not a criminal. I’m just heavily dependent on this thing and I feel like there’s a level of this idea of criminality behind it, especially in pop culture, right? There’s so much stigmatization like you refer to, I think that’s really powerful.

What advice would you give to other healthcare professionals who are working to balance this need to manage pain with risk associated with opioid use?

Dr. Jay K. Joshi: I’ll answer that by referencing a passage in part one of my book.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah.

Dr. Jay K. Joshi: Where I say, “An addict through proper clinical care can become a patient with substance use dependency just as much as a patient with substance use dependency can become an addict if they are left outside of the healthcare system.” I think what we need to do is create an opportunity for patients with conditions that we stigmatize with their substance use dependency, opioid use dependency, chronic pain to be a part of the healthcare system and have their voices heard.

I think what you are starting to see in this broader narrative is that many of the restrictive policies led by the DEA have really harmed patients with chronic pain and patients with substance use dependency and access to care is a fundamental right in healthcare and regardless of the medical condition that you have, you cannot deny a patient access to healthcare.

Now, once they have access then it’s incumbent on both the patient and the physician to implement the right solutions and so the advice I would have to answer your question directly, to physicians and my colleagues in the healthcare world with level providers and otherwise would be to implement healthcare strategies that go beyond just providing a certain medication and providing holistic approach to understanding the patient.

Look, healthcare at the end of the day is an experience, right? That’s why we say the art and science of medicine. We can’t forget about that art, we focus so much on the data, the lab, right? But the art is a relationship. It is a form of engagement and when you study addiction, depression, at its fundamental cause, they are behavioral patterns that emerge that the patient then struggles to cope with and then develop certain patterns as a result.

We wouldn’t ostracize the hypertensive patient who can’t control her stress and therefore, has these hypertensive spikes. Why are we ostracizing a patient with substance use dependency? I stress these analogies deliberately because I want people to start looking at substance use dependencies and addictions as a form of chronic disease and we’re starting to see that narrative change for chronic pain patients.

We need that to change for patients with substance use dependencies as well and I want to touch on one key point here, when I talk to policymakers that have this Nixonian-Reagan type of mindset on drug use, the whole “yes, they know” often what happens is they will say, “I understand the importance of harm reduction.” So they will acknowledge the importance of a clinical approach to patients with substance dependency and harm reduction as a means of treating those patients.

But what they will come back to say is, “If we were to decriminalize or provide some level of safety net for this type of behavior, there will still be a black market. There will still be people undercutting legally available medications whether it’s through the patient encounter or over-the-counter medications” and my response to them is that you’re looking at this economically. You need to look at this clinically and you need to look at it in terms of patient behavior with all its beauty, all its complexity.

I am going to throw a controversial word out there, all its irrationality and I don’t say that to disrespect patients. I say that to say, patients like you and I behave in ways that are counterintuitive that may not be in our best interests but we develop habits, we develop tendencies, we develop patterns and it’s incumbent on us to create frameworks that incorporate principles of behavioral economics to study patients in the real-life setting because that is a form of healthcare.

Understanding how the patient behaves is just as effective, if not more effective, than treating the patient properly within the what, 10 to 15 minutes of the patient encounter? I mean, how many hours in a day does a patient live through, right? Everybody has 24 hours, if you are seeing a patient every three months, how much time are you spending outside of the clinical encounter as a patient versus how much time are you spending in the clinical encounter.

We’ve got to start understanding that when you’re going to treat addiction and dependency, it’s outside of the traditional bounds of healthcare. It’s requiring a more comprehensive approach to patient care and understanding the experience that patients are going through.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, so powerful. I mean, I feel like it’s one of those things that the journey is windy because there’s so much unmeet attention and I feel like if there’s more awareness, more understanding. And like you said, this idea of how we approach what crisis and drugs and things like that from perspectives of those 60s, 70s, 80s even, it’s just not rational.

We’re in 2023 and we need to approach these things in a way that actually brings in your voice and brings in voices that are advocates for how to try to deal with these differently and move forward in a way that is both helpful and can help communities and help, of course, the patients, which is what we’re ultimately after. Can you talk a little bit, maybe give a lesson or two that you’ve learned from your journey that you believe could help those who are of course struggling with the addiction or perhaps caring for their loved ones who are struggling with that?

Understanding the Individual Patient Behavior Within a Broader ConstructDr. Jay K. Joshi: Yeah, I want to give a direct response to that and I also want to give a more philosophical response to that. I will start by looking at the pandemic. COVID-19 made apparent things that are always present in healthcare, just exacerbated. That’s why when we saw decreasing access to care, we saw overdoses rising and what happens is when you remove patients from the healthcare system, you’re not changing their existing behavior, you are simply making it more risky.

That’s why we’re starting to see all these fentanyl analogs but their crazy names and their crazy level of potencies leading to ever-increasing rates of overdoses. It’s not that these patients are deliberately seeking a high, it’s that they have no avenue to address their dependencies and their addictions, so they’re forced to go through more and more risky means of getting certain potencies in order to satisfy their dependencies, their addictions.

If we instead provide a means for them to address their conditions without judging them, without moralizing them but simply treating them as patients, then we’d be in a much better situation. These current models of rehab, you know these outpatient rehabilitation facilities, these inpatient rehabilitation facilities, they’re a revolving door of patients coming in and out because they don’t get that we have to focus on harm reduction.

Instead, it’s, “Okay, well a patient overdosed” they agree to go to rehab, they’re clean for XYZ days, they go back out into the real world and they relapse. Well, why did that happen? Well, they resume the original patterns of behavior once they left the rehabilitation facility and you can always talk about the financial correlate and kind of say that people may not have the best of intentions and these addiction rehab facilities.

But I think a more productive conversation would focus around understanding that these models don’t help the behavioral patterns of patients with dependencies, with addictions. Instead, try to focus more on what are the patterns that are leading patients to behave a certain way because when you start to see those behavioral patterns, you will see the same patterns emerging within a town, within a district, within a state.

People behave in very intelligent ways, it’s that the systems we’ve created incentivize irrational behaviors. So oftentimes, when you see patients overdosing, is not that they’re becoming self-destructive, it’s that they’re behaving in the way that they perceive to be the best way possible given the societal constraints that they find themselves in or the societal constraints that they are willing to put themselves into.

I think that is a very important point to understand that addiction and dependency require treatment as any other chronic disease would, where you don’t go from one extreme to the other where patient addict is kicked out of the house and then patient X goes into a rehabilitation facility. Find that medium, find the balance in harm reduction that helps to address the underlying causes for that type of behavior while recognizing in the intro, there may be a certain need to take that medication.

To take that illicit substance in a safe controlled manner as you work to taper yourself off and from a philosophical standpoint, you start to see these tendencies in all aspects of healthcare, whether that’s abortion, vaping, opioids, and I really try to make it clear that these fundamental tendencies in healthcare are pervasive throughout.

When you look at the issues of abortion, effectively we’ve simplified a very complex procedure and a very complex decision that a patient makes to go through an abortion into a simple rubric of weeks, where in ten weeks and after it’s illegal and ten weeks and before, it’s illegal but we don’t understand that. It is much more complicated than that. There is so many factors that weigh into a patient’s decision to get an abortion and not get an abortion to even be in that position in the first place to even make that decision.

The same thing goes with addiction, right? Addiction doesn’t begin at the overdose, it ends at the overdose. Addiction begins through a series of decisions and events surrounding that person’s life that turns that person toward a certain pathway where he or she is making decisions that again, he or she feels is in the best interest of what circumstances he or she finds himself in.

I think what we need to be cognizant of is that tendencies in healthcare repeat themselves at an individual level, at a societal level and until we start to focus on these tendencies and recognize them as they start to appear, we’re going to continue to see the same problems and as we see with the overdose crisis, we’re going to see a worsening of the problems. The DEA and legislators seem hell-bent on restricting access to care when it comes to certain opioid medications or certain opioid abuse medications.

That’s going to lead to increasing overdoses and I think you are starting to see the legalization of marijuana creep into more and more red states because they are starting to realize that restricting certain behavior is not going to prevent it, it’s going to make it more risky. So let’s start with marijuana, let’s decriminalize marijuana, and see what happens. Now, let’s, in a few years, decriminalize or de-stigmatize other substances.

I think you are starting to see the start of a trend to go away from this “just say no” mindset to more of a nuanced balanced approach understanding individual patient behavior within a broader construct.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s so powerful. It’s interesting your perspective is so deep and you’re obviously very passionate about this work because it is on that intersection of medical and legal and I’m glad you are doing this fight man because we need people like you that could really advocate for the patient in a way that’s helpful and healthy but also understand community and a broader scale, how these things can impact this not only now but of course, down the line and where those lines can be drawn.

I think considering your perspective and others that again advocate for the patient’s health, it’s so powerful. So I got to ask you, I mean, writing a book is not an easy feat. You wrote this book with very much intending to help the narrative progress in a positive way but I got to ask you, what is the most, like would you say your favorite part of pulling this book together? What did you learn from that journey in and of itself?

Dr. Jay K. Joshi: You know, I’ll tell you it’s such an amazing experience, just the art of rewriting, really. I think the biggest thing I learned is that find a good editorial team. Find a set of folks that believe in your vision that will work with you to edit and revise the book in a way where you see your voice magnified. As a writer and as somebody who writes op-eds and provides editorialized content, I feel like I’m a good writer.

But I think you want somebody to challenge your writing so that the tendencies that appear, certain writing structures that may not be optimal for your voice gets corrected and you know, as we spoke before this, Scribe Media has been amazing and really helping with refine my voice and that journey of refining the content, going through the proofreading, the QA, incorporating the graphs, it was an amazing experience. Man, I have to tell you that I truly enjoyed it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s awesome, man. I love that, I’m so glad you’re able to come to Scribe, and really put this pen to paper and make sure that it’s something fully own of course, and engage with in a way that can really pull the best sort of golden gems out of you and you know, I agree with that challenging part because you know, we are in a way our own writers. You know, we’re all on our own voice and all those kinds of things.

But it’s until that voice is sort of exposed to someone that can in an analytical way, in a very helpful coaching manner can challenge it or help you grow it or understand it more and I think the writing process I think for me personally, it helped me understand my own wisdom. It helped me understand my own story and knowledge and why the heck am I in my own fight, you know what I mean?

Dr. Jay K. Joshi: Exactly.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I’m glad that was something that you have felt as well. Well, Dr. Jay, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on today, man. Again, your passion and you’re on a mission to really help individuals, I just appreciate that about your work. The book is titled, Burden of Pain: A Physician’s Journey through the Opioid Epidemic. So besides checking out the book, where can people find you and connect with you, sir?

Dr. Jay K. Joshi: Well, I write predominantly on my blog, Daily Remedy, that’s daily-remedy.com. I have a few blurbs here and there, on Kevin MD, The Healthcare Blog but really, the best way to get a hold of me is to reach out via email and I have no problem answering cold call emails. In fact, I welcome them. So if you’re interested in implementing any of the solutions I discuss in my book or if you feel that my book may be important for somebody to read, please get a hold of me.

I can be reached at jayjoshi45@gmail.com, and please, don’t hesitate to provide any sort of feedback engagement that you feel is important.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that, thank you so much Dr. Jay. Again, it’s a pleasure having you today. Congrats again on the book and I know it’s going to go out there and make a great impact on the world, so thanks again.

Dr. Jay K. Joshi: Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.

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After you’ve earned your degree, established your career, and started a family, the last thing you anticipate is living paycheck to paycheck. In many American households though, financial security is a constant concern.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by author Monica Allen, who is here to talk about her new book, called Girls Just Want to Have Funds: Four Steps to Financial Freedom. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Author Hour. Today, I have a special guest. Her name is Monica Allen and she’s here to provide some amazing context around her remarkable book, called Girls Just Want to Have Funds. Now, if that’s not a great title, I don’t know what is. Monica, it’s so great to have you on the show. Thank you for coming on today.

Monica Allen: Hussein, thanks for having me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, this is my pleasure because I’ve had the privilege of swimming through your book early, if you will, and I am just – I love the simplicity, the context, the stories were so rich and so relatable, and I can’t wait to get into all that. But before we get into the book, I’d really like to set the foundation and share with our audience a little bit about you, your personal background, your story of perhaps where you grew up, and what led you to the path that you’re in now.

Monica Allen: Okay, thank you for asking. My story is really a story of “against all odds.” So if I can do what I’ve done in this book, then any reader is going to be able to also do it if they want to do it.

I’m just going to give you a little picture summary of a few things that have happened in my life because I think it’s easy when you’re struggling to look at somebody on the cover of a book and think, “They have it all together, we’re really not in the same class, I’m struggling paycheck to paycheck. How is this going to help me?” I’ll just picture summarize it.

When I was at the early age of 16, I had a teenage pregnancy, and this was what we called at that time a baby out of wedlock. I was not married. When I was 18, my father dies unexpectedly at the age of 44 of a heart attack, and at age 22, I’m going through a divorce that I did not want and I find out that baby number two is on the way.

I like numbers but let’s just say here that the statistics for success were definitely not on my side. If you look at teen moms, less than 2% of them get a college degree by age 30 but even worse, only 51% of teenage moms get a high school diploma. We have to get out of school to take care of our child.

The Breaking PointHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I think the circumstances of certain situations in our lives definitely lead us down paths that we may not have seen for come, right? Then, it’s really trying to figure out, “How is it up to me to make better decisions and start to improve X, Y or Z?” This is a story where you share not only what happened throughout those experiences but also really practical tips and advice and management tools to help people, and it’s very easy to navigate.

Can you tell us about a time when you felt really overwhelmed by financial burden and what you did to start to overcome that?

Monica Allen: Yes, I sure can. I think we all have our times but then there’s the time. So we have times when we’re struggling and we end up making it. It seems like it works out. We’re just maybe getting by what they call the skin of your teeth but I thought that I had made it when I finally met my husband Brad and we both had two good jobs.

I thought, “Finally, I made it” and then there was one night, and this changes my life, there was one night, I wasn’t really even thinking about finances but we both came home from work dead tired and we wanted to order a pizza. This is my north star of the book because, when I looked at our bank account, I realized that unless we took it out of – we had a measly savings – there was nothing really in checking – unless we took it out of savings that we weren’t going to get a pizza on that Wednesday night.

Something snapped inside of me. You know, where you said, “Enough is enough.” After that – we ended up eating – we cooked the frozen pizza that night – but after that, I started reading everything that I could on finances. Everything I could get my hands on. Some of it good, some of it not so good, but I soaked in everything that I could get my hands on and we started living differently. So now, I can live differently and help other people and just pass it on.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: There’s a breaking point, right? I think for me personally, it happened a few times I feel like. There’s like during college, after college, and starting a business, and the business part was where everything just snapped. I too, just like you, there’s something I’m not seeing here and I needed to figure out what I was doing wrong as opposed to I feel like the times before that, it was just like, “What’s happening around me and how can I control it?” That is obviously impossible, right?

But what I can control is my actions, my behavior, and my methodologies. Yeah, so you went down this rabbit hole of financial literacy and really trying to understand where you stand and that’s what inspired you specifically though to write about a financial management tool, basically, you call it the kitchen table approach. What inspired you to write that specifically for women?

Because I know there are a ton of financial literacy books and some are targeted towards women and some are targeted – you know? But I feel like, with your story, it’s more around moms, and correct me if I’m wrong, I feel that it’s maybe the book that you wanted to read when you were younger.

Monica Allen: I think it was, yeah. I think one of the biggest things is that mom, and most of us will agree with this, she is the heartbeat of the household. That old saying that, “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy,” it does hold true because mom, whether we’re in a bad situation or a good, her attitude kind of controls the pulse of the house. We’re not only the partner, if we’re lucky enough to have a partner, but we’re raising up little girls and little boys that look to mom like, “Everything is okay.” Even if you’re dirt poor, your mom can make you feel, in her mindset, that everything is okay. It can make these little lives better that are entrusted to you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful. I mean, I don’t know anyone who can’t relate to that. I mean, personally, I feel like I could ask my mom today where I left something 20 years ago and she would probably remember.

Monica Allen: I love that, yes.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s just her ability to, like you said, keep things together in such a beautiful way and yes, it is a shoutout to all those remarkable women who keep the things together. But there’s a missing element in financial literacy where the woman at some point really takes charge. I know, in a lot of people’s relationships, the woman is able to take care of the financials and just make sure things are sent out and on time. Of course, you’re keeping track of Johnny’s baseball game and his orthodontist appointment and all of these things. There is some science behind why women are able to sort of do multiple things.

Monica Allen: There certainly is, yes.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I found that really powerful that you brought that to the table. How can women who feel the pressure to make money and manage it apply your kitchen table approach to their finances? What’s the first thing women need to start thinking about to start applying this approach?

Monica Allen: We’re made to multitask and I love the science of it because, I’m scientific that I’m in the healthcare business. So before birth, they say that men’s brains are washed with testosterone. So they’re the, go hunt and kill and bring home and the lady was at home doing everything else. We are multitaskers. We can decide, we’re taking a vacation and it’s just going to be camping.

We don’t say it to the kid that way, it’s just going to be camping this year or we’re going to go to Disney. Big difference in money there. The female controls the pulse of what happens in the house, whether a room gets redecorated, how many sports each kid can be in, and keeps the pulse going. So, the woman is the perfect person to decide, “Hey, if you’re the one deciding on all the bills,” whether your husband’s doing it or you’re doing it, somebody needs to jump in and take the reins.

A lot of times, we’re so overwhelmed, both of us, the wives and the husbands, the men and the women in these relationships, that you just skate by. You want better but you feel like you don’t have the time to do better.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: What are some of the common misconceptions about financial management that you feel like your book aims to dispel?

Monica Allen: I think many people think that they need to go sit in a financial advisor’s office and they need to have a million dollars to do that. They just feel so overwhelmed when they think about that, that they do nothing. These steps are much easier than that.

Four Steps to Financial FreedomHussein Al-Baiaty: What are some of the steps you started taking when that snap happens and you went down that rabbit hole? What were the first few things that you started to do to really start making that shift?

Monica Allen: After reading everything that I could get my hands on, I decided that we needed to get out of debt and that’s one of the biggest things that almost any financial advisor will tell you, to start digging out of debt, to free up that money, to put the money and tell the money where you want it to go.

If you’re spending 700 bucks, which is easy now because of inflation, a month on eating out, and you put it down on paper, that’s great, do it. If you want to do it, great. Maybe more than that now, if you have a family with the cost of things. We’re not even talking five-star restaurants. You decide though when you look at it on paper, “Hey, I’m spending $700 a month eating out and I‘m putting $100 a month in my retirement.”

You may decide to do something differently. When I looked at it on paper, we decided we were going to do something different in our house, so that we didn’t have to live that way and then eventually go into retirement that way, when our income decreases and have to own or ask our kids to support us.

I don’t know what there is because I believe social security will be there. Many people question whether it will be there or not, I believe it will be there but it’s not going to be what it was when you were bringing home the paycheck.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, definitely, I agree with that. I think our culture and our society today, we’ve just been so misinformed for so long, especially around financials. I think it’s the least educated thing in our world really, to understand financials, credit, all that stuff early enough where we can actually make decisions and build habits because I feel like financial, from what I’ve gained and learned, no matter how you perceive it, it’s something around building, just improving and building better financial habits.

Of course, that is limited to what you know and how you get to know it and so I love that your book really dives into that space where it’s just like, “Okay, here’s what I did, here are the things that I started thinking about. I started putting it to paper, I realized that I was overspending over here and perhaps I can bring that down and take some of that leftover money.” You brought it up in your van story, which I love.

It’s remarkably written because this idea of, “This van is going to make us rich,” and it’s just, sticking it out with the old thing for a while until you start to get comfortable and build the habit of putting that money away as opposed to putting it into a brand-new car every other year or so. Some people can afford that, of course, and that’s part of their financial world and what makes them happy.

But in some cases, when you have a family, when you have things you got to take care of and manage and it’s really on your plate, you got to make those choices. So mama starts making some choices, things started getting better, and you start taking control of that checkbook. Can you walk us through one of the four easy steps to financial freedom that you outline in your book and explain how it can benefit the reader and their financial future?

Monica Allen: I would probably say that building the emergency fund, which is step one is one of the best steps that you can have because we already talked about getting out of debt, and that’s important to free up that money, but a lot of emergencies, depending on if you’re single or married, between about $1 and $2,000. When you have that emergency fund, when you’re getting out of debt, you don’t have to put it on credit.

You’re going to have emergencies. I firmly believe, when you have the emergency fund and we say it’s like between $1 and $2,000, that you don’t have as many emergencies because you have it but when you do have it, then you are not adding more debt for when the furnace goes out and it’s a $500 bill, we hope, or when something goes wrong; the car breaks down, the kids need school clothes, that’s almost an emergency sometimes, but we learn eventually to start budgeting for those type of things.

But when you have an emergency, it really is a big mental setback too because you are thinking to yourself, “I just paid all this off and now I’m taking a big, giant step backwards.” So you have that emergency fund, you deal with the emergency, and you go on your way and that’s one of the best things you can do for yourself. Women especially like having the emergency fund because it just gives us the sense of peace that we know if something happens, we’d got it. We got it covered.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s so powerful because and, again, that idea of freedom or just knowing that you’ll be taken care of if something were to arise, it does give you a sense of peace. I know it does for me and the more I’ve built up some of my savings and emergency funds and started getting better at allocating my budget and all those things over time and started building better habits, I definitely have a lot more peace of mind.

I don’t know about you but I used to have, oh my god, at the end of every month I would just have such anxiety, especially around when I owned my own business, you know, paying the taxes, doing all the things, and making sure everybody is paid. It’s funny, even after I sold my business and moved onto other things in my life, in writing and more creativity, what’s funny is at the end of every month, I still felt the sense of anxiety.

I’m like, “Wait a minute, I don’t have those worries anymore,” but the feeling and the pressures and the things are still there. It’s crazy because you realize, once I created that awareness, I was like, “Okay, during those days I’m going to just sit and meditate and just let these feelings pass because they’re not true anymore.” What’s interesting is the psychology of that at least for me, I’m not a scientist or anything or a doctor by any means.

But for me, it was just like, “Okay, at this time, this used to happen but now I have this pad and I have the systems in place to take care of my money,” you know, all of these things. So, I started wondering, “Why am I feeling this way?” And that feeling started to dissipate and now at the end of the month, I’m more of like in a celebratory sort of phase as opposed to feeling anxious and not good inside.

You talk about this a little bit in your book, which I found really relatable. I think that’s such a powerful thing, when you have systems in place or a system that you apply your money to, I think that helps with the mental wellbeing. Would you agree with that and would you elaborate on that a little bit?

Spend with GratitudeMonica Allen: I totally agree with it and here’s the thing, your business, you conditioned your mind in it. It had to be worried at the end of month to make payroll and everything but some of our conditionings may have been from something that was passed down to us from an aunt, from parents, something that we did not choose and we don’t really know why we act a certain way and we hang on to money like we do, with what I call a closed fist instead of an open hand.

When you have the open hand, money can come and go out as needed. But we’re the product of our environment and we didn’t get to pick what we were – maybe there was a time when someone said, “You are a bad girl, you do not get that toy,” you were running through the store, whatever but there’s certain things in our impressionable years that stick with us and we have to address those and get out of them.

For instance, maybe your mom and dad said, “We can never eat out. It is too costly to eat out, I don’t want to give anybody a tip. This is money we’re not going to spend,” even if they could spend it. So, in your mind every time you’re eating out, you feel guilty. There are a lot of things to address because we don’t want to just say in this book that we’re budgeting our money and were just going to scrimp and save.

We’re going to learn how to spend too and, when you do spend, it should be with joy. When you buy goods and you send your money out, you send it out with thanks and gratitude that I can pay this bill and when you receive it, it’s – think Ken Honda. He is one of my favorite people when he talks about this. When money comes in, you’re thankful, in gratitude, and when you’re able to pay something, you send it out with thanks and gratitude.

That’s what makes the world go round, so we’re not going to just teach you to covet and hold and hide and save. That’s not living. We want you to live.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful. I’m so glad you brought us there because you know, gratitude around money is such a powerful way for it to come back, right? It’s this reciprocity. What you put out in the world eventually comes back to you, and if you put it out in the world that’s in a state of gratitude then it will come back to you because you’ve been grateful to it. It’s one of those things that was such a huge mental shift for me.

It was that, I used to do this, everyone does it, especially when you are young and just trying to figure things out. I used to feel so angry having to write a check for something that I needed, you know? My first year of writing out my checks to my student loans, oh, they used to just – I used to hate them, you know? I’m like, “God, it’s so much money,” you know? But at the end of the day I got educated.

I got this job because of this or something happened because of this. Transforming it into gratitude, and saying, “You know what? I am grateful that I was able to do X, Y, or Z even though it was probably a little more expensive than it should have been,” that doesn’t matter anymore. The thing is it’s done and now how I think about should also be positive, so I can keep attracting this thing that I need to survive and live through. So it’s very powerful, I’m glad you brought it back to that.

Monica Allen: Yeah, make money want to be with you. When you send it out with gratitude, it’s okay to say, “I’m paying this electric bill and all the people that work for that company. Go ahead, go do what you need to do and bring, come back with friends.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful. So you know, writing a book is no easy feat of course, so congratulations on that. What was your favorite part of pulling the book together and what did you learn from that journey?

Monica Allen: It’s a long journey. I think it is much longer than what I even imagined but I think that it allows you to put your life and your perspective and stories in there and you are leaving a legacy, at least for your children and your grandchildren, of some of the stories that really impacted you. Like you said, when you read a few of the stories, they’re so relatable. We have four children and they’re so relatable, the stories that you’d go through.

But many times, those are not passed down. Each child’s take on the story might be totally different even my children but at least they’re going to know my take on the story when they read the book.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, that’s amazing. I love that. You know, what’s interesting for me is how one feels when they put down a book, you know? I think for me, having been able to skim through your book and really pull out some good nuggets, I felt more confident in what I am doing and it made me think about what I could also be doing, right? But it made me feel good and, you know, I like to feel good when I put a book down.

What do you hope your book does for readers that are really are struggling and figuring out a way to kind of start managing their financials? What do you hope they feel when they put the book down?

Monica Allen: I think in order to say what I hope that they feel and need to touch on a little bit about COVID. You know, COVID has really taken a toll on everyone. When I was in healthcare, healthcare was a great job but COVID changed it all. Each occupation probably in a different way but it did something to all of us. One thing I’ll say about healthcare, it is a good stable job and there is many things you can do in healthcare, but it hit the healthcare workers hard.

We had finally met our match and by that I mean, we got into this field because we wanted to care and help people and help them feel better and now this caring took on a whole new meaning. COVID could actually kill us and did in many cases. I had worked the COVID ward and I know many people that did and I tell you, it was a lot different. I was around even when AIDS and HIV came out and this was a lot different than even that.

At least in AIDS and HIV, we knew that we’d probably in the beginning we thought that it was just by shaking hands so we’re cautious that way but this COVID was airborne, eye-borne. We didn’t know what it was, we didn’t know how everybody was getting it. At the same time, we had to deal with COVID, and because of COVID, 3.5 million mothers left the workplace or they lost their jobs, that’s the early pandemic.

They had to care for those school-aged children. You couldn’t leave your school-aged kids with your grandparents anymore because we were scared they might kill them. So many of those people have not returned to work and we know that I don’t know exactly how they’re getting by but they need some tips because they didn’t just magically get the tips when they left it but finances are the number one cause of divorce and one in two they say get divorced.

Then a woman’s household income falls by nearly 41% after a divorce. That’s double what it is for men. So, one in three households are headed by an unmarried woman and one in three of these households are below the poverty line. What I’m hoping that especially these women get is that, when they set that book down, they think to themselves, “There’s so many tips and tricks and stories of real people who changed their lives by working a plan.”

I firmly – I am at the point in my life now, I don’t care if it’s my plan. If you’d come to me and say you picked the plan that Suze Orman wrote, I don’t care, but you need to pick a plan. You need to tell your money where to go and I want them to think, “You know what? I don’t have to go in an office with a guy who has a suit on and scares me. I can actually start working my plan by reading this book.”

If people will do that in just these four steps without ever even talking about a 529 plan for their kid’s college, I mean, that will pay for itself when it gets there or they can take out their own loans. If they could just do these four steps, you’re 90% different from people, no matter what income you’re at. You can even be over six figures of income and many of those people, they’re not working these four steps.

That’s what I hope that they set it down and they’re like, “Ah, this lady wrote this and I can do this because she went through stuff just like I did and I can do this.” I want them to just relax when they put it down and start.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful, I love that so much because you’re right. I think the power of reading in of itself just illuminates the imagination and I think reading is so powerful because it always leads to some practical things that we can do, which means taking action and the moment we take action, I feel like our illuminated imagination on top of the action may yield a result that feels good for the moment that you took an action.

But imagine that result being compounded over time as you start that good behavior and thinking about your future self. I think that’s what your book does for me. It reminds me to think about my future self while also taking care of my current self and just adapting new behaviors that can ultimately lead to positive outcomes. Monica, I’ve learned so much today. I’m so grateful that you came on the show, it’s such a powerful experience.

The book is called, Girls Just Want to Have Funds: Four Steps to Financial Freedom, that’s it, four steps. So, besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Monica?

Monica Allen: They can find me almost anywhere at @authormonicaallen and I’m not quite out there as much as I want to be but it’s happening soon. The book’s going to be released May 16th on Amazon and I have a virtual assistant who’s helping me get the social media up and going, so it is coming.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much. Monica, thank you again. It’s great to have you on the show and congratulations on your book.

Monica Allen: Thank you so much. It’s great to be here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Absolutely.

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We all share one story. We were born to adventure; it’s in our DNA. Lose that and your potency wanes, along with your relevance in our unpredictable, rapidly evolving world.

Welcome to the Author Hour podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by author Mike Boydell. He’s here to talk about his new book, The Adventure Advantage: A Roadmap into Uncertainty, through Fear, and Onward to Your Heroic Life. Let’s live through it.

Hello, friends, and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m here with a special guest, my friend Mike Boydell. Man, Mike, thank you so much for coming on the show. I’m already super excited to get into this conversation. The book is amazing. It’s called The Adventure Advantage. Mike, how’re you feeling today?

Michael J. Boydell: I’m feeling adventurous, Hussein, I got to say. Your enthusiasm is already contagious. So, I’m glad to be here. Thank you for having me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:I love it, man. I just want to be the number one hype man in the world. That’s my goal in life, you know what I’m saying? So, I got to hype you up and make sure the audience is engaged, because man, it’s worth it. Because here’s the thing, books like yours really remind me of my own journey in life. They remind me of the things that I went through and how powerful they are and all of these beautiful people that come in and out of my life. So, I got to share that with you because having sat with your book, just for a few hours, I was engaged, I was inspired, and completely motivated. This is why you feel the enthusiasm because that’s just how I felt. I just want to be able to share that with you and give that feedback.

But before we get into the juiciness of the book and your story, of course, I really want to share a little bit about your personal background, where you grew up. What was that like for you? Was there someone that inspired the path that you’re on? Or perhaps an event that inspired you? I’d love to go there first if you don’t mind. So, let’s go back in time a little bit and share about that.

Michael J. Boydell: Yes, that’s a dangerous starting point, Hussein. My sons have trained me over the years, “Dad, when someone asks you a simple question, give them a simple answer. Don’t immediately jump into the two-hour answer.” So, I’m going to try to give you the simple answer. And then we can see how it goes from there. I can’t claim real conscious memory of this. But the first trip I took was with my parents. I was born just outside of Boston, Northampton, Massachusetts, and my parents took a trip to Hawaii when I was six months old. Again, I’m not sure they asked me for my permission to do any of that stuff. But just that feeling of travel, the feeling of being on the move, and that concept of adventure was probably planted in me pretty early. From there, we moved up to Canada, when I was just about two years old.

I had a lot of change happen in my life early on. A lot of disruptive change. Divorce happened early on. My father got remarried quite early on, my mom got remarried quite early on and I was really sort of subject to a lot of turmoil. A lot of change. When I say turmoil, I don’t mean it all bad. Just a lot of disruption at an early stage. In some ways, I think I became practiced at the art of navigating change and almost anticipating it, and it’s all those skills we build in our zero to 20 years, really, that so much formulate our operating system or who we are later in life, and kind of who we’re taught to be by our parents or by influential people around us or by our circumstance, by our conditions.

I was certainly taught a lot of lessons around the importance of moving through change and kind of keeping yourself whole or almost reinventing yourself as you move through change. So, lots and lots of disruption in my early life, which in my adult life I come back to look at as really positive influences, and not that they weren’t difficult at the time. But when I look at the whole arc of my story, I’m really happy about the whole thing, given that it landed me in this place today.

Everything Is Perfectly FineHussein Al-Baiaty:So powerful, man. I’m so grateful that you shared that because vulnerability is a strength. It’s one strength that we get to understand later in life, I feel like, but I’m glad you share that, man. Because yes, all of us have this foundation of things that eventually channel us in how we become who we are. I’m grateful that you were able to navigate that world in a way that turned into something positive. But in your book, you talk a little bit about the practicing of “the art of everything is perfectly fine.” Man, I got to tell you that resonated with me so, so deeply, because here’s the thing, man. I grew up in America from 1994 onwards, and I had the privilege of coming from a refugee camp. Before that, it was war, right?

So, for me, my experience was visceral on so many levels. But I was blessed, man. I had a good mom and dad who – they weren’t just good, they were great, right, and an amazing set of brothers and sisters, that, man, literally helped me become the man I am today, in so many ways, right? I’m forever indebted to them.

However, those experiences truly shaped who I was to become, and I had to lean on those experiences, and my mentors, my father, my mother, to really understand who the hell I was because I was trying to figure out my identity growing up, right? Growing up in America, I had to like fake being perfect. Meaning, I had to kind of dress like my friends and talk like my friends and act like I didn’t live in the neighborhood that I lived in, which was like just a poor neighborhood where we could pay cheap, cheap rent. Things that you had to do to kind of cover up what was inside. For me, I had to cover up the fact that I was a refugee and the ugly stuff.

So, you talk about this in a very unique way. Can you share a little bit more about what it’s like to live in this idea of the art of everything is perfectly fine? Tell me more.

Michael J. Boydell: Yes. That’s sort of a choice, I think, that we’re all invited to. But it’s hard to jump at that and make that an easy part of your day-to-day, the art of practicing everything is okay. I think if I just pick up a bit on your story, and I might ask, so I can give this some context, what age were you, Hussein, when you came over?

Hussein Al-Baiaty:I was like nine years old, like eight and a half, nine years old.

Michael J. Boydell: I’m a big fan of really looking at those zero to 20 years, in the influences and so forth, and thinking about all those stories that we’re taught, who are we, what’s important in life, our relationship to money, our relationship to work, our relationship to change, like all these kinds of things. But they do kind of formulate a story that we all take into our 20s, and part of what I have such passion for is just talking with people about their own story and the journey through their own kind of arc. But we often hit that stage in our early 20s, where we’re ready to take on the world and we’re kind of ready to put ourselves out there. We either have a point of view that the model we grew up with was really good. The values were right. I’m going to follow the path that was set. It’s my responsibility to carry on the family tradition, whatever.

In which case, we’re not actually that independent. We’re just living off somebody else’s script of who we’re supposed to be. Or we come on into that world saying, what I grew up with didn’t work for me. It’s my job to change that. I don’t abstract to those values. I don’t want to repeat those things. And I’m going to change it. In which case, we’re still not really living our script. So, often in our 20s, we’re making big, big life choices without even realizing it, right? Education, yes or no? Pursue work, yes or no? Where are we going to live? Are we dating? Are we getting married? Big, big decisions get made to sort of formulate a path. Somewhere in our kind of late 20s, early 30s, we’re sort of invited to that question about, is this the path that I want to be on?

That’s kind of a scary question when you start to feel like you’ve got something to lose. It’s one thing when you’re out there and you’re playing with house money—you got nothing to lose. But when you started to accumulate, when you started to be in a relationship, when you started to have a reputation or a career or what have you, and it feels like your identity is attached to that, it gets a little harder to approach that question of, who am I really?

So that notion, coming back to your original question of everything’s actually okay, that takes a while to get to that place of not yearning, not ceaselessly striving, not seeking, just to be comfortable where you’re at in this moment and know that there is an adventure path that you’re on.

I would want to share just as super quick story about someone who was very meaningful in my life and in the lives of a lot of people. His name was Mark Alessio, and he was a teammate of mine in college, played on the same basketball team. For me, he was this adventurous man. He traveled around the world. He rode a motorbike. He taught English as a Second Language everywhere in the world. And his life very sadly came to a tragic end when he was living with his partner in Madagascar. Hears a break-in downstairs, some noise, goes downstairs, and is confronted by some burglars, and he is shot and killed instantly. It was such a senseless, tragic, random seemingly loss of life.

But before he passed away, he put out this little video vignette, which I still have to this day. I watched frequently. I use it with clients or all kinds of situations. Just out for a walk, and he notices there’s some graffiti and it says, “Everything’s not okay.” And he just kind of says, “That’s an interesting thing. What does that mean? Everything’s not okay.” He just sort of contemplates a little bit, and then he comes back the next day, and the knot has been spray painted out. He says, “You know what? Everything’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

So, whether we think about that little video vignette from my dear friend, Mark, or whether we think back to Shakespeare’s writing and talking about the choice to be happy or not to be happy. To be or not to be. These are the existential questions. But at the end of the day, we’re all invited to choose. Do you want to see everything is okay? Or do you want to see everything is not okay?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That is so deep and so powerful. I love that. Sorry to hear about your beautiful friend and the tragedies that feels like takes away the human beings that we connect to the most. I can resonate with that deeply. I’m glad you went there because I feel like this idea of creating this identity of a perfect, fine life resonates because we are tethered to, like you said earlier, what society wants for us, and how we should portray ourselves. How we should show up “professionally” or not, or whatever.

Dude, for a long time, I didn’t even like my name, bro. My name is Hussein. And before 9/11, and after 9/11, brother, you can see where I’m going with this. You know what I’m saying? Sadly, I would come to my dad, man. Like your friend, my dad was that confidant. He was a remarkable human being. After he passed, it was like, everything he had ever said to me was in front of me. It was vivid. It was colorful. He always used to remind me. He said, “It’s not that your name is Hussein, and then that’s what people are afraid of. It’s what your name stands for.” I’m like, “What do you mean?” He’s like, “I named you after a beautiful human being who was heroic, who stood for righteousness, who stood for freedom and free thought. He was like a revolution.” He’s talking about the grandson of Prophet Muhammad. He’s a huge character in Islamic world.

The way he defined this personality, he said, “My goal with naming you that is that you would live some of those attributes in your life, and that your name is a constant reminder to how great you can be.” With that mindset, it makes that shift, right? It’s a shift of going from negative to positive. That has always been empowering, and God bless his soul. Those are the things that I’m always reminded by, not only his beautiful art that he left me but his beautiful messages that will always live with me. I just appreciate that you shared that story, and I’m so sorry about the tragic loss of your friend. But it’s funny how they live with us continuously, and here we are talking about them, right?

Michael J. Boydell: You’re giving me so much good stuff. I want to riff off that a little bit because the idea of the name that you’re born with, I know I talked about this in my work a lot, is that we don’t even get a choice in that. We don’t get a choice where we’re born or gender, like age profile, socio-economic status, birth order. We don’t even get a vote on our name, and yet it’s this thing that’s just been kind of imparted on us. To me, it’s such a part of that journey to make it your own. Again, just to share a similar quick story back, the name on my birth certificate is Michael Jess Boydell, and the Jess is named after my grandfather, and I can trace our lineage back to the 1100 and see Jesses and Johns and James. So, it connects me back to that.

But have always had in my mind, Michael, is the name that my mom called me. Mike is the name my dad called me. Always in my life. Because I had this split in my family very early on, and my mom moved away, and my dad was still with us, still very close to my mom, but she was in a different part of the world. But it meant that I almost had this identity split. Mike meant one thing. Michael meant another thing. And it wasn’t until recently, in my adult life, people would say, “Well, are you Mike? Are you Michael?” It was like a confusing question to answer because I hadn’t really come to my own sense of closure and identity with that. I flipped back and forth and, “Let me try Michael. Let me try Mike.”

I really get what you’re talking about with that name, Hussein. Mike, Michael is a fairly easy one relative to the weight of what you’re talking about. But how cool that your dad kind of man to man, sort of invited you to really see it in a different context and make it what you wanted it to be at the end of the day.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Right. Exactly. Yes, man. There’s always those beautiful individuals, right? Whether it be my father or your friend or our mothers, whoever, that sort of remind us that we are more than what our society, our context wants us to be. We are more of what we want to create out of that. He said, “You can avoid it and change it or lean into it and embrace it.” I chose the leaning into it. It made me unique. It made me stand out. And it was just like, again, do you lean into that? Or do you fall back?

So, that ultimately defines your character. So, that’s the beauty of those kinds of elements. You talked a little bit about, of course, the whole book is about this idea of advantage. Let me tell you something, man, going on adventures and traveling has dramatically changed who I am and how I see the world in so many ways, and the opportunities that I’ve been able to have growing up in the States, not just traveling in the States, but travels to India, and those kinds of things. Those are just adventures of life. But what is adventure advantage mean to you? What exactly does that mean to you?

The Adventure AdvantageMichael J. Boydell: It’s sort of the penultimate question. It’s, okay, what is the adventure advantage? I would start my answer off by saying, as kids, we know what it is. As kids, the idea of adventuring is built into our DNA. We all have stories, and it’s a fun one to ask people. What’s your first memory of adventure? What was your first adventure? I’ve got a bunch of mine, and I’m sure you’ve got a bunch of yours. But they generally tell the story of what adventure is all about. I’m going to go off into the woods, or I’m going to go climb a mountain with some buddies, or I’m going to try to do a handstand on my bike. All these kinds of crazy things that we do as kids, without realizing it, we’re adventuring. And we’re not thinking about it. We don’t need a book to tell us what to do. We don’t need a method. We don’t need a coach. We don’t need – we just do it.

Again, as we get later in life, we kind of forget that stuff because we’re chasing something. So, really, the adventure advantage, and this is the way I like to kind of frame all my work. It’s right in the book, in base camp. Let’s just start with base camp and understand, really the three elements of what the adventure advantage is all about. The first is understanding the anatomy of adventure. Really, what does adventure mean? It’s not about swimming with sharks and climbing Kilimanjaro and all that kind of stuff. Adventure is an inside game. It’s an inside job. It’s your relationship to change. If you can see change is something that happens for you, as opposed to if that’s happening to you, you’ll have an advantage. That’s the first piece of it.

The second piece of it is really understanding the arc of adventure. The phases that we go through on any journey of change. There’s been lots and lots of people that have written brilliant work on this and have done great work on it. The grief cycle comes to mind immediately, and so many people that have been through real challenging, difficult change know all about the grief cycle. But to me, that arc of adventure starts with some kind of disruptive spark. That’s the first stage. It puts things into a complete emotional mess. We work really hard to fix the mess quickly by making some mental meaning of it. But that usually keeps us stuck in the past, a past version of ourselves. And then after that, it’s a choice to move into something new, to something uncertain, or stay stuck. But those that take that choice to move forward have an advantage. If you understand the stages of change, if you understand how to keep yourself moving through them, what to predict along the way, you’ll have an advantage.

And then the third and final piece of it to me brings it all together. When I ask people to share their adventure stories, they always have four elements in mind. There’s some sense of vision or possibility, some belief in some new thing that might be possible. There’s some sense of focus and presence with everything that’s in front of them. There’s like a sharpness to things. There’s a sense of emotional flow, and then there’s a sense of bravery and risk taking. So, I think of the third piece of the adventure advantage is understanding the axis of adventure, that there’s an altitude to things and maintaining a line of sight between vision and presence, future possibility, and what’s clear and in front of you right now. What’s real right now.

If you can maintain a line of sight between those two things, you’ll have an advantage. Equally, if you think of this as kind of an east–west axis, you’re able to maximize your impact and your attitude in life if you can balance empathy, consideration, understanding emotional flow in yourself, in others, in surroundings. Balancing empathy with bravery, risk taking, moving into the unknown, being assertive, protecting boundaries. If you can maintain that kind of counterbalance between empathy and bravery, you’ll have an advantage. I believe that all of that stuff is already baked into our human condition. Male, female, or any gender in between, we have access to those kinds of four elements.

I’ll stop there because I could go off on how those have been around since the beginning of time. But that’s really the adventure advantage. Understanding the anatomy, understanding the arc, and understand the access. If you’ve got that stuff in your adult life, you’ll have an advantage.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yes. It’s so powerful. I love that. What an amazing sort of in-depth explanation of that. Because, I think for me, when I think of adventure, I guess for me, it was like this unknown. Unknown in two ways. I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I don’t know how I’m going to respond. I’m excited about it. The first time I got on a roller coaster was with my wife, and dude, I was scared. But it was an adventure, and I’m living this adventure alongside her. I was telling myself like, “Man, this little girl in front of me is eight years old. She’s like, a third time going on his roller coaster. I got to step my game up.”

But those are the kinds of adventures I feel like because it arouses fear. It arouses insight. I feel like for me, as I got older, the adventurers were really a reflection of who I would potentially become because I’m learning about myself through the reaction and response. I’m learning about the world around me and the people around me. I think that’s really powerful. Because the coolest adventure is one that’s memorable, of course, and in the fact that it’s memorable. It’s created an experience. That experience, obviously, has created some sort of transformation. Now, for me, I still get like that fear, I guess, the arousal of fear when I think about a roller coaster, and my wife’s like, “We’re going to Disneyland and we’re killing it.” I’m like, “Okay, cool.” But in my back of my mind, I’m like, “I hope to God that roller coaster is off when we’re there.”

But it’s funny because it’s like, I’ve gone on. Everything’s good. But that experience of the unknown is still there, which is really interesting. I don’t mean to oversimplify what you’re saying. But at least that’s how I’ve experienced adventure. You know what I mean?

Michael J. Boydell: To your point, my whole premise is to simplify it. Part of my motivation for taking all this kind of 54 years of lived experience, and what I’ve been doing professionally for the last 10 plus years, and putting into book form was to simplify it for people. All of these complex things that we all feel like we’re going through individually, there is a pretty common, fairly simple human story to it all. Even when we take – I love your roller coaster example, that’s the first stage of any adventure, that disruptive spark.

The disruptive spark can be something that happens to us, right? Fired from a job, walk in on an unforeseen event, a global pandemic. Or it can be something that we initiate. We quit the job, we get a new hairstyle, we decide to go on a roller coaster. That’s the start. Start a business, right? Do a podcast, write a book. That’s it. And you can initiate that spark. But as soon as you’ve initiated it, expect things to get messy, right? So, your emotions, your heart rate, going up that, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, going up that roller coaster, it gets messy.

And then, the brain kicks in, and it wants to lock stuff down. That’s really the ego saying, like, “I want to keep you safe and protected, and maybe I’ll come up with some reason why I just really can’t go on the roller coaster today.” Whatever it is. But if you step into it, and you choose, you know, to trust yourself through that, trust your vision, trust your presence, trust your empathy, trust your bravery. You’ll make it to the other side changed, and then you’re building that kind of muscle memory for the next adventure that comes your way. The more practice we can be at that, the better we are at navigating uncertainty in our life.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes. That’s so powerful, man. I love that. The part of uncertainty, obviously, raises a lot of emotions for people. I think you encapsulate that in so many stories in your book, and I thought that was really powerful. I won’t get into all of them because I really want people to go and hunt down your book and really reveal it for themselves. But in your experience, can you tell me a little bit about maybe like one of your most memorable adventures that you’ve had the opportunity to go on? Maybe what’s one thing you learned from it?

Michael J. Boydell: The opportunity for me to make a choice because when asked questions like that, we’re all immediately drawn to tell you the big adventure story that looks great, that looks sexy. That’s like, “Oh, I went to this place. I went to swim in the Great Barrier Reef. Climbed the mountains in Costa Rica. Blah, blah, blah.” That’s, of course, where the ego wants to go first. So, as you’re asking me that question, my mind is already saying, “Oh, yes, tell him that story. That’s a good one. People will love that story.”

To do justice to the book and to justice to the work, I’m inclined to tell you a more challenging story of adventure. I would point to a time in my late 30s where I had worked really hard. You’d kind of talked about moving to America for the first time. And it’s like chasing that American dream. It seems like there’s a playbook, almost. If you follow these things, if you do these things, you will be successful, or you’ll be powerful, or you’ll be whatever. I was certainly on that playbook in my 20s and 30s, chasing the right job and the right house on the right street and the right cars, and that sense of external validation was something I was really hotly pursuing. My real kind of life-changing adventure started, and I had some signals. This buddy of mine, Mark, I mentioned, he was killed in and around, I think, I was about 38 at the time. I had also lost another close friend, Eric Eolis, to brain cancer right around that time. There’s that sort of invitation to really, like, what does that mean? What’s the meaning of that to me? Or, just skip over it.

But I went through pretty, pretty lonely period where everything on the outside of my life looked amazing. It looked like success. What’s this got to be worried about? I had one real lonely morning, like morning, morning, like 3 a.m., or something, where I woke up after a long business dinner, and I was traveling; I was in the UK. And I just had a real long look in the mirror, and I just didn’t like what I saw. It was like, I was just pretending to be something that I wasn’t.

I had a couple real close friends at the time. We have these people that show up in our lives, kind of when we need the most, who really kind of challenged me to say like, “Are you living the life that is yours to live? Not somebody else’s definition.” That started me on a pretty big adventure, which is not the kind of one that you would be putting on your trophy wall. It was the kind of adventure that had me really digging into first career. I’m pursuing this type of work. I’m a tech company CEO. I’m traveling around the world. There’s a lot of great things that are happening here, but I’m somehow being called to do something different. I think I want to bring out my psychology background and combine it with my strategy background and combine it with my experience leading teams and leading organizational change.

I think I want to open my own business as a coach, and that’s like the last thing that you’re supposed to do when you’re around 40 years old. Every recruiter in the world is telling you these are your prime earning years. You’re insane. You do that when you’re 60. So, there’s those kinds of adventures that, for me, where the real go down and in, and have a long, deep conversation with yourself, and part of the challenge of that kind of adventure is you can start it but you don’t really know where it’s going. You don’t really know where it’s going to end up, and it’s hard when you’re surrounded by people that are pursuing the life that you used to have.

So, I was really lucky to have, as you say, your father. I had a couple of very close sort of mentors of mine, a couple of real close friends that didn’t care about the status, or the title, or the money. They just cared about me. I have to say, both of my parents—I actually think of myself as having three parents. My dad, my stepmom, who I call my mom today, and my birth mom, all three in their own way were instrumental in just believing in me through that period. I had to face a couple real tough choices about how I was identifying with professional reputation, the meaning of money in my life, the meaning of status, and I had to make some real bold choices that involved being real clear on who I was and the feelings that were important to me at the time. I came out the other end of that, and I’m going to call that sort of a four or five-year journey, Hussein. This was not a two-week off-site exercise on vacation somewhere.

But I came out the other side of that with a profound new sense of freedom. I knew who I was in the world, and I wasn’t playing by an email to script. I had a sense of purpose, and I was ready to take that into the world and build interdependent relationships, professionally, personally, and that really launched me, you know, in a completely different life trajectory that I continue to enjoy today. But that would be one of those adventures that was kind of born out of real loneliness, real kind of a disruptive period in my life, and a long, lonely road. But I had some great mentors, great friends along the way, and couldn’t be more happier in terms of how the story ended up.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yes. What a transformation. I love how you channeled this energy into an adventure for yourself. An adventure going inwards and bringing out the gold from within. When you said freedom, I knew you connected the dots, right? I just knew it because here’s the thing, and this is why I relate so deeply. I was building my business, I was doing well, I was out of college, and I’m hungry, I’m young, and I was building my little t-shirt business. I had five employees, then 10 employees, and 15 employees. I was like getting contracts with Nike. Man, I was at the top of my game, feeling sharp as ever. But guess what, I was working 100 hours a day, you know what I mean, and like, just looking out for the next thing.

My father used to come into my shop and hang out with me, and he had a little desk that I put up for him, and he would just paint. He was retired. He was on Social Security. He was just sitting there hanging out, painting these beautiful Islamic quotes from the Koran or whatever. He would hang out and always talk, and he folded t-shirts with me, whatever. Pops, man, taking care of me. But I got to be honest with you, man. When he passed, he traveled back home to Iraq as he did. You take a few months off and just got to go hang out with his buddies and visit home, especially around 2014, ’15, ’16, when things were a little bit better, where he could visit and rebuild his home. That’s exactly what he did. He knew he was going to go back. He always sounds like, “When I’m gone, that’s where I want to be. I love my country. I love Iraq. It’s the home of every human being.” He has such a beautiful connection, and I love that about him.

When he went there, he unfortunately passed on his prayer rug, which is exactly how he wanted to go. But here’s the thing, man. It’d hurt me so much. I felt like that was his reward of living such an incredible life. But for me, in a weird, weird way, after I kind of got a little bit out of grief, in the months after, six, seven months. I felt freedom. For the first time, I felt freedom. Because here’s the thing, I realized in the moment that when we were putting him in the ground and burying him, I knew in that moment I would be there eventually, and that my journey is actually that – he always said, “You’re from paradise, you’re going back to paradise. You just got to follow the way. You got to figure out the way.” And the way is being a good human. Just practice being a good human. This practice, it’s not going to be perfect.

Like I said earlier, those messages really resonated with me because I felt free. At that moment, that shop didn’t matter. The money didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. It was more like I’m on a new adventure now. I’m a completely different person, meaning I’m going to chase something different and not chase it, but more like have it come to me, in that I’m letting go of all these ridiculous, ridiculous ideas and really living out the adventure I’m supposed to be on, which is self-discovery.

The more we discover ourselves, the more we discover our truth, the more we connect with divinity, the more I connect with my father. Today, all I want to do is be like him, which is sit down, chill out, paint, you know what I mean? And just go there. I’m like, I get it now. I totally get it. It’s so freeing. Unfortunately, it happened at the time, and that’s how you become a warrior, right? In the sense of like, when you experience someone saying goodbye to you in a very unique way, you realize that you too have that short amount of time, and what are you going to do with this time? And what are you going to do with this journey? And it really is up to you. I love that. And I feel like that was the advantage that I needed for the adventure ahead. And you put it so beautifully, and how these major life things that happen.

Looking Back On The Adventurer InsideHussein Al-Baiaty:I got to ask you this, and I’ll let you go after this. I know I’ve taken a lot of your time because it’s such a beautiful conversation. When we talk about the journey of life, it resonates with me deeply, man, I feel like I’ve been on a huge, long journey. But many journeys within. You know what I mean? Which I’m sure you can relate. What’s your hope for the reader when they’re done reading your book and having put it down? What does that feeling you hope that they walk away with?

Michael J. Boydell: Yes. That’s a great question. I put a lot of thought into trying to answer that question, and I love what you talked about with your dad, just doing some art. And I’m already connecting to the name of your book, that art of resilience. For me, I really tried to take not just on author’s approach, but an artist’s approach to how would I engage someone in a one-on-one conversation, which is most of my work is really just engaged, just like we are now, just in a real conversation.

So, I tried to structure the entire book, even though it’s challenging when you’re not getting any feedback, right? You’re just looking at the screen or looking at the words on the page. But I really tried to invite a one-on-one conversation and take away as much of the noise as possible. There’s lots of great books out there that have quotes from all kinds of people or have case studies throughout, so you can get a sense of yourself relative to other people.

I wanted to write a book without either of those things because I wanted the reader to just have their own completely immersive experience. I start the book out like I start out my work, and like you invited me to, today, just by telling a bit of my own story to invite the reader to get comfortable with their story. What I hope is that they would see their own story in that adventure advantage notion, right? They’d get us in, yes, my sense of vision, presence, empathy, bravery. But when they get into the meat of the book, in the freedom adventure, the courage adventure, the power adventure, that they would find a natural starting place for themselves. For me, if you’re starting somewhere, start at the freedom adventure, right? That’s the place to go. You talked to all about this in sharing some of your story.

Really take the time to explore the meaning of your past, the meaning of the lessons your father taught you, your mother taught you, caregivers taught you, and choose which ones to take with you and choose which ones to, with love and respect, leave behind. And then really take the time to explore mastery of your own strengths and mastery of your own fears. And then come up with a mantra for yourself, as if you were the only person in the world. When you go through those stages, that’s really what has you completing the freedom adventure at the end of it, and then you come away with this beautiful sense of independence. You’re your own person at the end of that freedom adventure. And then, you can move into the courage adventure, which is all about interdependence. How are you going to be in relationship to other people, other places, other things. And then, the power adventure finally is about that renewal of vitality, intellectual vitality, emotional power, spiritual power, physical power.

So, my hope for the reader is that they find a starting point for themselves, and that there’s something in there that they can feel connected to, a little less lonely, and connect back to the adventurer that’s already inside them. Whether they pick up some of the suggestions or tips and stories that I tell, or whether they create their own adventure that they just sort of believe in themselves and get back in the world. I think the world so much craves adventure right now. We’ve been through so much with socio-economic changes, global turmoil, and war, and pandemic, and existential questions about work and workplace, and gun violence. This stuff is just daunting to live through. So, if I can inspire people to just reclaim that inner sense of adventure, get on the life path that they want to be on, pass that on to those around them, that would be a thrill. I would sleep very, very well at night if I felt like I could make that kind of difference to the reader.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Well, what I love about your response here is that you are living in that, I feel like, right now, in making a difference in the people’s lives that you work with, that you share your story with. Of course, now, through your book, it’s a remarkable story unfolding, and it continues to unfold, and I’m glad you take on – I’m glad you took on that adventure of leaning into the coaching and helping others sort of not only find their adventure but really find themselves, find their truth. I think that’s the most powerful thing we could do on Earth. I think it’s the number one thing.

I always used to ask my dad like, “Why? Why are we here, man? What are we doing?” It’s like, you got to discover yourself. That’s the ultimate thing. If you can do that, you live free. He left me with something really beautiful, and you share that. That’s why I’m like, we can continue talking forever because it really ties into all of the things that I feel like these beautiful human beings have left us with. Mike, you are –

Michael J. Boydell: Hussein, we got to take your show on the road. We got to go on the road.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: This is what I’m saying. This is what I’m saying, man. I love it. Mike, you and I have a definitive connection, my brother, and I just appreciate you coming on the show. Your story’s remarkable. Your book is amazing. I know you’re super excited because I know that book is sitting in your hands right now, and it’s powerful, and it’s going to resonate deeply with so many people, like it did with me. I’m beyond grateful and honored to have had you on the show. I know our continued brotherhood and friendship will continue on because that’s a new adventure for me.

The book is called The Adventure Advantage: A Roadmap into Uncertainty, through Fear, and Onward to Your Heroic Life. So, besides checking out the book, where can people find you and connect with you, Mike?

Michael J. Boydell: Yes, we’ve got a few places for people to reach out. I mean, the book itself is one. You can get it on Amazon. On the back of the book, you’ll see a QR code for those that are technology literate on such things. Click on the QR code, it will take you right to theadventureadvantage.com, and that will tell you a little bit more about the book, but it will also introduce you to some of the programs that we offer. For those that just really want a taste, almost a primer, the book is probably enough.

But for those that want to experience it, we run three to four-day adventure programs where you learn the content that’s in the book, but then you get out into nature, and you get to experience it. Also, I do keynotes and learning seminars for larger kind of audiences. I’m not all over social media. I kind of concentrate on LinkedIn. So, you can certainly find me on LinkedIn, and you can also find The Adventure Advantage group page on LinkedIn, which is really just more of a community for people to share their adventure stories.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:I love that, Mike. Thanks again, brother. I appreciate you coming on. It’s an honor. Congratulations on your beautiful new book.

Michael J. Boydell: I appreciate you, Hussein. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me today.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Absolutely, with honors.

The post The Adventure Advantage: Michael J. Boydell appeared first on Author Hour.

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How would things be different if everyone adopted learning as a way of life? Can intentional, messy, audacious learning unlock the power to live meaningfully and contribute to the world?

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by author, Kelly Smith, who is here to talk about his new book called A Fire to be Kindled: How a Generation of Empowered Learners Can Lead Meaningful Lives and Move Humanity Forward. Let’s get into it.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Author Hour. Today, my guest, Kelly Smith has some amazing insights in his new book called, A Fire to be Kindled. Kelly, thank you so much for joining me today. Your book absolutely resonated with me so I’m going to get into it.

Kelly Smith: Thanks for having me Hussein, it’s good to be here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man. So, every now and then, a book about education or learning or knowledge and all those kinds of things, come across my table and your book really resonated because I’m not from around these parts, man. I’m from the Middle East and I had to grow up in America and I was a refugee and so learning was — I always felt like I was on fire, you know what I mean?

I had to absorb and adapt and adopt fairly quickly and my mind, I felt like, was always on fire when it came to that and your analogy about your book title, man, it just like hit me in the head because I just deeply resonated [with it]. I feel that way, I feel like there are so many amazing people who added to that fire but I’m excited for you to walk us through that a little bit. Before we get into the book and the goodness of it, I really want to give our audience a little bit of background about you and where you grew up, and what got you into the world that you’re in today?

Perhaps, somebody that inspired you to go on that path, or maybe an event that inspired you, I’d love to know.

Kelly Smith: Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks again for letting me be here, it’s great to be able to talk about this. I think the thing people should know about me is pretty like middle America and I grew up in the Suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona. I went to public school. I was one of those kids that school came relatively easily to me, I did pretty well.

I have a brain that memorizes things pretty quickly and easily and so I found myself kind of getting this steady stream of positive reinforcement, good grades, and happy teachers and things like that, and over a period of time, I came to kind of believe these things about myself. Not necessarily – you know, what I look back on now was it wasn’t so much a fire for learning but it was a system that I understood and I knew that I was able to function well.

So for me, the game became, putting the minimum amount of work in, getting the grades, and moving to the next stage. That’s ultimately what I was trying to do — and if you think in crude language, it’s, I was trying not to learn, you know? I was trying to do the minimum amount of learning possible, the minimum amount of work, risk, and effort that it would take.

I would turn in a paper, for example, written exactly to what I thought the teacher wanted to hear, with no original thought whatsoever and it worked. I was able to get the grades but as I look back on it, I don’t feel very proud of it now. It’s sort of like, what could it have been if I had been excited about learning?

So that’s my path. I went to undergrad to study physics, ended up at MIT studying nuclear physics, working on fusion energy in a lab, taking these crazy hard science and math classes and at that point, I recognize like, “Oh, I don’t know this.” I’m not the smartest person anymore and this is hard and not only is this hard, I don’t know how to learn. So that was kind of a terrifying moment, an existential crisis for me.

To Drench or KindleHussein Al-Baiaty: Wow, that’s really powerful. I love that you displayed this idea that even though as a young person and being a student — let’s be honest, we’re kind of taught to stay within those margins, right? We’re taught to stay within those lines but it’s interesting because there is so much more there that could be tapped into.

But it is the approach of course of our mentors, teachers, and all those things, and obviously later on, as you get more excited then to deep learning, I feel like, things start to shift. But real quickly, I want to talk about this idea of how you started your book. You talk about the – where the book title comes from is this amazing quote but I’d love for you to share that story and why that resonated with you specifically, then we’ll jump back into the career stuff.

Kelly Smith: Sure, yeah. I wish I could take credit for the title of the book. I mean, I ripped it off.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I mean, you should, it’s the title of your book now.

Kelly Smith: It is the title.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: You take the credit.

Kelly Smith: But it’s definitely pulled from the – when thousands of years ago, the ancient Roman/Greek philosopher Plutarch who said, “The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” So you kind of fast-forward my story I left them IT, I did a bunch of tech jobs, I started a company. I ended up becoming a learner.

You know, really getting to this place where I felt like I can learn whatever I need and it will help me succeed at my job, it will help me create new jobs, create new opportunities even outside of work. I started finding a lot of the meaning and purpose that was happening in my life was tied to my ability to go out and learn things.

And what happened was, I got to this place where I had some time extra in my life and I started teaching kids to code. It was a volunteer thing. Once a week, I would go to the public library, kids would show up and I would help them learn the basics of computer programming.

Well, this became my little learning laboratory, and what I got to see in this room was learning come alive, right? I’m watching kids who really wanted to learn, who were engaged, the stories were nuts, right? Parents were using code club, this after-school program, as leverage to get their kids to do chores.

They wanted so badly to be there and to tackle these hard cognitive challenges. Meanwhile, these same kids are disengaged at school, they’re frustrated, they feel like failures, some of them are getting in trouble, getting bad grades, and so I’m looking at this and saying, “Man, what is the – what’s the problem here? Why is this not working?” So when I encountered this quote from ancient philosopher Plutarch, I just quickly immediately recognized that there are these two competing metaphors.

If you think of education as filling a vessel, like pouring water into a cup — which is how so much of our system operates today and many well-intentioned great people inside of that system are thinking in terms of, “I’ve got this knowledge in my pitcher, let’s get it into that heads of these kids and we’ll have them repeat back to us through assignments or multiple choice test.”

That’s one model or paradigm of education but what Plutarch was saying, and I think he was right, is that it’s much more like kindling a fire. If you’ve ever created a fire out of nothing, getting sparks and trying to catch these precious sparks and all of your dry kindling, you’re blowing air on it and trying to kind of hold it and get it started. It’s a delicate operation and it’s so amazingly cool when it happens, when you’re able to get to actual ignition.

Now think, if my goal is to kindle fire and I pour water, like from the other metaphor, that’s the exact wrong thing to do. Don’t do that. That’s going to make it impossible and yet, that’s what’s happening for so many young people today, where I think the things that are done to them, all of the pressures and systems and structure is the equivalent of dumping water on them.

And really discouraging them from asking a good question, caring about something, setting a goal, diving in a direction that they’re excited about and so you have these competing metaphors and that’s what I wanted to write the book about.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right. Man, I love that. It’s so powerful because, I just can’t agree with you more, especially because I feel like in a lot of ways I’ve experienced drenching the person with water. Like, when we were in that refugee camp, we had a school, which was like in portables and it was just – it was – hands down, probably the worst place to “learn” because it was completely fear-driven.

I was terrified. Because those teachers were allowed to hit you and I mean, punish. Yeah, it was so traumatic, but when you don’t know anything outside of that, you just think that that’s how school is. Well, guess what? I come to America and oh my God, right? I still had those internal fears about going to school but now they were different. They were based on social aspects as supposed to learning aspects.

But I still had those traumatic experiences where you know, I would want to forget things at school because I wanted to forget them as soon as I left school. I saw kids being hit, I’ve been hit and so everything you learned was jam-packed around that traumatic experience and now you just want to forget it.

Well, you’re not going to – learning is off the table. So coming to America, I had to unlearn that and relearn how to learn and that was a profound shift for me. I don’t think it happened until, honestly, my eighth-grade school teacher. She was just so amazing and saw so much in me and literally after school, she slowly start teaching me like, “Here’s how your memory potentially works so let’s work through that” and just getting me to understand, literally, how I learn.

That completely changed my mind, because it is like you said, if you want to learn something — throughout your book, at least these are the things that I got, if you want to learn something, you got to go out and actually, it’s hard. You have to earn it to learn it, right?

Kelly Smith: It’s messy, it takes time.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Exactly. So this is where I was going to go with this, you talk a lot about being intentional, being messy and audacious. Can you give me some examples that you’ve embraced in this type of learning to achieve the success that you have?

Kelly Smith: Yeah. I mean, Hussein, first of all, thanks for sharing your story. It’s an incredible story and where you’ve been, you can see in that so much of what I’m trying to talk about, right? It’s that –

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It resonates.

Kelly Smith: For sure. I mean, to learn something at all, requires a mindset and an approach, and guess what? If a child is in a state of fear, we’ve got very strong, kind of biological responses that are going to step in and shut off the parts of our brain that are going to be open to taking risks and grinding through the hard stuff. It’s like my job is to put my head down and avoid getting hit by my teacher, in your case.

In my case, it was more about getting a bad grade or getting in trouble, you know? I think, we’re in these modes too often of kind of fight or flight, like reptilian-mammalian, kind of brain modes. What we’re really talking about was learning as a loftier, bigger endeavor is saying, “Look, that’s going to require humans to step out of a safe place.” We now – many of us live in safety, no one’s physically –

No, I’m speaking to somebody who has experienced, you know, being a refugee and some of these things, they still exists in the world but for many of my readers, it’s like, yeah, nobody’s chasing you down or trying to hurt your body. It’s like, you are safe but you don’t feel safe because of a combination of these things.

One of the first things I point to — and I’m glad you brought this up — your eighth-grade teacher is to do this, right? To really get – invite a child into that space of taking those risks and doing the hard messy work of learning, really needs connection. Like, connection as a psychological concept. This idea of having an adult that’s there, that knows me, that literally can see me and hear me and understand me, and that I believe, has my best intention at heart.

So as you put that together and really try to design around that, that one adult, that ability to provide that connection is so incredibly powerful, so incredibly foundational to kind of open that up for a young person in their quest to learn and I’ve been lucky enough to have that in various settings in my life.

Some I might talk about in the book and some of them I don’t but I want that for every child, right? I want every child to have adults in their life that are completely there, safe, vested, and ready to provide that stable foundation on which the messy and risk-taking kind of endeavor of learning can happen.

Learning is Inherently CollectiveHussein Al-Baiaty: Hey man, that’s so powerful and honestly, I’m not going to lie, I sort of teared up because as you were speaking because I just recall how valuable that teacher was to my life, you know what I mean? The more I listen to you, the more I recognize how empowered I felt, which literally leads me to my next question and I’m saying this with pure authenticity.

Because look, the way I want to explain this is that because of that empowered feeling is the reason why I was able to get to college and start a business and now get into publishing and become an artist. Bro, I feel like everything spawned from those moments of sitting across this remarkable teacher and, I love that and you talk about that and there are characteristics.

But what would you say is the most important characteristics of an empowered learner? Can you go there a little bit with me?

Kelly Smith: Yeah, I love to do that first of all, I hope this teacher is listening and I hope anybody out there –

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh, I’m sending her this.

Kelly Smith: Please do but honestly, I hope everybody that does the work of the day-to-day of this, the hard part about it is the return comes so much later, right? So you don’t know and Prenda, my company gets to work with lots of these people that are really making sacrifices and they’re making – it comes from a very pure place.

They’re doing good for children and you don’t really know, at the end of the day, that kid maybe today was rolling their eyes and falling asleep and having a bad attitude. It’s like, I can’t see it but 10 years from now, they’re going to be sitting on somebody’s podcast talking about how I made a difference.

So that’s a huge part and always has been in the education space but yeah, like what is it? Basically, what the book is about is an empowered learner. I mean, the two things that I say to be an empowered learner, it’s real simple. First, you have to make a decision. There’s agency involved.

You have to make this choice that I’m going to be a learner and that sounds so trivial and obvious but if you look at our lives, so much of it is handed to us, especially nowadays, kids in Western society, I mean, we’ve got them programmed, right? Every single hour of their life is scheduled and we’re driving them around to these things and all of it is happening to them and so it kind of crowds out space for a human being making a choice but I am arguing that’s a huge critical part of this. Then the second one is, once you’ve made that choice, you’ve got to practice.

It’s an art, a skill, it’s a life, right? To be a learner, there’s a set of habits and daily routines and skills that you can acquire and the book goes into all of that. I hope people read it and take a look but so much of this is about a shift in the way of being to where once you have made that choice, I’m going to be a learner. Now, it’s like, “I’m going to get really good at that” and you meet these people that are just incredible learners.

I have seen them in every field, right? Music and sports and math and business and all these different places and as you watch them do their thing it’s truly inspiring. I mean, this is what’s going to change the world.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, 100%. I can’t express to you how important education is to my parents who didn’t get through high school, in Iraq. I can’t express to you how my father reminded me damn near every day how extremely lucky I was that I was attending high school, just school in America, and then having the opportunity and the choice to go to a university and of course, these things were not afforded to him.

So I always felt privileged and lucky and almost to a degree, this is how powerful learning is, man, and how it was for me was like to a degree. I felt a sense of guilt for those who don’t have this opportunity, right? My father’s biggest thing was –

Kelly Smith: Yeah, absolutely.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: — don’t feel the guilt, feel that you are fortunate to give it back because that’s the coolest thing about knowledge is that it multiplies. You can never get – and you mentioned this so beautifully, it is not pouring out your knowledge. The only thing you have to keep the fire going in that mind is just to feed it more knowledge and it expands and it gets bigger and the way it gets bigger is of course, sharing the knowledge, which is like the essence of knowledge itself.

It is meant to be shared. Can we go there a little bit and how you built your organization around this idea of empowered learning of course but how we perceived knowledge and how it needs to be shared? Yeah.

Kelly Smith: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the interesting things that came out of the book — and I must have understood this at some level because it is baked into the learning model that I helped craft and the company that I founded but— as I really had the chance to write down the concepts and think this through, you can think of learning as this massive herculean individual thing, right?

Me, myself, and I am going to go out and acquire this knowledge and I’m going to use it to better myself and accomplish my goals and do these things and it is that. Learning is the key and I can hear in the way you talk about it and your parents understood this too, in learning you are opening doors for yourself, and you are creating opportunities for yourself. We talk to children about your future self, right?

By putting work in as a young person, you are doing a favor to your future self, you know? You are setting them up for success and possibility. So with that individualistic nature is so critical but what’s interesting is it’s not enough, right? Learning is inherently collective, we live in a society where we’re connected to each other, we interact with each other. So much of learning is with and through and by other people.

So seeing, this individual learner is going to see everyone around them pretty quickly as, “Well, these are people I can ask questions. These are people I can collaborate with. We can work together, we can co-create, we can work on things and have learning experiences together” and there’s just like you said in the metaphor of the fire, right? More people doesn’t put out the fire.

That builds the fire stronger and brighter and it becomes more exciting. So, so much of what we did with Prenda and I had talked to a lot of people that were at the time, right? People homeschooling, people doing other things for education, whether it’s signing up your kids for a specific school or homeschooling and I was thinking, “Yeah, but I think there is something to a personalized student-centered approach to education.”

That’s what I put together for the first micro-school that I started in my house, which was in 2018, well before the pandemic made these things popular but seven kids around my kitchen table, and what I was amazed to see was the degree to which that became a collective endeavor. It wasn’t just individuals becoming learners, it was a group learning as a group but doing so in a way that is very collaborative, very engaging, and very dynamic.

So instead of, “You guys sit there and listen while I tell you something,” it was, “What are we going discuss today?” and one of the students would pull an article and give it to the other kids to read and create this educational moment that I was basically a facilitator, a supporter, and we call this role a learning guide at Prenda and so I was that guide. The kids were really driving their education.

That was incredible to see, it opened my eyes to what’s really possible as we kind of rethink what could school be, and what could learning be all about.

Creating Environments to Encourage Lifelong LearningHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, man, that’s so powerful, and the idea of getting to participate in and make decisions about what you want to think about for the day and what you want to learn or the week and then how you can encourage your friends, which later leads to encouraging your colleagues, right? I mean, it goes hand-in-hand and I just can’t disconnect sort of my experience as a kid to where I am today and how learning fits in between.

I was so compelled by everything that I was reading that I started speaking and that is one way and then I went out and wrote a book through Scribe, of course, right? Then now, I am building my YouTube channel and it’s one thing — I love this idea that you talked about is that one thing of knowledge, one base of knowledge, it’s a platform that you get to stand on while you build the next one and it is not to go up higher, it’s so that you can see further, right?

See people way out further that you can help and reach out to and I love this idea with the micro-schools that you’ve been developing, sort of creates and fosters this concept on such an amazing scale through the Internet of course. Can you briefly talk to us a little bit about Prenda and not only developing it but where does this idea come from?

Kelly Smith: So I kind of hinted at this in parts of this conversation already. I was teaching that after-school coding program and I saw learning come to life. I saw firsthand fire is kindled, right? That you can see it in the eyes of the kids that would come week after week, they were doing really hard stuff. I saw some nine-year-olds, this was a great day for me because I had been talking to a lot of these kids and they were saying things like, “Oh, I hate math class, they get so hard and I am getting a bad grade.”

Then one day I walked over to a little table where two nine-year-olds were sitting and they weren’t in the coding software. I could see that they weren’t working on their game that they had been really excited about, I was curious like, “What’s going on? Why aren’t you guys working on this?” Well, I looked closer and they were in Con Academy teaching themselves trigonometry. So this is math that’s three or four years ahead of where they were.

Maybe six years ahead of where they were. They were teaching themselves sine and cosine because they want to be able to shoot a cannon ball from a pirate ship in the video game that they were designing and they wanted it to fly in the correct kind of parabolic trajectory so it looked cool in their game and all of a sudden, it was just like you could feel the warmth of the fire, right? That came from that.

This is learning in its highest form because these were kids who were creating, who are synthesizing, who are dreaming this up and then they’re learning. They’re going out hungry for anything that will help them achieve them and you compare and contrast that with like, “Okay kids, today we’re going to learn about sine and cosine.” It’s like a complete opposite thing and it’s definitely the thing that’s going to.

You know, I am long on humans. I guess Hussein, I’ll just say I believe that humans are the resource on the planet that can really take us forward. Our brains are capable of so much more than we currently – and we stop ourselves, right? There are a lot of things getting in the way but what I’m obsessed with and then I saw this during code club, I’m obsessed with helping kids get to that point where the fire is lit.

So that was the idea and when I started that initial micro-school in my house, that’s what happened. I saw it for seven kids, one of them was my own son and then in the next year, more kids and pretty soon other people are doing it here in Arizona and that spread to the other parts of the United States and even beyond. It’s been really exciting to just see people step up in a collective learning endeavor, right?

What a micro-school can be, we can create our learning environment together, we can make it a place where kids make that choice and practice becoming awesome lifelong empowered learners.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful. I love that so much, man. You articulate it so well and I am grateful that you are doing this kind of work because it is extremely important and gives us more options to look at things a little bit differently. Can you tell me a little bit about it — because I know writing a book is no easy feat. Can you tell me about your experience and that journey of writing a book and what you learned from that?

Kelly Smith: Yeah, it is no easy feat. I think I probably underestimated as I’m sure many authors do what it would actually take to do it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh yeah.

Kelly Smith: I mentioned earlier kind of an insight that came from the process of writing. I understood myself and my work better because I force myself to sit down with the computer and write. Yeah, ultimately it was a question of what do I really believe and what I want to say and who do I want to say it to, and my message, you have heard this already, just continuous to be that we as a society, I mean, I think we give lip service to learning.

We think of it maybe roughly synonymous with school, I’m saying no. It is so much bigger than that, it is so much more powerful than we realize. This is all about lighting fires and those fires are going to power the future of humanity. So this is, I am not kidding around or trying to be dramatic. It’s like if we’re going to solve the hard problems that face our species, which I believe we can but we need to be learners and tackle things together in a way that we’ve seen glimpses of but by and large, we’re missing in today.

So as I picture parents out there kind of thinking about, “What do I want for my child?” I think the days of, “Well, I want them to get a perfect transcript and get into Harvard” like, for some people that’s what they want but I think more people are asking the question of like, “Well, so for what? What is it for? Why do I care about learning and education and what do I really want for my children?”

I think we see humans as multidimensional, each one is different. There are so many versions of genius and intelligence and you see this in your child to try to impose kind of a one-dimensional system on that, it just doesn’t make sense anymore and I think that’s what really what I am about with the business and the effort around Prenda but that is what I am trying to do with the book is just open people’s eyes, get them thinking and asking these questions.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, so powerful man, I love that. So when your reader puts down the book and finishes it up and now is feeling good and all those kinds of things but what’s the emotion that you hope to evoke that they walk away with after having read your book?

Kelly Smith: Yeah, it’s a great question because I think there is a sense of inspiration or excitement in it. I think there is also going to be just full honesty to somebody considering this book, there is going to be a sense of like overwhelm maybe, like, “Well, this feels – it feels big, it feels lofty.” Our brains are working against us in this quest to become empowered learners. It’s just all too easy to get distracted or to limit ourselves with false narratives and beliefs.

So you’re going to feel all of that but I guess what I want is to give you something to hang on to that says, “Look, there is this better way, this better approach toward learning that will be the difference in your life and you are totally capable of it. As a human being, you can do this.” So that’s kind of number one, inviting individuals to step up to that empowered learner goal, understanding that it is not going to be just this easy snap of the fingers.

Then the other thing is to be collective about it, right? Engage with your community, I hope you’ll talk to others and we’re building a kindled collective, a group that basically people who believe these things about learning can come together and support each other and join and so I want you to be excited to take action and confident in the sense that you are not alone in this, that you are capable along with many, many others as we kind of step up and shape not only our own lives but together kind of shape what the world is going to be.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful and spoken like not only a learner but definitely an educator and a person who obviously sees the world in such a beautiful light. Your book deeply resonated with me, Kelly, so I am so grateful that it’s out and I can’t wait to share it with so many of my teachers because I fall into that space of I love speaking to the youth as well, high schools, colleges about my experience and what opportunities are that lay before them.

Your book really triggered some of those really inspirational moments I’ve had in my life and reminded me honestly just how lucky I truly am. So thank you for putting pen to paper and going through the hardships of bringing all this knowledge together and serving me such a good cup of wisdom, I really appreciate that. So it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the show, my friend.

I know this book is going to create such a huge ripple and impact in our world, so again, I am grateful for that. Your experiences and of course your stories are profound and I know I found them great and I know the audience did too. The book is titled, A Fire to be Kindled: How a Generation of Empowered Learners Can Lead Meaningful Lives and Move Humanity Forward. So besides checking out the book, where can people find you, my friend?

Kelly Smith: Prenda.com is probably the easiest place and you’ll be able to see some information about this Kindled Collective that we’re talking about, this community that really is much larger than a single company. It is about these ideas in practice.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. Kelly, thank you so, so much. Congratulations again.

Kelly Smith: Thanks.

The post A Fire to be Kindled: Kelly Smith appeared first on Author Hour.

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As a physician, your skills help you earn an income well above the national average, but life is expensive. Between financial illiteracy and an increase in living expenses, financial education has never been more vital. And for women physicians facing systemic oppression, it’s often a rare commodity.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by author, Dr. Latifat Akintade, who is here to talk about her new book, Done with Broke: The Woman Physician’s Guide to More Money and Less Hustle. Let’s flip through it.

Hello friends and welcome back to the show. I’m here with my friend, Latifat Akintade today, and I’m super excited because her book is absolutely remarkable. It’s going to be so helpful to so many people, but first of all, I’d like to welcome Dr. Latifat. How are you?

Latifat Akintade: I am doing fantastic. I am so excited to be here and glad that I get to chat with you today.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, me too. I was literally sitting at your table when you came to Scribe and started your work, and it’s such a privilege to watch authors come to the table, get their things together, outline their books, and have a vision and they bring it to life. I get to have the privilege of watching those journeys unfold, and your journey is obviously huge because you have a very unique story but also, a purpose.

Your book, Done With Broke: The Woman Physician’s Guide to More Money and Less Hustle, is just that. It’s amazing because I hear so many physicians out there, or stories about physicians out there that struggle financially. Even though they’re making good money, at least, to society it sounds like being a doctor, make sure you earn good money and all that good stuff.

However, I know I’ve learned it through business, it’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep. The way you go about your book and the stories that you share are so powerful. I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you for joining me. I really want to get into the juiciness of the book, but before that, I really want to talk to you about it and have you share about your personal background a little bit.

Perhaps where you grew up, what it was like for you, and maybe a person or an event that sort of inspired you to be on the path that you’re on to becoming and working as a physician.

Latifat Akintade: No, absolutely, thank you so much. I’m really excited to be here, and honestly, to say that I cannot believe that I’m having this conversation with you would be an understatement. And the reason why is because my journey to where I’m at today is not what I ever thought it was going to be.

Me writing a book, me talking about money and, in fact, maybe even a physician, honestly, were not things that I thought — I mean, I hoped it would happen, the physician part of it, but if I look at my journey from where it started, and for those that do not know me, which I’m as human as a lot of your audience. I grew up in Nigeria, I moved to the United States about twenty-something years ago.

I’ve always wanted to be a physician from a young age, which, to be honest with you, I have zero idea how that came about because my parents were not college educated. My dad had a business, my mom would stay home for a lot of our lives because she had seven kids; six girls and a boy. I remember her biggest fear was that the girls were going to get older and everyone’s going to get pregnant at the age of twelve.

She [was] like, “I’d better keep an eye on this crazy kid.” So my mom was a stay-at-home mom, which I’m super grateful for, but I moved here to be a physician, really. But the path wasn’t one that was always straight. I didn’t know what the journey was going to look like. We first came here with my siblings to Los Angeles and had the privilege of being hosted by family members.

My aunt, who’s now late, unfortunately, and my uncle. They played a huge part in my life, and I’m really grateful for how they impacted our journey. But they also were not physicians, so I didn’t know how I was going to get here. It’s literally through the impact of mentorship, and good advisors that I’ve been able to navigate this journey.

And a dose, a huge dose of stubbornness and determination to be honest with you is what let me through learning how to be a physician. I went to UCLA for undergrad, UCSF for medical school, and I’m really just grateful for the path that has led me to where I am today, which is to be a physician and specifically, a gastroenterologist.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow, what a journey. I’m so glad you articulated that so beautifully. And it is a beautiful journey, and I’m so grateful because, in a lot of ways, I relate to that kind of journey, where I got to come to the States and have tons of people in my life and in my journey. I never thought I would go to architecture school or anything like that, but this is where I find a lot of connections, right?

Because as we come from different countries, we see in the distance what the vision can be but man, it is not a straight road. Like you said, it is very windy and sometimes you feel like you end up in a cul-de-sac where you’re just like, “I’m stuck.” But yes, stubbornness and, of course, eagerness get to where you want to be.

So congratulations on that journey, I mean, it’s beautiful and I’m glad I get to experience it alongside you here. I want to talk about a little bit the importance of not only becoming a physician but also the importance of financial education for physicians. What made you realize that that was an important factor in what you were doing? Was that something you were always good at or not so good at? How did you wake up to this realization?

Latifat Akintade: Oh my goodness, I was horrible with money. I knew zero about money. In fact, I went through my entire medical education without any financial education. We’d learn a lot of stuff, amazing, helpful stuff in medical school but financial education isn’t one that is included in our training. I went through undergrad, med school, three years of internal medicine residency, and then another additional three years of training after that.

The longer the training, literally, I should tell you that I was hecka broke. That was the whole point of that, so I knew zero about money, and because my entire goal was to be a physician. I wanted to be the best doctor that I could be and I’m really grateful for the path that I took, the education, the mentorship, the patience, everybody that taught me throughout my journey to be who I am today.

But what happened though was at the end of my training — at that point, I had two kids, and I now have three. I remember looking around, and I’m so glad that for some reason, this was a time when people weren’t necessarily talking a lot about burnout in medicine. I looked around, and I saw that a lot of my attendants were burnt out. People were tired, shoulders slumped, and these were amazingly smart people. I always tell people that if you want to be inspired, go read the personal statement of a physician or someone that wants to be a physician.

We go into this field because we want to change the world. We care deeply about people. Nobody in their right mind would sacrifice their twenties and thirties to learning, spending sixty to eighty hours in a hospital, missing out on a lot of stuff in their twenties, not going out clubbing, not partying when their peers were doing that, being broke, going into debt, and acquiring like USD 250,000 averagely in debt, without caring about the purpose and mission for which they’re doing it.

We went into this to care about people but unfortunately, the way that the healthcare system is created, unfortunately, can lead to a natural path of disempowering physicians. I had this moment where — I’m so grateful for — where I just realized that if I did not have my money shit together — can I say “shit” on this podcast?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Latifat Akintade: All right, great, I’m a GI doctor. I say “shit” all day.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I mean this ain’t Disney, this is my show.

Latifat Akintade: Okay good. Hey, just ought to be sure, just want to make sure I’m on the right channel here, right? I knew that in order for me to be the kind of doctor I wanted to be, in order for me to create the kind of impact that I wanted to be able to create, in order for me to be able to practice medicine with authenticity and courage and honesty, I knew that I had to have the power to be able to walk at any time.

I knew that I had to have the power. You know, my roof, my shelter, my kid’s food was not dependent solely on someone walking into the clinic and saying, “I don’t like the fact that you’re taking too much time with patients and you’re not meeting some ridiculous metrics, you’re out of here.” And I wish that was false. I wish that was a myth but unfortunately, there are physicians that are amazing, that are excellent, that I will trust my entire life and my family’s life, and my family too that unfortunately, sometimes are fired for no just cause.

Maybe they need to go take care of their health issues and they’re like, “Sorry, we cannot accommodate that, you’re fired.” Stuff like that should really not be happening. So for me, the way that I think about it, money is a tool that helps physicians be excellent physicians. Money is a tool that helps physicians stay in the game, not because they don’t have a choice but because they want to. And if you truly want to see someone that’s excellent at their art, they are the people that have a choice.

They’re not there because that’s the only thing they can do, they’re not there because they can’t pay their bills, they’re not there because they’re afraid of their lack of voice. They are there because they’re like, “I want to be here with what I call two butt checks,” meaning like, with full authenticity and speak to you because it’s like, “I could be anywhere else, but I care about you, and I want to be here.”

That’s the whole reason why I had to learn money for myself and that’s how and why I teach other physicians and specifically, women physicians to know money, to have money without hustle, without grinding but in the way that takes focus, commitment, intentionality. Because when we do that, it’s going to create a different breed of physicians, which I believe is what the world needs today.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/rolled-20-u-s-dollar-bill-164527/

Making Financial MovesHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful. Latifat, you have such deep passion for not only your work but the craft of your work, and also other physicians, and over these airwaves, I could just feel your passion and energy towards wanting to help other people become free of this idea of, the idea of feeling like, “I have to do this” and it’s, “I get to do this.” And really, that fine line of financial stability, financial understanding.

That’s how you become a great artist, like you said, you show up and not worry about this other thing, that that is taken care of and that you’re not forcing yourself to be there. That’s very powerful, and that mindset, that mind shift of thinking about your craft in that way and not walking around with slumped shoulders and feeling the burnout.

So, how did you start making this move on your own to figure out, “Okay, this is something I have to do, and I have to understand my financial state, what it looks like” all these good things? How did that journey start? Take me down that story of making these moves.

Latifat Akintade: The start was not fun at all because here I was, a physician who knew nothing about money. I had spent sixty to eighty hours in hospitals at that point, learning and taking care of patients. So for me, I had lots of thoughts, and the thoughts were not very helpful. The thoughts were, “I’m already too late, everybody else knows about money, and I don’t,” right? How am I going to say I know nothing about money and people are going to be able to trust that I’m smart enough to be a physician?

I looked around and the only spaces that existed unfortunately at that time were hard for me to come out and say, “I need help with money,” because everybody looked like they knew it. So I thought that was a classic med school that I escaped, which that class didn’t happen, right? I had all those reasons in my head for why I couldn’t learn money, but then the reasons that I just shared with you right now were the reasons that I had for why I had to learn money.

I wanted to be able to practice with authenticity. I wanted to be able to make sure that the sacrifices of everybody that had invested in my life, including my mother who I didn’t see for five years because she was in Nigeria then, I wanted to make sure that their sacrifices were not in vain. And for me, if I could not practice medicine by choice, their sacrifice was going to be in vain.

Also, at that point, I had two kids. I did not want to be a parent that I would keep making excuses and saying, “I did not have a choice.” If I’m going to do something and not be there physically for my kid, it’s because I believe in it. It’s because I want to go there and take care of a patient. I want to go there and save a life. I want to go there and comfort someone, right? So I just did not want a life of excuses.

So even though there were those fears, my why became strong, and it was those why’s that really became what pivoted me into going into what felt like a dark hole for figuring out how to do money. And honestly, the process wasn’t sexy. It literally was me going online and going, “Okay, people said I need to learn how to budget. Like, what is a budget? How to budget?” Especially if you hate math. I do not like math.

I got 100% in calculus in college because I pretty much did every single extra credit that you could find in this world, and I did great, but it doesn’t mean I’m good at math, right? So I knew that I had to figure out how to do money in a way that didn’t take a lot of time because I’m like, “I’m busy, I don’t have time. I don’t like math, I don’t like spreadsheets.” So literally, I had to learn what was out there but then now go into figuring out, “Now that I know what people are doing, how do I create something for myself that makes sense in English?”

How do I translate this jargon into what is not boring and going to put me to sleep, right? What is going to be interesting and what is going to be successful, despite the things that I thought I sucked at? And so that’s how I had to create it for myself. So it’s as simple as things like, instead of budgeting, what is a spending plan? How do I tell my money where to go? How do I redirect my –

I literally had to change the communication of money in my head and do it for myself because, again, listen, I was so bad at this that I didn’t even for a second imagine that I would be teaching anybody how to do it. So that was not even on my radar at all, I was just there to fix my own shit, literally, and that’s the path that took me to learn money. I always tell people that the hardest part is starting.

Once you start, you keep going, and you start to see wins, you start to get better, and then you’re like, “Oh, maybe my thoughts about this were not right.” You start to create evidence for yourself on why this is actually doable and possible for you, and that’s the path that has led me towards learning my own money, learning real estate for myself, investing in real estate, and now being the person that’s able to teach other women how to do this.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful. I love that journey because in order for us to actually learn the thing that we most fear, we have to go to those dark alleys. And the funny thing is, when we get into those dark alleys, you realize, there’s a light switch, right? You flick this thing on, “Okay, I can learn this.” I was terrible at math, and I think there’s a fear around that, right?

But the crazy thing is, we have to prove to ourselves in a way that, “Yeah, I might not be great at math, but there are ways to do this. There are ways to do this that I can teach myself, especially over a span of time.” I think for me there was a book that broke the code for me on how to think about money and it was just the mind shift. I’m like, “Oh my God, instead of putting it all in one pile, separate the piles.” And I was just like, “Now I can understand how to apply the math.”

It’s just a simple switch, but it’s something that was a revelation, almost. And when you have that, it makes all the other processes that much easier because you understand the overall concept, and I think that’s really powerful. How can women physicians facing systemic oppression benefit from the principles that you present in your book? Because I know you like to go there and it’s really deep.

But I want to learn a little bit from you about women facing systemic oppression and how they can apply these tools in their day-to-day.

Empowering WomenLatifat Akintade: Absolutely. I think it’s no secret to you and a lot of people around that the culture in the world we live in was not specifically made with women or people of color or minorities in mind. That is just a fact that exists for good or for bad, it depends on what direction you’re coming from. And I love diversity. I think diversity is the spice of life, and I do think that a lot of what we have already is servicing some subsets of the population, which is great for them.

Now, the question is, and I always talk about the fact that we go in there. We talk about things like privilege. I don’t think privilege itself is a bad thing. I think when scarcity is applied to privilege or when the privilege creates scarcity and disparities, that is so broad, and I am not naïve to think disparities are never going to exist, but I think the huge range that we have of disparities in a lot of things including money currently is pretty jacked up.

So the key is this: If we can learn how to not be afraid of being broke, not be afraid of money because we’ve learned the principles that I talk about in this book, what that means is that we are able to speak more powerfully to things, like decreasing the wage gap that exists. For example, I will share a story with you of someone that shared with me. This is a couple, a woman and a male physician.

They work in the same hospital; they work in the same department, they check the same amount of calls, they commute to work, which is a salary position. So it is not like, “Oh, maybe one person is seeing more patients than the other.” The woman, in fact, was more celebrated in terms of her patient scores and how well she does compare to the specific male partner that she has, only to find out that their salary is actually different.

When they called this out, they were told that “Oh, sorry, it was a mistake.” Another example for you is another woman physician who had been working in this department for years, a new person, a guy started working in that department and what happens is they were just happening to have a conversation, only to find out that he was earning about USD 80,000 more than she was and he started working after she did.

The reason that they were told was, “Oh, you did not ask.” So there are things that we can do better, like negotiating better, speaking more with confidence, and asking for appropriate pay in exchange for the value that we create. But I do think that a lot of times, the reason why people don’t is because of fear, of again, fear of money, fear of judgment, and some other things that we’ve talked that I do go into somewhat in the book. And my hope and my goal is that if we can learn this stuff, we’ll be able to apply it to our lives and be able to get the return on the amazing work that we’re already doing in this world.

If we can do that, we don’t have to pay any subset less, but the other people that have been behind just get to be elevated, and that is what I’m here for.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s so powerful. I can’t even express how grateful I am for someone like you to step into that light and educate people in the way that you are. Because it is so profoundly clear that we have been systemically oppressed in so many different areas and in so many different parts of our world, and especially in the US; sadly, that it needs to be adjusted. It needs to be corrected; it needs to be brought to light.

This whole idea of “you didn’t ask” is absurdity. It’s an absolute absurdity. I just read a thing that talked about, just in the State of Oregon where I used to live, that just across the board, people of color are earning 50% less than their Caucasian counterparts. And it just – I knew that working in the state a few years back and volunteering my time for policy making and things like that, and it was so frustrating because it was just like, we’re fighting for something that just – it’s like, “Why are we fighting for this?”

I’m doing the same exact same kind of work here as my counterpart; the fact that I get paid less is absurd. It makes no sense, and there is no excuse for it. However, that’s the systemic oppression that we are all trying to counterbalance, and I think your work and your book [is] a shining light on that. Because, and I love the fact that you’re not just a physician, you really want to help your physician friends.

You want to help the community; you want to help people. And I think by being well-educated and by being paid the right way and being able to really come to that in a way that is powerful, now I can come to work, show up in the best form and serve my community in a way that I signed up to do before even entering university for becoming a physician, to begin with.

Now, I’ll tell you this; my nephew is working on becoming a physician. He is in medical school; he’s a beautiful kid, beautiful, super intelligent. We have these conversations about what he wants to do and things like that. And he talks a lot about it because he’s just more aware; I feel like the younger generation has become so much more aware, thank God for the Internet and their abilities to connect with one another. And we do talk about systemic oppression and how he believes that he wants to become a voice for that.

I just champion him, man. He’s so beautiful in that way, and so for me, that just resonates deeply with how far we’ve come as young people and what we feel is right in our world. But I had to ask you, what advice would you give to women physicians specifically who feel maybe overwhelmed by their financial situation and are not sure where to start? Where is the beginning? Where is the starting line for someone?

Learn to Master Your MoneyLatifat Akintade: You know, what I would say to them is I 100% get it, and the reason why I get it is not because I read a book about it, but it’s because I’ve lived it. It’s because I coach women physicians that have lived it. And some of them are still living it and walking along their journey to make sure that they empower themselves financially. I will say that the thing is this, being overwhelmed by money is not necessarily even dependent on how much you have.

It’s knowing what to do with it, it’s knowing the power of how to be the CEO and master of your money, CEO, and master of your life, and also have your mindset, your money mindset, the way you think about your money, the way you process money, the way you relate with yourself, the way you relate with money in a way that actually leads you to what’s freedom and not keep you bound.

So this is part of what causes overwhelm a lot of times, we have such misunderstanding of money that is not just based on us misinterpreting it, but because of the miseducation that may have been passed around honestly for sometimes generations. So the story that we’ve been taught about money, what we’ve been witnessing about money because if you think about it, a lot of what we do is not just what we’re taught but what we observe and what we see.

There is so much misinformation that we learn actively and passively that it is completely normal that a lot of us are misinformed about money. And when we’re not trying to do money from a space of misinformation, from a space of incomplete education, especially about money and the mindset around money and how we process money and the mentality around money, what ends up happening is we feel stuck because we’re like, “I don’t know what to do.”

Me, for example, when I start at money, one of the things that I have to struggle with was things like money is the root of evil, right? Money is the root of evil; you’re a physician, you’re greedy for talking about money. You are greedy for asking about money when people don’t have any lived experience of our lives, what the cost of being a physician is, not just in terms of debt but the continued cost of a physician spending sixty to eighty hours in the hospital.

We have lives and families outside of the hospital that cost us to maintain because we are spending all that time in the hospital. So yes, I agree with you that it’s not just about what we earn but what we keep. But when we don’t have the appropriate education, the complete knowledge information, the strategy, and how to really be the CEO and master of our finances, it is no surprise to me that many people, including myself, struggle with money.

But the good thing though is, if you’re a physician and even a non-physician and you’re listening to this right now, what I’m going to say is many of us that are listening to this episode are people that have done hard things in our lives. Whether you’re a teacher, whether you’re an accountant, whether you’re a physician, whether you’re a stay-at-home parent, you’ve done things in your life.

Listen, one of the hardest things you could do is hang around a toddler for twenty-four hours, so don’t tell me you don’t do hard things. That shit is hard. So you’ve done things that are harder than money, and you may not believe it right now because it’s not what everybody else has told you. Part of the reason why is because there are so many people in our society that get to benefit from you not being gripped with money.

For you not knowing how to think clearly without the baggage of the emotions about money, people that are like, “Please, don’t look at your credit statement because we’re living it up with the interest that you’re paying us every month.” People that don’t want equity or decreased disparities, I should say, because there is always going to be inequity, but it doesn’t have to be so crazily wide.

But there are people that benefit from you not taking the time to learn how to invest, from you not taking the time to learn how to have ownership of a business, how to be a CEO, how to be a business owner. There are so many people that are benefiting from that, and so they would tell you that it’s hard, that it’s too hard for you, as if you don’t already do hard things, right? So if you are listening to this, the point is you’ve done things that are harder, and money just happens to be the next area that maybe you need to bring some intentionality into it.

Because if you focus on it for a season of your life, if you choose to spend as much time as you spend on Netflix or Facebook or whatever it is on money, it is completely impossible for you not to be great at it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Preaching right now, that is such powerful advice because you’re right, it’s all about your mindset and bringing that intentionality to this area of your life, which is, let’s be honest, one of if not the most important area of your life. Because money dictates, sadly sometimes, how you feel. Instead of you feeling good about it, it dictates how you feel not so good about it, and our culture and societies that we live in; you’re right.

They are making a good living off of us not understanding how money works, where we’re spending, all of these things. So raising your level of awareness that you can take control, you can do hard things, it is possible, you’ve broken through those barriers, you come from a different country, you’ve been able to do X, Y, and Z, everyone can do this. That’s such a powerful way to frame everything that you’ve done, especially in this book.

It’s so amazing. You know what’s crazy about your book, what I love? I mean, it’s not crazy, it’s just honestly, and I don’t mean this in a rude way or anything; it’s easy to read. It’s easy to navigate, the concepts are — honestly, as I was swiftly [going] through [it], I’m like, “Oh, I mean, it’s written for physicians.” But the reality is, I can apply some of those things to my life, you know what I mean? By just bringing my awareness to it, I think that’s so powerful.

But I got to ask you since you’ve been with Scribe, what was your favorite part of pulling this book together because it is not an easy feat, of course, but you do hard things, and I get that. One of these things is writing a book, but what was that journey like for you? What was your favorite part?

Latifat Akintade: It’s funny because you were at the beginning. You mentioned that you remember us sitting at the table when I came for the workshop, and there are so many times during that first time with you guys that I thought, “What the heck am I doing? How dare I think I can do this? Latifat, just delegate this. Let someone else take care of this.” Because it’s writing a book, that’s a freaking big deal, right?

I have to remind myself to have the tools that I use when it comes to money and bring that here as well, which is like, I’ve done harder things. There is literally nothing that is too hard for me. But what I have loved most about Scribe is, honestly, I think if I try doing this myself, I probably would have quit many times and not because I’m not hardworking, not because I’m not a go-getter, not because I’m not stubborn or persistent.

I’m all of that. I can do things that I put my mind to it. But because there were also many things that are happening in life, happening through life, so many competing things that are happening. I have a podcast, The MoneyFitMD Podcast; I am a mama of three kids, and I work pretty much full-time up until last week Thursday; I am preparing for a year of sabbatical. We’ve had losses in the middle of life and COVID, right?

COVID has been hard in hospitals, all this. So it’s not the lack of the ability to write but the presence of life. I’m really grateful that I chose to work with Scribe because you guys have made the process very, very, very doable. The checking process has been good, by having someone that checks up on you and say, “Look, these are the deadlines you’re working with. How are you doing?”

Shout out to Joy, by the way, I don’t know if she’s ever going to listen to this, but she’s amazing and I just love her attitude of, “I’m here to help you.” Yeah, why don’t we just — I’m like, “Okay, I have this question. Why don’t we just get on the phone, you know? Here’s my calendar; schedule a time with me, and I just love that. Knowing that there is someone walking through it with you has been one of my favorite parts of Scribe, and just knowing that I have a team that’s out there to support me has been priceless.

Again, I could do this myself, and I know that there are people that are sitting down listening to this and want to write a book, and they’re like, “Yeah, I can do this.” And there is no doubt in my mind that you can. But if you have life, number one, if you don’t think you can, then absolutely work with Scribe, you will. But also, if your life can just happen, and it’s nice to have someone and a community outside of yourself whose goal is to get you through that finish line and for me, that’s probably one of the best parts of this.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful. Thank you. Thank you for sharing such sweet comments. I’m sure everyone at Scribe appreciates that, and I know I do because just watching your journey unfold has been really powerful. But you’re 100% right in that you can go on the journey alone, and that’s fine. No one says you can’t do that, and that’s actually really powerful, but it’s so much – I don’t know, it’s more fun with friends and people and supporters and mentors.

Like, a tribe of people going along the journey with you ensuring that you’re doing well and helping you when things are getting harder and helping you stay on track. Because I feel like that’s the hardest thing is accountability because writing is such a solo thing. It doesn’t have to be, right? It doesn’t have to be just you sitting at a computer forever trying to crank out a book and bounce it off other people.

That’s really powerful; thank you for sharing that. Latifat, it’s been an absolute pleasure just having you on today and you share from a place of beauty and passion and, really, a place of wanting to serve the world. I think not only are you doing it as a physician, but of course, you are doing it as a mom and showing up on a podcast and really wanting to help people get to the mindset that you’ve achieved, which is that financial freedom but also work with pure purpose and love and just putting those things altogether.

You have buttoned it all down in this book, which is amazing. So the book is called, Done With Broke: The Woman Physician’s Guide to More Money and Less Hustle. So besides checking out the book, where can people find you?

Latifat Akintade: Absolutely. You know, thank you for having me here. The best place to find me is I have a podcast, which is called, The MoneyFitMD, so The MoneyFitMD Podcast, which is where we release one to two episodes every week, and we talk about all things money and mindset. You could also find me on Instagram @moneyfitmd, Facebook MoneyFitMD. I’m checking out LinkedIn, I’m not completely there yet, but I do have a lane in there.

But if you really want to hang out, then find me on Instagram, Facebook, or on my podcast, and of course, you can also go to my website, which is moneyfitmd.com. You can click the contact me, or if you’re a woman physician, absolutely, you can click the Work with Me button on there, and we can chat with someone on my team, and we can make sure that we help serve you as best as we can.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Latifat, it’s been an absolute pleasure and an honor, not only just watching and bringing the book to life but now getting to celebrate with you as the book launches. Super excited for you, I know it’s going to make huge waves in our world, and it’s very important work. So thank you for putting the time, resources, and energy behind this. I’m grateful to be on the receiving end of it, so thanks again for coming on the show. Have a great day.

The post Done With Broke: Latifat Akintade, MD. appeared first on Author Hour.

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To turn within is to survive. After the collapse of humanity in 2211, Letty Valentine, her family, and the rest of Washington DC’s Black upper class sought refuge in the ruins of Salt Lake City. As the founders of The Obsidian Society, they turn inward, protecting their own against remaining colonies on Earth. My next guest just launched her debut novel and it’s amazing.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by my friend and author, Keshara Moore, who is here to talk about her new novel called, The Obsidian Society. Let’s flip through it.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m here with a special guest, my good friend, Keshara Moore, who just launched her debut novel, The Obsidian Society. Yo, Keshara, I’m so excited to have you on the show. I’m really excited to get into this conversation but most of all, thank you for coming on, how are you feeling?

Keshara Moore: I feel very – that was a really smooth slick intro. But yeah, no, I feel wonderful. I’m super excited to talk and be here and all the things.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I’m super excited for you because — I got to tell you, I know we talked a little bit off air but — your book instantaneously pulled me in. You took me in this scene and I just felt like I know what that was like. Swimming is not like a strong suit of mine.

Keshara Moore: I mean, I do not think that you are alone so that’s the feeling that I was going for.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: No, it was perfect. You were describing something that I think a lot of people feel, especially when they jump in that water but again, that’s the power of captivating the audience [at] the very beginning. You did such a good job and I’m super excited to get into the novel, the behind-the-scenes but before we do that, I love to give our audience a little bit about who you are, where you grew up, your personal background a little bit and what led you down the path of getting into publishing and writing and creative stuff that you do now.

Keshara Moore: Yeah, great question. I will start off by saying I don’t have any major credentials. I feel Scribe was like, “Oh, unlocking the world’s wisdom, everyone can write a book.” I am a great case of that in the sense of I didn’t have a ton of writing background and you know, “this paper” and “this dissertation” and all those things.

But yeah, just from growing up, both my parents were in the military. So I moved around a ton, I moved around every three years. I got to experience a lot of great places, a lot of great people, ended up going to college and thought I wanted to be an attorney. I ended up becoming a paralegal, got into the law business and then very quickly was like, “I’m sure this is for some people but this is definitely not for me.” So all of that being said, that was kind of the background I was coming from as far as how I ended up in Austin and got my first job here.

Turning WithinHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that. Just for those listening, Kesh and I work at Scribe Media and for the most part, we publish books that are expert-driven, knowledge share, or memoirs. So this one was a little bit outside that scope which is actually amazing. I love that you took on that lead of launching something that was creative.

But all of together, I mean, even the theme of the book was actually really powerful — which we’ll get into but — I want to know, what inspired you to write, to turn within and this idea, this concept of turning within? How do you come up with the concept? Is this something that was planted within you when you were young? Or is this something that you started thinking up in the last couple of years and decided like, “I want to write this story, I got this concept.” How did that come about? Because a novel is obviously different than writing what we’re experts in, or a memoir, you know?

Keshara Moore: For sure. No, great question. Where do I even start? Yeah, so as with a lot of things, as you know, the world is pausing, COVID-19 is going on, it was very fresh. I actually did work from home, probably for a total of two months when the courts kind of shut down.

This was peak paralegal time, things were kind of shutting down and I just started doing some scribbling, just some ideas swirling around. I started playing around with those and it was mostly just for fun, and escapism, and just something that I like to do with my time and then, I was like, “You know what? How funny would it be if I just like turned this into a novel?” I wondered where that could take me. So to turn within — and turn within is actually a super funny phrase because — and I won’t spoil but once you get to the end of the book, hopefully, the reader will realize this, that turn within is actually kind of takes a transformation in the sense of, actually, the real power here is turning outside of yourself, turning outside from what you’re used to and looking at things from a different point of view. But very early in the book, the main character is very much in his mindset of, “Yeah, I need to turn within in order to deal with these problems and deal with my issues.” So the turn within is a funny-like transformative thing.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Talk to me a little bit about the writing process for something like this, like your novel. What kind of challenges came up for you while writing it? I mean, I feel like the research and thinking about these elements and people in my mind — because I haven’t written anything like this — it feels like there’s so many moving parts in a novel and you got to, in a way, suggest that where the dots will connect, right? But obviously, I don’t know, for me that could be challenging. For you, it could be where you’re floating downriver but can you talk a little bit about that process of how you start to gather your thoughts around these components?

Keshara Moore: Absolutely, I could talk about this all day but since we don’t have all day, I’m just going to get the quickest of rundowns but obviously, again, just citing the fact that I am no expert. So for me, this was actually the longest piece of work I’d ever written.

So I think that the number one thing that really helped was the fact that I was actually interested in building this world, interested in where the characters were going, interested in what motivated them, the actions that they were taking because I have several friends who are like, “Hey, I really want to write fiction but every time I try, it seems like I get a little bit of the way and then I get bored.” And it’s like, “Bro, if you’re feeling that way, imagine how your readers are feeling.” So I fully understand that.

I think for me, the beginning thing was like, “Okay, let me just write about something that genuinely interests me and the rest will go from there” but I actually recently just had a conversation. Someone asked me — what’s the question they ask, “Are you a plotter or a punter?” I know it’s a common question in the community and that’s funny to me because like, “Oh, you got to be one or the other?” When in reality, you’re probably a little bit of both but I will say, shout out to Rose, shout out to Cal. They were some of the folks that helped me edit. Those first manuscripts were very rough in the sense of, yeah, it was literally me just having fun, not paying attention to formatting and structure and things like that. Those things came later on once I kind of got the validation of like, “Oh, this might actually turn into something. It could be something.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that you approached it with this idea of like, “What is interesting to me? What resonates with me, what do I want to write about?” and what’s interesting about that concept, I feel like there’s an unknown, right? Because what’s interesting to you can always evolve as you grow and as you write, it’s going to bring itself out of you. I think that’s an interesting take because it’s trusting something that is going to be there but may not be there in the moment and that is really difficult, I feel like, for writers, right? But then, if we just write completely what we know, how we know it, all the past experiences, those things — I could tell you from personal experience, writing a memoir, there is parts of my life where I was like, “This is boring,” you know? And I’m like, “And it shouldn’t be here” but ultimately, a piece of that story is actually helpful for this long piece of the story or the bigger piece of the story but it’s almost like you don’t know what needs to come of it until you actually sit down and write. I think it’s really powerful that starting with, what’s interesting to me, that’s a very powerful question because then, you write everything kind of stacks on top of that.

Because if you’re interested in it, then you got to write it in a way that gets the reader interested into it of course, which makes, I think, for a powerful perspective.

So talk to me a little bit about how the story — it takes place obviously in a post-apocalyptic world and I know there are many types of stories that share this idea of far in the future and things are going down and the world isn’t what we think of it or we want it to be. But here’s an opportunity to be completely creative and everything is really open for your own translation. So talk to me a little bit about this world in which you create and maybe what kind of research did you do to create that world and characters.

Keshara Moore: Yeah, so as far as it goes, the first thing you said about writing what you know and writing what you’re interested in, I fully, fully believe that everyone who creates stuff has like just the biggest ego ever because how much of an ego do you have to have in order to be like, “Hey, I’m going to create this thing and I know there’s one person out there, at least one person out there is going to vibe with this and read with it.” You’ve got to have like some bit of an ego for that but I definitely think it’s like a fine line between that ego and hubris and all the things. So that’s number one but to answer your question about research and the behind-the-scenes stuff, terribly-terribly-terribly was actually, ended up being helpful. Just all the things going on around us with COVID-19 at the time because a book doesn’t take place that far in the future from where we are currently right now. To where – and that was purposeful because I didn’t want it to be some insane amount of years in the future where it’s almost very hard to envision this thing happening but the fact that yeah, a lot of the fallout in this world is manmade in the sense of like nuclear bombs and sickness and things like that like those post-apocalyptic or apocalyptic themes that everyone’s familiar with and used to.

Those are something that it’s super easy for us to envision because we are quite literally, and still are on the tail end of it, lived through a lot of those really hard things. So as far as research, there were definitely some ins and outs or just like wasn’t familiar with stuff because you brought up like the whole drowning thing. I cannot tell you, my Google search history is so questionable right now.

But yeah, you Google the ins and outs of like — and something that I ended up finding out — I was like, “Yeah, drowning actually doesn’t happen that slowly.” It happens very quickly. So I took that into account when writing that like opening scene. So all of those little things, obviously, you research those. Bridge the gap of my own knowledge but even then, yeah, it just goes back to the fact that the ultimate goal is for other people to read this story but at the end of the day, I had fun doing that research and I had fun coming up with this world but yeah, I didn’t want it to be – I know the sci-fi and the fantasy publishing gatekeepers are going to be like, “Ah, this doesn’t fall under all of those like umbrellas.” And I’m actually not upset with that because it really was just me having fun, building a world that I hope entertains other people.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. I’m glad you brought us there because I want to share a little bit about that world and the characters in it. You call them the main group, The Valentines, or the founders of The Obsidian Society, and correct me if I’m wrong. Can you tell us more about The Society and its sort of values and those kind of things that I feel like in a way, resonate with some of the things that we think about today but you approach them in a very unique way, which I love, can you share a little bit about that?

Keshara Moore: Yeah, so you had it spot on. The Obsidian Society is the faction currently living in Salt Lake City and they are – I don’t want to say, necessarily run but a big portion of their leadership is this family, The Valentines. The matriarch, Regina, she is obviously overseeing this entire colony. Just because of the length of the novel, I didn’t really have time to go into the nitty-gritty. But the idea here with The Obsidian Society is I was like, “What does it look like for a group?” If you do your research and go back far enough, essentially, there are these groups that spring up after the Emancipation Proclamation and you have these freemen who are now free, these people who used to be slaves who are now “free”, they start to move to areas and one of those really big popping areas was Washington DC. If you do some research, I can’t think of the names of the top of my head, but there are a lot of these groups who would populate in cities like Washington DC; they would found these groups and the expressed purpose of those groups was the advancement of those Black families and Black settlements that were cropping up from these freemen groups. So the idea there is that — and this is mentioned in the book but — The Obsidian Society takes some ties from there, that it is the present-day version of those groups.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s so powerful. I don’t want to give too much away, I feel like the book is so unique. I love that you draw from these sort of past experiences and how you intertwined them with modern and future outtakes, which I just love because I feel like in a lot of ways, unfortunately, history does repeat itself and it can repeat itself but improve, right? I think your battle between how the characters really come together and capturing this essence of, “Okay, here’s an opportunity for us to create a new world essentially but there is some stuff going on and we got to get through this stuff. I love that and I think your book sets it up for a potential sequel, maybe. Do you have plans to continue the story or the series?

Keshara Moore: Ooh, that is the sweet question. I absolutely do. Yeah, I kind of went back and forth. I knew that one book definitely was not enough to tell the entire story that I wanted to tell. So I actually think it is going to be a trilogy, so kind of out of the box, yeah.

The Black MonolithHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that. Okay, I’m glad we shared that because I was — you know, as I was kind of perusing through your book, I was like, “Man, this is so powerful.” I want this to be a series selfishly and then the more I read, I was like, “Okay, yeah. I think there is a setup here for that potential,” which is really cool. So talk to me a little bit about your favorite part of pulling this book together. What did you learn from that journey?

Keshara Moore: I love a well-built character. Like you have the plotting, [that]’s cool. You can do all these wonderful things with the plot. You can do all these wonderful things with structure but just like a genuine character whose voice you can hear in your head and who you can kind of start to paint your own mental picture of what that person looks like and their mannerisms and why they did this instead of that.

I love me a good well-built character and I feel like one of the parts of the character, which I really try to emphasize a lot was just this idea of dialogue. So there are some characters in the book like Nico and Nila, who have these very, some might say hard to read accents and have these very thick accents that are there throughout the entirety of the novel. So, playing around with that dialogue, one word here versus a word here, and how that makes a difference was probably something that I really enjoyed and I think I did well. I might be brushing off my own shoulder but I think I did an okay job.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: No, you did a good job. You did a great job.

Keshara Moore: Yeah, that was one of the things I had a lot of fun with though.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that. Can you tell me a little bit about — you have a very unique overall theme to the book and story, you know, just tell me a little bit about how you sort of drive this theme and where does it come from? Where does it land with you personally?

Keshara Moore: There is so much to talk about there but yeah, as far as themes go, I mean, the most obvious one is just this intersection of what does it mean to be Black and to be queer and then to also be a woman because I — and I put the woman in there because I do think that this novel looks or this story looks completely different if this is a Black gay man versus Letty, who is the main character, who is a queer Black woman. I think the story looks completely different if it’s from that point of view but, that’s one of the really biggest things, and using that and that intersectionality to break up this idea of the Black monolith, right?

We’ve all heard about the Black monolith. It’s this idea that all Black people in the US have the same exact experience, which then is so harmful to us as people. So I wanted to use Letty to bring about what does it look like to have this Black queer woman but not to have that be her whole story, you know? I feel like oftentimes, a character like Letty has previously been used in a comedic relief type of way or like injustice, “Oh, I’m going to pile all of this shit on this character and then they are just going to have this terrible ending at the end.” I feel like those types of characters tend to be used in that way and I wanted to do the opposite of that and actually fully flesh out all of the different aspects of Letty’s identity with the fact that yes, she’s Black, she’s queer, she’s a woman but also you know, she’s not limited to just being those things. She has all this other stuff going on. So that’s probably the biggest theme that people are going to immediately get but to quickly name a few other ones, we’ve obviously also got generational trauma, this idea of the beliefs that are handed down to us from our parents and what we do with those as we age.

Yeah, we’ve got some silly ones that are like, what does it look like to write Black people in places that historically, we don’t often get to see. That stuff and this is probably a really big one in the sense of you think of like why stuff like Mortal Instruments, Vampire Academy, Beautiful Creatures, if you go and watch those film adaptations of the book, it’s almost funny to just sit there and just watch those movies because it’s like, “Dang, there ain’t no Black people in this movie.” This is supposed to be modern-day society and not a single Black person and it’s almost laughable to a point, right? So I want to do that in I feel like apocalyptic settings, it’s like for some reason when we enter those settings, it’s like, “Yo, where are all the Black people at?” So that’s kind of something that I really wanted to point out as well.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much because I think that is the most relatable thing throughout your theme and throughout the book is that even though it is set out in the future and you got this amazing character that’s experienced a lot and this has been passed down with a lot, it feels similar to the things that you and I go through almost every day, right? So you don’t see a whole lot of Middle Eastern people in those movies either.

Keshara Moore: Right, exactly. Look, people of color in general.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah and if you do, they’re portrayed in a specific way and we know why, you know what I mean? That’s why I felt like somebody amazing, I can’t remember who they were, it was a podcast or something I watched on YouTube but he said something like, “If your people are not in literature, they’re probably not anywhere.” That was so powerful to me and it really pushed me to write my book because I just felt like no matter how many books we write, no matter how many movies we’re creating, no matter whatever, it’s just like that drum isn’t loud enough because our people are certain –

You know they are out here trying to just survive let alone have the opportunity to create. I think creativity is a blessing and it is a privilege that we can indulge in to bring our voices to the table, you know? It doesn’t necessarily have to be a luxury, right? But if you can create that 30-minute, one-hour block of putting your voice down on paper then it’s amplified and it amplifies all our voices and of course, it inspires all of us to go out and do that thing that we have been putting off.

That idea that we have been brewing and in your case, you were brewing this for a few years, you started passing it around and started moving it and I think that’s beauty alongside your work because you are working really hard too but I think it is just a testament to how not only does that theme sort of apply to who we are today but just how it unfolds in our modern culture and you know pointing and bringing those ideas to attention in these creative works, I think that’s so powerful. I am so glad you took the time to do this.

Keshara Moore: Yes, well said, that was beautiful.

Publishing as a Team EffortHussein Al-Baiaty: Because it is opening up the door. No, thank you but really though, I mean as you taking on the reins to do something creative and do something that we haven’t really done at Scribe, which is create this novel and bring it out into the world through that and the idea of owning our work, our creative work, our stories, our art, I have always been a fan of people who go out and do it on their — not necessarily on their own but to the point where they own it and it’s not controlled by whatever means, you know what I’m saying?

Keshara Moore: I totally feel you and I mean, having — just I mean, it’s easy to see, “X, Y, and Z designed this book deal” or “So and so just released this mega-series.” Like, I get all of that and that is all great for someone who wants that but, I have to give the biggest shoutout to obviously Scribe, mostly for the fact that they helped me bring this product out into the world so beautifully.

No kind of weird undercoat swindling or anything like that, it’s quite literally like, “Hey, we want to help boost this story out to other people who might enjoy it. So yeah, just the idea that I still own all of my own royalties, all of my own content and they’re just there giving me the resources and cheering me along the way has been so incredible because — I think I mentioned this in my acknowledgments.

It is definitely, although it started out as a very me, just pen to paper or I guess typing, it started out a very lone thing that I was doing on my own. Since then, it’s been like an entire team effort. So many people have pitched in, in just the smallest and biggest ways. So I can’t even harp on that enough of just like how much of a support system and how much of a team effort this has become, so yeah.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that so much and I’m sure the whole team is super excited.

Keshara Moore: Yes, I won’t name every single name but it’s in the book, I promise.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Okay, and for those of you who are listening, the book cover is out of this world. It’s so well done.

Keshara Moore: Oh, shout out to Erin Tyler.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, shout out, man, it is huge. It is amazing, I love just all the elements and how they stack on each other. It is just so powerful to me, so I love that but I got to ask you one last question and it’s about your readers. I want to know, what is the thing that you hope they feel when they finally finish up the book and put it down?

Keshara Moore: The thing I hope they feel. I think the biggest thing is going to just be entertained. At the end of the day, life do be lifing, and if this book can get into people’s hands and like they’re even entertained by a specific character or really feel some things with a specific character and be like, “Oh shit, my mom is kind of like that too.” Or anything that they can relate to even if it is just the smallest thing and their day not be so —

Maybe they just needed a few moments of escapism. That’s probably the biggest thing is just them being entertained, hopefully, signing on for Letty’s journey as she journeys through the rest of these two books and I promise, it is about to be dope but yeah, just entertainment.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I’m so excited. I can’t wait to continue reading it and, like I said, I got through chapter three and I skimmed sort of the rest to come up with this dialogue that we are having because I literally started reading it yesterday. So yeah, I have the rest of the week. I have the rest of the week to kind of push through it a little bit and I am super excited because I know this ending is going to be amazing.

The setup is actually really good, I really love that you really wove that in as far as creating this trilogy. Well, Kesh, it’s been absolutely amazing having you today. Congratulations again on launching your book. You’re remarkable, you have inspired me to continue pushing along on my second book so I am excited for that but man, thank you so much for just joining me today and sharing your stories and sort of behind-the-scenes of creating, The Obsidian Society, which I just love the title. It’s so powerful.

Keshara Moore: Hey, thank you for having me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Of course, so besides checking out the book, where can people connect with you, reach out and say “What up?” or ask for help or inspiration, whatever it is?

Keshara Moore: Yeah, I’m always down for a DM, I will respond even if it’s just like the small sort of comment like, “Hey, I really like this.” If it’s like, “Hey, I really hated this” you know, maybe just keep that to yourself but yes, I’m on Instagram, Twitter, both of those are @faroutblackgirl, and then LinkedIn for the really professional folks. I’m not on TikTok because absolutely not. Yeah, I think those are all the things, yeah.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love it. Well Kesh, again, it’s been a pleasure. This has been so fun hanging out with you. We connect on LinkedIn but of course, our Slack channel is going to be on fire after this but again, thank you so much for coming on Kesh. This has been amazing, congratulations. Have a fantastic rest of your day, I know this is going to be a number-one seller, so I’m just waiting. I’m just waiting.

Keshara Moore: Oh, I’m manifesting. Manifest that for me. Thank you so much, Hussein.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s right. All right girl, well, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Keshara Moore: Woo!

The post The Obsidian Society: Keshara Moore appeared first on Author Hour.

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Your company is changing, whether you like it or not. As a manager, you’re expected to make that transformation happen. Yet, you feel voiceless, unseen, and unrepresented.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by author Pam Marmon, who is here to talk about her new book called, Speak Up or Stay Stuck: Get Your Voice Heard when Fast and Forced Change Happens in the Workplace. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, friends, and welcome back to Author Hour. I have a very special guest and a friend of mine joining us today. Her name is Pam Marmon, and she just launched her second book out in the world called Speak Up or Stay Stuck. Pam, thank you so much for joining me. This is super exciting.

Pam Marmon: Thank you for having me, Hussein. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Pam, you are such a beautiful case study in our Scribe world because man, you get in, you knock things out, and you keep it pushing, but I know having watched your journey sort of uncover, there was a few moments in time where there was some self-doubt and all those kinds of things, which I really want to get into.

But of course, your book is so powerful. I had the opportunity to peruse through it in the last few days and I got to say, I mean, just like your first one, it was easy to get through, easy to navigate. The stories had such a good pace, and I didn’t feel overwhelmed, which is always nice to feel that in a book.

But before we get into the book, I really want to give our audience who don’t know you and aren’t familiar with your work, to give just a little bit of personal background. Perhaps, where you grew up and what that was like for you, what got you on the path and the thought leadership that you’re in now as far as change and change making and development in the work culture. So just give us a little bit of a background if you will.

Pam Marmon: Absolutely. I actually opened the book with the story of immigrating to America. I grew up in Bulgaria until I was twelve, and my family moved to America. That was a big change and it wasn’t until years later that I realized that change chose me. So instead of feeling like I was taken out of control or change was happening to me, it was a mindset shift, and I’d like to think that particular individual private change in my life really set me up to the career path that I’m on and I have taken over the years.

I do change management consulting. I’ve been in the space for over a decade. I absolutely love what I do with clients; I find change joyful, satisfying. It brings me delight, and I encounter so many leaders who fear it, who are afraid of it, resist it, and so I’m on a mission to help people celebrate change and to see change as something that’s actually really good for them, both personally and professionally, and so my journey has been really interesting.

I’ve had the chance to work with Fortune 500 clients, lots of executive senior leaders, and managers on the front line.

Take Control and Remove Limiting BeliefsHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that. I’m glad you brought us right in because, again, your work is very interesting, and it’s also kind of personal in a way because I feel like in engaging with these senior execs and all those things, you really have to get to the root of what those fears are. What are the most common — I guess you would call them lies, if you will — that people believe about change and how do you coach sort of overcoming them?

Pam Marmon: Yeah, so this is really interesting. It takes me back about a couple of years ago. I was visiting a client of mine in Michigan, and I happened to be in town where I have friends from college. We all sat around the dinner table, and we went around, everybody went to give an update on what life has been like for them, and so I shared that my first book came out.

It’s so great, I’m working with executive leaders, helping them change the world, and my friends paused me and said, “What about us? Who’s helping us? We feel like change is happening to us.” And really, that was a defining moment for the book itself because I felt like all this time I was coaching the executive leaders, and yet there was a whole group of people that was impacted by change and needed to understand how to navigate change.

It made me really step back and say, “I actually have a solution here.” And I can really help not just my friends, I can help so many people in the world. So when I started writing the book, that was the premise of the people who I wanted to really address their pain point, and one of the critical areas that I recognized was these limiting beliefs, things that we think that are lies in most cases.

But these limiting beliefs, one of them is, “My leaders don’t care about me.” And if you approach work with that kind of mindset, it’s very likely that’s all you’re going to see, but in the book, I talk about how I sit in the board rooms. I watch your executive leaders fight for you on your behalf. They’re actually good people, and then the absence of information, we make up all kinds of crazy stories that may not be true.

So that’s one, we have things like, “If I don’t speak up, I will lose my job.” That’s a really important one to understand. Many people hold back from speaking up because they’re afraid of retaliation, and there are companies that have toxic cultures, negative consequences, and so my question to them is, “Is it worth it?” Can you find another position where you don’t have to be afraid of speaking up because you’re valued and the culture allows you to be who you are and bring information to the front?

Another one is, “I don’t have much to add” or “If I speak up, it won’t make a difference” or “Nobody consulted me about this decision, this big change.” So, in the book, I unpack each one of these mindsets and help the reader understand what is in your control and what are some limiting beliefs that are not serving you well, and it’s best to eliminate them.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful. I love that you brought that up because those limiting beliefs, I mean, they creep up all the way to the top of leadership, right? And they trickle back down all the way through, and those beliefs I feel like, like you said, are intertwined with just lack of information, lack of communication.

So how can we sort of effectively communicate with senior leaders to ensure our voices are heard, as people who are in management are people who are just trying to seek change but do it in a way that again, doesn’t in fact impact our work or get fired or you get let go, or just impact how people see us at the work environment?

I know that’s a tough conversation, and I know this is probably kind of a loaded question, but what has been your experience with that communication aspect of how to get our voices heard?

Pam Marmon: Yeah. So one of the most important things that I teach in the book is how you can leverage your voice to make change your choice, and that’s really powerful because if you approach change in the workplace from a point of control and having authority and making decisions for yourself, you’re much more likely to be effective.

But if you think change is happening to you and you have no control and you’re just a victim, then you will behave a certain way and you will get results that are subpar. So I hope the readers really understand what is in their control and how they can influence others. The first part of the book is about the past, and we uncover some of the things in the past that are holding us back.

The main part of the book is about the present, and I introduce a model called “LESS” listen, empower, speak, and solve, and that’s truly the essence of the content that I want to teach people. Then the last part is the future about becoming more change resilient so when it comes to being able to speak to your senior leaders and be heard, it’s important to start out with listening.

Listen to understand. Why is this change happening? How will this change impact you and your team, what is expected of you during that transition? All of these things are really critical to understand in order for you to be able to speak. First, we listen. Empower is all about influence. It’s you as an influencer, but you also extending your influence to others and having the courage to speak up and bring information to your senior leaders.

But also being able to negotiate, and that’s a really important piece because life is full of negotiating opportunities, and we just have to get more effective in how we approach negotiations. Not to be fearful of negotiations but to really have an open mind. So introduce some concepts and some tools that the readers can really benefit from.

Then as we look into speaking to your senior leaders, it’s understanding, first of all, who are they as an individual, what are they like, how do they prefer to communicate, what’s important to them, what do they value, and then, being able to bring that information, bring insights in the context of your organizational culture, so that you can really communicate effectively with your senior leader.

Presenting your message in a way that will resonate with your senior leader, knowing when’s the most optimal time, whether it’s time of day, time of season in the year, and sometimes it’s actually not you necessarily that has to share that information. That’s a really important concept to understand, that sometimes you’re not the messenger and that it’s okay to get your message across, right?

And then the last part of solving it. Demonstrating results, understanding data, being able to leverage data in a way that you tell a compelling story and really, to drive that change and the results that you’re looking for.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that so much. I mean, you have so many great sort of stories that highlight these components in your book, and I love how simple it is less. It just stands sort of on its own, and you really effectively showcase not only how to think about change but where you fit in the whole realm of it and how you can perceive it in a more positive way, and I think that’s so powerful.

Can you share maybe a success story or two of a team that was able to start thriving during a time of fast and forced change? I know, for example, there’s a lot of companies that merge. There’s a lot of companies that get bought out, those that created that fast and I feel like forced change, but I’m sure you have other examples. What’s a story of a team that was able to kind of navigate those waters?

Pam Marmon: Yeah. Actually, that’s a great reminder, I have a wonderful client that did go through a merger, and they took time. First of all, they dedicated a resource to make sure that the transformation was done properly from a people perspective, so that’s really important.

They understood the value of change management, the value of bringing your team along and integrating the culture, that was really critical for them, and we integrated the culture and was really the success story of how do you bring two different cultures together so that they learn and leverage each other so that there’s greater success at the end.

A lot of that was the introduction, networking, being able to articulate what the cultures bring, what are some gaps, where we can add, what training we needed to do, and having those conversations. Sometimes tough but oftentimes, very positive conversations that just needed to happen so that people can really move forward and be successful.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: You know Pam, I got to give you a shoutout because you’re one of those individuals that I just really appreciate, and again, I got to watch your whole journey unfold in writing your second book, but you’re the type of person that genuinely listens and has her ear to the concrete as far as like paying attention to the work culture environment. You, by just hanging out with your friends, you really listened to what they were asking for, and I just love that because not only do you talk about it and the importance of it throughout your book and last book, you really bring it out in this conversation as well.

That listening really, in listening I feel like there’s answers sort of provide themself because you are able to see the challenges and opportunity. You are able to see that change is actually just building more resilience, and I just appreciate that about your perspective and how you’re able to sort of quickly and in a concise way not only understand what’s sort of needed but also really coming up with a solution, and that’s really powerful. Where do you think that drive to not only listen but listen for potential answers or solutions comes from for you?

Pam Marmon: Oh, that is such a great question. I have a profound purpose, and that purpose is not rooted in organizations. This is going to sound so funny. I firmly believe that when a leader is successful at being able to orchestrate organizational change, that trickles into teams, it trickles into families, it has an impact on children, it has an impact in our communities, and so that is my outcome.

It’s impact globally, but I know it starts somewhere, and the somewhere that I have influence over is in the change management space. I think we all have influence somewhere, mine happens to be in change, and yours happens to be elsewhere, and so if we all think of how can we have the greatest impact in the world in the most effective way possible, in the shortest amount of time, I think we will all uncover that for ourselves.

Listening is key because if I don’t listen, I can’t solve the problem. I might solve the wrong problem, and I think being an effective listener really helps all of us to have greater relationships, more influence, more impact in the world. It is really the beginning of everything that we want to achieve in life.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photography-of-yellow-green-red-and-brown-plastic-cones-on-white-lined-surface-163064/

Adapt to Change with Resilient TeamsHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, so powerful and just this idea of putting change in perspective and where it belongs in that, it’s like you need it. You need it like you need water, you need it like you need having your core personal values. It is a part of who you are, and it’s a really a part of becoming resilient, and I want to talk about that and the idea of scoping things out in the future and what that looks like.

What steps can individuals and teams, perhaps, take to become, I guess, more adept to change and more in a way looking forward to it as opposed to resenting it?

Pam Marmon: Absolutely. When I first started writing the chapter and the section on resilience, I thought this was all about the individual, and as my research piled on, I realized I was wrong. This is not about the individual; this is more about us collectively as a team than it is about me individually as a person, and so that was a bit of a revelation because I feel like so many of us focus on, “How can I build my own resilience?” And there is value in that.

We should clear mental resilience, emotional, there is absolutely things that we can do, but I think the most ROI that we can get is when we think of our team resilience, and that goes back to culture because the resilient team can overcome a lot of challenges like the pandemic, like a recession, a competitor coming in and bringing in new products that maybe skew off your sales.

A resilient team is really at the heart of it. It’s people who trust each other, who understand how to work together, who can navigate difficult conversations, who can negotiate, who can handle conflict, that’s resilience, and I think if we focus our effort in becoming better together, we can truly overcome whatever the future throws at our way.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful, and you’re right, I mean, it does happen to a leader that can really see the scope of what this change and how it impacts people, and just communicating that and being an open book both ways, right? That there’s got to be space opening up so that people can ask, ask to understand, ask to pursue where the positive is, and I think highlighting those positives, especially with the changes that we see in our culture today, there is so much happening, right?

I think communication now is probably one of the biggest elements that unfortunately is missing. You’re right because if we don’t have strong communication, I feel like that’s when people start to make up stories, right? Because we want to fill the gap, and if we sort of are attuned to negative beliefs, then we fill that gap with negative beliefs, and I think if we’re attuned and sort of led to think positively about the change, then we may change that narrative not only with our self but of course with our teams.

I think I just love that. I love how your perspective around change, not only of self, of course, but team orientation is so powerful because we’re not out here in the world just doing our own thing forever, right? We always work, to a degree, we’re all working within teams, you know? Even if you are a freelancer, whatever it is, you’re out there working with other people, and it is good to think about these things. So I got to – no, go ahead.

Pam Marmon: Absolutely, and also on the individual side, I think there may be some helpful things, like at the end of the book I actually provide a resilience blueprint for the reader to help them think through attitudes, mindsets, habits, wisdom, gratitude, that there are so many things we can conquer to make us better people, period. Better individuals, better team members, better friends, goals, and visions that we have for ourselves. So there is much ownership that needs to be taken accountability by the individual as well.

Change Happening For YouHussein Al-Baiaty: Right, that’s so powerful. Pam, I know, again, having seen you go through the journey of writing, I know there was a few moments where there was some, maybe perhaps overthinking or emotional thinking around the ideas in the book but you did such a good job of just laying them out, really sharing with our group and community and sort of getting into the weeds of why you are feeling that way. Can you talk a little bit about the challenges that came up for you while writing your book?

Pam Marmon: Yeah, writing a book is such a beautiful process. Everything from ideas to putting it on paper to deleting all of it, scratching it off, and starting over, it really is a beautiful process, and I am so grateful for it because so many authors find wisdom that was in them that just needed to come out. So for me, what was interesting is I write my books quite fairly quickly, I guess you would say, maybe within a month or two I have books out.

The initial drafts of the books, and then I spend four or five months of editing, so it is pretty intense editing, and then once the editing is done, I step back and say, “Okay, what is left? What do we take out and what are we keep in?” And I had a moment of self-doubt where I thought, “Is this any good? Is anybody can actually read it and like it? Is this going to help anybody?” And I think that is part of us being human.

That’s normal, and I think if we normalize the fact that we all have self-doubts and then we all kind of snap out of it. Somebody will come along and say, “Get a hold of yourself, this is really good.” You don’t necessarily need the validation of all these people to tell you that for personal raise but just to help you overcome some of the doubts that you may have and I am not immune to those either.

I certainly appreciate the journey because the ups and the downs are just part of what it takes to become an author.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that so much. What a beautiful answer. So while going through your book as your reader and you hear you’re helping me, you’re sharing the stories, you are sharing things that kind of expand my thinking about change, and now that I see this sort of merger happening in the distance, I can look at the opportunities as opposed to just the negatives that are going to come out at this, and I love that.

What would you say is the number one thing that you want your reader to feel after putting down your book? What is that feeling you hope to evoke?

Pam Marmon: Excitement. I want people to just be excited. I want them to see opportunities where in the past they might have seen fears. I think that would be a win.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful, I love that. Excitement, that’s one thing we, I feel like, need more of in our culture, you know I am just saying it in general but in the sense of seeing change as an exciting thing. I got to share that being a refugee, having come to America, lots of changes, right? Identity changes, growth, and all those kinds of things, so you and I have a similar story.

When you come to a different world, change is sort of really thrusted upon you. Compartmentalize it and take it in and sometimes, of course, there is anger, there is frustration, but then I feel like all of that turns into compassion, and you understand that change is happening alongside you for you to help you grow and see the world in a new way, a new exciting way, and I love that you sort of really framed the book around excitement, and I just appreciate that because that’s what great listening does.

As a leader out there in the world, I feel like – well, can I take this issue that people think is an issue and turn it into an exciting opportunity, and that is very hard to do. Of course, it takes a lot of effort, and I feel like energy and people like you that help teams think of those things in a positive way, so that is really powerful. Pam, is there anything else you’d like to share about this remarkable book and the journey in which you took to put it out in the world?

Pam Marmon: Yes, so change is not happening to you, change is happening for you, and if we adopt this mindset, the outcomes will change as well.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful, I love that. Well, Pam, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the show today. Congratulations on book number two. I know the audience is going to certainly resonate with this. I know you have big plans, and I can’t wait to see it completely unfold. Speak Up or Stay Stuck: Get Your Voice Heard When Fast and Forced Change Happens in the Workplace. You can get that book on Amazon, so besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Pam?

Pam Marmon: They can find me on LinkedIn, I am happy to connect with anyone listening to the podcast.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful. Well, thanks again, Pam. Congratulations.

Pam Marmon: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

The post Speak Up or Stay Stuck: Pam Marmon appeared first on Author Hour.

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As your company’s growth accelerates, the heat turns up and teams break down. It gets harder to work together when things get tough. My next guests revealed surprisingly simple skills required to get your team to the top fast.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by authors David Greenspan and Justin Follin. We’re here to talk about their new book called, Be a Better Team by Friday: A Playbook for High-Performance Business Leaders. So let’s look through it.

Hello friends and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m here with my two friends, Justin and David, who have just launched an amazing book actually. It’s all about getting your people, your team better by our favorite day of the week, by Friday. I call it Floral Friday but these guys are going to make your team that much more efficient and in so many incredible ways. Justin and David, thank you for joining me today on the show.

Justin Follin: Thanks for having us, Hussein.

David Butlein Greenspan: Yeah, thank you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: This is really exciting for me because, as I said earlier, I get to have the opportunity of reading so many different types of books, and yours just kind of stuck out to me today. I was reading a little bit last night just trying to craft the questions. I think what I came up with, you guys will enjoy. I really love this idea of choosing your mindset and practice and I want to get into that here in a moment.

But first, I want to introduce to our audience. Justin, we’ll start with you. If you could give us a little bit of your personal background, perhaps where you grew up, maybe someone or an event that inspired you to be on the path that you’re on today.

Justin Follin: Yeah, definitely. Well, my name’s Justin Follin. I’m the CEO of BLUECASE and author of this book. I was born and raised in Falls Church, Virginia. I moved to Texas probably almost 20 years ago. I live in Austin. I think a relevant story, it’s one that I tell in the book about how I got into this.

I was a graduate from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and I was not totally sure what I was doing with my life at this point. It was right after I graduated, I was working in the banquet hall at the alumni center at the university and I had the chance to be a server for the UNC basketball team the night before their very first game.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh wow.

Justin Follin: And if you’re familiar with the University of North Carolina, the basketball is—

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Religion.

Justin Follin: Pretty much, yeah. It’s religion. There’s two things that are important in North Carolina, religion and basketball.

David Butlein Greenspan: And basketball, right, right, and you mush the two, yeah.

Justin Follin: Uh-huh. So I had the chance to do this and now, this is the year that the coach, Roy Williams, had just come over from the University of Kansas to coach the team. So the year that I was at Carolina, it was the losing-est team in the history of the school and they brought in Roy Williams to take that team over. He took the same five guys that were on that team and in a matter of two years, they were national champions.

And that night, when I was serving them on that very first night before their very first game under Coach Roy, I was standing in the back of the room and I was getting, kind of, secondhand get coached, hearing him talk and inspire the team. He was talking to them as if it was like he was talking to every single one of them personally. I was standing at the back of the room and I was getting fired up. You know, I was ready to win the championship.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that.

Justin Follin: That really stuck with me and I thought about that. Over the course of my career, I’ve really been interested in knowing what is that, that somebody has to be able to coach such high performance? I saw it, I experienced it, I felt it, and then the results were there. So I pretty much got into the field of high-performance psychology and became a coach and I’m doing what we do now and wrote this book after many years of learning.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s fantastic. What a cool story. I love hearing stuff like that, man. You never know when in life those moments hit you and they just, like you said, they fire you up. They get you intrigued about the human experience in such a unique way. That’s amazing. What about you, David?

David Butlein Greenspan: Let’s see. I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and I also live in Austin, Texas right now. As a kid, something that really inspired me from the age of five was actually Superman. Back then, we had Underoos, which were like pajamas that looked like Superman. I had a cape. I actually practiced flying, I broke my leg once doing it but I was really interested from a young age in Superman. I also, growing up, was very nerdy. I had really thick glasses, braces, I didn’t know how to dress.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So you were Clark Kent? You just weren’t Superman yet.

David Butlein Greenspan: What’s that? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: You were Clark Kent.

David Butlein Greenspan: That’s right. That’s right, yeah, actually that’s perfect. I hadn’t thought about that. I was interested from a young age in extraordinary performers and that inspired me to go on and get my doctorate in the field of high-performance psychology, which looks at why do certain teams and individuals perform at exceptional levels even in suboptimal circumstances and how do we apply those behaviors, mindsets, and practices.

So that’s part of what we have really shared because people are often asking, “Well, what are some of the basics? How do we do that?” That’s part of the reason why we wrote this book, so now people can just read the book.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful. I know it’s taken you guys some time to bring these things together. Years and years of wisdom and knowledge and experiences, it takes time to put together a book that highlights all those components and I think you all did a good job, but what brought you two together? How did you all start working together? When did you all meet?

Justin Follin: Well, David and I have been friends for many, many years prior to working together and over the years, we kind of talked about what might be possible if we did do some work together. There was a very specific time in our friendship when we were at Ojo Caliente in New Mexico, which is a really beautiful hot springs resort place where you just kind of soak in hot springs and hang out, talk to people who are in the pools.

We were just sitting there and we were talking and there’s something about, for us, about being in that spot. It’s a real power spot for us and we just kind of get into the vibe. We were just talking and just asking the question, “Okay if anything were possible, what would we do together? How would we bring this sort of experience that we have when we’re together, which is that we want to make people better, we want to make the world a better place. And for some reason, when we’re together, we’re even more excited and we’re amped up so there’s something we have here. What might it look like if we did something together?”

And at the time, David had recently founded BLUECASE and I was working in another job and I just thought we were having a conversation of just kind of dreaming. And then one thing led to another, and one year later, maybe a little less than one year later, we were business partners and we were taking BLUECASE from where it was to really create a big firm. We’re now working with clients that I think we never would have been able to work on together if we hadn’t taken those first steps in those early years.

Results of Choosing Your MindsetHussein Al-Baiaty: That’s amazing. What a cool story. Well, I’m glad you two have come together to work on something this powerful but I really want to talk about how you sort of define this idea of successfully implementing the “choose your mindset” practice. That was really cool, how you guys went into that chapter.

Can you share a little bit about what that’s like for you all to sort of go around and basically implement, and what kind of results start to come back from this idea of choosing your mindset?

Justin Follin: That’s a great question. We’re mentioning the term high-performance psychology and a lot of what leadership begins with is your psychology of how you’re thinking about the situation that you’re in. There’s a lot of talk out there about mindsets, about the different mindsets that you can have.

Carol Dweck, who wrote the book called Mindset, she talked about growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. So when you’re in a growth mindset, you’re thinking, “I’m in a difficult situation but how can I learn from this, how can I grow from this? What do I need to learn to be able to overcome the challenge?” Whereas a fixed mindset, you’re stuck.

So those are some basic mindsets that are very important when you’re a leader and when you’re in any environment where there are challenges. I think something that is often a surprise or just in a shift in a way of thinking is just this idea that literally in every moment that you’re in, you do have a choice about how to think about what’s going on and it’s the choice itself that’s so powerful.

It’s the knowledge of choice because as a leader, when you’re running an organization, the amount of breakdowns that you’re going to be dealing with just get bigger and bigger and bigger as your company gets bigger and bigger and bigger. A lot of times, naturally, you can get stuck complaining about it.

You can get stuck thinking, “If I wasn’t surrounded by C players, I’d do a lot better around here, things would be a lot better.” Yet there’s this way of going into these stories about, “Hey, there’s nothing I can do about this, it’s not my fault and I’m stuck.” And even if you’ve been trained in mindsets and you’ve learned about this, the concept of going from a victim mindset to creator mindset, a complaining mindset to being in a space of possibility, it is easy to get stuck where you are until you really get that, “Even in this situation that I’m in right now, even in the challenges that I’ve got right now, even with the team that I’ve got right now, even with the circumstances that I’m in right now, I actually do have a choice about how I can think about this.”

I think anybody who is familiar with the idea of changing your mindset, once you change your mindset, you start to see new options for actions to take. And then once you see those new options for actions to take, you’re starting to take very different actions because you made that choice. When you’re taking those different actions, well, you win national championships and in a business environment, you start to achieve what you want to achieve a lot faster, whether you’re running a company, whether you’re a CEO, whether you’re an executive.

Also, if you’re just a brand-new manager, leading people for the first time, that can be a real challenge to your mindset and be able to choose something different every day. That’s what’s important about implementing this. We make it a practice for teams, like, “Hey, everyone on this team, we’re going to prioritize.” It’s practice one, “We’re going to prioritize choosing a creator mindset when we’re stuck, getting out of complaint and we’re going to coach each other to help each other get out when we are.”

Implementing LessonsHussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful, man. I mean, I feel like when I was trying to grow my little T-shirt printing company that is exactly what I leaned on, like, “Okay, I’m going to probably face a problem today and there’s two ways to approach them. I can go negative, which I could do all day or I can be positive and just figure out where the opportunities are.” I think that mindset, for me, came from my dad. But it could come from anybody of course. I mean, you could learn it in a course or a book.

David, what do you think, as far communications with your teams, with improving how teams literally go about like you said earlier, Justin, this idea of coaching one another, really uplifting one another, what does that communication look like? You call it, I feel like, what is it? The “get real with each other” practice. This idea of just being 100, being open and transparent with your teammates. Can you share an example of how you all have gone about implementing that and how a company has responded to that?

David Butlein Greenspan: Yeah, it’s a great question.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s kind of a loaded question, my apologies, but I hope you get my gist.

David Butlein Greenspan: I got your gist. It’s a great question and it’s really common when we come into teams, when we’re working with executive leadership teams, the team oftentimes is having two different conversations. They’re having a conversation when the leader is in the room or when a large group is in the room and then they’re having a much more reserved conversation one-on-one or maybe they share about their wife or their husband or a friend after work after a few beers or something.

What we try to do is, how do you actually have what we call a level 10 conversation, an extraordinary conversation? If you think about it, there’s like three levels, there’s like ordinary conversations that are just very polite and then there’s “nothing’s really at stake.” Then there’s medium heat conversations, where I might say something that’s a little challenging or really authentic and you might feel like, “Oh, it’s getting a little warmer in here.” And then there’s like extraordinary level conversations, where I might really challenge someone in that room and say, “Hey, I don’t think that’s the right strategy” to the CEO.” That would be an extraordinary conversation, a level 10 conversation.

And so first of all, we have people score how the team’s doing and usually it’s like five. It’s like they’re not having the real conversation in the room and so it really puts the CEO at a disadvantage because he or she isn’t getting the full conversation. So we begin by acknowledging where the team is and then, we ask people to commit, to raise the heat, to start to challenge themselves to actually be more courageous and to bring it to a 10 or at least bring it to an eight.

We ask the group but really, it’s an individual decision to decide who is going to be courageous and an example of where that happened was, we were working with a team several years ago and the CEO was feeling like, “Oh, we’re having a really honest and open conversations and that we’re doing a lot better than we were in the past.” When the team scored, it was still really low, it was like a six. And he was asking why and everyone in the room was silent. You could hear a pin drop and everyone was looking at their shoes. And then one person stood up and said, “Hey, the reason is because of you. The reason we’re not able to have these, and here’s kind of the specific behaviors that you do that kind of have us not fully share.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: How did that go?

David Butlein Greenspan: And, well, actually, the CEO was great. He said, “You know what? You’re right.” He said, “You’re right. Thanks for saying that,” and after he acknowledged that and heard that feedback, he said, “Thank you and I’m going to work on that,” and from then on, the conversation was a lot more authentic and there were great conversations in the room and then they could talk about the real stuff. We sometimes call it the background conversation, like taking what’s in the background and putting it in the foreground, right?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much because by agreeing and just kind of opening up and letting his or her guard down, right? All leaders, once all of us put our guards down, especially in moments like that where you’re asking for something really specific and then that thing that you’re really asking for is kind of like somebody just needs to hold up a mirror and it sounds like that’s what that courage is implying is that, can you hold up a mirror to that person and hold them accountable and say, “Hey, I’m willing to work with you but you got to also work on X, Y, or Z and I think that will help us all.”

Then eventually, obviously it sounds like this ripple effect happened in the room as well, where everyone else was like, “Okay, now he’s hearing us and he’s willing to change X, Y, or Z, maybe I’ll share my thing, which is this problem over here or this issue over here,” and I love that. I think that’s just an approach of being open and opening your heart and listening to what’s really needed.

So talk to me a little bit about this idea of the “fundamentals of why”, Justin. I think that chapter really resonated with me in thinking about how I approach not only work but really my life in general. Where can you identify that in the team culture and how do you all educate others through the understanding of the fundamentals of why?

Fundamentals of WhyJustin Follin: The third practice in our book is “Know the Fundamental Why” because we are doing a lot. We’re talking about a lot, we’re seeing a lot in our working environment, there is just a lot going on and one of the things we were just talking about in the previous practice of being able to get real with each other is to be able to listen, to listen to understand. Listening to understand means making sure you understand the fundamental why of what someone is saying. Meaning, what’s important to them about this? What’s important to them about what they’re saying?

So if I am making a request of you, there’s what I’m asking for, and let’s say you’re a graphic designer and I am asking you to build me a website and I say, “Well, I want three webpages and I want them to look this particular way and I want them to be blue so it reflects our company brand,” and you do exactly what I asked for but you didn’t get why I was asking for it.

The delivery isn’t really going to give you an opportunity to show above and beyond what you’re good at, how you can add to achieve the why behind my request. And requests are happening like this all day long in organizational environments where the why is not being communicated, the why of a request, the why of a communication. The why isn’t being heard.

The fundamental why isn’t just the why of your organization or the why of yourself as a person. In every communication you’re making, if you want it to be effective, there’s a why behind it. Are you communicating the fundamental why clearly? Is it being understood on the receiving end? So having that practice is a foundation for a team. We’re always asking, “Why is this important? What’s the why? How do we get to the why? Are we clear on that?” So that when we leave as a team, you’re the designer, you’re going out and you’re designing something far better that I could do. I am not a designer at all.

David is going out and he is doing his part and he is doing what he does best because he understands the why of the request. So there’s a way that as a team, when you understand that fundamental why, everybody can step up and contribute at a much higher level than when it’s just what.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that, man, that’s so powerful. Just getting to the root of the why and when you have that to fuel the task or the job or the thing that you gotta go do, it’s really powerful. It’s funny, I was a graphic designer, I own my own printing company so there are a lot of requests from people and you get all kinds of things, like, “Oh, I wanted this logo and I wanted to have these colors.”

Then as soon as you ask, for me, it was like, “Why do you want that and how can we express this further?” And sometimes it was like, “Oh, let me tell you why. There is a deep story behind it,” which is great because then there are those enriching layers to the conversation and then there are times where it’s like, “I just like the color purple,” and there’s not much you can do with that, you know what I mean? So I kind of have to just like the color purple and figure out how purple plays out in your branding. But yeah man, I love that because I think for me the why leads to that deeper conversation. As an artist or as a creator or creative, I think we’re listening for opportunities to kind of surprise the client with something that is embedded into their reasoning as to why these things come together and then we surprise them with something that they like but they’re probably not even anticipating is such a good feeling. I feel like that’s deep listening, that is asking to understand and I appreciate that you brought that up. That really resonated with me.

David, I really want to take us to the “get focused” part of the book. Let’s be honest, our world is not only riddled with distractions, I feel like it is one big distraction now and in some ways, I feel like obviously it’s gotten into our work and everything that we do. But can we talk about getting focused, what does that mean to both of you and how do you help teams decipher that, David?

David Butlein Greenspan: Yeah, it’s another really important question because there are so many distractions and it seems like the distractions just increase as the weeks and months go on. One of the things is that we really look at how you apply the 80-20 rule on a daily and weekly basis. The idea of the 80-20, and I’m sure you’re familiar, it’s the idea that 20% of the actions you take produce 80% of the results.

And 20% probably of the distractions are the most disruptive, right? And people understand it conceptually but really to apply on a daily and weekly basis, to look at, “What are the three things that if I do really are going to move the needle for me today, this week?” And then reflecting back on it. And one of the areas that we have companies focus on a lot is too is meetings and really 80-20’ing their meetings.

Because there are a lot of meetings that are not effective, meetings are really expensive to have, and oftentimes, they can be like junk drawers. You know how junk drawers just collect things? Meetings just collect people.

You don’t really know why they’re there but you feel rude not showing up because the boss invited you or whatever. So we actually have some practices with meetings where one of them is if you don’t know why, if you don’t understand what the fundamental why is of the meeting, if there isn’t a clear agenda of what you’re trying to accomplish and if you can’t say why you need to be there, then you decline the meeting.

We actually have people do this, where they actually go in and they start declining meetings because it is not clear why they need to be there and it frees up a lot of time for them and for the organization and it declutters the meetings.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: The thing that we’re looking for here is not just productivity level but levels to where you can go in to do just the deep work that you need to do for the day. The two or three hours that you may get back are easily applied to whatever project you’re working on and instead of getting through that one task, you might be able to burn through four and leave early for the day. I just think about it like that.

Productivity for me is the byproduct of focus and it is not just, “Oh, I want to be more productive.” That’s just like I feel like always adding more to the table to where if I am just focused, then I am just like, “Okay, the biggest thing I have to get done is this, what’s in my way? These two things. Okay, I can eliminate or do later or do now,” and then draw in, go in and do the deep session.

I love that because getting focused I feel like is one of those opportunities for teams to really build trust and thrive because now we’re, again like you said, we’re not distracted by these meetings that I don’t necessarily need to be in or that I can just get a quick memo on later. I love that approach so much. You two have got some great tangible exercises and the practice that you all talk about was really all throughout the book.

I was kind of looking for spaces where it was just kind of like mindset tools, which you talked about, but everything else is really just tangible. “Here is something you can do, here is how you can get this done.” I love that your book is very action-oriented because you are trying to get this team ready by Friday, so we gotta get moving. I love that.

So, I know writing a book is no easy feat, of course. It is an accomplishment in and of itself but what was it like for you two to pull this book together? What did you learn from that journey? We’ll start with Justin and go to David.

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Writing the BookJustin Follin: Yeah. Well, we got the business of doing what we’re doing because we want the world to work better together, and really quite frankly, we’re in a pretty funny time in the world where a lot of changes are happening and a lot is affecting everybody and particularly in the business environment, it’s constant flux. We started our company to help companies be more adaptive and to be able to adjust and adapt in the world we were working in, in fast-growth, mid-market companies.

We kind of got to become the experts and figuring out how to get teams to be able to adapt quickly, to have the capability to adapt. We are not trying to teach them how to do their job but we do need to give some basic foundational skills to understand how to work together when things are happening like COVID and tariffs and fluctuating economic environments, fluctuating social environments, fluctuating pretty much everything going on right now.

We have been successful doing that in companies where they have to adapt to thrive. There are some really fundamental skills that teams can apply and get a lot better. You probably didn’t go to school learning how to work with people. You kind of know your job, and the “how to work with people” part is, “Okay, figure it out,” even though for most people that is the hardest part of their job.

So, making this book was a matter of, “How do we really distill the practices that have worked in high complexity, high-pressure environments with really high talent people who are running companies, running teams, how do we get the core skills that when practiced by teams we have seen consistently work over and over and over again?” So the process of writing the book, which was a five-year-long process, was kind of the process of distilling and getting really clear on what works so that we could, like you were saying, give you a bunch of practices.

You could actually take the book, have it at your desk, open it up, find a tool, and go do it, and the promise of the book is that you will get better as a team if you apply anything in the book. And not just a little bit better. You will be significantly better by making it a practice and we wanted to share it. That’s what the experience was like. It was actually hard to distill it and to really solidify that, and by doing it, I think it made us better at communicating about it and better at actually helping people do what we promise.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that, man. David, you want to add to that?

David Butlein Greenspan: Yeah, Justin, that was really well said. The other hope really is that we spent so much of our time at work. People spend a lot of times more time at work than they do with their families and loved ones, and for a lot of people, it’s either a tolerable experience or an average experience and there is actually some suffering in there too because they can’t fully give their gift. They can’t fully give everything that they have to give and people want it. People want to contribute to something big and so this is also about how do you unleash teams and really bring out the best in everyone? If companies can read our book, teams can read our book, they actually have the playbook to be better. And for us in writing it, it really required us to, as Justin said really well, to distill and to really bring our best selves and to adapt. We had to adapt a lot and learn and persevere.

So that’s my hope though, that this book can really impact a lot of individuals and teams and businesses around the world and have that impact and create extraordinary places where everyone is engaged and all the intelligence and creativity and innovation and passion is really online. That’s why I wanted to write this book, to make that possible.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful and I love that both of you are so passionate about this purpose of you know, it’s intertwined, right? Everything ties together. If I go to work feeling purposeful, I show up, my teammates are ready to show up with me, we communicate well, we’re vibing, we’re working on our things, we’re not getting pulled into BS meetings, right?

It’s not just busy work, it’s like, “Let’s just do this work, get home to our fam.” I love that because it strips away the fluff and it really makes it powerful in its sense. Like I said, it made me think about these things as like, “Oh, these are tangible. I can practice this today,” you know? I love that because your title really resonates with your message. Improving your team is one of the most powerful ways not only to grow your company of course, but to have a healthy community.

I feel like if people walk away from their daily nine-to-five situation just feeling good, they’re going to come home feeling good, they’re going to do the other things that they want to do in life in a healthier place. So it all starts there and I just appreciate your perspectives. David and Justin, it’s just been a pleasure getting to hang out with you today telling your stories of course, your experiences, and man, North Carolina, how cool?

I’m glad you picked something up there even while you’re there, you were drinking the juice, man, I love it. So the book is titled, Be a Better Team by Friday: A Playbook for High-Performance Business Leaders. So besides checking out the book, where can people find you two and connect with you two?

Justin Follin: Well, our website is bluecase.com and then I’m on LinkedIn posting a lot, sharing a lot. It’s Justin Follin on LinkedIn, Follin.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: What about you, David?

David Butlein Greenspan: Yeah, website and then David Butlein Greenspan on LinkedIn as well.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Perfect. Well, thank you two again. Congratulations on your book. I’m sure it is going to resonate and create the impact that you’re all dreaming of. I know it did for me and I just read a couple of chapters, so I am already inspired but thanks to you two for coming on the show. It was wonderful just getting to hang out with you today.

Justin Follin: Thank you very much, Hussein. It’s nice to meet you.

David Butlein Greenspan: Hussein, that was a lot of fun.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Absolutely.

The post Be a Better Team by Friday: Justin Follin and David Butlein Greenspan appeared first on Author Hour.

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My next guest has created a super meaningful and easy-to-follow guide, which is designed to help entrepreneurs build a strong foundation for exiting their businesses on their terms.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by author Wayne Zell, who is here to talk about his new book, Your Multimillion-Dollar Exit: The Entrepreneur’s Business Succession Planner, A Blueprint for Wealth Guide to Success. Let’s get into it.

Hello friends and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m very excited today because I have a special guest, Mr. Wayne Zell. Welcome to the show, my friend.

Wayne Zell: Hussein, it’s great to be with you, and thanks for having me on the show today.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Absolutely. Wayne, I know you just launched a book and I’m very excited for you and I’m excited to share with our audience all about your journey, how you got on this path of wealth management and not just wealth management but really just identifying this blueprint for how people exit a business or a succession plan. I just appreciate that because I once had a business that—I had over 16 employees and it got so big I didn’t know what to do and I told you earlier that your book is one of those ones that I wish I kind of had earlier.

So I’m excited that it’s out in the world now but before we get into the book, I love to give our audience and listeners a little bit of a personal background of who you are, maybe where you grew up, and what led you down to the path that you’re on now.

The Path to Business SuccessionWayne Zell: It’s an interesting story. First of all, I’m from DC, Washington, DC, and I live in Northern Virginia but how I got to where I am today, it’s funny, I was thinking about that this morning. When I was a freshman in college, it was after my first year at the University of Virginia, I was driving home with my dad and he said, “Well, how did it go this semester?” I said, “It was great. I had a great year, grades were good.”

I was co-lead in Godspell. I’m a right-brain guy, I was really into music, I was writing music, and it was becoming prolific. It was flowing out of me as a lot of people say and it’s just great. So I was totally focused and I said, “It was great” and he said, “What are you going to major in?” and I said, “You know, I’m thinking double major, music, drama, so that I can go into musical theater, maybe on Broadway.”

Because I’ve gotten a lot of really good feedback from a lot of people over the years and I’ve never just taken that jump and there was this pregnant pause. Silence and my dad goes, “So how are you going to pay for school?” and I’m going, “Oh, what? What do you mean by that?” You know, “What do you mean, how am I going to pay for school? You’re going to pay for school.”

He said, “No, you need to get trained in a profession in some kind of useful background so that when you graduate, you can support yourself and I don’t have to worry about supporting you” and that’s the key. Another pregnant pause ensued and I’m sitting there, thinking about “Wait a minute, he just dashed all of my dreams and I’m supposed to respond to this?” It was good advice because I said, “But what should I major in, Dad?”

He said, “You need to go to the business school. The McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia is one of the best schools in the country.” That was 40 some years ago, you know? Almost 45 years ago. I said, “Okay, like what will I study?” He said, “You should study accounting because it’s the language of business” and you know begrudgingly, I applied to the school.

I got in, it was a struggle at first because I really didn’t know what I was doing, and as a right-brain person, a creative person who did creative writing and getting into accounting and numbers and stuff like that, I wasn’t bad at it but I had to immerse myself in the stuff and I taught myself how to be a left-brain thinker. Analytical. Really digging into details as opposed to always thinking visionary, creative, and doing cool stuff and it was a big adjustment for me but I excelled at it and I succeeded.

I got a job at an accounting firm and I worked in the big accounting firm, Arthur Anderson & Company, which is one of the big eight back then. I went into the tax department, which was hard to get into right out of undergraduate and I did that for two years. While I was there, I was realizing that I was surrounded by all these lawyers who had a background in accounting and law and they were so smart and they were so capable and so technically proficient and I felt like, in order for me to succeed as a professional, I’m going to need to go to law school so that I can learn what they learned to think like a lawyer and even further my analytical left side of my brain.

So I went to law school. Again, it was a struggle. I got out, I excelled, I did really well in tax law and so I started out as a tax lawyer doing transactional work and then I—because I loved working with people one-on-one, I gravitated into both estate planning and business planning and for the last 37 plus years, that’s what I focused on and so it marries two very different areas of law together because of my background and accounting in tax, I’m able to work with entrepreneurs and businesses of various sizes.

I represented some really big family companies, the name’s really well-known, I won’t say them to protect the innocent but some very big companies, family-owned businesses, and then entrepreneurs who are just starting up their businesses and over the last 37 years, I’ve worked in business. I actually left practicing law and worked for a George Saurus-backed company called News Reel, which was a spinoff of one of the first search engine companies called Info Seek.

I did that for a couple of years. I was the CFO, the chief financial officer, and the general counsel of that company and I worked inside the company building their business model and working with all the employees. I did it once again back in the late 2010s when I worked for a company that was a registered investment advisory firm and I was general counsel, chief compliance officer and I was in the executive team and I did that as an experiment.

I wanted to really immerse myself in different industries and different businesses and because of that, I have the skill set that is really unique for lawyers, accountants, and others that I can really see the whole picture of what it’s like to do business succession planning for entrepreneurs. I just loved what I do and love to take it out to them and help them succeed, help them realize their personal dreams of wealth and freedom. So that’s my story in a nutshell.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: You know man, it’s a very powerful story but I know there’s quite a bit that happened sort of in between because there are so many transformations — I feel like for you and where you got to. Just how you brought this whole book together is actually pretty cool.

But I want to go back in time a little bit and if you don’t mind, I mean, what you shared with me before we got on the recording that you had gotten cancer at one point in your life and that really woke you up to a specific realization. Can you go there a little bit and share about that sort of story?

Wayne Zell: Absolutely. I talk about it a lot when I’m giving speeches and I’m talking to clients and friends. I mean, it was back in 2002, and I wasn’t feeling real good, I went to see my internist and he said, “Look, I think you had to go see this doctor and get tested.” So I went and got tested and it turned out, I had prostate cancer at the age of 43, which is really young. This is, you know, a long time ago.

I’ll be 65 this year, so I’ve survived it but when you hear that and my wife was at home with my four young children and she had stopped working to basically take care of the family, there’s a bit of a stressor, you know? So, I’d find out that I’ve got cancer, I ultimately had surgery at Johns Hopkins and everything was successful but, it leaves a mark on you and after you have the surgery, you have a period of time—

It took me about a month to recuperate and at the time, I was working for a big law firm, a firm out of Boston, which had 500 lawyers, 500 plus lawyers and I was a partner there and I was doing very well but, when you have the time to reflect and realize what you have in your life — much like what you had to reflect on, we talked before you were in a refugee camp.

I can’t even imagine what that’s like. I was suffering from the angst of having had cancer, four young kids, and then, you start to realize, I came out of it okay but what’s the rest of my life going to look like? How will I react to this? I really started digging deep inside and, “Is it all about billing hours as a lawyer?” and the answer was no. “Why do I do what I do?”

Well, I do what I do, to this day, it’s the stuff that gets me up, it’s the juice that gets me going in the morning, it makes me grateful for what I have is that I’m here to help people. I’m here to help my friends, my clients, my family, my employees realize their dreams of wealth and freedom. It’s my tagline, it’s what gets me going, it’s what got me going.

I mean, I left that firm ultimately with some coaching in 2004, I opened up my law firm, and then I sold it to another law firm in 2011. I decided I needed to get back into this because I loved doing what I do and I love doing it the way I do it and it’s just—it’s my passion. So, going through a life-changing event like that always has some kind of impact on you and on me, it was like, “What am I going to do the rest of my life?”

“Well, I’m going to help people” I’m going to help people realize their dreams and this is the way I can do it best.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s realizing that not just that you want to help people specifically but you also have a set of skills and a set of ways of doing, going about doing that, that really offers not only value but just like this—it feels like this commitment. This authentic commitment to really wanting to live something out for yourself but in extension, the outcome of that is it helps someone else and I think for me, I love that.

I mean, in that state of creativity, whether we’re writing books, right? We talked about that or for me like, I love painting and art and just this, right here, this moment where I get to speak to someone about their life, about their work, about their commitments. We’re sharing deep things and let’s be honest, a couple of hours ago we were strangers, right?

But the reality is, we are so interconnected in this idea that our beliefs in what we care to do, it feels kind of selfish like, “Oh, I want to put my time, energy, and resources into this” but the reality is, it is actually very unselfish because that thing, once it’s done or how it’s done or the way that it’s done benefits others.

I feel like for me, that’s always been a battle just with myself in convincing myself that what I’m doing is valuable and worth it, and as creatives, we run into those blocks of like, “Does this even fucking matter?” and it does. It does, right? On a bigger scale, it does for yourself.

Wayne Zell: It matters, you know why? You know why? Because you’re able to give yourself back to others. You give up your soul and then you give up your heart and your mind and the talents that you’ve got, use them to the best of your ability to help others and so to me, it’s the juice that gets me up in the morning and keeps me going throughout the day and probably makes me look a lot younger than I actually am so.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-of-human-hand-327540/

Succession PlanHussein Al-Baiaty: I’m sure it does man, it brings you—makes you very vibrant, of course, but with that I want to get into the book a little bit because that also resonated with me, and owning a business for over a decade and then basically deciding of like a career change. I shift back into more of my own creativity. I had to sell the business, I had to figure out how to do that, I had to—

There were so many — it was about a year and a half worth of really, almost weekly, trying to piece things together to prepare it to sell and that was a journey. I had a lot of help, you know? A lot of people that I love really help me with that and so, this is your work. This is your line of work and I appreciate that because it’s so important because it addresses such a huge pain point.

But let’s first, can you share a little bit of a personal experience where you, having an exit strategy in place, saved you from unexpected losses?

Wayne Zell: I don’t know, I don’t have that situation come up yet. I can tell you that I have—

Hussein Al-Baiaty: You’re a good strategist, that’s why.

Wayne Zell: Well, I’ve done it enough for so many people. I mean, hundreds of people over their careers that I now have my own business succession plan and because I get asked that, you know? I’m not getting any younger, I’m in my 60s. People ask, “What’s your business succession plan? What if you’re not around?”

My answer is, I’m building and I’ve built my business succession plan, I’ve got somebody 20 years younger than me taking over part of the practice. I’m recruiting another person to come in and take over the other half of the practice, so that not only can I do more of the business succession planning holistically but I can also do speaking and I can also go out and mentor younger people, which I love doing and teach, which I do.

I currently teach at George Mason University. So my exit is planned and it may not go exactly as I’ve planned it and that’s what I teach to the entrepreneurs that I work with—you don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, you never know what’s going to happen. In the intro of my book, I talk about a government contractor who died suddenly and his son who was friends with my daughter gave me a call.

So, right around Christmas he called me, he said, “My dad passed away” and I said, “What happened?” He said, “He was a diabetic and he went into diabetic shock and he fell and hit himself and he died from the fall.” I said, “Oh my God, so sorry to hear that.” He was frantic, he said, “I don’t know what to do, I work at the business that he founded and I don’t know what to do. My mother doesn’t know anything about the business and what do I do?”

I just said, “You know what? We got this, I’ve got this. Just give me some time, let’s talk about it and just spend some time thinking about your dad, making sure that your family’s okay, and then we’ll figure out what to do with the business.” So we did and it turned out, the guy had actually taken in some outside investment from two of his friends who were really well-known in the business and well-respected and fortunately, those people wanted to help as well.

So we put together a board. I was on the board, these two investors were on the board and the mother and the son were on the board. We put together a board of directors and we created an exit plan where none existed before and fortunately, with those two investors and me involved, we were able to come up with a path to the success of the ultimate—everybody was telling us, “You’re not going to be able to sell this business.”

The guy was a service-disabled veteran, he was subject to small business set-aside rules and everybody said, “The business might be worth $10, 11 million dollars max. You’re not going to sell it for any more than that” which is a lot of money but we brought in an investment banker. The guy was able to realize the value here. We brought in outside managers to run the business where the founder wasn’t—hadn’t—built his succession plan and these guys and the board helped navigate over the next two years, the company, to triple its size and revenue and we sold the business for close to $30 million dollars. The family was ecstatic and to this day, the son who called me on that day, he hasn’t forgotten and he keeps turning back to me. It’s one of the greatest feelings to get when you can help somebody like that but you never know what’s going to happen. The lesson is, plans change, situations change, the economy changes, COVID hits, you just don’t know what’s going to happen.

So you have to have a plan that’s dynamic, that can morph over time, it’s not set in stone and you have to work with people who are there to help you. As an entrepreneur, most people don’t want to think about that kind of stuff, you know? They don’t want to think about it, they’d rather work in the business than on the business and what my job is to do is to help them work on the business and I can help them do that without them having to take too much time doing that.

Misconceptions about Buyers and InvestorsHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s so powerful, man, and I can’t imagine how grateful I would be had I reached out when I was struggling because I feel like you’re a person that was like, “Let me look at all my resources and how we can solve this and come to this in a way that is really helpful.” To where I feel like if I reached out to just a lawyer, right? Or just a person who helps with exit strategies but has a check in mind, right?

A couple of boxes to check off and it’s like you need—and I did reach out to a few people. It’s like, “Oh, you got to get these documents in order” and it was very like, “Here’s kind of how you do it” but there is no meat to how you do it and it’s like, “Man, this is my baby. This is my business. I’ve grown it.” I can’t imagine what your friend was going through having, of course, lost his father, and now this huge sort of business to deal with and all of those things.

So just being there as a human being and saying, “Hey man, we’ll figure this out. Give me a couple of days” or whatever it is. It is just that feeling of reassurance that someone else can come in and help me out that is so powerful and obviously ties into what you have committed your life to. What are some common misconceptions that entrepreneurs have about what buyers and investors want and what they fear?

Wayne Zell: Common misconceptions, let me think about that for a second. I think the biggest misconception that entrepreneurs have is what the value of their business really is. They may think it’s worth a lot more than what it is worth today and so part of the process of doing succession planning is finding out what the business is worth and getting outside input into that. It requires some technical analysis and discounted cash flow analysis.

Comparable company analysis, what are other companies selling for in your space, in your industry with the same kind of customers in your size, and really, it varies from company to company. So I think the biggest misconception is they may think it’s worth more than it’s worth and that gap in value needs to be addressed. How do we get it to the point where the entrepreneur can get what they want out of the business, what they think it’s worth or what they hope it’s worth and how do we get to that point?

It’s realizing what the value gaps are and then figuring out how to fill it, how to fill those gaps. Bringing in experts, sometimes it might be a human resources person that comes in to help with employee planning and engagement, and retention. It might be an evaluation person that comes in to help really analyze what the business is worth today and what it could be worth if it hits certain targets and achieves certain things, how to maintain a culture.

But the other thing about the misconception is, is that the entrepreneur doesn’t need to worry about it, you know? They typically are so immersed in their business, they love their business, they love working in their business, whether they’re engineers or financial people or sales and marketing people, they love to immerse themselves in the business and they surround themselves with other like-minded people and they forget about the fact that they need to work on the business.

They need to take time away to really look at the big picture and part of the big picture is focusing on their personal goals. What do they want to do when they’re not working and how do they take care of their family using the business as a vehicle to fund those goals and objectives? Do they want to achieve family harmony? Do they want to leave a legacy? Do they want to maintain a specific culture or build a culture for employees that are going to last beyond them or the business after they sell it or after they exit it?

Do they want to give something back in the form of community involvement or charitable giving? How do they minimize their taxes? How do they protect their assets from creditors and things when they go wrong? How can they mentor other people? All these things are goals that every entrepreneur is different and they tend to focus on themselves in the business and the business itself without stepping back and realizing, “Hey, I got to take care of my spouse. I got to take care of my kids, my grandkids. I got to take care of my partners. I got to take care of my employees. How do I do that?” and if I can’t do it in a way that takes all of this into consideration, that’s part of the business succession plan. It’s figuring out, “Do I have enough to live on for the rest of my life and if I don’t, if something happens to me tomorrow, if I die or become disabled, what is my plan? How am I going to keep this company going?”

All of this is part of business succession planning and I have chunked it down in the book into different frameworks and different processes and I address it from the entrepreneur’s perspective who might someday sell their business. There’s a whole chapter about selling your business and the things that you need to be aware of, technically, so that you don’t make some of the same mistakes that others have made in the past.

Entrepreneur StoryHussein Al-Baiaty: There is so much to that, right? That journey could be as long as a couple of years and as short as a few months but the reality is, the further you think about it, the better. I feel like as a young entrepreneur when I was starting my little T-shirt business and not knowing where it was going to go and all these things, I knew at some point down the line that there would be an opportunity to sell it, especially as my contract started to grow. I was like, “This is not something I definitely want to do for the rest of my life.”

Wayne Zell: You said a couple of years or maybe some months. I mean, I’ll give you a story, a real quick story.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, please do.

Wayne Zell: I work with a guy, he’s a very good friend of mine, became a good friend as we worked closer and closer together but it goes all the way back in 2000, 2001 when I started working with him and he had a company. They had like five people working for him and I was with him all the way up until 2019 at the end when he sold his company for USD 53 million and had 375 employees.

Along the way, there were lots of rough waters that we had to navigate. My job was to be there for him as his counselor, as his concierge, as his conciliary, like Tom Hayden and The Godfather. My job was to be there for him as his lawyer but also as his business advisor and as his friend and so for 20, almost 20 years, 19 years, we worked together. He grew the company, but I didn’t. He gave me a lot of credit and he treated me very, very well in the end but he gave me a lot of credit but he was the guy.

He was the mastermind behind this business and my job was just to help guide him along and give him the tools that he needed when it was appropriate and helped him get out of the business and fortunately he got out before COVID hit. He made a very good profit on it and now he’s able to pursue some of his other personal dreams that he really wanted to pursue. Before when he was really engaged, 100%, 110% in the business.

He was able to get out and now, he’s able to spend more time with his family, spend more time doing some of his personal hobbies, and also, delve into technology, which was something that he had done in building his company. He is a technologist but now he gets to do some really cool things on the side and he’s enjoying all that and he’s mentoring young entrepreneurs as well.

So you know, these are all — it’s the stories that are in the book. They’re throughout the book is ideas and action and at the end of each segment, there are lessons learned, which summarizes each point in the book but it’s the stories that make the book and it’s the stories and the examples that I try to use from all the experience I’ve been fortunate enough to gain and representing all these folks over the many years I’ve been doing this.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, it’s so powerful and I love that. In thinking about it as a young entrepreneur is like what I — looking back, right? Hindsight is 20/20, looking back having someone like yourself that was just well-rounded in things that I was not aware of as far as how a business can mature and what happens then and always kind of keeping that in the back of our minds and getting that constant mentorship.

It was actually not until I got a business coach in 2018 that I started even putting things in order, right? Because someone on the outside needs to help you sort of like a magnet kind of pulling you toward what that future could look like.

Wayne Zell: I agree. I’ve used business coaches. I think business coaches are very helpful if they know what they’re doing. It was the business coach that I used in 2004 when I ultimately decided to take the risk with a wife and four kids and a mortgage and everything and just basically go out on my own. I grew it and was successful and I am doing it again and I want to make it even more successful. It’s exciting to grow a business and execute on a vision but having the coaching was really helpful.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s so powerful and I think a big part of the coaching, I think for me at least, it was the accountability, which is what I just loved. Because obviously sometimes not all entrepreneurs are like this but some, you kind of find yourself in a silo. You kind of find yourself in your own think tank and it’s just so much nicer to have someone on the outside making sure there’s air coming in so that you can think about things a little bit differently, which is beautiful.

What was your favorite part of pulling this book together? Because I know it’s a journey. I know it’s no easy feat, been there, done that but what did you learn from the journey?

Wayne Zell: What a great question. I started writing this book 13 years ago when I was less experienced but still very experienced as an attorney and a CPA. I started outlining it and I got too busy and I came back to it a couple years later, refined the outline but never pulled the trigger on it and my daughter got married in April of last year. That was a catalyst for me, I caught COVID at the wedding.

After I came out of COVID it was like, “Okay, I’m going to do this book because I’ve been thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it and I’m going to do this book.” So the hard part was starting and then, I read a lot of guides to writing your book and what decided was, I was going to get on a schedule and I set a deadline for myself because fortunately, I had already outlined the book and I knew generally what I wanted to say in it.

I had to build the content within the outline and that was hard and so I ended up dictating the book into a software program that allowed me to sort of organized it and then fix it and edit it and so on and so forth but I set a deadline. I said, “August 12 of 2022 was my deadline.” and I finished the first full draft of the book and really, it’s morphed over time by adding graphics and the last week was probably the most fun for me.

Because I’d actually left work, went down to a beach house in North Carolina in Albemarle Sound and I put myself away and locked myself up for a full week where I finishing up the book and at the same time, creating graphics and designs, working with a graphic designer but mostly it was my drawings that ended up in the book. That was fun. Again, it’s my right brain coming out.

I’m a musician, artistic by training, I love doing that kind of stuff and that was the most fun time and then it’s becoming fun again because we’re now ready to launch the book. We’re launching the book, and the effort that’s going into that launch is really cool. I’ve got internal employees working on it, I’ve got my partner, my wife working on it. I’ve got Scribe Media helping me out with it, in terms of the marketing and the publication.

Now, I’m scheduling speeches, which again, I’m very excited to take to the next level where I am presenting the book, presenting the concepts of the book in a way that is interesting to people so that they’ll not only buy the book but use it and refer it to others because I think there is a lot of great stuff in there and a lot of detail that you know if you want to get into a deeper dive, you can do that.

There are sections in the book that are deep dives, and go into real technical stuff but I can’t wait to get out and start speaking about it on podcasts and on speeches and conventions and it’s now taking me back to the time when I was on stage. I get to get back on stage and talk about something that I created, which I’m really, really excited about and proud of. It is involving processes and a system of planning that most people don’t do and that they need to do it.

If they’re entrepreneurs, they need to start thinking about this stuff and so it’s all this depth of knowledge or this technical stuff that I’ve acquired over 37 plus years as an attorney, 42 years as an accountant, now I got to bring it and give it to them in pieces and workable segments that they can pick and choose what they want to work on or they can do the whole thing. I’m so energized by that right now.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man, no, I love that and I feel your energy. I mean, I just feel like again, it’s back to the idea of when we align with our truest nature, it feels fucking selfish. It feels like I’m just doing this for me but in reality and how it actually looks is that it’s you’re injecting that energy and that creative force for it to impact others and I mean, if we’re not here to help each other just kind of prosper and grow and with anything, just through hard times and good times, laugh, whatever, what else are we here to do?

That’s really what it all comes down to and your work is a testament to that, my friend. It’s been an absolute pleasure just getting to hang out with you today and getting to know you. I feel like we talked for like 10 minutes before we got on the—15 minutes almost before we got on the show because you’re just such an easy to talk to type of person and have an amazing personality, so I am glad we brought that out because your book is a testament and is an extension of who you are, which I just really appreciate.

You’re right, the stories are so easy to navigate, and they are so well-written. So great job just taking at least that week off but I know it’s taking those things that take this much time, 13-plus years. We talked about this too that books are born in those times of realization and it just takes a little while to build up the right momentum, and the right courage. The ingredients just need to come together but when they do, they feel how you feel.

You know, just really excited to put it all together because they do take a long time, so congratulations.

Wayne Zell: Yeah, it’s just the beginning though. I mean, the way I look at it is it’s I finally was able to do this and now there’s other things that are related to what are in this book that will come from it and it will give me an opportunity to expand on those other items. It’s just the beginning and so I feel like a kid. I feel like I’m in my 30s again, so it’s great.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so great, man, I love that. So the book is called, Your Multimillion-Dollar Exit: The Entrepreneur’s Business Succession Exit Planner, A Blueprint for Wealth Guide to Success. It’s so powerful and so to the point but besides checking out the book on Amazon and Barnes & Nobles, all that good stuff online, where can people find you and connect with you, Wayne?

Wayne Zell: Thanks, you can find me at waynezell.com. That’s where the author’s page is and there’s a landing page and more resources relating to the book there. You can connect and get an executive summary if you sign up in time and then you can also find me at Zell Law, zelllaw.com, which is our law firm’s website, which has my full biography there and tells you a little bit more about my background.

But I just really again Hussein, I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you today and to talk to the listeners and to talk about my book and my passion for business succession planning. Thanks a lot.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man, absolutely. It was an absolute pleasure, an honor to have you today my friend. Thanks again, Wayne. Congratulations on your book launch as well, buddy.

Wayne Zell: Thank you.

The post Your Multimillion-Dollar Exit: Wayne M. Zell, JD, CPA appeared first on Author Hour.

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In our fast-paced world, it’s easy to chase one goal after another in search of happiness. It’s also easy to feel overwhelmed by expectations; those of society, friends, family, and ourselves.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by author, Mark Meyer, who is here to talk about his new book, The Art of Being Authentic: Increase Self-Esteem, Be Happier, and Discover Your Purpose. Let’s flip through it.

Hello friends and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m here with a very special guest, my friend, Mark Meyer, who just launched an amazing book called, The Art of Being Authentic. Mark, thank you so much for joining me today.

T. Mark Meyer: Thank you for having me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Mark, this is great man. I got to tell you, I know I told you a little bit briefly before we got on the show that your book was super sort of easy to get into. I kind of say that about a lot of other people. I think my thing with introductions to books is I want to get pulled in and go into this flash moment where I feel like I’m falling into the story, and if I’m not captivated in those first couple of pages, it’s hard for me to pick it back up.

But, I’ll be honest, in the last twenty-four hours, it’s a little hard to put down because I just kept falling deeper into the book. Your story is really powerful.

T. Mark Meyer: Oh, I love that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: But before we get into the book and the amazing parts of it and of course, your stories, I want to share with our audience just a little bit about you, your personal background, perhaps where you grew up, and what got you on the path that you’re on today of entrepreneurship and then getting into the mind and authenticity. What got you going there?

T. Mark Meyer: What got me going, Hussein — I mean, I was born and raised in Copenhagen, Denmark, which is a small Scandinavian country just north of Germany, and just as everyone else, I faced the — I had a good upbringing, but I also faced adversity in life, and I think when I became a young man, I just went into the world with a lot of ambition and with a lot of feeling I needed to prove myself to the world.

I think for me, I think I said very early on in life, I said, “Okay, I want to be successful.” I want to do all those things that people told me matter; I want to make money, I want to have a career, I want to be a success, and I want people to respect me.

So I just started out working all I could, you know? Getting a good job, trying to get promoted, and I was fortunate, I set some goals, and I was fortunate that this hard work, it paid off. I got promoted, I got promoted again, and I think I was maybe in my early 30s and I was heading up, I was a European director of an ad agency. So [I] was heading up a German office, I was heading up an office in Denmark, I was heading up an office in Sweden.

I really accomplished all my goals, and I accomplished them even earlier than I ever dreamed of, and yet I was still stuck with this feeling that something was missing. I wanted more, and I didn’t know why, but I was like, “I’m not happy, I got to act on this.” So I left my prestigious job, I found some investors, and I thought, “Okay, you know what? I’ll start a tech company.”

I’ll step out on my own, and then I will finally be happy. I will set goals, I will accomplish them, and I was hellbent on making this a success. So, I started training as a business coach, as an NLP coach because I needed some tools so that I could perform and I could get the people around me to perform, and we did really well.

The company revenue skyrocketed. We won business awards, we won tech awards, we won design awards. It was everything I ever dared dream and more, and yet, I still had that feeling. That feeling that something’s missing, that feeling that something’s missing. I want more. So, I did what I’ve been doing most of my adult life.

I thought, “Okay, well, I need to get more.” So I started another company, and when that didn’t work, I started one more company. So I was continuously on this chase for something, a goal in the future that could get me what it was I was searching for.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I feel like the goalpost gets sort of bigger but further, right? Because you feel like you can conquer not only the game but you can easily throw a grape in the ocean but that ocean keeps getting further and further, right?

The abundance, it feels like it’s never enough and as a young man, while I was in college, I started my little T-shirt printing business and one thing just keeps leading to another one thing. For me, it was out of survival. I really needed to pay for school, I needed to figure out a way to do that but that just continued to feed this curiosity.

I think for me, entrepreneurship was beautiful because it really was challenging, which I loved but also at the same time, it gave me this burst of being validated. Being told that I’m doing a good job and in your affirmations that I was seeking but honestly, I was so young. I didn’t realize that is actually what I was seeking.

I was thinking that I was doing the right things, you know? Just showing up, building a business and going to school and – but all of that, you know to say you’re right. Your story resonates with me so deeply because it didn’t feel like it was enough. So I kept going and, in some ways, hurting myself but I want to talk a little bit about this.

What inspired you to write this book specifically around the idea of authenticity? Where did you sort of come to that crashing wall of saying, “It’s never going to be enough, and I need to figure this out” instead of “Let me build more?”

Journey to an Authentic LifeT. Mark Meyer: Yeah, that’s a really good question, Hussein, because if we pick up my story there, the goalpost kept moving and I was almost getting a little desperate, right? I mean,“Why is this not working for me?” and then I was sitting at home one night, late in the evening and I was browsing the web and I came across this good study and trying to become a psychotherapist and I guess it was a bit of a desperate move.

I was like, “Oh, maybe this is what I need. I need to understand the human psyche, and then I will finally be happy, and I’ll finally be content.” So I went down to my wife, and I said, “Listen, I’m going to study and train to become a psychotherapist,” and I tell you, Hussein, she wasn’t happy about the idea.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: No. Yeah.

T. Mark Meyer: She said, “Okay, you’re running several companies, you get up at 6 a.m. every morning, including on weekends, how are you going to find time for that?” But I was just, “I got to do this. I need to do this,” and I decided to do it, but at the time, I didn’t know how life-altering it would be for me because that was really the beginning of my journey toward living an authentic life.

And yeah, I showed up for the first class, and I remember I was handed some papers and on those papers, it said, “During this training, you have to go through forty hours of therapy,” and I thought, “Forty hours of therapy, what am I going to talk to a therapist about for forty hours?” and I went to the teacher and I said, “Listen, I’m sorry but you got this wrong. I’m not here to learn about myself. I’m here to learn to understand everybody else around me,” and she smiled, Hussein. She smiled, and she said, “Listen, if you’re going to be here, you’re going to do the therapy.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh man, that’s so good, yeah.

T. Mark Meyer: Yeah, exactly, right? And when I did, I realized all of a sudden, I finally took the time to look at myself, look at my own emotions, look at why am I doing this, what am I trying to achieve, and I realized, “Listen, I’ve been chasing something outside of myself that’s already in me.” What I’m really looking for is that connection with the authentic self, what’s authentic for me. When I realized that and when I saw the benefits of trying to live authentically, then I thought, “This is what I got to do.” So I made a radical change in my life.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. That’s so powerful because here we are, yet again, right? In this place where you’re like, “I think this is going to give me what I need” which is just more of an understanding of the world around me, not just the physical, material world. That’s where I feel like the bubble burst because it’s like, “Well, in order to know and understand other people, you have to know and understand yourself and your beliefs.” That’s probably hands down, the most uncomfortable place to be.

When your values are on the table, and they’re being questioned, I feel like it’s like being on the surgical table and being dissected in order for you to open up and understand what’s going on, “Why do I feel the things that I feel? Why do I push the way that I push?” All of these things, and for me, that wake-up call happened after my father passed, and I just felt like nothing really freaking mattered because at the end of the day, I’m – this is where I’m going to end up.

There was a complete disconnect, which I had to come back from – you know what I’m saying? And until I got into therapy — and luckily, I was dating my wife and with her help, just helping me be patient through that processing I was able to slowly get back into [and] go to therapy and start to uncover like, nothing feels right anymore, things seemed off. It’s something’s off in the world and in my perspective, and sure enough, it’s definitely my perspective. Whether it was resentment, anger, frustration, jealousy, envy, man, it was all on the table. So tell me more. I mean, the book covers a variety of topics, you talk about self-esteem and tension, purposeful living. These topics all deeply resonate with most of us, especially when we struggle through those things.

What topic really started to resonate with you during this process of sort of reevaluating yourself and why?

T. Mark Meyer: Well, I think the first thing was really that what I realized was, “Okay, I didn’t even know what it meant for me to be authentic.” And the one thing is trying to figure it out, and the second thing is when I figure it out, “How am I going to go about doing it?” because you start worrying and it’s so interesting what you said.

You talk about when your father passed away, and you said, “Hey, nothing really matters,” right? That kind of realization is something that can move something in us, right? Because a lot of us want to be authentic, but we kind of like, “Okay, but what are other people going to think about that?” You know? Are they going to judge me, right? Maybe we’re going to start thinking, and I’m going to start judging myself now because I’ve heard these judgments so many times in my lifetime, and I have internalized them, so I’m judging myself right now also and then you start thinking, “Oh hey, what’s the cost here?”

This could be very uncomfortable for you, this is the feeling I’m starting to get, right? And then when we have these experiences like the one you had, which is a tragic and sad experience but that can also be something that set you to look at your life in a different way. To strive towards being authentic because right now, you don’t care about the cost anymore. You know that there is an ultimate cost, and that’s not living your life because it’s going to end one day, right?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, yeah. I love that you shared that because again, this is why your book was really resonating with me because I found myself really just… what’s the word? Just connecting with you in your stories, but I saw myself, especially after my father passed, those couple of years where really —I shed so many different things man. I questioned everything about my life and why I was really doing it because, ultimately, it’s like what doesn’t matter does not matter.

It’s completely off the table, you know? And I was sitting there making lists and lists. I’m talking about friends, relationships, people, things that I used to feel guilty about; it was just like a re-cleaning and opening my eyes to what is possible and how short time is, you know? I think that made me realize, “Okay, I have to think about how I really want to spend my time here and how much it really matters.” That revelation completely took me out of this mentality of, “Man, I wanted to do an apparel printing shop.” I was like a FedEx Kinko, right? Like, you could go anywhere, it was like this huge — and it’s just never enough. Like no matter how big I dreamt it to be, it didn’t feed that all the way to, “This shop doesn’t serve me at all.” What I really love and enjoy is speaking to the youth.

That was the big thing and I’m like, “I don’t really care to have this shop.” This was just all a front to get this validation from the people around me, to show my brothers and my family that their hard work and sacrifice and it all paid off. It was like living in someone else’s story as opposed to genuinely living my own, and that needed to flip, and when I made that flip, man, it was like nothing could bother me.

To be honest with you — and I know that sounds really weird and it took some time, but what happened when you applied this to your life? That course that you took, the revelation to yourself, how did your life then change? What was that transformation for you?

T. Mark Meyer: Well, that transformation for me was just that I realized I needed to work with this. I needed to devote my time to psychotherapy, I needed to devote my time to talking about authentic mindset and sort of getting that message out there. So for me, it became a radical change. I removed myself from the daily operations of my companies. I set up a practice where I do counseling for couples and individuals.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful.

T. Mark Meyer: I do consultancy for major corporations on authentic mindset, I do workshops on authentic leadership, and then I also do coaching for professional athletes and leaders on how to find their purpose.

So my life is very different from what when it was before but it is also a whole lot better for me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right. Do you feel — and I don’t know, this is just how I felt definitely after and especially as I moved states, I moved down to Arizona from Oregon. For me, making that move, I finally felt like I not only got to the peak of that imaginary mountain but now I was like flowing down-river. It just felt like what I was planning to do just felt natural as opposed to me sort of imposing it in my life and I feel like that is for me living from that authentic place. What did it feel like for you?

Acting from PurposeT. Mark Meyer: Well, I think you already answered my question because you say very well right then, it’s a flow state. It is your natural state, right? And a lot of time, being our authentic self is something that we kind of always know that this is it, this is what we need to do, right? What you said before, when you said, okay, it was like nothing could get you down. It didn’t matter, I think that is a very distinct quality about being our authentic selves because what you’re doing now is you’re starting to act from your purpose.

So instead of acting for some goal you need to achieve, you start acting from what it is that really drives you, what really is your purpose, and your purpose doesn’t care about the result. Your purpose cares about expressing itself, and that is just an emotion that’s a lot easier to be with than chasing goals. I usually say that you can either push to reach your goals or you can be pulled forward by your purpose. It is up to you. If you want to push to reach your goals, then you need effort and discipline, but if you want to move from purpose, well then you need self-understanding but then you can be pulled from your purpose.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that is so powerful. Parts of it was my father, and parts of it was certainly my mother, but the way I came to understand sort of my purpose was definitely in that in a way because I am a very graphic-driven person. I am an artist so I have to visualize what my purpose is. So I visualized it and compared it to a compass that lives within, and the compass is helping me navigate the adventures of life. So life is like this big map, it is just a big adventure, right? So, the purpose is like leading me from one sort of challenge to another to uncover, kind of like a superhero that develops his skills overtime or reveals its talents but only through a challenge that brings them out, and I think for me, my purpose has been not just one thing but the idea that it is going to lead me to a place where I am going to be uncomfortable.

In that uncomfort, I am going to learn something that is going to help me further along in this beautiful journey, in this adventure, and once I started looking at things like that and very simplistic in a way like drawn out in my mind, I said, “Oh, okay. Well, what kind of adventure do I want to have?” you know? Then you get to the real meat of the question, and then you start to fold things on top of that.

T. Mark Meyer: Yes.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: But what advice do you have for your readers who are struggling with maybe self-esteem, purpose, or authenticity? You don’t have to answer all three, of course, but maybe one or two that come up for you in your practice, and if there aren’t sure of where to begin towards that improvement, what advice would you give to kind of lead them in that direction?

T. Mark Meyer: Yeah, I think that is a very good question, Hussein, and let me say, I love listening to your story with the compass and this you’re telling –

Hussein Al-Baiaty: This is one way to visualize it, I’m sure there are many more.

T. Mark Meyer: But it is a very good way to visualize it.

I would say that the most important thing is self-esteem, and because we’re not being authentic, we’re afraid it is going to come at a risk. That is what’s keeping us from being authentic. What are the costs? So we’ve got to feel worthy. If we do not feel worthy to be our authentic selves then we are not even going to try. So self-esteem is very important — and I am talking about self-esteem here.

I’m not talking about confidence. I’m not talking about this ego-based “I’m really good at making money or I’m really good at playing tennis” or whatever I’m really good at. That’s not it. I am talking about feeling worthy, saying, “Okay, I have the worth to be my authentic self.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that. It’s very straightforward, continue, please.

T. Mark Meyer: I also think that a lot of people — and I think this is an important message to get across and also one you’ll get when you read the book — that is that our self-esteem is 100% within our control. The actions that we take every day, the more authentic actions we take, the more authentic decisions we make, the greater our self-esteem is going to be.

Sometimes when I say that self-esteem is important, people will be like, “No, no but that’s – maybe you can have that kind of self-esteem, but that’s a limit to my self-esteem.” Or “I’ve experienced these things, and I can’t have that self-esteem,” but my message is really you can, and it’s just a matter of the choices you make in life and just grow.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: To practice. It’s an ever-growing practice, right? Just like feeding your plants.

T. Mark Meyer: Yes, definitely.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Just like exercising, just like everything else that we need to embed in our day-to-day. It’s the day-to-day moments, I think, and you really hit that spot on. I feel like self-esteem is the — I feel like it’s the assurance, it’s the belief in self and knowing that, “Hey, you know I’ve come this far. What’s to stop me from continuing in a way that I believe in?” right? You know, working from that energy space.

I love that so much, which of course, leads to purpose and just I feel like authenticity is a byproduct of understanding yourself and you are 100% right, and you talk a lot about that throughout your book, which I found really powerful but I got to ask you, I mean, writing a book is no easy feat and you had a lot to uncover for yourself and really bring a lot to the table and share stories that not everyone is quick to get into as far as life and things that are thrown our way. From small traumas to ones that we put on our self, but I got to ask man, I mean, it’s not an easy feat. What’s your — what would you say the hardest part of pulling this book together and what did you learn from that specific journey?

T. Mark Meyer: Well, I mean, I think that when you write a book like this, I think the hardest thing was to also put myself out there with my own story because, in the beginning, I wrote, and I was like, “I’m not going to put my own story in there.” But then, I mean, I’m writing a book called, The Art of Being Authentic, you know? It sounds really unauthentic if I don’t talk about myself, right?

So I knew I had to walk the talk and that’s been a hurdle I have to overcome but it’s also been an amazing gift because writing this book has really made me implement these things even further into my life. You know, really walking that talk and of course, that’s a wonderful experience as well.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that the most, man, and that was my sort of flip-side of that coin is what your favorite part. I think for me, my favorite part of writing my book was truly just understanding my own self, my own life, and the things and then really connecting the dots more than I thought they connected, you know? I wrote a memoir it was to kind of just share stories about my father and stuff like that and the things that he taught me.

But it also came around and served me in a way, and like you said, the more I understood myself, the more I could just be myself and trust that man, I’ve kicked ass this far, I’m going to continue doing it. Just trusting that is such a beautiful thing but doing it from a perspective of this was such a good case study for myself. I can always lean on my own experience, I don’t need anyone to validate my experiences anymore.

That was really beautiful, it was like when I started speaking is not that I really wanted people to clap for myself. I enjoyed that, but it’s like I don’t need that. I want to share, I want to be of value and just come into terms with those kinds of things. So what was your favorite part of pulling the book together?

T. Mark Meyer: Well, I mean, I guess in a way, what you also say there because you say something very important. You say, “You know, okay, when I understood myself more,” you sort of accepted yourself more as well, right? And that’s what comes with self-awareness is this great acceptance of yourself. Too many times, we stop before we investigate our true motives and we just chuck it up to some sort of limiting belief, right?

We say this also, “Okay, I’m not good at that because I don’t have any discipline” or “I’m not good at that, I can’t control my temper” but if you really just give it a chance and try to understand ourselves, we’d see what is it really that drives us because it is something different. There is a positive mood driver there somewhere, and once we get to understand that, as you say, then we get to accept it ourselves.

That is also been something that I experienced writing this book is, as you put yourself out there, you understand yourself better and you get a better acceptance of yourself.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s one of those things it’s like, “Here I am, love me or hate me, you know I’m here.” I exist, I validate myself and my existence, and I am here to serve in the ways that I want to and create in the ways that I want to, and I think for me, planting that flag was something I know my father really wanted for me, you know? I know that that’s the deeper language he was trying to relay though he did it through subtle lessons, if you will, in life and trying to show me things and my mother too, my brothers too.

It is not that we want you to be successful in this and all that. Of course on the outside, we want to see you healthy and thriving, but ultimately, it’s the finding of self, and when we do that, there’s nothing that could replace that. It’s beautiful, it’s elegant. It is, I don’t know, in my woo-woo way, it’s divinity, you know? And it goes deep, so I am so grateful that you really brought those things to light through your own story.

I thought that was so powerful and so courageous of you to do. So I just wanted to celebrate that, but I want to know when your reader picks up your book, gets through it, which hopefully I have some time this week to get through it, which I’m really excited about but what do you hope they feel after putting it down? What is that feeling you hope to evoke within?

T. Mark Meyer: I hope they get a feeling that authenticity and being authentic matters a whole lot, and there is no perfect circumstance, and even if there is, it won’t stay perfect for very long. So this is my moment to say, “I’m going to be authentic now. I’m going to reap the benefits. I am going to say goodbye to all the negative effects of not being authentic,” and I’m going to say what you said before, this is me, here I am, take or leave it basically. This is me being my authentic self.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that, thank you so much, Mark. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the show today. The book is amazing, I know like I’m pretty sure I am going to dive back into it tonight, but thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences with me and of course, the audience. The book is titled, The Art of Being Authentic: Increase Self-Esteem, Be Happier, and Discover Your Purpose. So besides checking out the book, where can people find you, my friend?

T. Mark Meyer: Well, they can find me on social media, on Instagram. I am @authentictmarkmeyer or they can go to tmarkmeyer.com, my website, to the other website, which is called, peacemaker.nu.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful. Well, congratulations again on the book launch. Super excited for you, my friend. I know, this is going to make a huge impact in the world. So thank you for taking the time, putting the resources and energy into it, and delivering such an epic piece to read, so thank you.

T. Mark Meyer: Thank you, Hussein.

The post The Art of Being Authentic: T. Mark Meyer appeared first on Author Hour.

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Before we start this episode, we want to caution our listeners that the topic we’re discussing today may be triggering for some individuals. We’ll be delving into sensitive topics that may cause emotional distress or discomfort. If you’re not in a place to hear about these topics right now, we encourage you to take care of yourself first and come back to this episode when you’re ready.

Sex trafficking. For many Americans, it sounds like fiction. After all, who could believe that a preschool teacher was being transported against her will every weekend and being sold for sex in multiple US states out of the country and even in her own home.

Welcome to the Author Hour podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty. I’m joined by author Julie Whitehead, who’s here to talk about her new book, Shadowed: How I Became the Sex-Trafficked Mother Next Door. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to Author Hour. I have a very special guest today with me, Julie Whitehead, who has just written an amazing, amazing book about her life experience. She’s here with me to share this life experience and her transformation. Julie, thank you so much for joining me today.

Julie Whitehead: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely. Julie, having sat down with your book and making my notes, I was moved, I was emotional, but I was also inspired. I was inspired by the courage that you took to pen your story out. But before we get into the topic of your amazing book, I really want to shed light on your personal background, perhaps where you grew up, what that was like for you, and what got you on the path that you’re on now for transformation and giving back and helping people?

Julie Whitehead: Okay. I grew up here in Utah. I’ve lived here my entire life in probably a fifteen-mile radius. I’ve never moved really very far. I would say that despite my experiences, I was just a normal little kid. I was pretty shy, introverted. I still am. I’m the quietest person in the room, generally. Sometimes we go to functions with myself and my husband, and people will say, “Does she talk?” That’s just me. That’s just my personality. I’m just quiet and introverted, but yeah, I grew up here in Utah. Unfortunately, my experiences that I wrote my book about started in childhood, definitely put me on a path that led me to more trauma, so that wasn’t so great.

Where I’m at now, you talked about being the transformation. I’ve come through all of that trauma, the 31 years of it almost. I feel like I’m not one to say that I am healed. I don’t even know that there is such a thing as healed, like, what is that? I’m definitely healing. I feel so lucky to be on this side of it, as far on this side as I am and going further, and just being able to now work.

I work with a foundation called the Malouf Foundation based here in Utah, but they do work nationwide. I get to work with them and be an advocate for sexual abuse, especially talking about sex trafficking. I share my story, and it’s given me a lot of empowerment. Just feeling like I own my story, but I didn’t create the things that happened to me. Those were done to me by other people. I’m going to let them carry that from now on. I’m just going to tell this story and be a little bit more free from it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow. That’s so powerful. Again, I feel like you have such a courageous perspective in that you have defined the healing process as a balancing act and that it’s a process. It’s an ongoing thing. I could really appreciate that, because throughout my traumatic experience, having been a refugee, I can never really fully heal from those things that were taken away from my childhood and my innocence. I just appreciate your raw approach to this, because I find so much courage. I was inspired.

How did you find the courage to share such a personal and deep traumatic experience with sex trafficking? Because it is an epidemic. Of course, you share this, it’s an epidemic in our country and it’s sad, but you are putting a voice and a story to it. Where does that courage come from?

Julie Whitehead: A little bit of everything. My biggest hope is to create awareness, because before I was trafficked, I didn’t know what trafficking was. I had probably seen it in a movie and had some vague idea and thought it was like an overseas problem or something like that. But after it happened to me, and when I didn’t learn that I had been trafficked until I was in therapy, when they said, “There’s a name for what you went through. That’s actually called sex trafficking.” To just realize how unaware I was, and I went through it, that scares me, that there’s so many people that don’t know that it exists, especially right in our neighborhoods, right in our backyards.

My biggest hope is to create awareness that people can watch out for it. They can watch out for each other and especially the most vulnerable in our communities. I think that the statistic is like 84 percent of trafficking victims have some child sexual abuse history. If we could look out for it at the childhood level, maybe they wouldn’t have to go through that horrible experience and be scarred for life, because like you said — and you know all too well — the things that you go through, they’re never forgotten. It’s not like you heal from them and they’re just gone out of memory. They’re a part of you. They make you who you are, and some of that’s good, because I feel like a stronger person, because of it in some ways, but of course, I struggle with it.

It was a hard story to tell for sure. There’s a lot of detail in the book. I’ve struggled. I’ve thought, “What am I doing giving all of these specifics out to the world and for strangers to read? Why am I doing this?” But I have to hold fast to the thought that if we can know what it is, and it’s ugly, and it’s brutal, and I hate putting negativity into the world. I worried a lot about that when I wrote this book, I don’t want to just add negative to the world.

I think in reading it and realizing that I did survive it and now I’m fighting against it, I think that there’s hope for all of us, especially for those who might be going through it or know someone who’s going through it or has had a past experience with domestic violence or childhood sexual abuse. There is hope. There is life on the other side of it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s so profound. I think that’s probably the best definition of courage I may have ever heard, to be honest with you. That was so powerful, because you took your childhood experience and the unfortunate events of leading into being sex trafficked. Then again, not even realizing it because you’re just so in that world and not understanding what’s happening. For me, it’s very frustrating and very — there’s a part of me, I think maybe as a male or just maybe how I was brought up, and all of those things come to my imagination in that I feel like, I’ve always wanted to be a hero. I wanted to rescue people, because of the traumatic experiences that I went through in a refugee camp. I wanted to be Superman and just rescue everybody and have a solution for everything.

When you’re powerless, when you’re just a kid, you have this imagination of being powerful, right? As we grow, what’s interesting is that that experience in of itself actually makes you that hero, it gives you that power or those powers. What you defined just now is so powerful, because you’ve taken this really raw experience and turned it into a superpower to fight against this epidemic.

How would you say your perspective on sex trafficking and its prevalence in America really opened up your mind to how big of a problem this is? When you felt that, did you feel the urge to not only write a book but of course, join forces with other human beings that are also fighting this. What else did it open up for you?

Julie Whitehead: I was right there in my community where I had lived and grown up. I was being sex trafficked on the weekends, primarily. Taken to different states, but all of them around Utah and the western states. I believe I was transported across the US-Mexico border once, or maybe twice. When it happened to me, I was just like, what is happening? How are there people that are doing this? How is this possible? I knew there was negativity and bad and evil in the world. I had grown up with it and had some of those experiences in my adult life, but I was just blown away by the next level of it, that people could be so mean to each other, and so dehumanizing and just see —

I felt like they saw me as just an object and something to be bought and sold. How is that possible? I’m a human being, can’t they see that in my eyes when I cried? Did they have no compassion? What’s wrong with them? Why can they do this to other people? When I went through that, and then after I escaped it, I was just shocked. I would be lying if I said it didn’t give me a really bleak worldview for a long time. I saw people as potential — like a lot of the people that I was trafficked to, that were the purchasers or whatever you want to call them, the customers. They appeared to be normal people, you’d look at them, and you would never suspect.

When I came home, I saw that potential in everybody. You can’t trust what you see in a human. You can’t trust what they’d say. That was really bleak for a very long time. I went through some serious suicidality because of it. It just took time. The way I got through it, I had a really good support system. My husband is the most amazing, incredible, supportive human being on the earth. He saw me through it, and my kids gave me a reason to keep going.

Now being on this side of it, I just don’t want to do that to people. It’s hard when you have something so terrible, you don’t want to take away people’s innocence, but at the same time, innocence can be very dangerous. You have to know what is a threat and what is really going on, especially when it’s at this level. Sex trafficking is the number two enterprise in the world, just short of drug trafficking.

It’s a big deal. It’s going on everywhere. There is nowhere that this is not happening and no one that is not happening to. I was a mother of three. I volunteered with the PTA. I couldn’t have been more of just the mother next door. It happened to me in my community and surrounding. I just think people need to just know about it and not be so terrified that they’re drawn to inaction, but more so inspired to take action and be part of the solution like you said, you want to save everybody.

If everybody could have just some of that feeling that you have, that I appreciate so much and look out for other people. If we can all be a community that looks out for each other, I mean, it could just – I don’t have hopes of eradicate. I mean, I do, I would love to eradicate it. That’s a big task, but if we can help solve the problem, if we can get one person out of it…I know that sounds cliche, but if we can get one person out of it, then we have succeeded.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Your story is so powerful. It’s not cliche to say one person, because that one person could be you, right? I mean, that’s the thing. It’s like no gesture is too small. In fact, that’s actually huge to save one person, because then that person could probably go on and save too, like yourself, right? You’re on the path of rescuing and helping so many other individuals, but you’re the one, right? For me, when I hear you speak about the impact at which sex trafficking is to me, it’s at a scale of war, right? It’s at the scale of causing displacement, causing refugees to be.

This is not something people choose. No one chooses to be a refugee, no one chooses to be sex trafficked, no one. It’s obviously unfortunate series of events that cause others to make this harm, right? Those people are obviously, I mean, they are beyond hurt. They’re, obviously also very traumatized and take advantage of others. There’s that evil, right? I think for me, looking at just from a perspective of war, this is what I related to. Things like this that happened to people that you wake up one day — I woke up when I was fifteen, I’m like, “Oh, my God. We went through a war.” It was just — my parents lost everything, their livelihood, my dad. All of these deep things that when you’re young, you can’t put together. You just can’t. Your imagination is not that powerful.

I think as we get older, as we try to make sense of these things, they don’t make sense. Nothing adds up, right? The math is so off. That really, it’s like the only thing you have is the urge to want to help other people, because yeah, you may not solve the whole problem, but you are a part of the solution, especially having come out of it in a way, whether it was your partner that helped rescue you or rescued yourself. I mean, I think there’s a balance there too, in how you transformed your way through it. What you’re sharing is so powerful. Can you tell me a little bit about a time you felt like maybe giving up, and what kept you going?

Choosing LifeJulie Whitehead: There were so many times I felt like giving up. I mean, I wrote my first suicide letter at age sixteen. That was after my brother’s best friend had committed suicide. I realized at that time that there was a way out. It was this pivotal moment for me where I thought, I don’t have to do life. If it’s too tough, if it’s too awful, I can get out. I wasn’t at my lowest end by any means. It was really after I escaped, because during my trafficking experience, I like to try to explain to people that it was actually easier to survive my trafficking experience than it has been to heal from it. That’s not downplaying how hard it was at all, because it was intense.

It was always a choice of life or death. I always chose life. It was just constantly making the choice to survive, to survive, to survive whatever that took. When I got through to my healing side of it, I had to choose what I was going to do with it. This has happened. I can’t change it. I have these memories and these flashbacks and all of this stuff going on. I had to intentionally put myself back through it. I think you mentioned something about that earlier, where you’re choosing to re-experience and how awful is that. Unfortunately, that’s the path toward healing. That’s been much harder.

I had a point where I remember I was in Tennessee at the time at a treatment center. I was sitting by a river, and I just thought, I can’t do this anymore. I was so low. I mean, so very low that I couldn’t think of a reason to continue going on. The only thing that kept me going was this deep, innate sense of self-preservation that my body and my brain had of just keeping this human being alive. I was so grateful for that, that just inborn sense to want to survive and keep yourself alive. It wasn’t enough by any means. I had to have more than that, but at that moment, that is what it got me through, is just this survival of the species thing.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow, so powerful. Julie, you have the ability to talk about these experiences at such depth, which I think is what makes your book and story so powerful. I’m sure, to a lot of other people, is probably relatable. You are putting words to an experience that people don’t even want to talk about. Don’t even want to think about, let alone brought up, right? But it’s when we do that, it’s when we revisit those stories. As hard as that is, that’s actually where the healing starts, is that you look back and say, “Let me just look at this again and realize what I experienced and how does this even help me?”

I think for me, looking back at my refugee experience, I always look back like, man, how fortunate I was to have just been a kid, because I had a great family. My mom and dad, I was so lucky. Brothers that fed me. I was five years old, six years old, running around with other kids in a refugee camp. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. It was just madness. But revisiting that and writing about it and getting into the book, oh, my God, I was in tears half the time. I was just, I would just start shaking.

When I first started writing my book, it was visceral. My whole body was shaking, because I was terrified. I was terrified then. I forgot about being terrified, right? I was like, “Oh, I’m just sharing my story.” But really now I’m feeling the experience again. It’s so visceral and I just really appreciate the level of depth that you go into. Like I said, I was totally immersed in your book. I didn’t want to put it down. It was so powerful, because it shared such a pathway to like, light. How did you ultimately escape from your captures? What was that process of recovery like for you?

Julie Whitehead: Well, it was really interesting. My trafficker had me so completely stuck as far as he was manipulating me. Of course, he had threats against me, against my children. He took photos and videos of the abuse and sent them to my ex-husband to use during a custody battle to try to help my ex-husband win custody. Ultimately, I did lose custody of my kids for a year and had to work to fight really hard to get them back half of the time.

He set me up this one time. He said — he was a long-haul truck driver and that’s the business that he used to traffic me. For whatever reason, he decided he wanted to purchase the truck that he was driving from his employer. He thought — because this is just the way he thought — that I would have better chances of successfully sealing the deal just because I was a woman. I could use my womanly charms or whatever.

He basically told me, I mean, all along, it was never like, “Hey, do you want to do this?” It was always, “You’re doing this or else.” He told me I would meet with his employer to do that, to seal the deal on him buying the truck. I went, and I met with his employer and had never met him before. I didn’t know him from anywhere. It was the most incredible thing. So many people had seen me over five months I was trafficked, and so many people had seen me with my trafficker, seen horrible situations and me being drugged by my hair, pushed out of a vehicle, jumping out of a moving vehicle, and yet nobody intervened.

I don’t hold any hostility toward that, because I just know that there’s a lot of feelings of that’s not my business. I shouldn’t get involved. It might be a domestic violence situation or people just don’t know how to react, maybe they panic. But so many people had seen me and done nothing. When I met with his employer, he saw me, like really saw me, and he said, “Why do you look so scared?” He wouldn’t let it go. He just said, “Something’s not right here. Tell me why you’re involved? What is really going on?” I wasn’t fully able to just open up and disclose to him. Number one, as I said before, I didn’t even know that I was being trafficked. I just thought I had this horrible relationship where he was sharing me with people. That’s what I called it.

I told his employer just a little bit. I said, “I’m in a violent relationship with him. I’m scared of him. He won’t let me do certain things.” He said something to the effect of like, “This is America, and nobody should live that way. You shouldn’t be scared. You should be safe.” He ultimately got me free from him. He let me sleep on his couch. Several nights to be safe. He watched over me. He helped me get moved out of the apartment that my trafficker had secured for me, and because he was his employer, I think that my trafficker had a certain level of intimidation about him, so didn’t necessarily want to mess with him too much.

I had that level of protection. We actually ended up getting married, me and my trafficker’s employer, several months later. He ended up stalking us for, gosh, I think it was three years. He was just trying to keep the pressure on me to not reveal what had happened, and it worked. I wasn’t excited to tell anybody what I had gone through. I didn’t know what I had gone through. I had repressed a lot of it, not to the point where I didn’t remember it, but just compartmentalized it so that I could live in spite of it.

It didn’t come out until years later in therapy that that’s actually what it was, but my husband literally saved my life and has been keeping me going ever since. He’s my champion, my hero like you said, you must have a lot of same traits as my husband. He has that protective nature. He just wanted to take care of me and protect me ever since. He’s done such a great job of that. With his love and support, I’ve been able to go down the healing path.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow. What a remarkable man. I’m not going to lie to you. I got tears coming down my face, because first of all, what a courageous man. How beautiful of him to see through you in that way and helped you in that way. It’s remarkable, because I think those are the things that I saw in my dad and in how he really wanted to save us and save our lives. I think that’s what I carry today. It’s so powerful to hear you share that, because it’s something that we all seek in other humans to see through us, to see us whole, to see through our eyes and to our soul. I think it’s so powerful.

Shout out to your remarkable husband, because men like that inspire me every day to be the human that I could be. I’m not perfect by any means. I mean, none of us are nor do I want to be. I just want to be human. I want to be loved, respected, and divine. I think people like your husband is who I live for, you know what I mean? Who I want to make proud, because they remind me of my dad. Shout out to him. What a beautiful man. I’m so glad that your paths crossed in that way and he helped you in that way.

I got to ask you what advice would you give to others who have experienced and are sadly, probably, currently experiencing sex trafficking? What’s one or two things that you could give to them if they’re listening right now?

Hold On and FightJulie Whitehead: Well, if you’re in it, hold on. Fight, fight, fight. Never give up. Always choose survival. I have a lot of experiences that I feel really guilty for, and I work through that in therapy, because I made a choice to do something to survive, but it’s not a choice that I would have made in my everyday life, I would never choose that. I did things that I would never normally do, but I had to do it to survive. Make those choices. Choose survival. Then to those who are working through it, I guess just keep remembering that there is light on the other side of it. This can make you a stronger person. You already are a stronger person for having survived it.

You’re a champion. You’ve come through something that is so devastating and you’re still here, and choose to fight through it and work through it. I promise you that there is healing. It’s not easy. I’m not going to lie to you and say that it’s easy. It’s not. It’s a choice every day to get up and fight, but you can have a beautiful life still. That wasn’t taken from you. That was just put on pause for a while.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow. What a beautiful sentiment. When your reader picks up your book and begins to read through it, and after they put it down and they feel everything that you had gone through, what do you hope they feel after putting it down?

Julie Whitehead: Number one, I hope they feel empowered to help. Empowered to make a difference. I wrote this book as I’m a volunteer and, on a survivor, advisory board for the Malouf Foundation. They have put together this training called, iamonwatch.org. My story is one of the modules in there. There’s a lot of other survivors who shared their stories very candidly and that is a resource that you can go to. You can get educated on what are the signs of human trafficking and what to look for. When you’re out in places that you work and you play, if you see something, and a lot of it is a gut feeling.

I mean, when I asked my husband, “How you did know?” He said, “It was a gut feeling.” He just had to follow it. I think all of us have seen something at some point or other that our gut has just told us, that’s not right, something looks wrong there. Then if you take the training that iamonwatch.org, you’ll be taught even more signs of what people could have seen, what they could have done, where they could have intervened and what you can do if you see the same thing.

I definitely want people to feel like I shared my story in a positive way, even though a lot of it’s very negative. I want people to feel like, “Wow. Somebody can survive this and I can help someone else survive this, too. I can help them escape. I can help prevent it from happening.” There’s so many stages that you can intervene in a person’s life. If they feel a little bit more empowered to do that, that would be my greatest goal.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful. Julie, I am inspired. I am humbled. I’ve learned so much today. You took me down a path that was honestly unexpected, because I just felt so connected to your story in some way, and just relationship to my story and just the trauma and resilience that you build in the sense of taking what negatively impacted you and turned it into an immense amount of fuel to push forward and help others. There’s nothing more commendable than that. It’s so powerful.

Julie, it’s been an absolute pleasure and an honor to have you on today. Thank you for sharing your story, your deep, deep experiences with me and my audience. The book is titled, Shadowed: How I Became the Sex-Trafficked Mother Next Door. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you and connect with you?

Julie Whitehead: You can find me on Twitter, you can find me on LinkedIn, on Medium, and the book is available on Amazon.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Julie. I appreciate you. Keep fighting the good fight. I hope to see you in person and meet you one day.

Julie Whitehead: I would love that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: And definitely meet your husband.

Julie Whitehead: Yes, I would love that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Our heroes. I look up to heroes.

Julie Whitehead: Thank you so much.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Thanks again for coming on the show, Julie. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Julie Whitehead: Bye.

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According to my next guest, we’ve been fed a lie. Losing weight is not just about food. It’s connected to what makes you reach for something to eat when you feel overwhelmed.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by author Katy Landis today, who is here to talk about her new book, Losing Weight is an Inside Job: How to Forget Food and Focus on You. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Author Hour. I am here with my friend, Katy Landis, who is calling me all the way from the UK. Welcome, Katy, welcome to the show, thanks for joining us and I’m super excited to get into this book.

Katy Landis: It’s great to be here. Thank you, Hussein.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely. So the title of the book is amazing. Losing Weight is an Inside Job. See, I’ve known that but it’s the acting on it, right? I’m super excited to talk about your book because you know, you’ve put a lot of energy into this mind-body connection and where food plays a role.

But before we get into the book, Katy, I would love to share a little bit about you, your personal background, perhaps where you grew up, and maybe a person or an event that led you down the path that you’re on now.

Katy Landis: Sure. Well, I was brought up in London with my brother and my parents were both actors and they got divorced when I was seven. My childhood was quite drama-filled and I think that I turned to food at quite a young age without even realizing that I was and then as I got older, I met my husband and now I have my two boys, my two teenagers and we live in Sussex, which is in the country now, I’m not in London anymore.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow, that’s amazing. Tell me a little bit more about how you got into the line of work that you’re in, around losing weight and getting healthy and changing the perspective of people as mindsets. Tell me a little bit about that work and what got you into it?

Katy Landis: Well, I think I got myself into it by reaching a moment in my life where I couldn’t take it anymore. I was acting out, blaming others, eating a lot of food, and always thinking that the solution was in another diet.

I would get really excited about trying something, especially if it has a glamorous name like the Beverly Hills diet and just eat fruit for a week and then just eat one vegetable and then just eat steak and just do these ridiculous diets and lose weight and I still feel didn’t good within myself. It was almost like I was trying to feel good about how I looked on the outside, and I was good at losing weight, so I would yo-yo, especially in my 20s and 30s when it was easy to lose weight.

I would go on a diet or whatever the latest eating fad was, lose the weight and the minute I finished, it was like I didn’t know how to be in a world of food without being told how to eat. I was either under-eating or overeating and completely obsessed without being aware that I was obsessed and it was only when I hit a really low ebb when my mother died and I was going through a really difficult time with my husband that I realized that things had to change and they had to start from within.

Because unless I address the root cause, by looking to food for the answer when that was the symptom of my problems, I was just on this cycle, this downward spiral all the time and not really pleasant and I’m just really blessed that that hit me when my boys were so young, one was a baby, one was a toddler.

Because up until that point, I’d been sort of ricocheting from one drama to the next without really addressing what was going on within me and how my perspective of what was going on was the most important thing.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I’m going to dig a little deeper because I’m really interested. I feel like most of us human beings, we all go through difficult times and how we cope and deal and build our resilience back up and, like my guest beautifully said yesterday, not only do you build resilience to build up but you also build it to go forward. I thought that was really powerful because I walkways as myself when I grew up, being a person that not only could be resilient because we came from the Middle East and refugee camps and all these things.

But also, I knew that, at some point, I was obsessed with becoming a business owner, right? Like, I obsessed and worked my face off and all those things but it was also trying to fulfill something that work was not going to do. I just wanted to feel good enough, right? And I feel like that overwhelming connection is huge because that leads to such bad habits and it sounds like for you, food was an answer to try to like, fill this void.

I’d like to go there for a second if you don’t mind. What was that feeling that you felt like you needed to replace? What was that place that was deep that you felt was the root cause of what you were going through?

Filling the VoidKaty Landis: I love that question and that void is just about not feeling worthy, not feeling like you belong, just not feeling good enough and I love what you said about moving forward because that’s what it has to be about, about transformation and this is what I love about my journey and when I take other people on this journey is that it can — this problem with food can open a door to such self-awareness and transformation and I think I got it quite young.

I had two parents that love me but they had their own traumas being brought up and I had a stepfather that didn’t really want his wife to have two children. So I wasn’t wanted by him and he didn’t really look at me and he didn’t speak to me. I got this feeling that I wasn’t good enough and children get into all sorts of ways — I just wanted to be really clear that it’s not about blaming the adult because they purposefully being too difficult upbringings themselves when their parents just didn’t have it to give but I wasn’t aware o of any of that.

I was just aware of this void that needed filling and as you said, you filled it with work and I filled it with food and it wasn’t just the not eating or eating, it was the obsession. So I could have got to be — especially when I was in my teens and my 20s — I could actually lose a lot of weight and get to the sort of body that I wanted to have but the moment I hit it, I knew I would stop climbing and in fact, I prefer losing to putting on because then I had boundaries.

I was putting everything into the food, I was looking in the wrong place. I had to look within and I was looking without and what was going on in my life. I had to look at my resilience and my perspective, and how I could change that and the way to change it for me had to begin with awareness. I had to be aware of how I behaved because if you’d asked me 20 years ago, I wouldn’t have known this.

I just knew that the fridge door was open and I was eating. I wouldn’t have actually known what had just happened that made me do that. I wouldn’t have looked at the root cause. So just to start looking at ourselves and what we’re feeling and actually getting into contact with how we’re feeling physically, how we’re feeling emotionally, are we feeling heavy and almost putting a white coat on and looking at ourselves and taking inventory of what’s going on just to offer some understanding and compassion to ourselves.

Because I know being a mother, I could always put one of my children at the top of the list but when it came to me, I was always chasing my own tail, being tired, overeating, obsessing, and just slowing down and learning extreme self-care and how to look after ourselves and offer ourselves love and compassion, for me was the beginning of change.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful and I think the byproduct of trying to feel that void is that in a way, I think for me, this is why your stuff just really resonated with me. I think for me it was about in order to feel the void, I also felt shame and guilt. Because I was overworking, I needed to compensate like somewhere else, you know what I mean?

And if I didn’t fulfill other people’s needs or all these other things then I would feel guilty and then I would sort of overreach or overextend myself to do that and I’m just — at the same time, I’m just emptying the tank further and further and it just felt like you said, like this vicious cycle and there’s the one thing that of course, brought my attention to it was people around me that my supporters, you know, my family, my friends.

My friends said to me, he’s like, “Man, every time I’ve seen you in the last like six years, it’s been at your shop. Like, could we go somewhere?” and it just, oh my God. It hit me in the face so hard and that’s when I knew that I needed to make some changes, you know? And really start to think things out. So, I love that.

Katy Landis: It’s interesting, you talk about shame because it’s just so powerful and it can run our lives and we’re not even aware of it. I was so not aware that, at my very core, I felt the deep shame of not being good enough and so I wanted to do a thing. For me, it was on the outside to lose weight but it can be anything like you say and just to be aware of that because that not feeling good enough, that feeling responsible for everything and everybody, it changes our expectations.

I mean, when I was young, my whole being wanted to make sure that my mother was okay in this relationship. So I was relying on someone I had no control over and no power to be okay so she could look after me and that can continue with this illusion of control over other people, relationships, anything. Places, situations, and it has to begin with me and that’s the last place where I wanted it to begin. That sort of self-care isn’t just about massages.

It’s about taking care of our needs first so that we have yeah, gas in the tank to be able to give, especially if we have children.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That is so powerful. I think that level of thinking and level of awareness, it’s definitely not only the start but it is the push forward. Sadly, it has to come to—sometimes I feel like it comes in realization in a beautiful way. In a lot of ways, it’s interesting because the problem becomes the solution, right?

By really analyzing, why do I—why am I consuming this at this hour? Just waking up to that, right? Then just get you to question your decision making, your behavior and I think that is like the road to the internal piece, right? It may be as long as you know, the rest of your life but at least it’s a start. So I appreciate you sharing that.

Katy Landis: And the problem is that we live in a society where we all want the quick fix, the pill, the two-week diet, we want immediacy.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: The Beverly Hills one, don’t forget that one.

Katy Landis: Yeah but actually, when we do the deep change and the deep shift, there is so much peace on the other side. There was so much joy on the other side because I noticed and this is the people I work with as well, when you use food to push down and numb and not feel, because you don’t want to feel for whatever reason, you’ve learned not to feel. You’re also denying yourself the other side of the spectrum, the joy, the happiness. You’re making your emotions smaller in every way. It’s difficult with emotions when you’ve learned your whole life not to feel alone. Even, it might just be — we’re told when we’re young, aren’t we? Be a good girl, be a good boy, be brave.

People lose their husbands and, “Oh, isn’t she being strong?” As if it’s not okay to fall apart, it’s not okay to feel your feelings and sometimes the only way is through but that propels you to the future rather than getting stuck in the past which is what happens when you’re continually pushing down your feelings and your emotions.

And also the compassion and love that this is just a survival mechanism that you’ve always used and you have to notice how you’re using it to be able to break out of it, accept that that’s what you do, and then you can take action and it is deeper, harder work than a quick fix but the outcome is a complete transformation of your relationships with other people, as well as your relationship with food.

Your relationship with everything and just noticing how you use food and relationships to give yourself a bit of a release, it’s almost like a momentary release because anyone who uses food, they know when they’re eating that they’re going to feel even worse after. It’s almost just like a momentary numbing, it doesn’t last forever. We have to come up the air at some point.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah and I think it’s like a fix, right? It’s just a quick fix and that comes in the forms, many different types of forms. I mean, from gambling to all kinds of different formats and how this sort of behavior starts to grow and manifest itself but like you said, I think the realization is up to anyone and the realization can come from every kind of spectrum.

In your book, you emphasize the importance of dealing with these painful experiences without being at the mercy of our emotions. Can you share maybe a technique or a strategy that readers can use to help them achieve this?

P.E.A.C.E.Katy Landis: Yeah, sure just a simple one. I call it the PEACE method because it is a good acronym. P is just simply for pressing the pause button and it could be, if it has to do with food, it would be the moment and the idea of eating each. The moment and the idea of eating pops into your head, it’s not when the fridge door is open and you’ve got your hand in the food. It’s just that idea and that’s when you just give yourself some space to make a different choice. It is also quite helpful if someone’s irritated you and you have that knee-jerk reaction to want to say something but we’re talking about food here.

It’s just at that moment, you just give yourself some space and press the pause button and then E for emotion. Just simply what emotion are you feeling, are you feeling vulnerable, angry, upset, left out, unnoticed, frustrated? Just by thinking, “What am I feeling?” you’re stepping outside yourself and you’re not in the whirlwind of that emotion because you have to stop and think, “Wait a minute, what am I feeling?”

Then A for acknowledge, just acknowledge that you’re feeling whatever it is. You’re feeling very upset and rejected, if that happens to be what you are feeling, and just notice that in your body and how that feels and then C, that we all have choices. So instead of having a knee-jerk reaction, one that almost feels like a magnet has pulled you to the food, just give yourself a second to bring some love and compassion in and perhaps, make a choice that’s in alignment with what you want for yourself and the life you want to live.

Then empower for having the power to go through all of this and then make a choice and even at the very end you decide to eat, you delayed it. You have given yourself some space and we can’t expect ourselves to be good at this straight away but it’s just the little P-E-A-C-E way just to let something else in, to let some love and compassion in instead of being at the mercy of our feelings and just almost like a knee-jerk reaction, the food is in our mouth as the thought comes into our head.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful, what happens when you raise your awareness and what kind of actions that leads to. I mean, it changed my life. It changed my career, it changed my trajectory, it changed my relationship, it changed everything once I was just aware of how my behavior and my emotions were connected to this overdoing of something. I enjoyed and love my work but I was overdoing it.

To kind of reel it back, bring it back to a place where it’s healthy, it’s not that you shouldn’t do it. It’s not that you shouldn’t eat it’s, “Why are you eating?” to begin with and it’s to nourish your body not damage it, right? I think of that as one of my favorite realizations that my wife led me to was that I was always used to talking about I want to lose weight, I want to lose this belly fat, you know? She’s like, “Well, maybe you should think about just the idea of just having a healthy nourished body that you get to carry.”

It totally changed my perspective. Instead of going to the gym to just try to look a certain way, go to the gym because that is what your body needs and it stays healthy just like you like to read. I was like, “Okay, wow. That’s a profound change” you know what I mean? I feel like that’s what your book was doing for me as well, it was reaffirming these ideas of how to think about myself first and foremost and that’s very powerful.

Katy Landis: I think with that as well just to take care of the basics; sleep, fun, relaxation, connection to others, to give yourself the support system as well so that we’re not running on empty and sometimes the exercise can come out of connection to others and fun by joining a sports team or something that just involves that connection that we have to other people, which we all need.

I think lockdown showed us that when we were isolated from each other stress and anxiety went through the roof because ancestrally, we’re designed to want to tribe with people that we care about and care about us and we can support each other and that’s where we come from. As babies, we look to our parents for love and connection and I don’t think that ever leaves us. We still want love and connection and belonging.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I can’t agree with you more. I feel like doing those simple things I think people overcomplicate just how we see ourselves and our culture and our nature and who we are as human beings. The reality is that things are simple but they are hard to maintain and I think it’s hard to maintain because it makes it rewarding to have maintained it. I think one of the proudest things I have is I am still very close friends with about seven guys I knew from high school and we’re very close.

But we’re all very proud of maintaining our relationship and it’s hard to stay consistent, stay active on the messaging and call and ask and say hello and reach out. [When] we haven’t heard from someone in a while, we all reach out and say, “Oh man, are you okay?” and I think having that circle around me has been such a blessing because you know, I feel like I’ve earned that friendship and you know that’s beautiful.

It is very rewarding but that I think is where it gets difficult for some people and that is the reward, where is the reward, when is the reward, and obviously we want it today in our current society and I feel like that’s less rewarding, that is less valuable if you get it today but if you had worked towards it or if you go out and earn it and all those kinds of things, the level of appreciation and value is different.

It’s just way different and feels different in the body but you suggest, you know, you make these small changes to improve over time one’s mind, body, and life. What’s one small change, maybe two small changes that you made that had a big impact on your own journey?

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/water-drop-40784/

Small Changes with Big ImpactsKaty Landis: I think one of them was looking to myself and keeping the focus on me because I would love to look to my mother who was in an abusive relationship and I always wanted her to be happy. I was always on her rollercoaster. If I could make her happy if I can look outside myself and make her happy then I could be happy, and I would do that with relationships when I was younger and so I would always choose someone who wasn’t emotionally available to try and fix them.

To have a small step that I’m okay as I am, I don’t need other people to be okay or to be treating me well for me to feel all right and just to start taking steps to look after myself, like I said with the basics, with sleep and food and connection to others before I moved on. Just these small steps of putting the oxygen mask on ourselves before anybody else like they do in the plane. People think it’s odd because you don’t put it on your children, you put it on yourself first because you are no use to anybody else if you don’t look after yourself.

I might have been running on empty my whole life and I haven’t even realized it, so just stopping because we are also busy aren’t we? We don’t even connect to what’s going on with us right now. Just making that connection with body, mind, heart, and soul. I can’t just look up one area like food because I was actually using food to punish myself because I didn’t feel good enough and sometimes when I work with people, they feel like they’re on the sidelines or in the shadows of their own life.

They want to step into their life and they think, “I’ll step into my life when I’ve lost the weight” or “I’ll get that job” or “I’ll get the husband” or the wife or the partner or when I’m good enough and it’s just that we’re enough right now wherever we are and just having to slow down for that and be present.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That is so powerful. Katy, I love this conversation because here we are talking about your book, which is about helping people to lose the idea of what it is to be on a diet really and really, the diet that we should be on is a mental one and one that we need to clean up our—in a way thoughts and our environment and live from a place of gratitude because I feel like shifting from gratitude and getting the opportunity to do X, Y, and Z through awareness is so powerful.

It’s life-altering and I think you really bring that forth in your book and in your work. Lastly, what advice would you give to someone who has been struggling with their weight for years and feels like they’ve tried everything? I mean, we know we’ve talked a lot about the mind, how can they break free from that cycle of dieting and self-punishment? You know, I know these little tools and anecdotes are great but basically what I’m leading to is how can people feel like they can take action after putting your book down, that’s the feeling I’m after.

Taking Action

Katy Landis: Yeah, sure. I mean, they can work through my book because I have different chapters. One of them is stepping out of this stress-eat-regret cycle and we have to recognize that we’re obsessed because most people, when they come to see, they think they’re going to get a diet plan and first of all, we talk about their obsession and it’s only when I ask them certain questions that they say, “Oh gosh, I am obsessed” just stopping from that getting that awareness and then bringing support and love and compassion into their loves.

The first step that I work with awareness, acceptance, and then action. The beginning is just becoming self-aware and I do actually have some free resources as well once someone has read my book or courses to do but just by working through my book a chapter at a time, will be a springboard for transformation and then the side effect of that would be weight loss because weight loss is what everyone wants but it’s actually the side effect of the inner transformation.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That is so powerful and so well said. I am so glad you brought us there because that moment we make that shift, you’re 100% right, the moment I made the shift personally from thinking about how I feel on the outside and thinking about how I want to feel on the inside that’s the life-altering moment and then decisions just got easier. The resistance just I feel like the armor came off a little bit that’s why your book is so powerful and I related so much to it.

I got to ask you this, what was your favorite part of pulling this book together? I mean that in of itself is a journey but what was your favorite part?

Katy Landis: When I finished it, I was working on it with the end of lockdown and it was just very, very busy at the time and I would just take half an hour here, an hour there and it felt good to have completed the task and also feeling that I could put something out in the world that could help people because for me, this is not an intellectual exercise, I’ve lived it. I understand the pain and the desperation of turning to food when it’s the last thing you want to.

So just to offer some hope because I am not obsessed with food and I know when I finished my meal and I don’t feel called to food like I used to, like a magnet and I’ll be in the kitchen. I wouldn’t quite know how I got there and just be able to offer hope to other people.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, so powerful. I love that and when you speak from experience, from that specific experience, you speak freely because you’ve overcome it and there’s nothing more powerful than transforming that overcoming energy through writing and I totally felt it. Katy, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on today. Thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences and being so vulnerable with our audience and myself.

The book is called, Losing Weight is an Inside Job: How to Forget Food and Focus on You. So besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Katy?

Katy Landis: Well, at www.katylandis.co.uk/resources, and there, I’ll have courses and some work sheets and some free resources.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, thank you again. This has been an absolute pleasure. I feel like I have learned so much and I am inspired this weekend. I just feel like I’m going to go on an extra mile run because I just feel good, you know? So, thank you again for putting your magic in these words. I appreciate you coming on the show. Congratulations on your book, have a fantastic rest of your day.

Katy Landis: Oh, it’s been great to chat to you. Thank you, Hussein.

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Every addict lives in a war zone. My next guest was no exception. Homeless, penniless, and filled with despair, he routinely fought for his life.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by author Joey Pagano, who is here to talk about his new book, No Addict Left Behind: It’s a Recovery Medicine State of Mind. Let’s flip through it.

Hello Author Hour fans, welcome back to the show. I have a good friend of mine today, Joey Pagano, who is here to talk about his new book. I’m super excited. Joey, thanks for coming on the show.

Joey Pagano: Man, definitely glad to be here and look forward to the show.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man. On this show, my goal is to always, of course, talk about your book and your work, which I think is amazing. I found myself swimming through that book, it just kind of pulls you in. Your story is very fascinating and you go into depth.

But before I go into the book, with all the amazing advice that I’m sure you’re going to leave us with, I’d love to give our listeners a little bit of a personal background. Maybe like, where you grew up, what was that like for you. Maybe a person or an event that led you down the path that you’re on now that sort of shape-shifted your work and what inspired you to write this book.

Joey Pagano: My name is Joey Pagano. I’m from a little community, it’s called the Mon Valley named after like, Monongahela River in Southwestern PA. It’s about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh and it’s, you know, the economy used to boom. We used to be called the Magic City but addiction has plagued this place where there’s no magic left.

Addiction just runs rampant in this town. So I grew up here, and I grew up from a good family, but it’s still a dysfunction in there and everything where addiction just took over. So, the event that kind of led up to that was — I mean, my whole entire high school life [I was] bullied all throughout that high school and addiction — as much as it was, we’ll say a con, it was also a pro. It kind of preserved me through some of those years and helped shape me into who I am today.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Sadly, those experiences numb out that pain of being picked on, joked about, judged—there are so many layers, right? And yeah, when you’re in an environment where that’s what’s conducive, you’re going to lean into that, and I can relate to that to a degree.

I didn’t necessarily go into usage or anything like that but, my thing was art. My father was a painter and all that but that’s where I poured my heart and energy because growing up a Middle Eastern boy, man, in high school and middle school, the days weren’t fun bro, learning English and I get it. Man, you just come from a different place in the world, and people don’t understand you. Your culture, your background but then over time, things evolve, and when I started pouring my energy into creating art and just going, playing outside like getting out of my habit, things started to look up a little bit, but I want to know, sort of, what else led you down this path? What happened as you started using and kind of getting through high school, what happened next?

Being Left on The Side of The RoadJoey Pagano: You know, I got through high school, and I made it through there — and see, I barely graduated. So I really couldn’t see a future, and my life was just getting shaped and I decided to just go in the Army, you know? I was like, “Well, maybe I need to be a veteran,” and I wanted to be, just something, because I always had dreams but I just, I wasn’t sure, right?

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be. I entered the military and I thought I was doing well, but I didn’t realize that I was an addict, right? I had this addiction that carried me in there and you know, that’s where I started experiencing like the stigma of addiction on a grand scale.

I mean, I found myself where you go in the military and drink, and [it] becomes just socially acceptable. In fact, you’re like, urged to drink, I felt like. Party with one of the guys and then, next thing you know, I was getting kicked out of the military and received an other-than-honorable discharge; for any veteran, that’s a scarlet letter.

I actually put that part in my book where they just drop me off, they said, “Listen—” they labeled me, right? They gave me that, “You junkie,” and I didn’t even know I was an addict. I didn’t know anything about recovery, nothing. It was, “Here you go, we’re going to drop you off on the side of the road on I-5.” I think I was 20 at the time, maybe 19, 20, and you know, I’m a kid.

You don’t know you’re an addict, you don’t know anything and you got to walk like 30 miles to like, Seattle, just imagine that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow, that is horrendous, man. Unfortunately, when we hear these stories about the military — and it’s one of those things is like, the idea of being responsible to the people that are in your community — so, the fact that the services weren’t offered or the necessary, would drop off at like a rehab center or if there are rehab centers that are connected to VAs and hospitals, right?

That, hey, sometimes, these places aren’t conducive for everyone. For example, I dislike[d] math growing up, you know what I’m saying? That was like torture to me but in art class, I could be there all day, right? And I get it. Sometimes you got to bounce out of your comfort zone but not every environment is for a specific somebody and that environment can really push somebody to those limits and they may not know that.

So, to hear your story about being just dropped off, I’m glad you brought that up. It is hard man, it’s so hard to hear and so hard to know that that’s something that sadly goes on. So tell me more. What advice did you start receiving? What happened to sort of start shafting where you were and where you were going?

Joey Pagano: You know, I found myself, even after that event just back in my town called Charleroi, which is around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I found myself there, not knowing I’m an addict, not l knowing I have an addiction, not knowing anything about recovery, and I suffered for like 20 years. 20 years in that. I always say that hell isn’t just a place you could go, it’s what I carried around for decades.

I had to go through a lot of hard-won experiences, and I had to realize that in my life, my struggles didn’t define me. They refined me into who I became, right? So I found myself in some utter desperation and then surrendering and changing my life through a very hard-won experience. I just wanted to just change my life, and along the way, I tried many times.

I tried many times to stay clean, you know—different treatments when I found that there was such a thing as recovery. So my life evolved, and there were a lot of persons in my life that helped me get through certain areas that kind of preserved me through those decades of just active addiction, you know?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s an intense sort of journey. So what advice would you give someone who is struggling with addiction today or has a loved one who is struggling, and how can your book really help them on that journey? Because I know there was a lot of that sort of emotional work around family as well. Can you go there a little bit and share about that experience?

Joey Pagano: Yeah, no problem. That’s what I think, when I hear a lot of talks on addiction and I know just in my clinical work as a licensed social worker and working in drugs and alcohol for a long time is the families just get missed, you know? But the truth of the matter is just like one of my chapters says, addiction is a family disease. One person uses, the rest of the family, right?

We hurt and they go through the same battles, because addiction is like war, and all that shrapnel gets thrown on those family members, the people that love us through our process. So I wanted to focus on kids, I wanted to focus on the parents. If you have a loved one out there, it’s about not giving up on them no matter what, and it’s about—they might not be clean, they might not get clean, right, in the time that you want them, but don’t give up. Don’t shun them.

To the best of my ability, I tried to like, open my heart and pour some of my experiences so that other kids, right? And other parents can just maybe feel those experiences and they can reach out, right? They reach out and touch them and they could maybe identify if that situation is applicable to them and they could say, “Huh, that’s what we did”, right? And like I said, recovery is individualized. So is parenting.

So is being a child. It’s about just, if our child doesn’t do something the way we think they need to do it, we still love them anyway. It’s no child left behind and likewise, right? It’s no parent left behind, and that’s what I did. I pulled those experiences and I also interviewed my mom, right? As I said, if a parent reads this, what are they going to want to hear?

They’re going to want to hear a mother tell their story. So my mom told her story, I’ve woven it in and in the first person and for a reason, so another parent can identify and they can understand this. Listen, you’re not giving up by loving your child from a distance; you might have to love them very far away, and you might have to learn that no is a complete sentence but you still love them.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful, man, and just kind of bringing that closer, right? Using it as fuel is so powerful. I’m glad you brought that into your book because I mean, whether we’re struggling with drug or alcohol or gambling or really, any sort of addiction, right? Or just — I mean, hell, it could be anger, right? That’s not necessarily an addiction but that’s just like a behavior that people around you can really struggle from, and so I’m really glad that you brought that into your book and the dynamic of it.

In your experiences, what are some of the most effective methods for overcoming addiction and maintaining sobriety, and how do you relate that to unique insights and perspectives maybe that you offered in your book?

There Is No Cookie-Cutter ProcessJoey Pagano: It’s just like applying some principles or like trauma-informed care. I mean, being a clinician, it’s about just meeting people where they’re at, not where I’m at. It’s that theme, which is just being able to step out of whatever I think is best for them. I might be a clinician, along with my coauthor, Dr. Scott A. Cook, he’s a physician, so we have our specialties, what we think, but once again, recovery is individualized.

In the solutions chapter, we break that down into social work, family, and medical—but once again, we don’t know the best solution for everybody. There is no cookie-cutter process for recovery.

So we use that like our experience like the social work, it’s about listening — we meet someone, we practice things like harm reduction, it is using principles of trauma and form care as I said, like self-determination. I tried to throw stories in there that separates me from any specific modality of recovery including my own because I don’t represent any modality. Just because I’m in recovery, it doesn’t mean that I represent that or I know what’s best.

It means that I just wanted to share those experiences and the social work; it talks about those principles. It talks about, through data—I have published manuscripts where it focused on the efficacy of different things. The family, it talks about my mother through the experience, like she had to learn discernment, like that tool. She had to learn how to be able to step out of situations and say, “You know what, Joey? You’ve hurt me long enough.”

“I’m going to love you but I’m going to love you from way over here” and that’s kind of the tool that we use. Dr. Scott Cook covers the medical solutions, which is, it’s more of just these are the tools in the toolbox. It depends on where you’re at in your treatment, your recovery, of what tool you need, and sometimes, that tool might not work with you, but all we have is an outline and that outline is what guides us.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, I love that. Dr. Cook is amazing, I’ve had him on the show too, so I am glad you mentioned him. His work is remarkable, and I think when you have people around you that think in that way, that perform in that way, you start to really lean into that information. It starts to shape-shift your mind and how you see yourself and then other people and I love that you are also on the journey, right?

You still say that. It’s like there is not an end to this road; it’s an ongoing thing; we’re all trying to navigate it in our own way because every single human being has that specific unique experience to them, and it’s really untangling all of those things—but even if you untangle them and they’re perfectly ordered in front of you, they are still there, right? Now, you have just created more space to be able to process, and I think that’s beautiful, and that level of awareness that you start to rise through is also very beautiful.

Yeah, man, how do you intend to help readers find the sense of, in a way, acceptance, peace, and hope in the face of addiction?

Joey Pagano: That is such a good question and I get asked that many times. The purpose of my book is let readers be able to transform in these stories if they are applicable and to let people really see what the stigma, like where it’s at in these different areas, right? So I wanted to apply to all these different professional roles whether you’re an addict or if you are an addict reading this, you could see the lesson like, “We’re not going to give up on you no matter what” right?

Your purpose is just to know that you are not alone and other people have been on the journey and it is possible and hopefully, whoever is working with you, they’re not going to give up on you because I’m not, and maybe if they are a professional, maybe they’re a physician, they’re going to know that their stigma, the stigma in an ER because I threw those experiences when I overdosed, they’re going to know that that’s real, okay?

Maybe the theme they’re going to take from that is, “Wow, they hear all the horror stories and you have all the people that try to go in an ER and abuse the system and all that but listen: an addict is a person, and they need love, and they don’t need to be judged, and they need that professional to step off of their high horse and just understand and just hopefully, just know the impact that stigmatized whatever, the verbiage they’re saying, how it hurts someone.

I want them to learn and get that knowledge and, hopefully, they could learn from that and if you’re a parent, the theme is very similar. It’s about just don’t give up on your loved one, whether that’s a parent, whether that’s a child, it’s about I got clean, I don’t know, the 25th, 26th time, right? If they would have given up on me, I wouldn’t be here. So that’s the theme, it’s about meeting people where they’re at not where that person is and it’s most of all, don’t give up on someone because it is truly no person left behind.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, I love that so much because here we are — I wouldn’t say I’m the most religious Muslim in the world. I would say I’m Muslim-ish, right? We are in Ramadan and it’s a beautiful month. I used to always ask my father and my mother, “What is Ramadan? Why do we do this? Why am I not eating all day?” He’s like, “It’s not just about the food, you know; it’s about your mind, where you say what you resist, what you’re able to.”

“Are you able to be lured by temptation?” and the more you can resist, it’s a practice. It is not that you would never give in to that sugar or whatever, it could be a drug, whatever it is but if you can learn to build those layers of resilience, as you get older, you get better at them because those temptations aren’t going to get weaker, they’re going to get stronger, right?

So it is a very powerful thing, but I was very fortunate at a very young age that I was taught, I wouldn’t say the most effective tools in the world, but there are just some tools, there is something I had to work with, right? The other thing about Ramadan is that it gets you to think about people who are in less fortunate situations and that’s the idea is that when you do see someone who is struggling on the street or whatever it is or there’s someone struggling, you have dissonance and realize that, “Oh that person is going through something.”

The idea is to grow compassion and see yourself from that perspective, right? If you are hungry all day, you now know how it feels to be hungry and out on the street trying to survive, so you have more compassion, and your urge to want to go help those people goes through the roof, right? This is what I love about your type of work, your line of work, because you really put yourself there every day to not just show up with just the tools and your education and the doctors and the peers that you have.

But really, just to show up as a human and just say, “Hey man, I see you” or “Hey woman, I see you” or “Hey mom” or “Hey father”, you know what I mean? I just commend your work man because it is not easy. It’s hard on the soul. I just found so many of your stories so compelling and so I understand that acceptance is a huge one. I mean, even for me going through the traumatic experiences that I’ve had.

But with that, I know writing is a journey. Man, it’s no joke, it is a huge journey. What was your favorite part of pulling your book together?

“I Need To Write A Book”Joey Pagano: Oh wow, just listen to how it came to fruition because I think that is the most—I get excited if people ask me that. So it’s 3 am — and just picture this — I am getting a shower. I try to focus because I’m in my doctor’s social work. I am in schooling, my recovery, my wife’s in schooling, my kids… all these stressors, right? You know where I work, in the trenches, right? So I close my eyes in the shower, and I open them up.

I say, “I need to write a book” and like I said when these thoughts come Scott and I — or Dr. Cook and I — we normally talk through messenger and we’ll dictate. So I ran out of the shower, and I dictated this. I said, “Scott, we need to write a book, and we need to write it now, and we need to share our beliefs about just never giving up on someone.” I sent that and I said, “It needs to be called, No Addict Left Behind: It’s a Recovery Medicine State of Mind.”

We love Jay-Z, right? We love “Empire State of Mind,” so we kind of put a spin on that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s a state of mind, yeah.

Joey Pagano: Yeah and that’s how it happened, and then the next thing you know, it’s like three, I woke up four hours later. I went to sleep, and woke up, right? My wife looks at me, “What are you doing up?” I said, it was like the Blues Brothers moment, I said, “I’m on a mission from God.” So I ran downstairs, I’m writing, and I wrote the book in like two and a half months, collaborating with Dr. Cook. Listen, this is on top of writing tons of papers because I knew.

I knew that people needed to hear some words that it’s about never giving up, and I’ll tell you what, my purpose, I said, “Scott, we’re going to save as many people as we can, and I’m not going to stop, and these words are going to fuel me, and they’re going to fuel other people. Hopefully, they could identify with these stories”—and that moment changed my life. I almost got divorced three times in the matter, but it changed my life.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful man, so powerful. This idea of just you caught this bubble of inspiration and you just went for it, and it’s sometimes it is that overthinking about that message and not taking action that holds us back but in that moment, you took action. It didn’t hold you back; you recruited the people that you knew were going to help you, and that’s so powerful.

What’s one thing you hope your readers feel when they put down the book after they’re done?

Joey Pagano: I just hope they feel some love and they know that you know when you read some of those words that especially if you could identify in one of those situations that maybe I went through or maybe what Dr. Cook, his words in the book that, you just feel that love. These words, they just hold special meanings in our hearts, and I’m hoping they could just feel the passion and the love and the empathy and the compassion that I try to feel on a daily basis.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful, man. I love that. You really channeled your story but not only that, you know, like tips and advice and really heartfelt message throughout the book. Joey, thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences with me. The book is called, No Addict Left Behind: It’s a Recovery Medicine State of Mind. Love the title. So besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Joey?

Joey Pagano: All right, on April 25th you can get this book on Amazon.com, yes, and you can also look for me on my website, noaddictleftbehind.life. There is a little blog about the book, you’ll find all the information and I’m on all the social media handles. All the information, I will push you to Amazon on April 25th and you’ll find me, Joey Pagano, @gratefulandclean on all those sites. Yeah, I can’t wait.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Love it. Thanks again, Joey. I appreciate you having on the show, man, your story is compelling. Thank you so much.

Joey Pagano: All right, thank you.

The post No Addict Left Behind: Joey Pagano appeared first on Author Hour.

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Have you tried dozens of ways to make a decent amount of money, only to watch them all come to nothing, no matter how hard you worked? If so, the problem isn’t your financial system. It’s an energy blockage in your unconscious programming.

Welcome to the Author Hour podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by author Daniel White, who’s here to talk about his new book The Financial Freedom System: An Uncommon Guide to Master Your Money, and Transform Your Life. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the show. I’m here with my friend today, Daniel White, who just launched an amazing book, The Financial Freedom System. Daniel, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your time.

Daniel White: Thanks, Hussein. It’s great to be here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yeah, this is incredible because your book is one of those books that I feel like most of us wish we’d had when we were young. But honestly, the older we get, it’s not like our financial situations necessarily just magically improve, they compound. So, it’s always good to revisit them, clean things up. So, I know that’s what you booked it for me. It kind of reminded me of a few things, and I just appreciate it. It’s really not about just the money. It’s really about the intuition, the depth. There’s so much more to it.

Before we get into the book, which I’m obviously very excited about. I really want to give our audience a little bit of a background about you, maybe where you grew up, and what led you down this path of really helping people with this very important concept in their life?

Daniel White: I was born and raised in Perth, Australia, which is on the west coast and happens to be the most isolated city in the world. We were very isolated. I mean, the nearest city was six hours away by flight up in Singapore. It was a very interesting time, a very pristine environment. It was wonderful. However, my family struggled a lot with finances, which is why this sort of has evolved in my life, this work. I went through that experience of not having money, and then having money, and not having money, and learning about that. So, that’s where I came from.

I’ve traveled the world. I’ve worked in over 40 countries. My business, I’ve been doing for 30 years. Of course, this book, I first started the process after the fifth anniversary of my business. When I looked at my finances, I was really excited because I made it to five years, right? That’s a big, big milestone. But I was broke, and I was in huge debt. So, I said, “No, this has to change. This has to change.”

Listen to Your IntuitionHussein Al-Baiaty:Yes, what a pivotal moment. I definitely had that moment happen to me, around 2017 or so. I ran a business, I ran a print shop, and it was amazing. Things were good. But nothing fully felt like it clicked in the right place. I was, like you said in a book, you got these worries. I’m stressed. I’m staying up all night. I got employees, all these things. So, there is a burden that comes with financials. And it really prevented me from being creative. That’s, for me, I just feel like when I’m not worried about all of those things, I am myself. I’m creative. I’m funny. I love being around myself. I love being around other people.

But when I’m stressed, and I’m anxious, and I’m worried, it really takes me away from the moment. I cannot tell you how much I loved how you address that in your book. But I want to talk about what inspired you to write The Financial Freedom System? And how did you develop it, the steps outlined in the book? Because you hit this pivotal moment, and as I did, but I’m really interested in showing people how you started going, “Okay, this has to change.” What did you do next?

Daniel White: Right in the beginning, as I said, I got to my fifth anniversary. I was really excited, but I was super financially stressed. And I started praying and saying, “God, you got to help me here.” It has stopped working for me. I’ve got to find a way to get some answers, to get out of this situation, because it’s totally – you know what it’s like when you’re stressed with finances. It’s soul-destroying. You’re just totally freaking out all night, you can’t sleep, and you’re worried and stressed.

Anyway, so I did. I prayed and asked and immediately got an intuition, which was a vision of the airline drill. You know, when the air hostess comes out, and they say, “Put the oxygen mask on yourself first before you help others.” That’s what came. I’m like, “Huh, what does that mean?” And then I start to see, as I’m asking God more, I started to see me, paying money out to all these other people, and then my wallet being empty. And I go, “Whoa, put the oxygen mask on yourself first before you help others.” And it was like, “Pay yourself first before you help others.”

Well, there is no way I could afford to really pay myself what I felt I was worth. So, I had to find a system that would build up to that. And then, because I have a strong relationship with God, it was like, “Okay, God, you show me the way.” And then I got it. I was like, “Oh, it’s my intuition. I got to work with my – not just my brain, which is really brilliant, but also my intuition, which is through the heart, through the soul.” How can I marry intuition and finances together? This was really interesting.

So, I talk about in the book, how I said, “I’m going to – okay, I feel – $35 feels good. Probably a lunch, going out for lunch. But $35 feels really good.” So, I said, “That’s it. Monday morning, I’m going to go down and start the week off fresh, and I’m going to open a bank account, put the money in, and let’s see what happens.”

As you have seen in the book, I went to my wallet on Monday morning. I didn’t have the money in my wallet. I was like, “Oh, man.” Okay, so I’ve got to – I scrounge around the house, going through the car, and I eventually got this whole bag of coins and dollar notes and everything. That was totally embarrassing. I went down to the bank and opened the account. I have to say something happened when I made that commitment, and I gave the money. And then she gave me the checkbook back with the balance. So, it was the old style. This is back in 1999. So, before the internet was flying, and I feel a peace come over me. I go, “Okay, I’m on the right track. I’m on the right track.”

And then, I walk outside the bank. I don’t know if you’ve read it in the book. There was a $20 bill sitting on the pavement right outside the bank. I’m like, “What?” That was amazing.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yes. It’s just that refreshment, right? It was, for me, I grew up Muslim. So, I was surrounded by a very, very religious father and mother, and they just wanted what was best for me, especially – but they weren’t great at financials, either. It’s not like they could have taught me everything. We grew up in a different environment where money is just different here in America. You know what I mean? It’s perceived differently.

So, there wasn’t too much that they could teach me except to save as much as you can. You know what I’m saying? The most basic level of understanding of things. So, it took me a lot to really understand where I am, and my relationship with money, and I feel like it’s an ongoing process. But it starts with that moment. For me, that moment was like, if I don’t do something this week if I don’t take action, next week, I’m not going to have a business. That’s how fast that shift was, right? And it’s just, you wake up the next morning, you say,” Okay, I know what I have to do. How do I do this?” For you, it was like, go to the bank account, maybe start something new, throw some coins in there, and just see what happens. Just going to start fresh. And that approach for me was definitely reaching out to God as well. I’m like, “God, it’s all in your hands at this point. I don’t have any control.”

My whole thing with my dad was, “You got to surrender, son. You got to surrender.” I just didn’t know what that meant. It was that week, I surrendered. Because I was just like, “I don’t have it in me. I’m not even going to get up and battle this. I completely surrender.” So, that moment, and as you said, the intuition, I woke up feeling refreshed. I didn’t have the anxiety. I didn’t have – my body was just like warmed up, ready to go. A few phone calls, and then I reached out to a very special person on LinkedIn. I had been following this person for maybe, oh, months, and he’s like a coach in the printing business. And he was like, “Hussein, just read this book before you and I meet.” I was getting ready to pay this guy a couple of 100 bucks for an hour just to figure out what to do, and he gave me this book. It’s called the Profit First, and it completely changed everything for me.

So, that whole idea of just listening to your intuition, opening up, and just surrendering changes everything. How can readers use the system to break through these energy blockages in their unconscious programming and achieve some financial freedom? I love that so much that you call it a blockage because I totally feel like that’s exactly what it is. Can you go there for a little bit?

Daniel White: Most people who are in that situation, they’ve actually dug a nice deep hole for themselves. So, all they see is like them sitting at the bottom of a hole, and all they see around them is the walls of the hole, and up above they could see some sky. Well, maybe there’s freedom up there. How can I get up? But then they say, “Okay, I want to get up.” So, they start digging even more of a hole because they’re trying to find ways to, with their mind, try and get out of the hole, but actually creating more of a problem.

So, if they go to their heart, below the neck, and start to check their intuition and see how much is the correct amount for them to transform their life and then stop. It’s like, every time they put that amount, I talk about in the book, whether it’s in the bank or in a box, it’s like a step. And so, they go up a step, and then they go up another step, and the next week, and the next week, they go up another step, and they slowly are getting themselves out of the hole.

I’ll give you a great example of this situation. I had a multimillionaire who called me, and he says, “Kim, I’ve got so much money. I don’t need money, but I want to get rid of my stress.” So, I put him through the program because what happened was he inherited that wealth. He didn’t build it himself. He didn’t have the foundation in himself to deal with that volume. So, the stress was what caused the problems.

When we started working, it was amazing. It was 14 – this is in Europe. It was 14 euros a week. This guy could just go and buy planes with his pocket change. But his amount was 14 euros. It’s nothing. It’s a cup of coffee for him. But he did it, and he followed the system. He trusted me. He followed the system, and he said, within a month, he was saying, “Kim, my stress levels have gone down so much. It was amazing.” Because it wasn’t about the money. It was about the foundation. So, this whole system here is that freedom is coming from building a foundation within yourself. It’s not actually about the money.

As you build out, and I made so many mistakes when I was developing the systems, and I sort of talked a little bit about the book, but what the book is, is the solutions to all my mistakes as you go up. There was a point where I got to the top of the hole, my eyes are peeking over the top of the hole, and I could see the horizon. I go, “Wow, I made it.” Well, that’s what I thought. But I wasn’t because the rest of my body was still in the hole. So, I had to go further, and I talked about the 12-month test where you’re really testing. Am I out or not? When you get out, it’s like, “Wow.” It’s like you will never build a hole again in your life, and you feel so relaxed, you feel so clear. Your intuition, because you’re training your intuition through the system every week and every month, you actually develop it for other areas of your life. You’ll notice that stress goes away in other areas of your life. It’s not just about the money. It’s incredible.

Photo by Breakingpic from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/gold-colored-coins-near-calculator-3305/

Tips and MisconceptionsHussein Al-Baiaty: It’s like a maintenance program for your body and mind and your soul. It’s a way to kind of take care of it. I think, this idea of some consciousness and how it’s connected to financials. It’s so deep, and it’s so deep-rooted. That means, for me, I kind of inherited the lack of understanding of money, and I inherited the stress that came around with it. So, I’ll give you a perfect example, man. At the end of every month – I ran this business for 12 years, so I knew what I was doing. It was good. It was healthy. But at the end of every month, I was unhealthy. I was stressed out.

Because in my early years in the business, the end of the month, the bills, everything’s due, that stress. But even when I was doing well or doing much better, at least, where I didn’t have to worry. I was still worried. So, I felt that the stress, that worry, that the memories around that were so ingrained that they would just come up and even years later now, that I don’t even own the business, at the end of every month, I have to kind of check myself, and be like, “No, everything’s fine.” I have to breathe through it, go for a couple of walks, and realize that the end of the month is coming, and I need to just kind of subside these feelings that don’t need to be there. That’s so powerful. Because you’re right because it is addressing those feelings and emotions around the money, whether it’s there or not. It’s really the sort of memories, it’s in your DNA. I love that. It’s really deep. What are some common misconceptions people have about achieving financial freedom? How do you think your book addresses that?

Daniel White: Well, I think it’s about when you’re at peace, you become attractive to prosperity. But when you’re stressed, you can become attractive to more debt. So, by learning to listen to your intuition and building that solid foundation inside you. It’s not really a mental process, it’s actually below the neck; it’s in your body. And you’re building this solid foundation with your heart and with your soul. You will notice that you stop attracting those who want to take your money. Or you stop attracting opportunities, or you’re very clear on opportunities that are not in alignment with who you are.

Whereas it sounds great, your mind will just go, “Yeah, let’s do it. This is a great opportunity to increase my finances.” But actually, your heart and your soul say, “No, this is not for you.” There’s an abundance of people who would love to share in your money and take it away from you. So, it’s like, “Okay, what’s real?” As you go through the system and you build that solid foundation, you get to a point later down the road where you only attract prosperity to you, and you don’t even see it. When you have a situation where something from the past comes up, you check your intuition, it just goes. It dissolves. It’s like just an old memory coming up, and then it dissolves because you’ve built the foundation. You’ve built the solidness that is going to carry you through the rest of your life.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:What are some, I would call, practical tips, I believe, or advice you would give to someone just starting in their journey towards financial freedom? I know that there are many, obviously, the steps that are outlined in your book, and I want you to pull from that. But can you maybe share even a story that someone that you know and worked with that started implementing just one or two things that they can start doing like today?

Daniel White: Definitely follow the system. Because it’s all going to come as you do it. And to be patient with yourself. Because this system is separate from your regular bank accounts, and your regular finances, and just have this as a separate project, that you’re doing this as a project for life. It’s not about just getting some money together for the next holiday or any of that. So, you have it as a separate –

The first step is to have it separate from everyday spending and earning. So that way, you start to build your solid foundation, without it being interfered with by the stresses of life. And the process only takes five minutes a week, once you’re in the flow. So, it’s, “Okay, I’m dedicating five minutes a week, to the rest of my life, to freedom.” And then, you’ll notice as you build up that foundation, you start to attract more opportunities that are in line with your truth.

So, it takes away the stress of should I, shouldn’t I? What can I do here? Does that make sense? It’s like building up that so that you know immediately, “That’s not to me.” There is nothing wrong with it. But it’s not in line with my journey. So, you’re building up that solid clarity for your future. Having it separate to start is really important.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. And just want to reiterate how important patience is in this whole process. One is like having grace. I think, for me, it was having grace with myself. I knew I wasn’t going to get out of this hole, even in the next six months to a year or that foreseeable future. But there’s a sense of like belief. I think that’s where your intuition comes in, and our urge to want to be free has to be sort of connected, I feel like for me. I speak for myself. Has to be connected to a belief that “I can” and that “I will” in the future. I think sometimes just trusting that and trusting that process. And then, yeah, trusting a system as you say, “I’m going to just trust this system and allow this to work for me.” It’s wonderful when you can open up and surrender to that.

Daniel White: Yes, because I mean, I stated right at the beginning of the book. If someone is really addicted to the stress and the struggle, then this book is not for them. It’s really designed for people who are in those scenarios and really want to go for a peaceful life. I don’t mean peaceful, sitting on a tropical island beach or anything. I mean peaceful like you’ve got your perfect career, you’re loving what you do. Your contribution is just flowing. Life is great. Your relationships are great because you’ve built this foundation, and you’re not attracting the takers in your life. You are not attracting the taking opportunities. You’re attracting the giving opportunities or the giving people. You’re setting up a new consciousness within yourself.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:That’s so powerful. I love that flip of, who you attract, like you said earlier, can either take away from you or give you, and it is what you want. They ultimately want opportunities. That’s the thing, I think for me, I stopped thinking about how much money was coming my way, but really thinking about how many opportunities are out there that can come my way, right? It’s like, come your way how. It’s like, well –

Daniel White: And knowing what is a good opportunity for you and not a good – it could be a great opportunity for someone else, but it’s not the right opportunity for you, for your life. So, you’ll start to notice that you get a separation from everyone else so that you can really give your gifts to the world. You have the power and the solid foundation in yourself to give your talents and your gifts to the world, instead of just following everyone else. And it’s just so much freedom.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: There’s so much freedom. I can’t even tell you. Once I made the shift and got out of that hole a little bit, I ended up selling my business. And truly, like the speaking engagements, the writing my book, all of these other things that I’ve just kind of had on the back burner forever, came to fruition even faster than my business came to fruition because I was just surrendering and not allowing that resistance to flow in a very beautiful manner.

Daniel White: I got so many calls when COVID hit from people who’ve been following my system for years. They were so grateful because while they were watching all their friends and colleagues running around with their heads chopped off and stressed about what was happening in the stores, and they were like, totally relaxed. They were like, “Wow. This is a real testament to what this is doing. Because while the world is going crazy, I feel at peace.” And that’s so important for people. Even I had a personal experience when I moved to Europe, my whole business model had to change because it’s a very different system over there.

So, starting out again in Europe was like, oh, going back to square one. But I had no stress. Everything just flowed. I was like, “Wow, there’s no way that would have happened before I did my foundation. Before I build up the system.” So yes, really good.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:I’m glad you shared that. Because you’re right, when you eventually become a warrior, however you put it, right? In this case, the financial warrior, you are calm and in the midst of the battle of the chaos. You are calm, you’re collected, because you are trained.

Daniel White: And then you become a leader for others. You become a leader to show people that there is freedom out there. You stand out.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:One hundred percent. It’s like, you know how we gravitate towards people who make us laugh, who make us feel good? They have a sensibility about them. We’re also attracted to people who are confident in situations like this, where financials and all these kinds of things aren’t something that really bothers them and don’t stress them out. As you said, whether you’re a billionaire, millionaire, or a person with a regular old job, all that good stuff, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But wherever you are in the process, people do stress about money. It’s not the stress about money, it’s actually stressing about something deeper, and it’s like addressing that will help alleviate feeling like you’re stressed about money. So, that’s so powerful. Your book is so spot on. I wish I had it 10 years ago, but I’m glad I have it now, which is beautiful. What was your favorite part of pulling this book together, Daniel? What did you learn from that journey?

Daniel White: It took me so many years to find a system to be so simple that anyone can follow it. When I first started teaching this back in the early 2000s, it was too complicated for people, and I said, “There’s no way I can teach this to a mass market.” I have to find a way to – that’s a really huge win for me to find a way to make it simple to follow, and everyone can follow it, and they’re not – it doesn’t have to be specific to each person. Each person will find their way because they’re following their intuition. They’re making it a basic system where they can access their truth and then build their life as a result of that. So, that was like really exciting for me to find a way to really make a simple thing.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes. It’s very powerful.

Daniel White: It’s the same thing, the different stories that come along the way of people having different feedback. The guy with – I don’t know if you remember the guy, the “call me”, because his kitchen waste box, he was only taking the trash out once a week. Whereas before it was, before he started, it was always twice a week. Because they were eating – the stress was causing them to eat so much. The whole family lost weight because the stress went down by following the system.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Wow. That’s so powerful. And he probably made more money because he’s not spending it on food.

Daniel White: Exactly. Exactly. And also, the guy who called me because he got his system to a certain point. He thought, “I’m really happy with that. I’ll stop here.” And then it was like, “Kim, I’m feeling the stress come back. What’s going on?” I’m like, “Wow, let me check.” And I checked, and everything was fine. So, he found out his wife was pregnant. His whole foundation had shifted, and his intuition knew it, that there was something coming that they weren’t aware of, and he just started building up again, and bam, it was like within a month or two, he was like totally relaxed again. So, you just had to take that little bit of extra work because the family was expanding.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes. The level of awareness, I think, that’s the most powerful thing I took away from your book was just like my level of awareness has always been heightened, just because of massive amounts of stress before. But now I know how to manage that heightened levels, right? And when they come up, I have the tools to sort of understand and be aware, reach out to certain people, check on my bank account, whatever it is. I have these tools that I do to kind of calm that part of me so that I can stay focused, stay creative, and show up for my relationships and my friends.

I love that. It’s so powerful, man. I love how it’s so much deeper and richer than what we actually associate our problem with. I feel like, in the West, and in the East as well, I know my mom did it all the time to point to our problems. But being that they were money. And sadly, money, that just wasn’t necessarily the problem. It was our treatment of money, our management, our lack thereof. That’s not to disrespect my parents or anything like that or anyone else out there. But it’s like our bodies, it’s like everything else in our world; once we know it and overcome the fear of not knowing it, then we can fully understand where those things are really coming from and your book really lands the plane there, and it’s so powerful.

So, what’s one thing you hope one of your readers, when they pick it up, they feel relieved, they put it down. What is the one feeling you hope they feel?

Daniel White: To go immediately start and not sabotage the opportunity to transform their lives, and actually starting, as soon as they read it, let’s go into action, and I want to transform now. Not next year or the next 10 years. I want to transform now. That is just that one step forward for each person who does that is a total game changer in their life. Because they’re taking the power back into their own hands. They’re not relying on others. So, that’s what I would wish for each person.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the show today, my friend. I’ve learned so much. It’s really – it’s been just an engaging conversation because everything about our financial world has to start with us, and I love that just taking action towards a positive future for yourself is so crucial. Your book really shares that experience very deeply.

The book is called The Financial Freedom System: An Uncommon Guide to Master Your Money, and Transform Your Life. So, besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Daniel?

Daniel White: They can go to my parent website, which is kimwhitecoaching.com. Or if they need to reach out to me personally, daniel@kimwhitecoaching.com.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful. Well, thanks again for being on the show, my friend.

Daniel White: Thank you. It was fun.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Congratulations on your book.

Daniel White: Thank you.

The post The Financial Freedom System: Daniel White appeared first on Author Hour.

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We’re driven to accelerate growth in our local startup communities but in the process, we overthink, we overanalyze, and overload even our simplest activities. Before long, our community’s goals buckle under the weight of our complex adult concerns. Our motivation dries up, our best ideas fade away, leaving entrepreneurs no choice but to find another city in which to make their dreams come true. The solution: channel our inner 10-year-old and build the fort.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by author Chris Heivly, who is here to talk about his new book, Build The Fort: The Startup Community’s Builders Field Guide. Let’s flip through it.

Hello friends and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m Hussein, of course, and ‘m here with my friend Chris Heivly today, who just launched his second book, Build the Fort: The Startup Community’s Builder’s Field Guide. Chris, welcome to the show, my friend.

Chris Heivly: Thanks Hussein, I look forward to what we’re going to talk about.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man. Look, we were just talking off the air here about startups and how much fun they are and how I started one when I was in college and all these fun stuff but before we get into the juicy topic of startups and your book, which is amazing, I really want to kind of lay the foundation down for our audience and talk a little bit about your personal background.

Perhaps where you grew up and kind of led you down this path of getting into startups and cultivating that space but maybe, was it a person that inspired you, was it an event that inspired you? I’d love to know a little bit about your history.

Chris Heivly: Well, thanks for asking because no author wants to not spend an all-time talking about themselves. So you know, I—

Hussein Al-Baiaty: You got to get uncomfortable off the bat, you know what I mean?

Chris Heivly: Yeah, exactly, so uncomfortable. Hussein, the bottom line is I like to just build things. I like to start things, I like to figure things out and I think I’ve been that way all my life starting with building forts, which is kind of a metaphor that I use in everything that I do. Yeah, as an adult, I didn’t think I didn’t know what an entrepreneur was, I’m a little on the older side.

All you youngsters know about that, in high school and even college I didn’t even know that was a thing you could do. The way I characterize what my journey is that early on, I was more of an intrapreneur, which means how do you start businesses or new products inside bigger entities but then, eventually became an entrepreneur and then with success became an investor.

Then with some of that success, figured out that how important startups are to any city’s economy and started figuring out, “Well, how do you build a community or an environment where more startups can succeed?” and that’s been my last startup is how to consult and figure out the art and science of community building.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful. When I got into your book, you talk about this move to Colorado where you just sort of started navigating that space of what it’s like to cultivate a place where incubation can happen, ideas can flow, people can run into one another. I really like that.

Can you share a little bit of your story of when you started your first startup? It’s called the Triangle Startup Factory. I love the factory idea because I got a story for you but I kind of want to know what that was like for you and I know you started it back in like, 2009/2010 or so.

But I want to know because that was an interesting time in our culture of course, what was going on, as far as the banks, all that stuff. I really want to know what kind of, you know, what that was like for you because I’m sure it wasn’t super easy but yeah, tell us a little bit more.

First StartupChris Heivly: Well, let’s be clear, as much as fun as we were saying startups are, they’re never easy, right? Because if they were, everyone would be doing it. It’s not for the weak of heart or mind but where I was sitting in 2009 is that I had started reading about a new kind of incubator. In fact, it’s such a new kind of entity that we don’t call it an incubator anymore, we call them accelerators.

And the two biggest tech incubators/accelerators, one was in San Francisco of course called Y Culminator. It’s still around and still, one of the best engines for startup facilitation and the second one was in Boulder, Colorado called Tech Stars and I was new to a community in Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina at the time which is still basically home, circa 2009 and I’m reading about this and what they basically do is take in 10 startups at a time.

I really modeled the startup factory over the Tech Stars program and so they bring in 10 startups at a time, invest about USD 25,000 in each, and for three months those startups and their teams, usually one to three people, because they’re at their earliest stages of the idea phase and they come into a common space and we just facilitate mentorship on steroids and my thought was, “Well, if one startup is fun, then 10 at a time should be a complete blast, right?” and it was.

So the good news is — obviously I have a lot of experience, a.k.a. I’m on the older side but what that meant was, I wasn’t building any one company at the time. I mean, Startup Factory is kind of like a company. It was really just an entity by which myself and my partner at the time, Dave Neil, could figure out how to bring a community of like-minded entrepreneurs, some with success, some with failures, some investors, the whole community of actors and bringing them in for these 10 groups, companies, fledging little entities, and bring them into our space for three months and really help these people succeed.

I got to tell you, nothing like it in the world. The goodwill, the — and by the way, everything is done on kind of a—what we call a give first basis, right? Everyone’s just volunteering their time. Yeah, we did that for four or five years. It was a blast.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: What an amazing sort of story and really taking your experience and applying it in a way that helps others in such a profound way. I mean, obviously, I feel like that’s one of the most underrated things I feel like in the world is to have someone like you in a startup-like corner, right? I feel like that’s the one thing I always look back when I was a kid in college and starting up my little graphic design.

Little print shop, I was kind of mentioning earlier and my dream was to like, have this like, “factory” that people would visit and kids would come and learn how to screen print and just kind of get involved and see it and I love speaking to kids. So I always thought about like, “Oh, it would be cool to have them come and do field trips to the shop and always, like, it was like the Willy Wonka factory of printing.

And I just wanted to kind of expose the printing world to the youth because I just felt like when I was a kid, you know when I was going through high school, middle school, I didn’t see what I was doing like anywhere. I didn’t really have a graphic design class. I didn’t have a screen printing class but it was so fun and so creative, you know? And T-shirts are a huge part of our culture and I knew so many kids that would be interested in that work or going into the graphics world, right?

And for me, wanted to just create a space where people could see it because I always—the print shop that I learned everything from was just sometimes those, I guess you could call them like, dirty type of businesses, they are always in like warehouses tucked God knows where, right? Like no one sees anything and I just wanted to not do that. I want to display the work so people could really—especially the youth, see what is possible for their creativity.

I love the idea of how you were like “Well, if we can do one startup here, what’s it like to do 10?” you know? Because then you’re just really kind of adding fuel to that fire and it’s just really cool. So I just appreciate that about your book, how you kind of took a deep dive there but you talk about this it’s a complex system and from the bottom up, the way you kind of design and help people build these things is the idea that it’s from the bottom up, network-driven peer approach versus a top-down sort of patriarchal type of approach. Can you speak on that a little bit in structuring startups?

Structuring and The Challenges of StartupsChris Heivly: Yeah, mean, there’s a big “aha” in this and whether you know it or not, you actually just touched upon it in your story about inviting kids into your t-shirt shop. At the end of the day, almost nothing is all, but almost every entrepreneur I know has an inherent give back. You want to share and help others, okay? And that’s not a transactional mindset, right? That’s not like, “Okay, I‘m going to help the kids but I need to get USD 15 an hour out of it” right, you know? Or “Someone needs to give me free stuff.”

Entrepreneurs don’t think like that and in fact, the best entrepreneurs, the ones that have grown one or more multiple companies over years of effort know that their success is based on the amount of help they get to make a few better decisions here and there, right? And to make less bad decisions that end up making it harder to grow a business because let’s face it, it’s hard. So that notion, right? If you think about that, it’s really more of a kind of one-to-one mentorship, peers.

Again, we call that give first, the idea of give first is like give without any expectation or get anything in return. If you go to your kind of, that model that you mentioned about complex systems and I’ll dev into that in a second but the idea that the best startup communities, those are all the actors, those are founders, employees of those small companies, serial founders, successful founders that are maybe retired.

Investors, economic development folks, university professors or researchers, or instructors, right? This whole—all these actors that make up a startup community and just about every city in the world, if not America, right? How do those people come together? Let’s go back to what you just kind of tickled on. It’s a basic desire to say, “What can I do to help you? What can I do to help?” and the problem is, when people don’t view it in this—in that basic core tenant.

When they think about startup communities as a business, they screw it up, right? They bring this kind of structure and hierarchy and we got to figure out how to make this happen for our community. Nothing like, “How do we put a performing arts center” right? Or some, you know, community foundation, right? So they take this very structured hierarchal because most of the people that do this are kind of late in life.

They’ve been successful running businesses or government entities, that’s what they know and what this book is about, the first thing that says is, “Actually, this is the wrong way to think about it.” You have the wrong mindset, you have, what’s called, a complicated mindset. We need to embrace what we call a complex mindset and the idea of a complex mindset is based in the idea that it’s not top-down and assigned and structured.

It’s actually the opposite, it’s grassroots. It’s lots of little connections. In fact, I say, s0, right? It’s not, you know, obviously, it’s a riff on death from a thousand cuts. It’s success of a thousand nudges and everyone doing a little part of meeting with one founder and saying, “How can I help?” That’s what makes a really great community.

So what the book is about is say, I know the mindset you have, most of you coming in. Let’s suspend that for a second and let me tell a bunch of stories of why we need to rewire how you’re thinking.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s really cool because I feel like an early startup, it’s like a baby plant. It’s kind of fragile but you kind of like, you have to kind of experiment around it and sort of pamper it in a way but the whole idea is playfulness actually leads to sort of innovation and that free-form thinking. Again, especially, at the early stages where you’re developing different things.

If you’re developing a product or even a tech product or whatever it is, an app but then there is a moment or a conversation or someone comes in and kind of helps you nudge it to go left a little bit and then now, it’s Uber, or now it’s whatever, right? But in order for those moments to happen, you got to allow the free form, the innovation, the trying and failing at things. I mean, I think that’s a big one, right?

With entrepreneurs, it’s like for me, like, I tried and failed at God knows how many things. That became a part, like a habitual thing. If I’m not trying something that’s not innovating, I’m not growing, I’m not meeting new people and I feel like that was, for me, in my mind at least, I was like, that could be the death of my company if I’m not going out meeting people and seeing how I could improve. So that’s really powerful.

Chris Heivly: There’s an old adage from Dwight Eisenhower that got repurposed by a guy named Steve Blank. The Eisenhower adage was, “No battle plan survives its first contact with the enemy.” The status version of that is, “No business plan survives its first contact with a customer” right? So to your point, successful startup building is about experimentation, iteration as you’re in this discovery process to figure out what we call product market fit.

If our audience can think about for a second, say, “Okay, there’s not an exact playbook to run here.” If there was, we’d all be running. You and I will not be talking, we’d be extremely wealthy people, right? We would have built 14 Facebook competitors by now, right? So if it’s not one playbook that you have to run if it is this kind of experimenting and iteration and a lot more questioning than answers, then a structured approach to helping hundreds of startups would be the exact opposite that you need, right?

And so, if we take my journey example of helping build single companies and then the startup factory helping 10 at a time, twice a year, so 14 to 20 companies at the time, now, what I’ve been doing the last five or six years is how do I help hundreds of companies in a city? How do I build an environment, a mindset, you know, a whole set of activities around making sure that we give space for hundreds of people with ideas to start their companies and hopefully succeed?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful and thinking like a community, this mindset of community building as a startup community builder yourself, what challenges have you faced? How have you sort of overcome them?

Chris Heivly: Yeah, well, it’s like a startup. Some of them you overcome and some of them you don’t and some of them hurt you and I still have the wounds from some of these but my latest startup being the last five or six years, both in partnership with the company called Techstars in Boulder and then now, since I’m mostly retired and writing, you know, a book and doing some small projects.

Six years I’ve been thinking about the science and the art of how the startup communities get built. I’ve done deep dives and spent significant amount of time in over 15 global cities from places of smallest, Fort Wayne, Indiana with 250,000 people, and as large as Lima, Peru with 10 million people and then I have my own experiences over the last 12, 13 years in Raleigh Durham.

So what I can tell you is it’s really hard, okay? It’s hard because it’s not a company. There’s not a CEO or a king of the startup community. Remember, it’s grassroots. It’s more of a network with nodes and people are connected to each other. So how do you get a mindset, a culture around helping each other out, not bringing a transactional mindset, not trying to own or control certain things and so in the places that it’s more difficult, you have maybe an older, more patriarchal, more structured culture.

Where they’re like, “No, no, no, we do it my way because I’m “the CEO” of the thing” and then the best communities, it’s the opposite. So you can imagine the challenges are if you’re either doing it on your own or doing it as a consultant is how do you shift people’s mindset? How do you educate, bring awareness, hopefully, inspire them to think differently than maybe what their natural kind of mindset would be?

So there is a lot of coaching and prodding and nudging and then experimentation just as much as you do in your startup and so if you can imagine all of the friction points and all of the restarts that you have in trying to do that. So it is mostly people, to be honest with you but it’s also kind of the right activities that fit the right culture because every city has its own culture.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Definitely, and I am sure in your experiences, you’ve come across many startups, not only communities but businesses and companies that were sort of on the verge, and maybe you came in to help them out a little bit. Can you share a success story or two of a startup community that effectively apply some of the principles that you outline in your book?

Chris Heivly: Yeah. I mean, I’m going to go to my own community in Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina. I’ve been working in that community for 12 or 13 years. It was kind of a little stagnant when I jumped in and I ran around and I met 275 people for coffee, lunch, or end-of-day frosty beverage meetings, about 275 and about five or six months, and luckily, my new friends in Tech Stars in Boulder gave me a couple kind of north stars to think about, one of which was this give first.

When I look back today maybe we could have found, maybe we found 25 or 35 kind of you know, early, early, early seed stage startups but here we are, 10, 12 years later and you know we have exits like Jesslips and its share file. It was exited now onto a second startup called Levitate. We have the Shoe Box, it’s a really cool company that I spend a lot of time with. James Avery at Adzerk, now renamed, Kevel, whose starting to grow five, six years later after his start and really taking off in terms of some ad-supported software.

Then I just gave you some specific examples but I want to make sure I give you the squishy example. I don’t know how I’ve influenced hundreds of people. I know that I’ve met with hundreds of people. I know that I’ve been there when they’ve needed me and they’ve been there when I needed them and you never know what your influence is going to be. So I know that those examples are people.

Scott Wingo, whose now on his fourth startup, who started a whole venture fund just for kind of mid-sized companies locally. I know that working together and doing all the things that I’ve done to be a community builder has impacted their ark and hopefully for the better and that’s kind of the bottom line of the book is don’t look for any big silver bullets or some big magical one thing you could do.

Just get everyone to do lots of little things and all those thousands of things add up to be something really meaningful.

Showing UpHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that so much because and I think your magic thing is the idea of like, “I’m going to go out and meet people. I’m going to go out and see what I can give. I’m going to go out and see” and it’s that being proactive I think that where it resonates with me a lot. I’m glad you went there because that was the thing for me, was to, “You know, how do I build my startup” and it’s really — you got to be a part of the community.

It’s like who are you serving and not just like for work and for t-shirt projects or whatever but it’s like, “All right, well, what else can I do? Well, I can speak” so then I went and started speaking at high schools and middle school and it was all for free? Just because I enjoyed it. I can write so I started writing a few articles here and there for the local little newspaper, you know? Whatever it was, it’s just like, “How can I serve?”

“How can I show up?” and of course, showing up for coffee, showing up for some frosties, you know? Just kind of celebrating with other entrepreneurs. I feel like sometimes today and I’m sure you get this too whether it be on LinkedIn or just community stuff; I feel like people are quick to pull the sales pitch because they’re eager, and I get it because you’re excited. You’re eager, you’re young, but I feel like it’s the relationship-building that in the back of your mind is just like, “This person doesn’t have to be a customer.”

This person can be a friend and matter of fact, your friend is probably going to be the best customer and so I thought about it like that and that’s how I was able to sort of stack up the leads if you will, and the people and honestly, the coolest thing I think that I’ve gotten out of my startup and how I grew it was all the relationships. I think back and I’m like, yeah, we did so many fun projects but I still talk to some other people that I’ve worked with four, five, six, seven, ten years ago, you know?

That’s really profound. I think that adds to my health and well-being, you know what I mean? Something that we sort of neglect talking about in startup communities is that like how do you maintain your health and well-being, and it’s just like not everybody needs to know that you’re selling something. Not everybody needs to be a customer. They could just be humans that you enjoy their company with, right?

That is actually really cool, and I like that you brought that up, but of course, all of those things can lead to a successful startup. Can you share a little bit, maybe some advice for someone who, like you is starting out as a community builder or looking to get involved in a local startup community? What are maybe one or two tips that you can give them to kind of lean on, to kind of get their journey going?

Chris Heivly: Well obviously Hussein, the first tip is go buy the book because it’s—

Hussein Al-Baiaty: One hundred percent.

Chris Heivly: I’m trying to spell it out for your newer current community builders but so the beauty is, you know again, to expand on the point you just made, everyone has a role to play and everyone can play a role. I think the best founders build the best startups and the best startups are in the best startup communities and so you know, now reverse that. If we can build a really good community, we can inspire new businesses that end up doing unbelievable things that help our whole city and our whole economy and by default, we’re helping founders do their job better and I think great communities support that.

I did a workshop a couple of weeks ago in Columbia, South Carolina and I was doing a workshop on how to be a really good mentor and a man raised his hand. He said, “I work at the bank, other than them needing me for bank stuff, what do I have to offer?” and I said, “How many people do you manage?” He said, “Well, at times I’ve managed up to 300 people.” I’ve said, “Have you hired people?” “Yeah.”

“Have you coached and counseled people?” “Yeah.” “Have you had to fire people?” “Yeah.” I said, “There’s a whole lot of business experience just in that” and if I am a new founder, scaling my t-shit business from eight people to 15 people and I need to know now how to manage 15 people and some of which I didn’t know before they came in as opposed to my friends who I hired beforehand, right? I’m going to need to know how to navigate that.

I’ve never been a leader before or a CEO or manager like everyone has something to offer. Everyone has a set of experiences that make you an expert as compared to everyone else, right? So just be willing to share that willingly and freely and it’s funny, he smiled and he nod his head. He’s like, “I got it. I got it” and I said, “Half of the journey of being a good mentor, which also means being a good community builder is just being there and listening to people and hearing what they need and then going out and trying to facilitate getting them that” whatever that thing is.

So for startup community builders, a lot of times it’s like, “You know what? I think we would love a kind of monthly meetup that helps me figure out how to do better marketing on Instagram and Facebook. Great, let me go find an expert, let me find someone who’s willing to do it one hour a week, let me find the space and let’s spread it out to all of our little network of founders. If you’re interested in this, I am going to sponsor this meetup and by the way, we’ll get some local company. We’ll buy the pizza” right? Or whatever.

It can be as simple as that, so I mean, the world is your oyster as a community builder. It’s the mindset you bring to that, which is kind of what the book is all about. It is more about a mindset. Yeah, there’s lots of tactics in there but the main thing is, “Here’s the mindset I want you to walk in with” and the best way to facilitate your piece in that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, that is so powerful. I love that you shared all of that because you’re 100% right and that the idea is that are you the dot connector, you know what I mean? Are you the person that just if you know a set of people here and a set of people here and there’s people that you’re not going to know but guess what? Your phone is so powerful. This is the thing that I always told myself.

It was like my phone is the most powerful thing I carry. It is a weapon. I can literally reach out for help, I can contact this person who can get me in contact with another person, right? Most people are open to doing things, especially if in the long run it helps them and if you can pitch it in a way that, you know, make sure that they get something out of it of course but yeah, these little things that you could do that could help the community and grow it, like you said, you can just facilitate it and be a part of it in that way.

You don’t have to be the guru who knows every single thing. As a matter of fact, it’s probably better that you don’t know every single thing and let the experts do what they’re good at, you know what I mean?

Chris Heivly: Yeah, I don’t know, do you know everything? I don’t know everything.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Hell no, you know? And nor do I want to. I feel like that would be a lot of work.

Chris Heivly: Last night I got to the end of the Internet, I don’t need to learn any more.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well yeah and then with things like ChatGPT and all that, it’s like you don’t really need to know everything, right? But it is how you ask. It’s how you position yourself and what’s your intention is and I think for example for me, my intention was to let these kids see what’s possible in the graphic design world and so once a month, we just—I just literally would call schools and I say, “Hey, I could do two things for you.”

“I can come out and speak to the kids or you can do a field trip and come out to my shop” and so many teachers were just blown away by that because no one does that, you know what I mean? Here’s the upside of that, so many of those schools, guess who they wanted to print their T-shirts, right? So at the end of the day, I got work out of it and it was the simplest and most fun thing I can do.

Yeah, so I love that, and of course, when you put those kinds of things on social media, whatever, your whole business just looks great, you know? It’s a good-looking thing. So, I got to ask you like writing a book, in your case, writing two is no easy feat, man. You got to do a lot of work, a lot of leg work but what was your favorite part of pulling your book together and what did you learn from that journey?

Chris Heivly: Well, I actually like the writing part. I’m not having much fun with all of the other parts like helping to choose covered designs and fonts and all the stuff. Luckily, I had some help from the Scribe people on that but I actually love writing and I have two or three more books kind of designed out. So I haven’t been able to write for three or four months because I am busy doing all the other stuff but I can’t wait to get back to the writing.

When I write, I ended up—it’s so funny. Again, expanding on what you just talked about, when I write, I write an outline. A very detailed outline and then I’d say, “All right, who can I talk to that knows more about this thing than I do?” It makes me go out and reach out to a lot of what I call professional friends. These are people that I’m very, very close to. You know, I am not hanging out with them every weekend but we’ve helped each other out.

So I get to reconnect with them and run some thoughts and, “What do you think about this thing?” and they’re like, “Oh yeah, I remember when I did that” and so I can’t wait to jump back in for book three just to reconnect with all those people and do that whole give first thing.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Sorry, onto my last question, which is basically around a feeling and that feeling, what is the feeling you hope for when that reader puts down your book, a community builder, what is the feeling you hope to evoke in that person?

Chris Heivly: That’s a great ending question and I’ll kind of do a little bit of a politician thing. I think I’m going to answer a slightly different version of that question. What I run into all the time and the hundreds kind of either current or future startup community builders around the globe and the thing that they are most trapped by is, “What do I do tomorrow?” and what I hope the book gives you, in fact, I say it explicitly is here’s where you can start.

Here is what you can do tomorrow, it doesn’t cost any money, it may cost a little bit of your time but it is an action plan and with a good mindset to say, “Here’s what I can start doing tomorrow” and that’s what I hope people come away with is, “Hievly has done it again, he simplified the complex. He is giving me a little bit of a roadmap. It made me feel a little more confident that I can go and do this new thing tomorrow and know that I am going to have an impact by doing it that way.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful. I can’t tell you how many times I ask myself that especially as a young entrepreneur, “What do I do tomorrow? How do I deal with that?” so that’s very powerful. Thank you for sharing that. Chris, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on today. Of course, your stories and experiences go so extensive in such a beautiful way in your book, so I can’t wait for people to check that out.

The book is called, Build The Fort: The Startup Community’s Builder’s Field Guide. So besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Chris?

Chris Heivly: Head over to heivly.com. By the way, I have a free networking eBook and a couple other freebies there. You can also sign up for office hours, I have an open couple of hours a week that I spend, you get 20 minutes shot, we’ll talk about whatever you want to talk about. It’s at heivly.com and that’s my personal website.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love it. Well, thanks for coming on the show today, man. Congratulations on the book. If you are out there and you are listening, go get the book. It’s an amazing read. Chris, absolute pleasure having you on today, my brother.

Chris Heivly: Thanks, Hussein.

The post Build The Fort: Chris Heivly appeared first on Author Hour.

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My next guest suffered a life-threatening illness in early adolescence, enduring multiple surgeries and months in the hospital. Doctors told her to expect a life marked by pain and limitation.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by Renée Joyal, who is here to talk about her new book, Live Beautiful: A Compassionate Balanced Guide to Everyday Wellness and Wellbeing. Let’s get into it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m here with my friend, Renée Joyal, who is here to talk about her beautiful new book. It’s literally called Live Beautiful. Renée, thank you so much for joining me today.

Renée Joyal: Thank you so much for having me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, this is so great. Like I said, before we got on the recording, that I’ve been able to kind of swift through your book, and it was so, sort of easy, and it felt like a magnet. I just kept being pulled in, and I had other things to do, so I had to put it down. But –

Renée Joyal: That makes me so happy to hear. Thank you so much.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it was so beautifully written. So great job on that. Congratulations on launching your book. I’m super excited to just have you on, but before we get into the book and all the juicy stuff that you took so much time to put into words, I really want to share with our audience a little bit about your personal background.

Perhaps, where you grew up and maybe, what led you down this path, maybe a person or an event that occurred that got you on the path that you’re on today in your wellness and healing, yeah.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/ambulance-architecture-building-business-263402/

A Fragile YouthRenée Joyal: Sure. So I grew up in Massachusetts. I have an amazing family, my mom and dad, still married, they’re forty years married. I have two sisters that were very close in age, and what really led me to my lifestyle and the way that I live today, I grew up with a lot of health ailments that imposed a lot of restrictions on my life. I was given labels and circumstances that were something that I was told, you’re a child, you’re healthy, and then you’re not, and this is how you’re going to have to live the rest of your life.

So I struggled for quite some time, but it had changed the trajectory of how I live my life and who I am today, and how I show up in the world.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about, you know, being young and being diagnosed. Can you talk to us a little bit about sort of what you were diagnosed with and, you know, go a little bit further on like the limiting beliefs that were sort of, almost wanting to be imposed on you?

Renée Joyal: Yeah. So I was always a healthy kid, super active, I was involved in every sport you could imagine, always happy. Everyone’s always commenting on how much I smile or talk and all of a sudden, age 11, I became really ill with some hormonal issues, and then I was triggered with an internal staff infection, which actually almost took my life at one point, and then landed me in the hospital for ten days.

It was a blood infection that was affecting my heart, my liver, my kidneys, and my lungs, and I recovered from that, and then I was like, “All right, I’m good to go.” And you know, again, you’re a kid. You’re a young kid, and I was doing fine and then still maintaining the same lifestyle, you know, you’re young, you’re eating America’s processed foods, and I ended up struggling with some severe chest pain and some health issues.

I felt like I had an elephant on my chest as I would take a walk just take a walk to the stairs, and that’s not me, I’ve always been super active. So after countless doctor’s appointments and doctor’s visits, my parents were amazing, bringing me everywhere, I was told, “You know, you’re just growing, it’s probably your chest bone growing, it’s growth spurts, you’re fine, take some Ibuprofen.”

Turns out, I was not fine, and I ended up with a virus that was attacking my heart and my major organs. I ended up in the hospital for a very lengthy amount of time. Two heart surgeries later, and I was, you know, left the hospital basically saying, “You are not a healthy person, you’ll never be a healthy person, and you’re going to have to live a life with limitation and restriction, and you probably won’t go to college or have a family.” So, and now in my adolescence, that’s pretty heavy information.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s a lot. That’s a lot, yeah.

Renée Joyal: But at the same time, there was no information from doctors that told me how to eat, how to sleep, how to manage my anxiety because you can imagine that, never having anxiety before, you can imagine when someone tells you those things. Naturally, you’re going to have a little anxiety.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: 100 percent, yeah.

Renée Joyal: And then there was also, you don’t want people to think that you can’t do certain things.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I feel like it’s one of those things that if you know something that will impact the child, it’s better to kind of – you know, I feel like, that being said to you triggered two things in my mind, right? For me, growing up, a lot of stuff was said to me, specifically from some of my teachers.

Like one told me that I wouldn’t be an architect. I wanted to pursue things because I was – I didn’t speak great English when I was young, right? I came from a different country, but I always feel like those hardships and especially having gone through surgery and heart surgery and then coming out of that and feeling so deflated, right?

Because I feel like, any time we’re in and out of hospitals and especially when the doctors are like, “We don’t know what’s going on. We don’t know what’s going on,” and then it’s like the worst thing that could happen to you. It’s like, “Oh, this has been happening, and you didn’t know?” So it’s like one of those things, yeah.

So that’s a lot for a young person to handle, but you have a really unique resilience set of mindsets that I feel like you deployed. So what happened when you left that hospital, and what did you start doing to kind of say, “You know what? All of these beliefs and limiting things, they can either define me or refine me,” right?

Renée Joyal: Absolutely.

Live by Design, Not DefaultHussein Al-Baiaty: So tell me a little bit about what happened, yeah, in that moment in time?

Renée Joyal: I chose to live by design and not by default. I wanted to live like every other child was able to live. I wanted to play sports, I wanted to go to college, I wanted to excel in school, I wanted to – if someone told me I couldn’t do something, I wanted to show them I could. So I became, still, feeling extremely unwell. You can imagine no energy, lethargic, nauseous, and you know, I was – my hair was falling out.

I was becoming so ill, even just from the medications, as a side effect from medications that you’re ingesting. So I had to figure out first and foremost, “How can I eventually come off of these medications?” which really scared the hell out of my parents at the time, but I said, “I can’t, you know, they were making me so sick.” I didn’t know if I was doing better with them or without them. So I said, “How can I start to see improvement in my life in day-to-day?”

So I became my own researcher and my own practitioner at a young age. So now, by this time, I’m probably 17, 18 years old, and I am researching everything under the sun. How you hydrate, how you eat, how you sleep, how you move your body, the thoughts that consume you, the quality of your thoughts, your mind, and it really did make an impact on how I was feeling and making small lifestyle changes, and this is not an overnight thing, and I hope that people understand that, that micro-changes can have a long-term effect.

So for me, it was making small improvements in my life, even with the people that I surround myself with. Are they good people that are not draining from you or people that are there for you? That affects how you feel and how you can recover and how you can heal. So my life totally changed, and I’m very passionate about it because it does affect how you feel, and I am living proof that how you live your life can have a long-term effect.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that you mentioned that you wanted to live your life by design and that you wanted to create a life that you wanted to feel healthy. You wanted to embrace the certain things and really, the only answer to that is you taking the reins, right? You taking control and saying, “I’m going to research everything. I’m going to figure out how to get healthy” because the answers I keep getting are not leading me to it or even the medication I’m getting, it’s not leading me to a prosperous life.

A life that I want to live, and by making this decision, I think of just taking responsibility, if you will, almost accepting what’s happening and taking on that responsibility. You may not have known it then, but I feel like that’s what it looks like for me, you kind of took responsibility.

Renée Joyal: Oh, absolutely.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, yeah. So tell me a little bit more about that.

Renée Joyal: Sure. I mean, nobody can make changes in your life for you. You’re really the only person in the driver’s seat. So you can have a support system, and you can have people in your life, which I highly recommend having a strong support system, and it’s just surrounding yourself with good people, but you really have to nurture yourself and be your own researcher, be your own advocate.

What makes you feel good, what lifts you up, what gives you a sense of purpose? You really have options in your life. You can look at things and say, “Let me find the best in the situation” because you’re not going to find any good in a negative situation or in a negative mindset.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right.

Renée Joyal: So even finding one thing that could help me feel better or lead to a path that I could come out stronger on the other side, it was worth it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. What was that one thing for you though? You know, what did you start leaning into as far as like, taking the first steps towards improving your health and well-being? Was it the food, the air, the people, like, or just the mindset?

Renée Joyal: There is so many things, but I would say number one — and you know, when you’re young, nobody ever wants to sleep, but sleep is the foundation of health. So if you are not getting a good quality sleep, you can’t give your body the time that it needs to actively heal and regenerate, and also the sleep affects your mood and your energy, and your – the quality of your thoughts and then how you eat.

So, usually, if you’re not sleeping well, it’s easier to eat a little unhealthier the next day or not want to exercise or move or – I really do think that sleep is the foundation of health.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful, and I’m thirty-seven, and I feel like I wasn’t up until like this last year that I realized how important sleep is. You always know that, of course. Everybody – it’s like eating healthy or exercising. It’s like that, but knowing and doing are two different things, right?

Renée Joyal: Absolutely, absolutely. So don’t get me wrong. I mean, I do like to – I am more of a morning person. I do like to go to bed early, so there are occasions where I’m an old lady, but there are occasions, you know, where you have a late night, but it’s okay as long as you are maintaining the balance the majority of the time. If you’re able to track your sleep, get good quality sleep, allow your body that time to heal and regenerate, it makes a significant difference and impact in the next day.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes. I know in my life, once I started really setting myself up, positioning myself up that you know, prioritizing sleep, I think that was the big shift for me was that I know if I sleep well, I’m going to be sharper tomorrow. That’s just how it goes, right?

Renée Joyal: Yes, absolutely.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: For me, once I kind of started feeding myself that new narrative about how important sleep is, things started shifting, man, I just became a lot more clearer earlier on in the day. Like you said, I’m kind of eager to get to the gym because I am energized in the morning. I am refreshed and just like everything else, right? Your Tesla needs a charging, your brain needs a charging, and we could probably talk about sleep forever because it’s so amazing.

But I want to get into a little bit about, like in your experiences, what are some of the most common misconceptions people have about this idea of just healthy living? How do you address that in your book?

Renée Joyal: Well, I think that people think that you have to fall into a category or a fad or a trend, and a lot of that falls with restriction, and that’s not sustainable. Living with restriction is just not enjoyable, and for a long term, it’s not fun. I wouldn’t recommend it. So for me, I think that you have to find something that you enjoy, and find what works for you, what makes you feel good.

Usually, when you start feeling good, you’ll enjoy what you’re doing, and you’ll want to do it again. So I think I’m around so many people in today’s society that also just what we’re exposed to and you know, social media and in this digital age of diet trends and you know if you’re – everything has a label or a name. I really don’t fall into any of those. I think that you have to do what works for you, and it has to be within balance and without restriction because otherwise, it’s not going to work long term.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. I think some of the best health and well-being sort of advice I got was from my wife. She’s remarkable in that she very much takes care of her health and got me going to the gym when we first met because I was super, you know, just building my business. I was working lots of hours, and she saw what that was doing to me, obviously, and she kept thinking, and I’m like, “Yeah, I will go to the gym and get buff.” You know?

This is like eight years ago, almost ten years ago now, so definitely different mindset, but you know, it’s that persona of what I felt like I needed to do was to have this body, right? Her mindset was just like, “What do you need to do to feel good inside?” right? Because that is always going to be an outward sort of like –

Renée Joyal: Of course.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Once you focus inward, it will kind of display itself outwards, right? She’s like, “What if you just go to the gym to feel good and not necessarily need to like pump all the weights and get exhausted and not go back for another month, you know?” I’m like, “Oh, okay.” So that slowly shaped my thinking, and it’s like eating this much, it tastes good, it feels good, but then you feel lethargic, then you’re like laying down for hours, right?

Or whatever it is, what is something that’s going to do the opposite? Once you eat it, it is actually going to give you that energy that you want, and so once I started thinking in that because of my amazing wife and her mentality and how she thinks about health, I slowly started sort of reframing my own experience and reframing my day to day activities, and you’re right, I love that you said this idea of micro-changes.

Can you go a little bit deeper on that with the micro-changes and what’s maybe like a couple of micro-changes that we can do as listeners that you sort of applied it in your life that you feel have just added up to just so much significance?

Renée Joyal: I mean, they sound so simple, but honestly, I think that we overlook some of the most basic things sometimes that have such a huge benefit. For me, I would say I bookend my day. So meaning, how I start my day and how I end my day are two pivotal moments that have to take place, at least five days a week, so that I have that balance and I have just that time so that it’s not so strict.

Not every day has to be in that same sequence, but how you start your day and how you end your day are so important. You have to wake up and just tell yourself, “You know today is going to be a great day” or “Today I’m going to feel good” and start your day. Hydrate, map out your day, what you want to do for your life, whether it’s for your family, for your business, your routine, and then also how you end your day is so important because that’s setting you up for a good night’s sleep, which is also starting you for your next day.

So that is a micro-change that I think is absolutely necessary, it’s how you start your day and how you end your day, and I would also say hydration. I think that especially as a kid, I don’t remember ever anyone telling me drink water. I just don’t think that occurred, but I do think that you know if you’re not drinking water or if you don’t enjoy drinking water, find a way to hydrate that’s enjoyable.

You know, whether you make it a citrus water, make herbal-infused teas, you should be hydrating all day long. You know, we’re like plants, you have to water a plant if you want it to thrive.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that so much because I genuinely believe that for me, having made that mind shift in, you know, more hydration, honestly just thinking about it, right? Just being aware, knowing that how you are in the day and how you feel is completely correlated with what you eat, drink, and how you sleep, and how much movement you get. It just dictates the rest of how your day can go or how your week can go.

I love that these micro sort of small adjustments – I do a thing at night where I just call it the brain dump. In order for me to go to sleep, I just have to write down all the BS that’s on my mind in that moment, you know? Whether it was good, bad, whatever, just get it out on paper and kind of – and then sometimes, not all the time, I like to start my day by kind of planning out the day but sometimes kind of leaving notes in.

For, “Okay, tomorrow, I’m going to think about X, Y, and Z, but that’s tomorrow’s problem,” right? And just kind about like telling myself that I kind of disengage with having to really think about it and stay up all night thinking through it and worrying, and I put those worries onto paper and get them out and 98% of the time –

Renée Joyal: Oh, I highly recommend that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s so powerful, and I don’t remember where I learned that, but it’s so powerful. Can you share a little bit of a story of someone that you’ve helped implement some of these tips and practices from your book and what kind of significant improvement in their health or well-being?

Renée Joyal: Well, it’s amazing. I actually never intended on writing this book, but my sisters, who are just two beautiful, amazing women, they’re always coming to me with questions or they’ve never had a health issue in their life—God bless—and you know, but still, you can have struggles. You can still feel unhealthy at times, you can still not feel good at times or have worry, and I wanted to put something together for them.

I said, “Let me help you with this.” Whether it’s diet, nutrition, what you’re eating, how you’re moving, and I started this book for them, and honestly, just seeing them evolve and how they live their lives and just some of the small changes that they’ve made and how appreciative they’ve been or the realization, watching the realization that, “Wow, this actually – something so simple can make me feel so good.” That’s been very rewarding.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much. I love that it just comes from such a core and deep place, especially with our siblings looking up to us in those ways, and I know this book is going to significantly help so many others, but what was your favorite part of pulling this whole book together? What was that journey like for you?

Renée Joyal: Well, the journey is a long journey. Writing a book is no joke; the commitment was there. So as I was writing this book, I experienced more life obstacles in this journey, which actually was just more of a reason to say, “Renée, you have to finish this book.” So I’m so happy that I did, and it was just a commitment that I wanted to be able to share it with my sisters, and then it turned into so much more than that.

I said, “If I can help one person that maybe is going through challenges in their life.” Because we all have challenges, there is no escaping it. We’ll all experience challenges in some capacity, whether it’s family, health, financial, relationships, we’ll all experience something, and if I could help one person then this would be all worth it to me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so amazing. What do you think that one person, what do you hope they get out of reading your book after putting it down? What do you hope they feel?

Renée Joyal: I hope that I can give someone the energy to carry on a lifestyle that is something that they enjoy and that they can move through life gracefully, knowing that things are going to come into our lives but find a way to enjoy it and feel good in the process and not take life too seriously. Just to – I am really hoping that I can help someone live a healthier life, something where you really just appreciate the present moment and enjoy the journey and not just the destination.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful. I love that so much because it comes from a very pure place, and having read parts of your book, your stories, and your experiences are, I don’t know, they’re essential to read through because you really shed such an amazing light on resilience and that’s I think resilience is one of my favorite words and it’s one of my favorite human sort of attributes that’s already built in and we all have it.

It’s just how is it, what is it exposed to, and how is it activated, and I think for you being exposed to such health ailments at a young age, it really sort of unpackaged your resilience at an early age and now that you’re able to speak from those experiences made your book so much more powerful, and I just can’t wait to like pick it back up this week and push through it.

Renée Joyal: Oh, thank you so much.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, like I said, I resonated with it. You know, I was at a young age I was in a refugee camp, all these things that happened, and obviously, when you’re young, you can’t make sense of it all, but you know, later in my late teens, early 20s, when I got into college finally and all these things, I started realizing how much that played a role in my life and how strong I was by just having gone experience that.

Renée Joyal: No, that’s amazing.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it didn’t necessarily define who I came to be and all these things, but it definitely, to me, gave me a knowing of what I’m able to do, what I’m capable of, and that’s really – that is so empowering, and I feel like for me, just reading a little bit of it, that’s what it reminded me of. It reminded me of my inner strength, and I love that so much.

Renée Joyal: You know, we all have micro or macro traumas in some way or another, but if you’re able to turn your pain into purpose and use those experiences to help others, and you’re unknowingly helping yourself at the same time.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful. Well, Renée, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on.

Renée Joyal: Oh, it’s been amazing speaking with you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I know that people are going to learn so much from you and your book, and I know, again, it’s going to resonate with a lot of people. The book is called Live Beautiful: A Compassionate Balanced Guide to Everyday Wellness and Wellbeing. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Renée?

Renée Joyal: They can find me at livebeautifulbook.com, it’s my website, or you can find me on my social media Instagram page, which is @reneemarie_livebeautiful.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Love that. Thank you so much, Renée. It’s been an absolute honor just having you on today.

Renée Joyal: Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Absolutely.

The post Live Beautiful: Renée Marie appeared first on Author Hour.

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Too often, the bottom line in business is valued more than the journey endured to get there. But the journey is where the real growth occurs. It’s where lifelong learners reap the benefits of vital lessons. It’s where students thrive. It’s where leaders distinguish themselves from managers and progress is more valuable than achievement.

Welcome to the Author Hour podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by author Damon Lembi, who’s here to talk about his new book, The Learn-It-All Leader: Mindset, Traits & Tools. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, friends, and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m here with my friend, Damon today. Damon Lembi, I am super excited to have you on the show, man. The book — I got to be honest with you. Yes, man, the book is powerful, The Learn-It All-Leader. It’s one of those things that I feel like resonated deeply with me, because it’s not just about necessarily like the leadership, but it’s really about these tools, and the things that you really mentioned. Man, I don’t know. I just feel like I really want to get into the book. But before I do that, I got to share with our people a little bit about Damon. Where did Damon grow up? What was it like growing up where you were, that family dynamic? What led you on the path that you’re on today?

Damon Lembi: Great. Well, Hussein, thank you for having me today. My name, like you mentioned is Damon Lembi. I was born and raised in Burlingame, California, which is about 30 miles south of San Francisco Bay area. I was very fortunate to grow up with the two great parents, and Arthur and Linda Lembi. I’m the oldest of four children.

Growing up, sports were really one of the main features of my life, and I have a core group of best friends, still to this day, 40 years later. My three best friends, David Chesnosky, Fred Wolfgramm, and Dan Toothman. We all played sports a lot, whatever season it was. If it was baseball season, we play baseball. If it was football, we played football. Anyways, throughout my childhood and through high school.

By my sophomore year, I realized that I excelled most at baseball, and really decided if I was going to have a professional sports career, it was going to be in baseball. My senior year, near the end of my senior year, I was grateful to be drafted by the Atlanta Braves in the 13th round of the draft. I had my first really tough decision to make and that was, “Do I start on this journey as a minor leaguer at 17 years old or I go play college baseball at on a baseball scholarship at Pepperdine University?

My parents are awesome. They said, “Hey, you know what. This is your decision. We’ll support you in whatever you want to do.” I ended up opting to go to Pepperdine University and play baseball there. It really had to do with the vision that our coach, Annie Lopez, who I talked about quite a bit in my book had for the team. I get to Pepperdine, I started off slow, I struggled, end up getting hurt. At the end of the year, I made the decision to leave Pepperdine and transfer out. It was a tough year for me. I ended up at, eventually, at Arizona State University to play baseball there. I had a great two years.

I was really excited about an opportunity to continue on, on that dream to be a professional baseball player. At the end of my senior year, I didn’t get drafted. At that point, my baseball career pretty much came to — I decided not to pursue it anymore and kind of came to an end. Always played baseball my entire life, I didn’t have any professional work experience. I was very lucky to come from a family, a large real estate family in San Francisco, and I had some options. I can get into real estate, or go work at one of our hotels, or even at my dad, in his newest invention was this computer training company called Learnit. It was very small and I decided in June of ’95 to start there as a receptionist, and here I am 28 years later. My book is really about the journey from beginning of that here. That’s a little background.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes. Wow, man. I love that. Thank you so much for just kind of giving us such a sort of rich and contextualize sections of your life. I just appreciate that because I feel like when we write our books, they’re always connected to some deeper meaning. For me, I like to share these stories because a lot of that meaning derives from our youthfulness, and the things, and the resilience, and the things that we face. I appreciate that.

Man, I got to ask you a little bit about your baseball journey, especially post. It’s weird, because I’m sure there was like a grieving process. There’s a lot of times where young men, young athletes go — some of my friends were on their way to basketball and do amazing thing. Then, of course, it comes to an end, whether it’s an injury or whatever. What was that coping like for you? What was that grieving process for you? Because I know it’s different for a lot of people, but I know specifically, there are people that I know that in some ways, man, they’re still struggling with that. What did you do? How did you sort of step into this new sort of career, and feel good about it after sort of a grieving process, or if there was one?

Damon Lembi: Well, I think it’s a great question. Yes, there’s a grieving process, because when my season ended, I think it was 18 out of the 25 guys on our team did get drafted. Several of which who — I had a great career, I had a great year, so it was very disappointing to not have the opportunity to move on. But I looked at it like, “Okay. This is the –” you have to work with the constraints you have. This is time now to put this behind me, and move on, and get go all in on something else.

Now, I remember going to see one of my best friends, Jacob Cruz, play for the Giants against the Dodgers. Just going out on the stands, and seeing Jacob out there, I was very proud for him to be out there, but it hurt. It was my dream throughout my life to be out there and play for the San Francisco Giants or somebody. But it just came to an end, and it was time to move on. So I just kind of dove in 100% and focused on Learnit. It’s kind of funny how things turn out because unless you make it to that major league level, in any sport, it’s a rough pride. Sometimes things just happen for the best.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes. Absolutely, man. I’m glad you shared that. Thank you for being sort of vulnerable because I feel like there are so many dreams that lay at that edge. There’s a little bit of disappointment. But taking that energy and saying, “You know what? I’m going to still make the best out of what’s to come because what’s to come may be even better than what I thought would be.” Then there’s a level of transforming the mindset, which I feel like many great leaders apply in their lives. Because if you – I mean, I’m sure you have. I’ve studied quite a bit of remarkable people who had this moment of grieving, where it’s a year, a couple years. Or in the case of Nelson Mandela, it was like 30 plus years in a jail cell. Imagine what you can and take it from there.

Damon Lembi: Unbelievable story, yes.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s the beauty of learning from what we go through. Can you share a little bit about what happened next? I mean, so you dive in, you go all in, but you start as a receptionist at the very bottom, of course, like we all do with this Learnit program. Can you tell us a little bit about that and then kind of your phases going forward?

Damon Lembi: Sure. I chose to Learnit because I was, like I said, I didn’t have any work experience. I was nervous. I was nervous to get into it. I also didn’t want to feel like I was – just because I was just fortunate to have a family where I could just start at the top, I wanted to earn my way in whatever I did. I also really wanted to contribute to this new venture that my dad had. I just went in there as humble as possible. I still say to this day that I’ve answered more phone calls than anybody at Learnit.

Over the next couple of years, I taught classes, I did sales, and I just tried to learn and absorb as much as I can. I got really into it, I was really — and still am to this day — really excited about it. I would say, about five years into it, the CEO at the time wasn’t working out. Our board that we had were looking to replace the CEO. I went to my dad and I’m just like, “Hey. You know? I’ve answered the phones, I’ve taught classes, I brought in some of our largest deals. Why don’t you give me the opportunity to run Learnit?” He’s like, “You know what, kid? You got it.” So here I am.

That was right around the time where a lot of, you remember, a lot of us remember, it was a .com days and everything was going great. The joke was back then, all you needed was a fax machine for people to fax in orders. I thought, “Well, I’m like a genius. I’m great at this.” Then, before you can even blink an eye, we went through 2001, and the 9/11, and everything in the bubble burst, and really had a tough ride for a couple of years, which was a great learning experience. We worked our way through it and here we are today still.

The Four Key TraitsHussein Al-Baiaty:That’s remarkable, man. I mean, I think there’s no way to develop a leader, other than put them through hard times. It’s not that it’s something you wish on anybody. It’s not that you want to put through somebody, but life happens. I think how we generate – I think from there, we react. I feel like, especially when we’re young and we’re in leadership positions, for me, I was fortunate enough to start building a t-shirt business that I didn’t even know I was building. I was just wanting to make some side money, in college. Then next thing you know, out of college I had a team of five people. I was running this small company. I’m working with Nike. It’s a lot, but it’s also hard.

What’s cool is, you’re being put to the test almost daily to kind of push your edge a little bit, see how comfortable you can get. I know, with operating a business, and running especially a family business, there’s so many dynamics. I feel like those dynamics are actually what helped create the attributes to that leader, and what they ended up leading from. You talked about this in your book, it’s really the learning aspect of like, “You know what? I’m just going to lean into this idea that I don’t really know everything, and that’s okay.” But leaning into the people around me, leaning into my ability to learn and show up. Those are the qualities that I feel like all remarkable leaders possess. But what do you think is the most important trait for a learn-it-all leader to possess?

Damon Lembi: I really think that there’s four key traits. Those four key traits are, number one, humility, integrity, learning agility, which you just mentioned a moment ago, which you can also call curiosity, and also resilience. If I had to package them up, those are the four traits that I think that are super important for anybody who’s either wanting to get into being a leader, or who want to evolve as a leader.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yes, man, so powerful. You go into those attributes in a way, that’s really profound. I mean, you share some really powerful stories. But can you discuss a time when you either had a coach, or team member or just in your Learnit growing phase of going through those tough times, especially when the .com bubble burst. What was that transition like, and through those challenges, what would be the thing that you’re like, “Man, that challenge really developed this part of me”? What would you point to?

Damon Lembi: Right. Well, I’d say, as any small business owner, you have those nights where you’re wondering how you’re going to make payroll coming up in the week. Really, what I went through is, I just focused on, let’s address what the situation is in front of us, and what do we need to do to get us through what we’re at. One time, I’m looking at the great financial crisis of 2008, where we looked at it — and we said, “We’ve been through this already, once in 2001. What did we learn that we can do differently this time?”

What we learned from the first time was, you have to make some tough decisions, and it’s really best to do it all at once. What we did is we got together as a leadership team in early 2009. We said, in order for Learnit to survive, what’s potentially coming up is, we’re going to have to make some hard choices and reduce our payroll by about 25%. That’s what we did. I met with each of the – probably 15 individuals one-on-one and made the cuts that we needed to, the layoffs that we needed to keep going, surviving.

Then turned around to the team and said, “Hey, look. We put ourselves in a position to make it through this, so let’s all get together and focus as a team” and we did. That was very challenging and tough thing to do. Also, something that I think I’m proud of, and other team members are proud of, [is] that we were able to survive that really difficult time.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Man, that’s so powerful. You talk about this again in your book. I think the most profound times that I look up to leaders is when I was going through really difficult times. Like you said, making payroll, oh my God. The amount of stress, right? It’s because it’s not that the making the payroll, it’s how others will feel? It’s the sitting down with that person and saying, “Hey, we can’t go on. We got to go our separate way, whatever it is to make those cuts, and maybe we’ll be able to come back.”

You got to look at what you have to keep it going for those that are able to still work with you and then navigating those really hard conversations. Of course, the learning curve that comes from that. What was the biggest learning curve coming out of those difficult times that you picked up and began to apply moving forward?

Damon Lembi: Well, one thing, it goes back to — I’d say the traits I mentioned earlier, is humility, is to not think that you should try to do this all on your own. It’s okay to be vulnerable and it’s okay to reach out too. I’ve been very fortunate to have a network of successful business leaders and coaches earlier in my sports career. Where I can reach out to them and say, “Here’s our situation. I’m trying to be as transparent as possible. What can I do? Who should I turn to? What can I do for help?” That’s one of my biggest learning lessons, I would say, is don’t feel like you have to go out this on your own. Take advantage of the resources you have, and don’t be afraid to admit when you need or can use help.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yes. That’s so amazing, man. I mean, I feel like for me, when I was at the bottom of like feeling just bad because I just cut to people. We’re going through a hard time, we just lost a big client, right? Honestly, this was about six months after my father passed. I was just going through a really hard time.

Damon Lembi: Definitely.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Obviously, when you’re emotional, it clouds your judgments. It clouds how you respond. I was grieving my father and I was saddened, but also, I had a lot of people relying on me and all of these things. I just felt the pressure. For me, I reached out to this one person; I was listening to him a lot on a podcast and it was all about the screenprinting industry. I just reached out and I literally just was like, “My father passed, I’m struggling. I just had to let go of two people. How do I turn this ship around?” He was so kind. I didn’t even think he would reply back.

This is how powerful this was. I reached out to him on LinkedIn, and I was just like, “Hey, man. I’m just a big fan. I appreciate you. Your episodes have gotten me through a lot, and I’ve learned so much, but I’m struggling with this. What do you suggest I do?” That guy was like, “What’s your phone number?” Just replied back within 10 minutes. He called me and was like, “Man, I’m just so sorry to hear about your father, and this and that.”

Damon Lembi: That’s awesome.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:He was just like, “Let’s talk about it, free. Don’t worry about consultation, whatever. How can I help you?” Dude, I broke down for the mere fact that this person would just call me, a complete stranger. He didn’t have to call me. He can just be like, “Go listen to this episode.” But it was that human moment that I realized, wow, this is so powerful in the day that I feel great, and I’m on top of my game again, I want to be this person. Where I could just give back and possess this ability to connect with human beings.

That’s when I realized – he told me, “Just read this book, do X, Y, and Z,” which actually helped me so much financially. It was one of those moments in life where I just felt so connected to humanity and sort of like my belief was brought back to me if you will. I totally feel like my dad had a role in that, personally.

Damon Lembi: Oh, man. That’s awesome.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:You know what I mean?

Damon Lembi: Yes.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: But for me, it was just that deeply resonated in the sense that, “Okay. Now, when I feel great, I’m still going to reach out to people. And when I don’t feel great, I’m going to reach out to people. So, it just taught me to learn from others and really ask for help. Because man, I would say, [it] cut my ego in half because I can’t get rid of it, but I cut it in half that day.

Damon Lembi: Yes. Your ego and your pride.

Know-It-All vs. Learn-It-AllHussein Al-Baiaty:Let’s talk about that. Let’s go there because that’s where I was going. Let’s talk about ego and pride and how they can get in the way of leadership.

Damon Lembi: They absolutely can get in the way of leadership. That’s why I kind of talk about the difference between the know-it-all and learn-it-all. Where the know-it-all is like, “Hey, I got this handled, I know what I’m doing.” Where learn-it-all, I like to say as somebody – leaders are, they aren’t born really, or they’re complete. They’re always kind of in the making. They’re always willing to continue to learn and grow.” This woman who worked for me, Laurel Taylor, who I’m close friends with, and now is a CEO of a student debt company, doing fabulous. She told me about, six months ago, “Hey. Sometimes you just have to put your pride aside and go for it, and get yourself out of your comfort zone. Ask the tough questions, be vulnerable.” That’s what I think a lot of great leaders do, is they get out of their comfort zone and they are vulnerable and they’re willing to learn. Kind of like you mentioned, it’s amazing when you reach out to some of these really successful people, they want to share their knowledge and what they’ve learned.

What they also want, I think is – this is kind of a highlight throughout my book is the importance of listening. If you’re going to ask somebody for their advice or recommendations, you need to at least listen to what they’re saying. It doesn’t mean you have to always implement whatever it is they say or do, but listen to what they have to say. Then if you do, follow up back with them and say, “Hey, you know what? Thank you so and so for this. Here’s what I did with it.” Send them a little written note or a thank you because they love hearing back from you that you’ve took what they had to say seriously.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes. There’s nothing better than that, man. I feel like any time someone’s reached out to me, I appreciate it. You know what I’m saying? Because I’m in someone’s thoughts, and the idea of being helpful to them. I take it very serious, and I consider it as a part of that one day’s gift to keep giving back in any way that I can. I just feel like re-sharing that is so, so important. What specific technique or – I’m sorry, go ahead. You’re going to say something else?

Damon Lembi: Oh, no, I wasn’t. But if I was going to say something, I would say that that’s the stage I’m at in my career now, where is I love the opportunity to give back. I want to be able to take the struggles and challenges, and the learnings I’ve had, and share them with maybe people who are just getting into the workforce or looking, getting into their first leadership role.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yes, man. I love your story a lot, man. Honestly, I can feel like I know exactly who to send your book to. I have four people in my mind. I know exactly who to send it to. Because they are – two of them have made the slow transition of getting out of sports, and that world, and trying to do something else, which is just such a powerful place to be. Because I feel like you can still be an athlete and a remarkable leader. You can still be an athlete and just apply those techniques. But how do you say that? It obviously has to come from a person like you, who’s been through those kinds of things.

I always tell people, our own personal experiences will resonate with a lot of people. But more specifically, the people we really want to help are the younger versions of ourselves because those are the ones that you really want to speak to. I feel like my book when I wrote it, this is like the book I wish I had when I was 19, 20, but I’m glad I’m able to be in a position where I can share that story from a vulnerable place. But tell me what specific techniques or practices that you sort of develop on a daily, or weekly, or monthly habit, if you will, that you believe have like had the greatest impact on your ability to lead and help grow the company?

Damon Lembi: I believe that, especially for a small business, and this can be – I’m not talking about, has to be two or three people. I mean, Learnit, it’s about 50 employees. It could be a couple hundred-person company. The leader should lead by example, not sit up in an ivory tower, and just point fingers, and give direction. Now, don’t get me wrong. I think it’s really important to delegate. But I also think you need to lead your team so that they feel like that they have somebody who’s not afraid to roll up their sleeves and do the work. What I tried to do on a regular basis now, and this is something I’ve only gotten into in the last couple of years, is really plan out what are my goals for the year. I try to break down annual goals, maybe four or five annual goals. Then I tie them quarterly.

Right down to the week, what are the three main things I’m going to focus on this week and tie it forward as well. Because as a leader, or as somebody who’s – even an individual contributor, your time is precious. That’s one thing you can’t get back. You want to try and focus your attention on the most-high impact work. It’s too easy. It doesn’t mean that you’re doing great, if you’re just super busy, and you’re working 12, 14-hour days. Hard work is super important, but you got to really focus. I mean, there’s that great book, Eat the Frog, I think it’s called. Where it’s like, do the hard work, get that done. That’s something that I highly recommend. It’s a challenge because it’s easy to get distracted, especially these days. But really focus on the high-impact work that’s tied to your personal and company goals.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yes. Man, I love that so much. It reminds me of something my father always used to say to me, bless his soul. He used to say in Arabic, [inaudible 0:24:38], which means, those who are tired from putting that really important thing up first, like working hard at that thing first. [Inaudible 0:24:49], which means, plays later. You get to play during the day, during the week, whatever. But just do the hard things early on, get that out of the way. That way you can enjoy it later.

Damon Lembi: Absolutely.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:It always played in my ear, like all the time. Today, I have boxing setup. That’s my play. But in the morning at 7 am, I was neck deep in writing my new book because that’s the hardest thing.

Damon Lembi: Good for you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: You know what I mean? Yes, man. Just applying those little things, and I always feel it, right? When I’m off track a little bit, I’m like playing too much right now. I need to come back. Or I’m working too hard right now, I need to play. It’s that balancing because it’s an act that you constantly develop. That’s really powerful man. That really resonates with me.

Like I said, your book was really easy to really navigate and get pulled into, in the sense – not that it was like easily written. That’s besides the fact. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But easy to get into, meaning the stories that you set up really captivated my attention, especially because leadership is a huge component of my life. I like to just lead myself.

Damon Lembi: Thank you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:First and foremost, and my family. But man, you really set the foundation for some really cool thoughts and amazing experiences. But what was that journey like for you in writing a book, because it’s no easy feat? What were the most enjoyable parts and not-so-enjoyable parts of writing your book?

Damon Lembi: I think for someone like me, it was difficult to write this book. It took me close to three years.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Happy birthday. Happy belated birthday.

Damon Lembi: Yes, that was a while ago. But, thank you. It was difficult. The difficult part was that to write something in a linear fashion, a story in a linear fashion — because I have plenty of thoughts, and ideas, and tips, and stories, especially stories. If somebody comes to me and says, “Hey, Damon. I got this challenge, leading the sales team, and here’s my challenge.” I have a great tip or story that I could share with them.

But putting everything down in an organized fashion was very challenging for me. Besides that, it was also fun in the sense that it helped me reinforce some of my beliefs, as far as what’s important to me as a leader, and to really get there. I think a lot of times, learning, it really takes practice to make things stick. It was great to go through, and go through what was important to me or has been important to me as a leader, and to reinforce all that.

Then most of all, it helped me reflect back on the journey I’ve had with all these great people over the years that I’ve worked with, either at Learnit, or family. Then also, you’ve mentioned your dad several times. I lost my dad in 2010 to cancer. He was my very best friend. I got to relive some of those times. Some of the good times, and some of the times that we argued. I wish whenever we’re in a challenge these days, I wish I had him to turn to and say, “Dad, what should I do here?” But as far as writing the book, those are really –

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yes, fundamentally, I love that man, because I just felt like, for me, writing a book was not only reliving those experiences, but it was almost like a window into those experiences. Because now, I don’t really need to feel – I went through feeling the same things, but I can process them differently and make a much better higher-level judgment as to what was going on in that time. I can see things a little bit more clear, see the bigger picture. It really resonated with me and that, like you said, it really helped me understand my life, my journey, the decisions I made, or the things that were happening around me. To now be able to share and give back from a place of just utter love and respect.

Because when I realized what I was going through and what other people were going through around me, it made me just that much more compassionate, more empathetic. I think that’s what powerful books do and the journeys in which we take. Yes, man, three years, five years. For me, it took about, I would say, a lifetime right to be able to come to writing a book.

Damon Lembi: Yes. That’s true too. I mean, it took me 20-some-odd years to do it. But I agree with you. I look back at some of the decisions I made 10, 15 years ago. I’m like, “Man, what a dumb move that was, but you learn from it.” When that opportunity comes up again, you learn to make better decisions. I just really wanted to put all my thoughts down in a book and just share with people that, “Hey, you know, what? I was able to start off, and here I am through hard work, and really wanting to learn.” Others can do that too. You don’t have to have a certain pedigree or whatever. I mean, if you put in the hard work and you build self-confidence in yourself, you kind of follow some of those traits, I think that you can be successful in whatever you want to do.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Definitely, man. Absolutely. I love that so much, man. I mean, I can’t agree with you more in so many different things. But after one of your readers puts down the book and having finished it, what do you hope they feel and get out of it?

Damon Lembi: Great question. I hope what they get out of it is they see the importance of always wanting to continue on their journey, and that they’re never at the finish line. They have to continue to keep learning and evolving. That they also realize that if you have impostor syndrome, and maybe you fear something, you can work your way through it. Just give it your best effort and go from there.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes. Just keep showing up for yourself. Love that.

Damon Lembi: I mean, that’s what you said right there. Show up, go all in, and give it your best shot.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:I love that, Damon. You, my friend have taught me a lot today. You really helped me just kind of reflect back to beautiful times in my life. But that’s what your book does. It’s a good reflection of how to show up, and just be the person that a lot of people around you actually believe that you can be. Stepping into that light with the help of everyone else.

Damon Lembi: Absolutely.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s just not about leadership. It’s about the community that you lean into, to help you develop as a leader. I really just want to say like how much you dynamically showed what a leader can be. That was really profound for me, having sitting with your book. Damon, it’s been an absolute pleasure, man. It’s just been really cool to hang out with you today.

Damon Lembi: It’s been a pleasure. I really appreciate it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yes, absolutely. The book is called The Learn-It-All Leader: Mindset, Traits & Tools. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Damon?

Damon Lembi: Well, you could find me on Amazon. You could also connect with me at Damon Lembi on LinkedIn, or go to our website, learnit.com, and you’ll see bunch of the content and training that we provide there.

The post The Learn-It-All Leader: Damon Lembi appeared first on Author Hour.

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How do underdogs close a huge deal they have no business winning? How do rainmakers pull off a sale before the RFP is ever issued? They don’t do it with logical arguments or even the best PowerPoint presentation. They do it by turning their pitch into an emotional experience that makes the customer think this just feels right.

Welcome to the Author Hour podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by authors Diana Kander and Tucker Trotter, who are here to talk about their new book, Go Big or Go Home: 5 Ways to Create a Customer Experience That Will Close the Deal. Let’s get into it.

Hello, friends, and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m here with my friends, Tucker Trotter and Diana Kander, who just launched an amazing book called, Go Big or Go Home: 5 Ways to Create a Customer Experience That Will Close the Deal. Tucker, Diana, thank you so much for joining me today on Author Hour. How are you two feeling?

Diana Kander: Pretty awesome.

Tucker Trotter: Yes, doing great. Thanks for having us.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, congratulations on your book launch. I’m sure it’s been amazing. How’s the response been?

Diana Kander: I mean, pretty incredible. We’ve gotten a lot of great reviews for the book, and we’re just getting a lot of text messages and emails. People love it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, well, you put your phone number right in the beginning pages, and I’m like, “I’m about to text these people right now and say, ‘What’s up?’ This is cool.” Because I love that concept. It made it really sort of like friendly and intuitive. So, kudos to you for taking such a brave thing to do, communicating with your readers that way.

Before we get into the juiciness of the book, I love giving our listeners a little bit of background of both of you. Diana, I would love to start with you, maybe a little bit about where you grew up, maybe a person or an event that inspired you to be on the path that you’re on. I’d love to hear about your experience a little bit.

Diana Kander: Yes. I’m a serial entrepreneur. I moved to the US as a refugee when I was eight years old. So, growing up pretty poor and just trying to make it. That involved a lot of selling and a lot of business. I had about a decade of trying every different kind of business that I could, and some did really well and some didn’t. One in particular kind of rose like a rocket ship and then crashed. I wrote a journal of my experience during that, and that became my first book. That created kind of the next decade of my career of writing business books and sharing big ideas with the world.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:That’s remarkable. I share something with you that’s very, very close. I came to the States at eight years old, also from a refugee camp. So, we have a lot to chat about, and I’m excited to talk about all that. But go ahead, Tucker, I’d love to hear your experience as well.

Tucker Trotter: Yes, I mean, so mine might be a little more boring. But I’m the CEO of Dimensional Innovations, and we’re an experience, design, build, and tech company. Really, I think, one of the driving reasons behind the book was just we want more people to know about not just us but about the amazing experiences we get to create for people. But my background — and I think it’s relevant because it ties to this — something that happened to me, I think, really just interesting, is at a pretty young age, my parents got divorced, and I went with my mom and stepfather to southern Missouri and grew up in a three-story teepee that was off the grid before off the grid was cool. And because of that, we were 12 miles from the closest town, and it was really – there wasn’t a whole lot to do. So, I spent a lot of my childhood inventing, making, drawing, and telling stories, and that led to a lot of what I ended up doing today, which is some version of the same thing. So, yeah, that’s my unusual story.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Well, Tucker, it sounds like you were a refugee too, man. I mean, you lived in a tent. It wasn’t a refugee camp per se, but it sounds like you were pulled out of society in some way, shape, or form to kind of live out a childhood, living out your imagination. I love it. I feel like all three of us have lived in a tent, and that’s great. That’s a good starting point, man.

So, I’m really excited because you two have brought forth an incredible book I love this idea of customer experience. Now, this idea of emotions, and all those kinds of things that go into the packaging of a deal, and how it could come to fruition. And, of course, creating successful sales pitches. Let’s dive into it a little bit. Can you tell me a particularly memorable pitch that you have been a part of seeing or yourself giving? I know, Diana, you’ve been, of course, a huge entrepreneur. What was that like for you? Did you do something that you feel was memorable, as far as a pitch trying to, whether it be a sales pitch or getting some funding for your business ventures? We’ll start with Diana and we’ll go to Tucker.

Diana Kander: Well, I think the story of how we got together to write this book is a memorable pitch. Tucker and I got connected through a mutual friend. He had wanted to write a book about dimensional innovations and the cool work that they do. So, he called me up, and was like, “Hey, I want to write a book. Would you like to do it with me?” I was like, “No. Super not interested. Thank you so much.” I took the call on my treadmill, walking my dog, like, could not have been less interested. And he was like, “Hey, well, would you come take a tour of DI?” I said, “Sure, I’ll come take a tour.”

When I was there and learned about all the cool things that they do, and I also learned about this move that they had to close deals at a much higher rate than normal. So, their typical close rate is 45%. But when they do this move, they close 90%.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Dang, that’s –

Diana Kander: I was like, “Wow, that’s amazing.” The more I learned about the move and how it works and why it works, I became obsessed with this idea to the point where I went from not being interested at all to begging to co-author this book so I could tell everybody I knew about it. I think that’s the essence of the kind of pitch that we’re talking about. You’re not just trying to sell something, you’re trying to establish a relationship and emotional connection, and then somebody becomes like a tenacious advocate for you, as opposed to a customer.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:So powerful. It sounds like, even with that connection, there was a pitch inside of it that made it irresistible. I wonder what that is? Tucker, can you elaborate a little bit more?

Tucker Trotter: Well, I think it’s great to hear that story from Diana’s perspective because that really was, obviously, here we are on the podcast because of that important pitch. But to me, it was really just about getting to know Diana and sharing the enthusiasm and excitement I have for what we do here every day and in our amazing team. It’s pretty easy to do that.

We always say, if we can just get people in our door, then there’s an extremely high likelihood we’re going to work together in some way, and at the very least, form a really good friendship and bond. That’s what that day was about. I think what’s been really exciting is to see the team, just through the process of this book has, it’s really kind of reinvigorated our team, and you’re seeing a lot more of these moves happening throughout our team. The great part about it is that all this really does is just make it more fun.

So, I mean, if you think about it, a lot of times selling can feel like a job, and it shouldn’t. It should be like a sport, it should be fun. One way to do that is to introduce this whole idea into any pitch, and it’s more rewarding, especially after winning.

A Story Is in the EmotionHussein Al-Baiaty:That’s so powerful because I feel like, as a young entrepreneur, when I was kind of growing through my little t-shirt shop that I was building up in Portland out of college, I had to really pitch myself really. I had to — to these small organizations, for little t-shirt things, and I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no idea. But the thing I knew I was good at, I was good at talking to people. And I knew that if I could build a relationship, after a couple of weeks, I can make my ask, or at least offer my “service”, which was the t-shirt printing, it was really lame. But I grew it from there based on those relationships. I know for me, it was just, my strength was talking to people, but I didn’t know how to improve that or get better at that unless, of course, I started reading sales books, which some of them are dry, some of them are pretty straightforward, some of them are like, this kind of is just like repetition from all these other books.

But when I was reading throughout your book, the idea of emotions and how they play a role in having successful sales pitches really resonated with me because I feel like that’s kind of the emotion – that’s kind of the play I went in, was the emotions. Creating a fun environment, like a fun meeting instead of going to a coffee shop. It’s like, “Let’s go get some pizza.” Something interesting, fun. What do you guys think about this idea of emotions and how it plays a role? Diana, go ahead first.

Diana Kander: Well, the book has a ton of research that we did to figure out exactly why this move that DI was doing and had been working. The research clearly shows that while we think we are rational people, and no matter how high up we go in an organization, we are making decisions with our gut, like with our emotions, and then we are justifying them with our rational brain. There’s a fascinating study that was done where they put people in an MRI machine that was doing like a brain scan, and the researchers would ask you questions, asked you to make decisions, and they knew what the decision was 11 seconds before the person could formulate it in their minds.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow. That’s so powerful.

Diana Kander: So how can we, rather than talking to the rational brain, like talk to the gut, talk to the emotional part, the one that’s making all those decisions? I think you have to have a different kind of conversation, and then showing spreadsheets and numbers and a rational logical argument.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yes. Tucker, can you elaborate a little bit more on that conversation? How you cultivate it to be, I don’t know, to tap a little bit more into those emotions?

Tucker Trotter: Of course. I always think to stories, and I think to one of the stories that’s in the book that shows you exactly how this can work. And the story is about how we got the Miami Marlins bobblehead museum. So, on the surface, there was a budget, and there’s a timeline, and it was presented to us in that way. As a team, we got together, and we just said, “Okay, so this guy has the largest collection of bobbleheads in the world. So, he obviously loves bobbleheads.” This is a pretty tight budget to trap a bunch of bobbleheads inside of a case where they can’t bobble for the rest of their life just sounded horrible to us. So, we said, “Okay, we’re going to do a pitch. It’s not going to be what exactly what they asked for. But our LTF move was to build an actual bobblehead of the decision makers and send them to them.

The logical side, the non-emotional side would have been like, “No, you didn’t present to the budget. But because we’re emotional buyers, the opposite happened.” And as soon as he received it, we got a call that said, “Okay, you got it.” So, I think, not that you shouldn’t listen to your clients, you always should, but you should also understand the psychology behind what makes decisions happen and know that there’s always another side, and there’s always more opportunity.

I think, I always try to answer with some story that happen in our world that proves that it works. And the science, though, was so important to have in the book because otherwise you just got a bunch of stories in your head, you don’t have the evidence that backs all of it up.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yes. It’s really powerful. I mean, as far as, like, to what Diana was talking about, and putting someone in a – where you’re scanning their brain to basically figure out where this response is coming from, and kind of almost like proving how forever since humanity started how stories, are such a big part of how we process not only information, but also our emotion, and our decision making. I think that’s a powerful thing to obviously use.

But stories have been used to sell things for some time, and I think this interesting idea of making the move into more emotions and weaving that into the story and ensuring that it’s there, especially with your clients, is kind of fascinating.

So, you talk about this idea of balancing surprise and functionality. Can you kind of go a little bit deeper into that and kind of explain a little bit more, Tucker?

Tucker Trotter: I’ll kick this one to Diana, if that’s all right, because I think she can –

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yes, totally fine.

Remember to Be SurprisingDiana Kander: The book at a very high level is how to get somebody to feel emotion during your presentation so that they’ll remember it and be more likely to say yes. One of the key components that most people don’t think about is the importance of having surprise inside your presentation. So, the way that most people listen to a pitch is they’re asking themselves, like, “Do I know what this is? Have I seen something like this before?” If the answer is yes, then they can go into autopilot mode. The brain loves conserving energy as much as possible.

So then, they can start thinking about the new car they’re thinking about getting, or whatever. The addition they’re putting on their house. If you surprise them, then they’ll say, “Wait a minute, I need to pay attention to this.” So, we actually think it’s vital for you to plan out not just what you’re going to say, but how you’re going to say it in a unique way, and having some prizes as part of that is a key component.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:That’s really interesting because I feel like I’ve given a few pitches here and there, nothing too exciting. I was insane – I had one pitch that was a kind of a big deal, when I was pitching to Nike, that I could be their “small-time printer” for their, like, super rush jobs. Because they had these 1,000 t-shirts, 2,000 t-shirts for like events, and camps, and things like that, that were actually the bread and butter of my business. But in order for me to have been a – was like a certified contractor, I had to go through this process, and then I had to go meet this team and basically pitch myself. That was like, oh man, that was so daunting and scary.

But I think what landed me the gig was just my ability to just share my story and I think, [like] Diana, just sharing that I was a refugee and I was going through these kinds of things, [that] I was hungry for the work and that I was local. I was really just pushing all the buttons I can push, you know what I mean? And highlighting that, not only – it’s like, there are many print shops that can produce this work for you. That’s not the problem. But I’ve been showing up time and time for the past like three months because they kind of do these test runs with you and all that stuff. And then I told them a story about having to meet one of their execs at the airport to bring him a box of t-shirts that he was going to take to Michael Jordan.

I was just telling them the intensity of that story, how I stayed up all night, printed the shirts, boxed them up all beautifully because it was like such a cool opportunity to print something for Michael Jordan. I think that sealed the deal. I’m still not sure. But everyone just, I feel like, they sort of admired the hard work and the curves that I would take on such a project.

I think you’re 100% right in that I can tell through sharing those stories that are being emotionally connected to what’s the surprise? Did you make it? I was telling, “I was weaving through traffic, and I finally delivered the shirts.” I feel like in telling that story, I can see their excitement, I can see their surprise. So, I love that you share that because that is very important.

I remember like not even talking about the printing process and them not even asking about that. I feel like with a lot of people, when we pitch our businesses or ideas, we focus so much on the product or the service itself, or how it’s delivered, but not mentioning those stories that are critical or funny or interesting, that could probably raise an eyebrow or two, which could lead to that surprise.

Anyways, I just wanted to share sort of my interaction with how I try to balance those kinds of things. But can you talk about a time when a co-creation approach was particularly successful in creating a pitch that didn’t go your way or, I guess, got shot down? And what went wrong?

Diana Kander: Tucker, you want to talk about one of your pitches that didn’t work out?

Tucker Trotter: Well, I’m trying to think of one. I mean, of course, we always, in the book, we’re talking about –

Hussein Al-Baiaty: We’re 90%. It’s hard.

Tucker Trotter: Yes. Exactly. I think that actually, I can think of several examples, but every one of our projects, to some extent, doesn’t land exactly the way you thought it would. There’s also maybe stakeholders that are part of it, that maybe you’re not pitching to. But then in order for the project to be successful, they need to be a big part of it. So, I do think that one of the projects that we talked about in the book is Al Davis Memorial Torch at the Raider’s new stadium. And we’ve spent a lot of time pitching to the architect that we can create this, but we really needed to also get the owner to believe in the idea.

It was a very risky venture, in the fact that it was going to be the largest 3D printed structure in the world, and 3D printing and something of that scale had never been done, not even close. So, the way we appealed to the owner was that we kind of looked into it, and we said, “You know what, that’s actually the Raiders. The Raiders, they always do something different than everyone else.” If the whole league goes one direction, they’re going to go another direction. Actually, moving to Vegas is a good example of that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, very rebellious.

Tucker Trotter: Right, they’re rebellious. So, that’s the story we told. I mean, I think, backing up a minute, I think your story you just told us about pitching to Nike, it shows the power of the story is that – and you started off the podcast about talking about that entrepreneurs are really selling themselves, and that’s what people are buying. They’re buying you. They’re believing in you. And hearing your story about the t-shirts and telling the story about getting them to the exec at the airport, it shows that you’re humble. It shows that you’re hungry. And it shows that – and these are core values of DI, and so it really resonates with me. Also, like to them, it was so flattering, right? Because the whole story was about them and how committed you are to their team, and to their brand, and to their success.

So, I think that’s what – backing up to the Raider story, that’s what we were doing. I mean, it was, obviously, we were trying to show that we’re qualified to do the project, but it was more speaking to their brand, and who they are, and showing that we believe in that, and we understand it, and we learned about it, and that it resonates and ties to what they want to accomplish, and how we can help them do that. So, I think your story is incredibly relevant and fits right into the whole spirit of this book.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, that’s really powerful. I mean, that’s why I feel like a lot of what you were saying in the book really resonated was like, I was on track. These guys are obviously gurus and experts about the pitch. I mean, the audience and understanding who you’re getting to meet with, and being in that room with, or wherever that space is where you get to pitch yourself, because I felt like, yes, it doesn’t matter really – it does matter what you’re doing, of course, your expertise, and all that good stuff. But ultimately, it becomes about a relationship, which you kind of hinted at earlier, Diana, which I think is my favorite part of business. What I realized that I do love business because of the relationships, because I got to go have pizza, or go do some fun, or meet the guy I really want to talk to at his kid’s basketball game. But just go watch the basketball game like and hang out and bring some popcorn. Do something that was different than how other people were probably meeting this person and probably meeting their needs.

But you also talk about like this specific thing, which is analyzing the potential client on a deeper level, so that when you craft your pitch, there is that connectivity. Diana, can you sort of touch on that a little bit and how you sit and sort of strategize and analyze how you bring together the information about your client?

Diana Kander: Sure. I mean, there’s just so much that’s publicly available. But most of us stick to demographic research when we’re going to go pitch somebody, which is like how big their company is, how long they’ve been there, how much their spend is, how many employees, and that’s basically you preparing to pitch to a human shaped wallet. You just have a very –

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Wow. Such a good vivid image. Sorry.

Diana Kander: – high-level view of who they are. We think that you should be doing psychographic research, which is understanding their values, their beliefs, what they really care about, so that you can connect to them, not just about this deal, but on a human level.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:It feels like the deeper we get into business understanding marketing, I feel like it’s always been about the psychology, the human behaviors. But for me, as a young entrepreneur, I didn’t know because we got all these templates, it feels like, on how to do X, Y, or Z. But the thing about templates is everybody’s doing them, and it’s hard to stand out. I love what you said about, look, you got to go a little bit deeper, and there’s so many ways to figure out who you’re talking to and really get to know them. By engaging with them on a different, deeper level, you probably have a better chance of sticking out a little bit, which is really profound.

So, I got to ask, putting together books is no easy feat. But Diana, I know you’ve worked on a few, of course, for some successful ones out in the world. But what was it like pulling this book together? And did you two learn from that journey? Tucker, I’ll start with you.

Tucker Trotter: Well, I learned that I could not have done it without Diana, and that back to like important LTF pitches, getting her excited about taking on this journey with me was the most important deal I needed to close.

So, I think that it’s actually more challenging than I expected, and more work than I expected the decisions. I think some of the hardest decisions were the stories that we didn’t tell. They were so good. We had so many amazing interviews with people, and we wanted to tell everyone’s stories, but we also had this commitment to making this really accessible and not repeating the same concept over and over and over. Because people are smart enough. They get it. But we want to tell the relevant ones.

I think one of the hardest parts, actually, was probably what we didn’t say. But then just all of the decisions along the way. I think the critical element here, at least, was to have a great partnership, and Diana and I have just got an awesome partnership because I think we rarely agree on anything, but we always yield to the other one if the other one’s just more passionate about it, or has done more research, and that comes from trust and respect, and that’s what it’s got to start with.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Or whoever’s got the better pitch in this case.

Tucker Trotter: Right. Exactly. That’s the perfect –

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s awesome. Diana, do you want to add to that?

Diana Kander: No. It’s just been a great partnership. This is my third book, but it’s my favorite, and it’s the only one I want to talk about at the moment.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s awesome. Well, I have a question about your readers. There are so many entrepreneurs out there that could really use this work because I feel like pitching is everything. It’s our life. I had to pitch myself to my wife. You know what I mean? It’s kind of at the root. It is sales but in a different way. I think it’s profound. So, I’m eager to hear about what your readers are thinking, and what they hope to get out of it. But what do you hope they feel walking away from putting down the book? Diana, what do you hope they feel?

Diana Kander: I think that Go Big or Go Home is like a mindset of how you want to go into a pitch, and that is that you care about the other person and that you want to show them that in a unique way, and that you’re going to invest in them before they invest in you, which is one of the phrases in the book. I think it really helps you show your soul to the other side, and that’s a very different mindset from like, how am I going to convince them? How am I going to get them to say yes? How am I going to win? I want an action for the future, and it’s changing how I pitch myself as a speaker, and I’m closing a lot more deals. I’m having a lot more fun, and I’m building a lot more relationships.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Super powerful. Tucker, what do you think?

Tucker Trotter: Well, I mean, I think before this call with you, I don’t know that I had thought about this one. But I love the idea of it being validating, that an entrepreneur who was doing this naturally because they just do it, because they’re entrepreneurs that they read this and realize, “Wait, I’ve been doing this, and that’s why I’ve been successful.” So, I think that’s really cool, and not something maybe we sought out to do, and it’s exciting, I think, for everyone.

We’ve heard people say, “This is required reading for anyone in sales.” But like you said, everybody’s in sales to some extent. But I hope that people can understand that there’s a positive side to sales and that they see that it can be fun, and it’s not like if they had a negative connotation of someone of what a salesperson is, that maybe this changes it and helps them say that, “Oh, actually, I’m in it too,” and it’s really just about bringing some fun into what we do. Because after all, it should be. If you make it that way, people will see that. They’ll see that emotion, they’ll see that you’re excited, and that will forge great relationships and great clients.

So, I think everyone also tends to relate to the book. Because in so many ways, if you just think about some of your favorite movies, sometimes it’s like the moment in the movie that is the go big go home movement. So, I think that’s the other thing. There’s a lot here, and I think people will realize it’s very approachable, and find it validating.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yes. That’s super powerful, man. I got to add that this idea of going big, I think for me, was kind of like to what both of you were saying, and Diana, like the sharing of your soul, and just kind of like being vulnerable. That’s the biggest part of ourselves that we sometimes tend to protect because we don’t think that has anything to do with selling or pitching or anything like that. But I think anytime I’ve put myself on the table and just been honest about the connection and why I’m there and why I want to work with this person.

I remember locking a deal down with like a couple of school districts, and I basically use the same pitch. But it was just like, I honestly don’t care if you don’t give me this work. I just want to show up and speak to kids. The fact that I get to print t-shirts for these kids and bring it and then maybe invite them for coming out and doing like field trip to come out to my shop. That was fun for these teachers to hear. It was a different approach. I was just being myself because I was like, I love coming to speak to kids. Because let’s be honest, I didn’t see a bunch of people looking like me coming to speak to me when I was in high school.

But those were huge contracts. I was just like, “Well, whatever happens if I don’t get this deal, it’s on to the next one.” But I feel like both of you are definitely – you sort of – like you said earlier, you validated that how I go about pitching myself or doing my sales is actually the right way. However, your book goes deeper and teaches me the sort of analysis and the depth and the science, so that I can take my pitches up a notch even from there. That’s really powerful, man. I love that.

Tucker and Diana, you two obviously have something incredible here. I can’t wait for it to kind of grow throughout the community of entrepreneurship. You two are definitely rock stars, so thank you for sharing your stories and your time with me today. The book is titled Go Big or Go Home: 5 Ways to Create a Customer Experience That Will Close the Deal. So besides checking out the book, where can people find you two? Diana, we’ll start with you.

Diana Kander: I’m @DianaKander everywhere, but I spend most of my time on LinkedIn.

Tucker Trotter: I do too. Luckily, Tucker Trotter is a pretty unique name.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Tucker Trotter. All right, my man. Well, thank you two for coming on the show. Congratulations on your book again. Let’s continue to get this work out there. It’s amazing. So, thanks again.

Tucker Trotter: Yeah, thank you for having us.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Absolutely.

The post Go Big or Go Home: Diana Kander & Tucker Trotter appeared first on Author Hour.

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You’re stuck, you have been for a while. From the outside looking in, you’re successful but there’s a calling in your heart, nudging you towards radical change. Maybe you want to reinvent your career or build a business but you have no idea where to start or how to make it happen.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by author Lisa Guillot, who is here to talk about her new book, Find Your Clear Vision: A New Mindset to Create a Vibrant Personal or Professional Brand with Purpose. Let’s flip through it.

Hello friends and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m here with a very special friend and guest, Lisa. Lisa, how are you doing today? I’m super excited because let’s see here, I’ve literally watched your entire journey come to life in front of my eyes. So Lisa, thanks for coming on the show today, I really appreciate you.

Lisa Guillot: Aw, thank you and yeah, you watched it come to life before your eyes at the exact same time I was watching it come to life because from start to finish, it was quite a journey.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, yes, absolutely. The book is titled, Find Your Clear Vision, and I got to tell you, not only did the book title resonate with me but your book and your stories really resonated with me. However, before we get into the book and talk about all that good juicy stuff, I really want to share with our audience a little bit about you, sort of where you grew up, I love hearing those stories of childhood but also what was that like growing up, and what led you down the path that you’re on.

Is it a person, an event, something happened while you were just like, also feeling stuck and you made a transition? But let’s just go back in time a little bit and share about that childhood. Do you mind?

Lisa Guillot: Oh yes. Way, way back in time. Okay, born in Florida but spent most of my childhood in a tiny town in the Midwest Columbia, Missouri. The MU Tigers are there, my dad worked at the University Hospital there and when I turned 18, I thought, “Where is the farthest place I can go to get away from Columbia, Missouri?” and my dad grew up in New York and my mom grew up in San Diego and so I had an experience like on both coasts and I recognized I’m not a New Yorker, at all.

Instead, I ended up going to San Francisco for school and stayed out there for a couple of years during the .com boom and the .com crash and worked in the graphic design branding advertising world, and that led to so many opportunities. I was on the first team that worked on Pottery Barn Kids when it went live on the Internet for the first time in the year 2000 if that like, gives you any perspective of time for me.

But as the .com crash was coming, I thought, “You know what? It’s time for me to get back to the Midwest.” I’m a Midwestern gal at heart and so I moved to Chicago in, I don’t even remember what year that was, and my aunt lived on Lakeshore Drive downtown Chicago so spent time living with her and friends. Also, working here, I’m still in Chicago at design studios, ad agencies, and marketing departments.

Then it wasn’t until I had my own graphic design studio called Step Brightly, which I started in 2009, I did lots of things during a really short period of time. I got married to a man who had stepkids, so I instantly became a stepmom. I started my business, we had our first kid in 2010 and I started a nonprofit organization with two girlfriends who—we were all creative entrepreneurs.

I was the design arm and then we had a writer and a photographer and that’s really all you need to start a brand or a business is design, writing, and photography and we called it Fourth Chicago. It was all this cumulation of like adding more and more and more into my life and as a graphic designer, what I noticed was I was paid to be perfect and what I mean by that is in the design world, it’s the perfect color, the perfect typeface. The perfect space in between the letter forms, right? The perfect pixel placement.

Everything had to be perfect and that’s what I was being paid to do and I took that perfectionism straight into trying to be the perfect mom and stepmom and all the things. I even remember, I was doing core power yoga — which is hot. they heat up the room to about a hundred degrees and then they added weights and then at the end of the class, you’re just like, drenched in sweat and just falling apart. And then they tell you to lay in Savasana and I was like, “Okay, cool. I can get my weight training in, I can sweat it all out and meditate for a minute and a half. Cool, done.” Everything was like in this super tense order all the time, everywhere, and fast-forward to 2013 and I was about to have my second kid and that’s when the “you know what” hit the fan.

So basically, this was the transformational moment and I think most people who go into service of others, coaching, consulting, whatever it is, kind of have a story that led them to that breakdown. My breakdown happened when I had had a scheduled C-section with my daughter, which for a perfectionist was awesome because you knew exact date and time that baby was coming out and then the left side of my face had started swelling, and maybe it was all the fluids they were pumping in me, who knows?

But it swelled to the point where doctors were like, “Nope, you can’t hold your kid!” They were hazmat suits, I was quarantined in one part of the hospital in the delivery wing because they didn’t know what it was. Well, it turns out it was shingles that had manifested on my face and inside of my eye and it took like a team of doctors, two master life coaches, and a Buddhist monk, I swear to God, to help me ultimately recognize that shingles for a 30-something-year-old woman is directly related to what I wasn’t listening to, my body, my stress levels, my way of being, all of these things.

You would have thought I would have learned my lesson but it took another handful of times of breaking out to actually come to the fact that, “Lisa, you know what? This type of life is not normal and let’s find another way.”

New SelfHussein Al-Baiaty: I mean, I’m just like, this is again, where you get kind of sucked into the book, right? Because these stories are, they’re real, they’re happening to you. You’re experiencing them also while trying to build a career, a foundation, a nonprofit, and raising kids. I mean, there’s a lot happening and you got to be perfect at everything. It’s just not human nature, right?

It’s just, you are stepping into a framework that’s a little bit beyond, not that you can’t do it all, of course, I think it’s just doing it with compassion for yourself, and that’s something I had to learn in a very visceral way as well and I didn’t even learn it I feel like until unfortunately, ‘till my father passed and everything came crashing down like just deep realizations, and sadly sometimes it takes for our bodies to do something to us to be like, to wake us up.

To give such a visceral sign to be like, “Hey, there’s no more road here. I don’t know what to do for you” and it’s taken that moment to step away but then you kind of moved on from that. You grew out of that a little bit and you created something, which I thought was kind of interesting. You call it the clear vision framework and you kind of started, building this idea but what happened? Tell me a little bit about sort of post operations and feeling good and now kind of stepping into this new self. What did that look like for you?

Lisa Guillot: The first thing that comes to mind was like breaking down all of the stories and reasons why I couldn’t be perfect, kind of breaking up with that past identity and as a visual designer now with shingles in my left eye, I lost my 20/20 vision, which was perfect, mind you and no longer. So I then became a trained ontological life and leadership coach which really means, ontology is the study of who are you being about things.

And that was where I really started to play with this idea of, instead of looking towards who I thought I used to be, instead creating a clear vision of the future and aiming towards that and who do I need to be to create that clear vision, what does it look like? Often people, as the New Year rolls around, for example, people start to create vision boards, which is awesome.

A great place to start but then, there needs to be action applied to that and why is it important, and what is your first step, and what does it look like when you have reached that clear vision? And that’s the type of work that I love, love, love doing with my clients because even in this world where—and I might be in the thick of it where we talk about manifestation and abundance and all these things that like “feel good.”

There is also, like, straight-up research and science in the taking action part, and I think that that’s the part that is missing for many of us when you move from the vision board to actually being rooted in rituals and energetic work and rewiring what I call your paradox pattern to be more pop thoughts, so you live in this future world of where you need to be, and then we create the path to get there.

It’s kind of like you said, your body sometimes will give you a dead end. It’s like, “No, we’re not going this way anymore,” and we need to reinvent and transform who we’re being and create a new path, and I think that’s kind of the space that a lot of my clients and people who read this book are probably going to really resonate with is when you are a trailblazer, that means you are at the front of that road that has yet to even be paved, and so you are radically responsible for how that future’s going to look for you, and that’s actually kind of the fun part, really.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that so much. I think for me, I’m realizing that I’m going from like, a gas vehicle and now needing to go into an electric one or one that runs on the sun or whatever, you know? You realize that the tools that got you there are great but now, you have to kind of break away from the tools that are harming you, right? The things that are actually not supporting your push forward.

And you might need to take a break and kind of analyze those things and analyze that part of your story and I think what I resonated with in reading your book was just that level of awareness, right? It does take a lot of coaching and health and therapy and people you got to talk to and some time off and some deep thinking that is all kind of messy as well and they don’t all have the answers.

There are no answers out there, at least, that’s how I felt. It was more like; I need to listen in. I need to inward, I need to listen in. I need to really respond and build response systems to how I feel, and like you said, with that being grounded, now, I can think from a place that’s a little clear about the future and figure out a new vehicle and what that looks like and how that’s going to push me across the new bridge.

So I love that. What role do you think energetic and spiritual practices play in your approach to personal branding and how can readers incorporate these practices into their lives?

Energetic and Spiritual PracticesLisa Guillot: I think that what you shared about self-awareness is a beautiful place to start as it relates to energetics because when you are self-aware of your thoughts before you actually act on them. That gives you the opportunity to choose between what might be a drop box thought, which I call a drop box thought is an essence, a thought you’ve been thinking about for a very long time, that you have on repeat, right?

“Well, I should do this perfectly. I should get this done before tonight,” Whatever the thought maybe that keeps you stuck in this repetitive pattern. If you have the self-awareness to choose outside of that thought, you totally nailed it in that, it kind of opens up space for more ideas, right? “Well, wouldn’t it be cool if I got a hybrid car? Wouldn’t it be cool if I just heard the new King Charles, King of Britain, has a car that runs on cheese and wine?” right?

Cool, right? Who would have thought that? But in that white space, in this space between your thought and taking an action, that’s where all creativity and all new ideas live, and using energetic and spiritual practices to open up that space, which can be done with breathwork, it can be done with meditation, it can be done with physical fitness or music. Music is one of my go-to places to really pop out of the everyday.

In that space, that is like the golden ticket because that’s where as you climb the corporate ladder, for example, and let’s say you’re moving from VP to SVP or SVP to executive VP, you are actually given a lot more tasks, and responsibilities and they’re asking you to think more creatively, so we need to open up that space to have more creative ideas.

So that’s where the energetics come into play and spirituality and then how that moves out into personal or professional branding or thought leadership. It’s in those spaces, the space in between the thought and the action, where creativity blooms and blossoms, that’s where your best ideas come from and those are the spaces that it’s going to be a trailblazing idea, one that we hadn’t heard of before like a car running on wine and cheese and people are going to be like, “Oh, come on, really? I’ve never heard of that before?”

You’re like, “Well, yeah,” and that’s where you actually dig into it, step into that space, and at that point, we create what I call your visionary values and those are the conversations that you want to be in, in the future and what you simply do is you get yourself into those conversations now and so then, you’re an essence creating your future by design now.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: How do you see us getting into those conversations now, right? How do you take this future perspective and start taking action towards now? For me, when I need to, I don’t know, when I need to kind of check myself creatively, I’m a graphic designer. I went to school for architecture and graphic design and started my business around apparel printing. I mean, it’s a crazy thing that happened in the Northwest.

I didn’t even plan on growing a print shop, and I did and it was amazing, and I had to learn to really be a business person and pull the team together. It was an incredible journey, however through that journey, I realized that truly what I loved about anything I was doing was two things, was I love talking with people. So I just had energy around people, and I love creating art but rare types of art.

I didn’t want to necessarily duplicate everything I created, right? I love this idea of rarity. However, in order for me to get to that understanding, I had to go through this business, right? I had to build it and figure out what works for me and what doesn’t and I just love that because what it ultimately did was in a way, it didn’t give me purpose. It made me pay attention to my purpose if that makes sense, right?

I love how in your book you talk about purpose, you talk about how all of these things are basically intertwined with who we are, how we put ourselves out there, and what we put ourselves out there for, and I think for me, it helped me come up with ideas like RefuTees, it helped me come up with ideas like giving back to because I wanted to work with schools and be able to print for them.

I’m like, “Well, what can I do for schools?” and I was like, “Well if I go speak to the kids you know, in ESL classes?” because that’s where I was. And oh my God, I can’t even tell you how impactful that was for me, and it started changing that trajectory, which is why I started thinking about writing a book because a lot of people were asking, “Where’s your book? I love your story” all these good stuff.

So again, I found myself at Scribe, right? And how we eventually met, but isn’t that amazing how your work is not only sort of like this thing for money but it is also, if you’re aware enough, it could honestly be revealing something about you that you may be hiding from and you just need to figure out a way to bring it out into the world. So can you take me there for a little bit? Maybe a little bit about those fears, especially as creatives, because woo boy, do I have them, right?

We all have them but what are some of the fears that you feel like maybe you’ve encountered or maybe some of your clients have encountered as creatives to kind of pull back that curtain on purpose?

Creative ProcessLisa Guillot: Well, the first step in the creative process is to release judgment, right? If you bring the judgment in, “Well, I can’t run a print shop, I’ve never run a print shop” then you probably won’t run a print shop, right? But you came into that venture with curiosity and wanting to make an impact on folks that you saw you could help. I always think like we’re just one or two chapters ahead of the person that we’re helping behind us.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s 100% true.

Lisa Guillot: Yeah and—

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, one or two chapters at most.

Lisa Guillot: One or two chapters ahead. It’s not a whole book, it’s not a whole encyclopedia, and we don’t have all the answers. We’re just one or two chapters ahead. So step one, release judgment and I had to do that. Speaking from my experience with writing this book, when I went to college it was an art school, a liberal arts school, and I had to be put into a class to learn how to write a five-paragraph essay, which was the most remedial thing you could do in college.

I was like, “Oh, there’s actually like a framework for a five-paragraph essay?” I was blown away. For some reason, I had to learn that. I already had the thought I’m not a good writer, and then I had to—I could go back to first grade, I remember my teacher, Mrs. Duffy, telling me I’m not a good speller. So I’ve collected stories that I’m not a good writer for years. I had to at first release that judgment and in no way, shape, or form did I think, “I’m going to be an author.”

Instead, it started, it must have been in like 2018 or 2019, I was just looking for another way to play creatively. I was already full into my coaching career, I was only doing really graphic design and branding for maybe one or two clients and for myself and my business, and I thought, “Well, wouldn’t it be cool to write poetry?” and I know I love accountability so I found a poetry group and we would write poetry and read each other’s poems.

So I started super small, right? Same thing with you, you probably started with like one or two t-shirts, and then you kind of see how it goes, right? So I wrote ten mediocre poems, but I found it just so fun, and then I joined a personal essay writing class and then I started thinking, “Well, wouldn’t it be cool to write this book? I’ve got all these frameworks and real client results and research,” and that’s how the idea sparked and came to life.

But those little breadcrumbs along the way were now that I can look back, I had released the judgment from my first-grade teacher and the story of who I wasn’t supposed to be, and then I started brainstorming and that was the poetry moment and then I started forming my vision, which was, “Well, wouldn’t it be cool to write a book?” and then, step six, there are six steps in the creative process is to share.

There are lots of authors, and artists even, who create amazing work and don’t share it. A-okay, right? It’s their vision, it’s what they want, but I knew because of who I was and my clear vision, sharing it in a really big way and using this book to, you know, in essence, give it away. This is the DIY version of how to find your clear vision was the path, yeah.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that, that’s so powerful because it makes your framework and your experiences so much more accessible, right? And more adaptive and I love that because not only are you sharing your story but you’re really—I mean, it’s so good and that it gives some really practical tools and pathways to discovering a lot of those things and getting to that clear vision.

I mean, again, I was reading it, and I was like, “Oh my god, I don’t want to put this down right now” I really want to keep reading, and so I love that so much. What was your favorite part? I mean, like again, I got to see you kind of go through this journey, and it was really powerful but what was your favorite part of pulling your book together? What did you learn from that journey?

Lisa Guillot: The favorite part, well, definitely seeing it finished and having it in my hands, but I also like with the Scribe process and how it’s set up, I do best with accountability, and I knew 11:30 a.m. Tuesdays, I have that Scribe Guided Author’s call. So hoping on there with like-minded people, business-minded people, you know, from psychiatrists to therapists to people from the military, just all kinds of backgrounds, and being supported by people like you and Chaz and Emily really helped like carry me through it. Hold my hand even though you weren’t typing it for me but—

Hussein Al-Baiaty: We’re just cheering you on, but you can say all those, too, that’s fine.

Lisa Guillot: Yes, yes, yes, I loved that part as well. It also, like for other folks who are considering, especially in the coaching world, if you have a framework that you know works wonders and transforms your clients, that is yours to share and it is so powerful that when you do it one-on-one, it’s even more powerful in a group and I think it’s even more powerful when you can give someone the framework in you know, a 277-page book and say, “Here you go. This is it, you can do it on your own.” I’m really excited about that moment too.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s really powerful. The one thing I realized a lot of authors, especially in your category, right? With coaching and those kinds of things, which is honestly again, why I feel like your book really resonated with me because that’s kind of the direction I’ve been going to. It’s like getting into coaching and just understanding that world as well and what I’ve realized is that when I wrote my book, I got to know myself and my story more and my own wisdom and knowledge, right?

So it kind of put a stamp on it, meaning that I know what I know because I wrote a book. Did you feel that way coming out of writing your book as well? I mean, because we all know that we know that, but how did you feel?

Lisa Guillot: Yeah, a hundred percent because I always knew, like the type of work I do is to help people find their clear vision, and one day I remember just being on the floor with all of my notes and sticky notes and revisions and revisions and I thought you know, “Well, wouldn’t it be cool if clear was actually an acronym?” and that’s how I did it. It was like the biggest light bulb moment, and I was like, “Exactly.”

Just like applying the process and really defining the steps as it relates to the word clear, it was a beautiful insight that I had, and it might not have happened at such a rapid pace if I wasn’t open to this type of experience.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, and I mean, you obviously practice what you preach, which is like not judging the creative process, and when you don’t judge, you allow your heart to sort of just be open to new ideas and new pathways, and I think it’s one thing when we know something, it’s a whole other thing when we need to articulate it and when we to articulate it, you start to come up with new ways of doing that and making it as simple and clean as possible.

I love that you have that breakthrough and insight because so many of our authors kind of have—you know, like I did too. We have a vision of going into the book, and we know sort of exactly what we want to do and how to say it but then there is a moment in the journey where your own transformation sort of rehappens, if you will in the process, and you can take it on, or it kind of spins some people out, which that happens as well.

But I’m glad you kind of broke through that little barrier and really turned that obstacle into a possibility, and obviously, it came through very well. I love the book; it’s out there. It’s amazing. What do you believe that you really want the reader to take away? What is the one thing you could point to that?

Lisa Guillot: The one thing that I would want the reader to take away is even if at this moment in time you can’t see your clear vision or you think it’s something that’s outside of what’s possible for you, is blurry or fuzzy or maybe you’re just all turned around if you find that white space, you know, just a space in between your thought, your default thought and taking action and notice that you could take a different action, which will lead to a different result, which will lead to a different life like that is what your clear vision.

It has the possibility for you to discover; you just have to trust yourself. There’s an entire chapter on trust that is the biggest breakthrough of any client I’ve ever had is to fully and completely trust yourself because when you do that, then you become someone who is trustworthy, who motivates and inspires their team, their people, their message, their tribe, whatever it is, right? And then that reflects out in and who you’re being and that, my friends, is thought leadership.

That’s personal and professional branding right there when it comes from that space of inner trust.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful. I am kind of getting teary-eyed. This is what I’m telling you all, the book is amazing but Lisa, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing, of course your stories and your experiences. It’s been an absolute pleasure just getting to know you over the years and really watching you flourish and bring this work to life, so I attest to that. The book is called, Find Your Clear Vision: A New Mindset to Create a Vibrant Personal or Professional Brand with Purpose. So besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Lisa?

Lisa Guillot: Yes, that would be great. You can find me on my website at bebrightlisa.com, that’s bebrightlisa.com or same Instagram handle or I also like to play on LinkedIn sometimes. I’m always looking for more fun on LinkedIn. So you can come follow me there.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Perfect. Well, thanks again. Congratulations on your book launch. I’m super proud of you as a friend and colleague for sure. So congrats.

Lisa Guillot: Oh, I so appreciate it. It’s been a really fun journey, transformational to say the least.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. Thank you, Lisa, I appreciate you.

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Imagine believing from a young age that you would die at 38. How would you live your life differently? This belief drove my next guest to live her life in fast forward. The former model, actress, and host of American Thunder shares the adventures that arose from her certainty that her time on this earth was short.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast, I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by author Michele Smith, who’s here to talk about her new book called 38: Traveling My Life in Fast-Forward. Let’s slip through it.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to Author Hour. I’m here today with a very special guest, my friend Michele Smith. Michele how are you doing today?

Michele Smith: I am doing great, Hussein. How are you?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I’m doing so good. I’m super excited to have you because you wrote an epic book and I love the title and I’m going to share it. It’s called literally the number 38: Traveling My Life in Fast-Forward. Immediately thought, why 38? But before we get into the book and all the juicy stories and experiences, I really want to just tell people a little bit about who you are, where you grew up, because you have such humble beginnings and you have such a powerful story from a young age. But I really want to start there in Pennsylvania and walk us through a little bit of that childhood, if you don’t mind.

Michele Smith: What would you like to know exactly?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, I’d love to know a little bit about where you grew up and the events that happened and how you grew up into thinking and feeling like, I need to travel, I need to get out of this bubble. There’s a very interesting correlation. I just wanted you to share, I guess, a little bit about your childhood and where you grew up, what that was like for you.

Michele Smith: Well, I grew up outside this capital city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in a small town. I knew pretty much from a young age, when of course my mother died when she was 38 that’s pretty much the preface for the whole book, that I knew that my time on Earth was short because she died young. If you see your mother die at 38 you can never imagine living past that age.

At one point or another in my life and it was probably maybe when I was 13 or 14 and seeing my mother pass away, my grandmother passed away, friends, whatever. I said, “You know what? Life is short and I have to leave this small little town and get out and see what the world has to offer.” Because we don’t know how much time we have, we don’t know. I pretty much live my whole life like that. Like, I got to go. I got to see things. I got to experience new cultures and see what’s out there.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful. I think that measurement of just saying like, that’s where the ending is, so how am I going to live? It’s so short, right? It’s not that long. And the reality is whether it’s 38, 58, 108, I feel like, it’s not long enough. You know what I mean? Because there’s so much life to live. When I was young, unfortunately, there was the Gulf War that happened and we ended up being refugees. I share this story a lot, but it’s one that I feel connects with other people, because that for me was how I believe youth must have felt in that life is short, because everything was taken away from us, right?

I was lucky to just have my mom and dad in this refugee camp with my siblings, right, like that was what you are grateful for. But then when life opens up and you move and you get to grow up in America, I just look at everything so differently, and opportunities await literally at every moment. I’ve always lived from that space and I found that it’s interesting that you got there obviously very young, as well and that I want to live life fully. What happened? Walk me through post high school. I know you thought about becoming a model, an actress and you eventually get into that world. Can you tell us a little bit about that journey.

Michele Smith: Well, I hated school. I knew, I wanted to just leave. I always wanted to leave. Like, I think where I grew up it was a great place to grow up, but it was a great place to leave as well, because I needed to broaden my horizons and I didn’t want to be stuck in the same place doing the same thing that everyone else was doing in the town. I knew from a young age that I wanted to be a model. Don’t ask me why I even thought I could back then. It had a long ways to go, trust me. But I just said, “When I’m done with high school. I’m pretty much out of here.” I think it took me a few more years after high school.

I went on my side trip. I think—as I mentioned in the book—to New York City. I hopped a bus and went into the modeling agencies. I did local stuff and pageants and things like that. I just knew that I wanted to live a life of travel. I knew that one way to get there was by modeling. I would see—open a magazine and I would see these exotic locations and these women getting to do these jobs and blue waters, and sandy beaches, and wherever. I was like, “You know what? I want to do that and I’m going to find a way to do it.”

TravelingHussein Al-Baiaty: It’s so powerful to me how many people whether they turned on the TV, flip through a magazine or read a book. Something about those experiences ignite a part of our imagination. It’s almost like, “Oh, this is the gateway to what I want to do.” It’s just that I have to go through this modeling thing or through this acting, whatever it is, speaking, making art, but really what I want to do, for you, was to see and explore and meet people which was, obviously is a huge part of that experience of travel.

You get to meet so many different types of languages, people, colors, right? All of those cultural things that I feel, sadly even with how expansively connected we’ve become, we still have that yearning to travel, to go to that place. When did you start actually getting into that world and start going, okay, now I get to go to Greece or now I get to go—or do you just start traveling like, within the United States, and then it started expanding from there? What was that experience for you?

Michele Smith: Actually, one of the first places I think I went was the Caribbean with a friend on a boat as was mentioned in the book when I took off on the sugar cookie and scared the crap out of my dad. That was one of the first places, but when I went to Los Angeles and I signed with Playboy models, they started sending me out on castings. One of the first overseas jobs I went on was actually Argentina. I went to the Puerto Iguazu Falls. I had a really amazing experience. I stayed there for a month. Another place they sent me was Indonesia. Again, I stayed for a month to six weeks.

I took these jobs, yeah, okay. There was some pay, but the pay was hysterical. But I did it because I wanted to see the country, the culture, experience how other people live. I was curious about all that. I wanted to see it. Pretty much every job I took that was a traveling job, especially out of the country I took it to see the world, to be able to travel.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. I love that so much. It was under this — not pressure, but just calling that at a specific time I’m not going to be around. Even though it pays little or even though this opportunity may probably not even pay I want to go experience it.

Michele Smith: I think about it now where like I was sent to some of these locations. Yeah, I mean I had an agent that set everything up, but you never really truly know what to expect when you get off a plane in a different country like, especially, Indonesia. There’s a guy holding a sign with your name and you’re at his mercy for the next 30 days. Then he’s asking for your passport when I’m like, “Hell, yeah. This is crazy.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes. There are so many scary [things] in a lot of ways. What we are accustomed to and how we travel within the US is very free, right? But when you go across countries, you cross the oceans or even across the border things get a little bit interesting, a little more different. How did you deal? How did you cope with that fear as a young woman going out there and really not only exploring culture and all these things but also like, maybe protecting yourself, as well and caring for yourself and ensuring your safety? Because I know [for] a lot of people that’s the thing that stops them from travel is the fear. How did you navigate that?

Michele Smith: I have more fear now than I did back then. Back then, I was just, “Hey, I’m seeing the world.” I’m young. I’m in my 20s. I’m doing this, doing that — like when I was in Bali and I got this guy, he was one of the guides. You pay him 20 bucks and you spend the whole day with the guy and he takes you up high into the mountains through the rice patties or whatever in Bali. I look back now and I’m like, “Was I nuts?” I mean anything could have happened. I could have disappeared. Yeah, of course. But it wasn’t really a time that you were thinking about that and there wasn’t any social media to put the fear in you on things that maybe happen. I just went and lived my life. I mean, now I’m a little more cautious, I think because I’m older. But I keep going.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. That’s really powerful. I think for me, I got to travel to India in college to go help on this architecture thing and coming from the Middle East, but I was young, right? It was a really rough patch. It’s something I like almost wanted to forget, right? It was just not a great experience as a young human, but as I grew older, I started understanding a lot more things and when I got to go to India — I was young as well — but it exposed me a little bit to that fear. But then when I got over there, it was such an amazing experience, filled with some of the most loving people. I was just like, “Wait. What am I afraid of? I need to do this way more often.” Right?

It’s like, we just suffer a little bit more in our imagination. Like you said, there isn’t that the tools today that we’re so exposed to, almost overly exposed to the world in a way that it also creates this narrative that around fear and it plays into that a little bit. It prevents us from taking on those beautiful experiences. Yeah, from all the places you’ve traveled to, which one do you believe helped you connect with yourself the most? Why?

Michele Smith: Probably, Thailand. Thailand is a very beautiful laid-back, just a chill place that has amazing food and some of the nicest people. I spent many days just sitting on a beach and relaxing and getting massages. Every night was like, after dinner a foot massage. I mean it was like five bucks for like an hour foot massage and whether it was one of the, as they called them back then lady boys doing it or anyone else, it’s just, it was lovely. I mean I went to Thailand twice, actually. I went with some friends from Greece. It’s a beautiful place.

Connecting through TravelHussein Al-Baiaty: Life is school. School is not in a box. I mean, you play around with that idea in the beginning of your book. I love that so much because life is a teacher. But in order to get those experiences you have to go live it, which is what you emphasize throughout your book. I love that. How is traveling, whether it be on a motorcycle across the United States or across oceans impacted your personal growth and development as a person? How did that transformation really impact you? Really, you got into entrepreneurship. You were doing so many different things that were really unique. What was that like for you?

Michele Smith: I just think that through travel you just, you learned so much that maybe you wouldn’t learn necessarily sitting in any class in a school. I mean, you see how other people live and sometimes they live amazing, sometimes they’ve got dirt floors in their homes. You go back home and say, “Wow, I’m lucky.” It opens your eyes to everything, the food, the traditions, whatever it may be that each country has that’s unique and special to them. It’s interesting to see that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Did you feel a sense of connection to like, the deeper sense of connection to just what it is to be a human in that human experience? How it’s played out in different places of the world? Did you find that like, I found it, just like beautiful beyond measure? It felt like, I was — when you travel different places not only do you go to a different land, but you go to like a different planet almost. That’s how I felt when I came to America. I’m sure it was like that for you in different parts of the world, but I’ve always felt a deeper sense of connection to humanity, because of my experience. Do you feel that way, as well?

Michele Smith: I don’t know. I don’t know how to answer that one. I mean, I go to these places and I appreciate them. There isn’t one place I can say that I went to that I hate or I dislike or because each thing is unique for what they have or what they might have to offer. That’s about what I can tell you on that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. No, that’s totally fine. You talk about this amazing journey you did in Spain, it’s like a pilgrimage. I’ve heard a few people talk about it, as well. I love that. What was that like for you? Where did you hear about this pilgrimage and why did you decide to take it on?

Michele Smith: The first time I ever heard about the Camino de Santiago was in a movie with Martin Sheen called The Way. That movie came out in I believe 2008. I watched the film a few times, but the first time I watched it I was like, “Wow. That is a very cool experience.” You are walking this path or this pilgrimage it’s a 500-mile pilgrimage, but there are, I think there was five to seven different routes you can take. You can — you walk which ones you want to walk. You don’t have to walk the full 500 miles. I did it twice. I walked two different ways. It takes like 45 days to walk the entire thing, 30 to 45. Who has time for that?

Anyway, I just thought that the movie was so cool, but I thought for me that there’s no way. How would I do that? How would I sleep in a tent and be out there by myself? How would I even find the place and where is this place? I watched the movie and I forgot about it. Then in 2018, there was a lot of talk about it again. I would hear people talk about it. I was googling it. I’m like, “You know what? I think this is doable.” Because the more research I did, I realized that you don’t have to sleep in a tent. Yes, a lot of people sleep in hostels that wasn’t for me. I found a travel agent in Ireland that helped me book everything, right down to just carrying a day pack during the day and they forward my luggage onto the next hotel.

You don’t have fabulous hotels. You have very mediocre middle of the road [hotels], but it’s like, who cares? You’re walking all day. At the end of the day, you just want a place to rest your head and eat something. It was an amazing experience. We walked I think the first time something like 83 miles and then just this last September, I did it again. It was like 93 miles in six days. It’s a very cool experience and there are people there from all ages, all walks of life. I would definitely, highly recommend walking the Camino at least once in your life. But be prepared for blisters.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. It’s a walk. Yeah.

Michele Smith: It’s a walk. It’s not a race. I believe anyone can walk the Camino. I don’t believe you have to train until your legs fall off. I don’t believe that. You just walk at your own pace and you do what you can each day.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: What did you get out of that journey? I mean, as far as—was it like spiritual for you? Was it more just a motivational thing? What did you get out of that journey?

Michele Smith: I went to challenge myself to see if I could really do it because I wasn’t sure. Before I left, you have all these people — I went with my girlfriend in LA and she had some people say, “Oh, you’ll never make it. You can’t do that.” Then I had the same with a few people like, “Oh, my gosh. You’re not going to do that. You’re not going to make it. You’re going to fall down. You’re going to break a bone. You’re going to da-da-da.” I was like, “Oh, my goodness. Really?”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Negativity. Yeah.

Michele Smith: Yeah. It’s like the more you hear that, the more it’s like, “You know what? Screw you.” I’m like, “I can do this and I will do it.” I did do it. I had a unique experience in the old farmhouse that we had stayed in which was interesting. Yeah, I mean it was definitely a very cool experience.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I got to ask, I mean, obviously 38 was a very significant number to you, which not only signified when your mother passed but also this like this number that loomed in your mind. When you crossed that threshold, did you ever feel like the pressure to live life to the maximum come off or was it always, I guess, did it dissipate or is it still there for you?

Michele Smith: It’s still there. I don’t think it’ll ever go away. I mean, I always say like, if you sit down and do nothing you’re going to croak. I mean, plus on top of it, come on. I’m living in South Florida right now, so it’s like, what do they call it? God’s waiting room. No. Not for me. It’s like, I just keep going and keep moving. I can’t be like the other people here that — I probably shouldn’t say that, doesn’t go for everyone. Yeah, I know. I have to keep going. The thing is, the weird thing is, that I really am a homebody, but I say that because when I’m in town then, yeah, I like to be home. Yeah, I enjoy it. I always find something to do, but when I go, I like to go as far away as possible.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I got to talk to you a little bit about your time as a host with American Thunder, which is this motorcycle show. It was, I believe, on the B network or whatever it was. This is like mid to late 90s. What was that like for you? What was it like to take on a show and really travel? Motorcycle game was crazy. I mean, it’s still is in a lot of ways. What was it like for you?

Michele Smith: It was at the height of everything back then when they were building this crazy ass, raked out choppers and very expensive high-end. I started a show that was originally hosted before me by Chad McQueen and Michael Mattson. They were looking for a female host, so then I came along to do a show that I thought would go maybe a year. I mean it’s LA. You get a gig and if you get a couple months out of it, you’re good. But I had no idea that it was going to run like, I don’t know 10 plus years 11, 12 years, whatever it was. I had a big following in the motorcycle industry.

It was amazing. I mean for me the best part of it was being out at the events and meeting and greeting the guys and gals that came out, that rode out. Of course, I had some of the same guys that would ride to every single event that I was at, just to say “hey” and take a photo, and then they get on their bike and they’d ride five hours back home. It was a lot of fun. It was a whole lot of fun.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: What was the number one thing you feel like you learned from that experience, as far as living the life in fast forward? What did it add to that experience?

Michele Smith: The motorcycle show?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah.

Michele Smith: I learned that I had a whole lot of followers [than I thought] I had and all over the world, because they had the show syndicated and other countries, as well. That the people that watch the show are the people that you got to be the nicest to, because they tune in every week to watch you and to support you. They’re very loyal. That was great knowing that there were so many people out there that supported me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s amazing. You also turn that into a little bit of entrepreneurship, you created some products. You started getting those products into stores. You leveraged that in a way that is beautiful. I think something to learn from, honestly. I thought that was really cool. Can you share a little bit about your entrepreneurship journey?

Michele Smith: Yeah. I actually had a patent on a G String. It was a G String that turned into a necklace. The product was called Jeweled G’s. They were made with pearls and gemstones. I did very well with them. At one point, I think I ended up in a hundred and sixty Victoria’s Secret stores with one of my styles. I was so busy at that time with the Jeweled G’s and hosting a show that I almost quit the show because I was so busy working on this product that I’m like. Then one would slow down the other would pick up, so I juggled it. It was a busy time in my life. I loved it.

I had my friends helping me until I had a factory overseas, so we had a lot of fun with it. I mean you’d pull up to a cafe in LA, you sit down and you put these out on a table to show friends and next thing you got 10 people, “Hey, where can I get these? What’s this?” It was a good conversation piece.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah.

Michele Smith: For sure.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that you said that. It’s really cool. I love how these experiences started folding on one another and created opportunities for you, where you can, obviously create some income while the gigs would come in or while you take a pause from the show or whatever it was. That busy time in life is very interesting when you have a lot of opportunities that, I feel like, just like you saw the world as open and free to you. I feel like that’s how you start to see opportunities. I love that you really took that on and it made something of it. That’s amazing. Where are you now? Where are you traveling to, next?

Next DestinationMichele Smith: Well, I just got back two days ago from wine country up in Napa. I went with my little sister to celebrate her birthday. Yeah, we went out to Napa Valley. We went to about, I don’t know, five wineries. Then we spent the day in San Francisco and walked around there. Did all the touristy stuff. Got on the cable car and the whole thing.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I got to ask you, writing a book and of course writing a memoir is, in some ways, it’s challenging, some ways it’s really fun, but it is a long process, right? What was your favorite part of pulling this book together and what did you learn from that journey?

Michele Smith: I think, the favorite part was actually writing the stories and how I was amazed that I could remember everything from 35-plus years ago. I think it was therapy in a way because I was writing everything, writing everything down, reliving it again through my writing. That was definitely, I think, [my] most favorite part. I didn’t realize at the time, because I wrote this and it was like, “Wow. I wrote it in three months, four months, and gave everything to my editor.” I’m like, “Woohoo. I’m going to have a book soon.” I didn’t know it was going to be two years later. It takes a lot of time to do everything. Yeah, it’s pretty much two years from the time I started until April 11.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. But it’s funny, because it’s like it’s two years, but it’s like compounding a life well lived, you know what I mean? And continuing to live like — of course, right, I think when we sit down to write a book, we have a structure in our mind and the stories we want to tell or at least some of the stories we want to tell. But then, I think, for me personally it’s the reliving those moments that I’ll just take a break from typing and just sit there with that memory for a little bit. Just revisit it. There’s a lot of beautiful experiences in there. I like that you shared that. The reliving the memories is also very beautiful, but yes it does take time.

Michele Smith: The funny thing is, I didn’t sit down to write a book, because you said, when you sit down like, I couldn’t sit down for one second when I wrote this book. I was either walking, driving, talking into the phone, as I’m driving not typing, but I had to stand up. I had to be on my feet. I couldn’t just say, “Okay, today I’m going to sit here and write.” Because nothing would come out and I couldn’t think of anything. I had to be moving and doing something else and then everything would come to me. The minute I stopped moving, I couldn’t remember anything.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right. Well, it’s interesting, because I feel like that aligns was just perhaps maybe your personality. That you create the experiences on the go, right? Even if you need to relive them, you need to relive them also in movement which I think is really interesting. It’s really beautiful. If there’s somebody out there that is has those feelings that you had when you were younger of like, “Man, I want to get out of my town. I want to travel.” Or maybe just someone who is stuck at work for the last few years and just needs to do something, would you give them as far as advice to like take that leap and book a little something and get out of the—at least the community you’re in and go travel a little bit. What’s the advice that you would give?

Michele Smith: Remind yourself that life is meant to be lived and that you don’t know how much time you have on this earth. Book the trip, just book the trip, put off something else, but book the trip. I don’t care if you have a friend to go with you or you have to go on your own, because you never know who you’re going to meet. What if no one speaks to you? Nine times out of ten I’m on a trip nobody talks to me. Do I care? No. Half the time, I don’t want to talk to them anyways. I just go. I enjoy myself. I always say, “I’m with my two best friends, me, myself, and I.” I am my own best friend.

I remember years ago my first trip to Greece and asking a couple of friends, “Hey, you want to go to Greece?” “No, I’m not going to go. I need someone to take me.” Like, “You need someone to take you? Take yourself, geez.” And off I went. I don’t wait for people. I’ve learned the older I get that I might ask somebody once now, “You want to go?” I’m not going to ask again.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yup. Yup, exactly. I love that so much. My wife is originally from New Zealand and her dad is from Fiji. This summer they planned on going to New Zealand. My wife really wanted to go [as] a family thing and I’m like, “Let’s do it.” She looked up some flights and now we’re getting ready to go to Fiji in the summer. It’s going to be remarkable. I just can’t wait. Yeah, and it’s the idea of like having something to look forward to that I think is like the best part, because now I can live and do my thing and do my work without feeling like this is all I’m doing tomorrow and the next week. But it’s also working towards something and that something is just getting out to explore the world in some way. I just love that feeling.

Michele Smith: I mean, it was rough during the pandemic, but you find ways to cope. You just find ways to cope.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes. Yes. That’s amazing. How did you cope in the pandemic?

Michele Smith: I put a bathtub in my backyard. I sat out. I had this backyard bath and pretended I was somewhere else. Then the minute I thought I could get on a plane which was maybe after, I don’t know. I think two months of like sitting here, I’m like, “Okay, I got to go somewhere.” I think I went to my family or something. Then I went to LA. Yeah, I went to LA.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. Michele, today having spent some time with your book yesterday and getting to talk to you today, I’m just so grateful, because you really brought up a lot of those great experiences of travel. The wonderful things that I’ve gotten to do with friends and family. I just really appreciated that about your book. You share such intimate deep stories of travel and not only why is it important, but why it’s just a part of living and taking it seriously and just not taking it seriously in the sense of like, “I have to do this.” But really living in spontaneity and going with that wind, going with that flow. It’s so beautiful. It’s such a great reminder.

Your book is remarkable. Thank you so much for sharing your time with me today. The book is called 38 the number 38: Traveling My Life in Fast-Forward. It’s been an absolute pleasure. You can find a book on Amazon, so I highly recommend you go out there and get the book, but other than that, where can people connect with you, Michele?

Michele Smith: My website is michelesmith.me, my name is spelled with one L. There is no hell in my Michele. It’s M-I-C-H-E-L-E, so it’s michelesmith.me and Instagram @38michelesmith, Facebook is the same, as well.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Thanks again, Michele. It’s been an absolute pleasure today.

Michele Smith: Thank you, Hussein. Thank you so much.

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Have you ever made a bad investment decision at the spur of the moment? If so, you’re not alone. My next guest developed a hundred-year savings solution to help individual investors avoid financial traps and make solid long-term focus financial choices.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by authors Rick Sapio and Teresa Kuhn. We’re here to talk about their new book called, The 100-Year Saving Solution: How to Create the Financial Foundation for Yourself, your Family, and Your Legacy. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, friends and authors, and welcome back to the show. I’m here with my friend Rick Sapio and Teresa Kuhn today. Really excited because they just launched an amazing book, it’s already the number one bestseller on Amazon. It is called, The 100-Year Saving Solution, but before I get into the book, I just want to welcome Rick and Teresa. Welcome to the show, thank you for coming on today.

Rick Sapio: Hey, you’re very welcome.

Teresa Kuhn: Happy to be here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, this is great, this is so great. Before we get into the book and all the juiciness of it because you guys have a lot of gems to share, I want to go back in time a little bit and share with our audience a little bit about your personal backgrounds, perhaps where you grew up as someone or some event that kind of shaped the path that you are on today. Teresa, we’ll start with you.

Teresa Kuhn: Oh, thank you. I grew up in Miami, I have a degree in finance. I have a law degree, I worked with money at a Wall Street Firm before I went to law school, and then after I practiced for a period of time I was looking for strategies that could help my clients in ways that the traditional financial planning model could not. That search, that curiosity, that wanting something more for my clients, I think is what put me on the path to look for other strategies and what is now, we’re calling the 100-years savings solution.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: What about you, Rick?

Rick Sapio: Yeah. So one thing that everybody has to know that’s listening is that we live in a hyper, short-term world. Decisions are made in microseconds. They say that children today have an average attention span of seven seconds, and it’s horrible, so this book is the antidote to that.

My entire life, I’ve been a very long-term focused person. An example of that is when I got married, my wife and I said, “What does our family going to look like in a hundred years?” so before we had any children, we wrote down what we called the Sapio Family Placemat. It’s referenced in the book, and it’s a placemat that describes all of our family’s values or rituals. It has our family crest, what it means, what we do on Sundays, what we do on vacations when we vacation, all the rules of being in the family. You have to have that long-term, I believe, focus, because if you don’t know where you’re going to be in a hundred years, how do you know what you’re going to do today?

So if I want to live to be a hundred as an example, I wouldn’t, today in this moment, I would not drink a bottle of Scotch, most likely. My whole life, on the day I was born was about – I don’t know why — long-term thinking, maybe because I had a very, very difficult childhood. When I was thirteen, my dad died. I was the seventh of ten kids, and it was a lot of chaos in the family.

So ever since I was a young kid, I always looked at the future and tried to describe it as clearly as I can, and this book is really that manifestation of what it would be like to have a long-term orientation on all the decisions that you make. Teresa is great because she’s a former attorney. She’s been in financial services for almost thirty years, and she and I together have this vision of life [that] is a hell of a lot easier if you take care of both the long-term and the short-term. There’s a quote I say to my kids all the time, if you want an easy life, do hard things today. If you want a hard life, do easy things today.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, that’s so powerful, and I’m glad you say those kinds of things to your kids because those are the kinds of things I heard from my dad, and it really reminds me of him. So kudos to you for thinking such long-term. I think that’s, as you said, a vision that has been slowly tampered with in thinking about right now and thinking about the future.

Just in society’s norms today, things have shifted a lot for that attention span and how short it is. This is exciting for me because this kind of book really helps me think about, of course, my future, where do I see myself, my family, and all those good things.

I’m glad you titled it that because it’s really powerful, but also, you go into the nitty-gritty and talk about how to actually execute on these ideas, and I love that you also just live by this idea, which is really powerful, Rick. Teresa and Rick, how did you two meet? How did you come to this working together?

Teresa Kuhn: Well, Rick was referred to me as a client probably about twelve years ago, and we felt that we had a lot of similarities in our philosophies and our way of thinking. I was also a very long-term thinker, I was very intentional in the decisions that I made for myself personally at a very young age — about twenty years ago, I met somebody by the name of Nelson Nash, who had received education and training and actually worked as a forester.

If you think about forestry, you have to be a long-term thinker because you don’t plant seeds, waiting for a tree to sprout in three months, right? And you’re certainly not going to monetize on that tree in the next year. It takes sometimes decades, and he introduced me to this concept of long-term thinking, and it resonated with me because I was a long-term thinker.

I just had never articulated or put thought and consciousness around my process, and then about twelve years ago, Rick and I met, and we found we have so much in common in terms of our way of thinking and how we work with different financial concepts and just decided to work together.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful. I love that because I feel like in the world, there are definitely those people that come in and out of our – I guess you call [it] our “theater show” — and there are, of course, the few that really stick around because as you share in similarities and vision and seeing yourself identify with certain skills, just this idea of living life with consciously knowing that other people relate to the concepts and how you see your vision.

I think it’s really powerful. Can you share a little bit more about the hundred-year mindset? What does that mean to you, Rick?

100-Year MindsetRick Sapio: Well, it means that all the juice in life comes when we struggle, we strain, and we focus on things long-term. As an example of that, a friend of mine, I bumped into several years ago now — I bumped into him in the gym, and I said, he looked really happy; he was beaming, and he had lost a hundred pounds.

It was early in the morning, and I said, “Hey Carl, man, you look great. You must love coming here, you must love the fact that you lost a hundred pounds.” He goes, “I hate it, I hate coming here, I hate getting up in the morning, but I love the result,” and unfortunately, society has trained all of us [that] if we don’t like doing something, we quit.

So we’ve got a culture of quitters, and it comes from so many parents over so many generations saying to their kids, “Do what you love.” I tell my kids, “Do what you’re committed to because it’s going to be really hard and if you don’t go through the hard stuff, you’re not going to have the juice at the end.”

It’s a completely different message that Carol Dweck talks about in her book about grit, and how it’s vanished in America. So why is a hundred-year thinking important? If you want to have a fulfilling life, it comes from decades of work, oftentimes.

You know, I’m going to be married while only twenty years but when you bump into couples that are married fifty years, you ask what it was like, and they’ll say, “It was hard but we’re really fulfilled now. We love the grandchildren coming around, we love each other more than we ever have.” So our culture was upside down, it is not oriented towards long-term thinking, and Teresa and I are trying to shift the mindset of a small group of Americans — actually, people globally, maybe the book will be in different languages, I don’t know. The last book I did was converted to seven languages, which is great, but we wanted to change the culture.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s very powerful. I mean, you keep going back to that mindset of grit and resilience, and pushing through hardships, and I got to attest to that.

I‘m a Middle Eastern kid that got out of a war situation, ended up being a refugee coming to America, learning and growing and educating myself and all the trials and tribulations of learning a new language and all those kind of things. With all that, it’s like there is a satisfaction in that the more you work on yourself, the more you see yourself become whatever enriched version you want to see.

And I think that’s powerful. If you stretch that across a hundred years, what does that look like? I love, sort of like, where you are now but where is, where are you going, that aspect of thinking, that added layer of thinking really helps make the decision for now if you will, and I like those two points connecting.

So how does the 100-Year Saving Solution help an individual investor avoid those financial traps — there are so many — and make a solid financial choice in the long term? Teresa, what do you express about that? This idea of I think about my financials long-term of course, but how does one think about a hundred years from now?

Teresa Kuhn: Well, I’ll address that last part of your question with this concept of we live in a — we don’t even use the term microwave society anymore. We used to, maybe thirty years ago, but it’s like we want it now, right? When we click on our phones and order something from Amazon, we’re disappointed that it’s going to get there tomorrow. We want it immediately, and in another society, another time, that would have been magic, right? If you clicked on something and it just appeared, even the next day.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Day, yeah.

Teresa Kuhn: It’s still magic. We can go all the way back to, let’s say, a thousand years ago when in Europe, there were communities that were committed to building a structure, a physical structure like a cathedral that would be enjoyed by people, hundreds, if not thousands of years into the future.

They were very, very intentional about the materials, the design, where the building was going to go, what it was going to look like, and who was going to enjoy it. They were thinking way out into the future. Well, if you apply that cathedral thinking or that concept of long-term thinking to finances, people make decisions regarding their finances from either a spending perspective or an investing perspective based on the right now.

Like, “What do I want to do right now in terms of spending, and how do I want to invest my money?” I want to invest my money because I want to double it or triple it or, the whole crypto phase, right? Take a Lambo to the moon, right? If I invest in this Alt Coin and how has that turned out for a lot of people?

Not well. And so the framework, the filter of a 100-Year Savings Solution, begins with the intention of, what is the vision? What is it you want to create in terms of your finances a hundred years from now and the decisions that you make regarding your finances, need a rule book, a playbook in order to get you to that vision and maybe the rules include, “These are my rules for investing.”

“I’m going to do a certain amount of research. There’s got to be a certain type of the asset that I’m going to invest in,” or I’m going to master, right? Really understand a certain asset class before I invest, and I’ll actually have Rick explain the hundred-year savings solution strategy and how that plays a part in the filter in making decisions for the long term.

Rick Sapio: What we offer here is very counter to the normal way of managing money, whether people have accounts at Schwab or whatever and they say, “Make your own decisions.” The problem is that for the vast majority of people, making your own decisions have been a horrible idea, and you could see, people are emotional about that, but you can see the results if you look at Dell Bar, who tracks the results of the average person and their investment results over six decades.

It’s been horrible, nothing short of horrible. The average investor account yields about 3 percent annually, which is about the same as owning treasuries. So they go through all those heartaches with their 401(k)s and their IRAs and their accounts, and they’re barely beating the rate of inflation, which is crazy.

We take more of an endowment approach. If you look at how these massive pools of assets or managed in university endowments like Yale, Harvard, et cetera, they put a very small amount of money and stocks and bonds and huge amounts of money in alternative investments and cash. They want to have liquidity, so our model is to put half of your investible assets in cash, in cash-like instruments, and one of those instruments is a whole life insurance policy.

The other half of your investible assets in long-term oriented, high yielding, over the long-term, but illiquid investments, things like real estate and private equity funds and private companies and alternative investments, and you save a small portion of your money for the stock market because most IRAs and 401(k)s. You have to invest in the stock market, but that’s the smallest piece, and if you think about your wealth in those three buckets, let’s say 45% in cash-like instruments, 45% in long-term-oriented illiquid investments, and then the rest in stocks and bonds in your tax-free account like your IRAs and your 401(k)s. If you do it that way, you’ll be modeling what endowments do, and your yield will be much higher, three times as high, for example, based on our research.

Barbell Investment Strategy ExplainedHussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful. It’s a very interesting approach to how you see this and how you see it play out. How does this barbell investment strategy differ? I mean, I guess in a way, you sort of explained it, but can you go a little bit deeper on this barbell investment strategy that you talk about in your book?

Rick Sapio: Yes, so imagine the barbell. When you are holding a heavy barbell, it’s got a skinny bar, right? And on the sides are the heavyweights, and those heavyweights are represented by cash on one end and illiquid investments on the other, which is just what I was explaining, and the bar, the skinniest part of the barbell strategy, is your IRAs and 401(k)s and stocks and bonds.

But unfortunately and sadly, most people put stocks, bonds, crypto, and short-term investing tips and tricks as the majority of their investments as opposed to just the bar, but the majority of your investments should be what I mentioned, the private companies, things that you’re familiar with. Maybe if you are a dentist, you can buy dental practices. It’s the long-term oriented and illiquid, things that you know.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Now, I really like this idea, things that you know. As you said, if you are a dentist, you know that better than – especially probably someone that you are investing with that may not know your field, to begin with. So that’s really powerful, I like that. Do you have anything to add to that, Teresa?

Teresa Kuhn: No, I think Rick explained it really well from that, the barbell strategy. Another analogy I use is I have my clients look at their balance sheet, and we’re taught, there is so much misinformation out there that every dollar on a balance sheet must chase risk to create wealth, and I think that’s really not the case, especially if you’re putting the filter with the barbell strategy.

If every dollar in your balance sheet is there to chase risk, right, to create wealth, then what dollars are going to be available in reserve to take advantage of opportunities when they come up? What dollars are going to be in reserves to take care of the risky investments? When they need an infusion of capital? When your business needs cash? When you want to increase marketing? When you got to fix a roof on one of your investment properties?

If every single dollar is committed to turning a return, right? Chasing a return, there are no dollars in reserves to protect the empire, and I think the barbell strategy is just another great analogy, something that people can easily visualize, “Hey, I need to be balanced.” The barbell has to be balanced in order for someone to be able to lift it up.

So on one side, I’ve got assets that are chasing risk, investments, long-term, et cetera, and on the other side, I’ve got cash and a specific strategy that’s available that balances everything out.

Rick Sapio: Here is a really interesting phenomenon I want to share. So the SCC, FINRA, and the regulatory organizations will not allow smaller investors to invest in private companies for the most part. You have to fill out all of these sophisticated investor documents, okay? Let’s just think about the absurdity of this. Where are the highest returns, if you look at going back one hundred years, and you put all the different investment categories into a chart showing which had the highest returns, what category do you think is number one?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I don’t know, man, you tell me.

Rick Sapio: Private venture investing. So small companies, small companies that are private. They are not publicly traded, they’re illiquid. So the best investment I’ve ever made in my life is something that I probably will not be able to get my hands on for forty years. It’s the company I started thirty years ago, it’s illiquid. I can’t get my money until I sell the business at some point. That’s going to provide the highest return of anything I’ve ever done but imagine if I could get my hands on it every year. Well, my wife and I would probably have some use for that money.

My point is, the very thing that provides the highest return with the lowest amount of risk is the thing that people are locked out from investing into, and that’s why we make it a very important part of the barbell strategy because although they’re locked out from buying private equity funds for the most part, they’re not locked out from investing themselves into private companies that they’re very familiar with.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So I got to ask, I mean, writing a book is no easy feat, and I know you two have worked on this for quite some time. Can you tell me about maybe your favorite part of pulling this book together and what did you two learn from that journey? Teresa, we’ll start with you.

Teresa Kuhn: My favorite part of this journey is probably now that it’s completed and it’s done, looking back and saying, “You know what? I’ve got so many ideas for new books that I could do this again.” So that’s probably been my favorite part. In the middle, it wasn’t necessarily that fun. I had a lot of concepts and ideas and a lot of words. Rick is actually a great editor, and he was very instrumental in most of that heavy lifting as far as the editing is concerned.

We had a project manager, I’ve got team members that contributed in terms of some of the technical language and case studies, so it really was a team effort, but the whole process of writing a book and memorializing what’s in the brain and putting it out there for people to read I think is super cool. I’ve read books forever. I was a huge, huge reader for a long, long time, and I used to tell my son it’s so cool that you could spend USD $20 on a book and that author just poured so much into that book, nonfiction of course and even fiction.

You get to spend time with this author for twenty bucks, where can you do that? I mean, and today, of course, there are books, many books that are much less than that. So I love books.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Or free at the local library even to check it out, you know?

Teresa Kuhn: Exactly, totally.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, my father instilled that seek knowledge spread peace idea in me long ago, and it’s just like whatever you’re interested in, go read books about it, and he grew up teaching me art and all those beautiful things of course, but he knew he also had limits. He’s like, “There are things” – I mean again, you are talking about a person that came from Iraq and was a refugee and artist so he was just like, “I got you here man, there are so many more places you could go if you open up your mind and get further.

So, I love this idea from you two because I resonate with it in the sense of the knowledge, the reading, the books, if you don’t know the financial world, go learn it like literally my dad had the hardest – I’m like, “Dad, what is credit?” I was like twelve or thirteen, and my dad didn’t know it. He didn’t understand it either, he was a refugee, right? He just came here, and he said, “Man, I am just getting by. I am trying to figure out this on my own.”

He’s like, “Why don’t we go to the library and maybe you can get a book about it, and you can learn about it and then teach me,” and that really changed my world. Look, I might not have the answers, but you got to go figure out where you can get those answers, and I’m so grateful for that. But in a lot of ways, I feel like this is what you two have been embedding in your kids to see that sort of 100-Year sort of plan pan out for them is to really get them to see the value in that way. So that’s really powerful. Rick, what did you want to add to what Teresa was saying?

Rick Sapio: My favorite part, I would say, chasing Teresa to get some editing comments and her never being available for four years. No, I did want to add something, I like teasing her. She and I, we’re almost the same age. We’re three months apart, which is very ironic, but we did write another book, which is kind of a corollary to this book, which was the story of her son who – it is called, The 100-Year Education.

So again, we’re taking that long-term perspective and applying it directly to family, and he was a great student at a great private school in Austin, and her and her husband decided, “You know what? Rather than send you to college to be a business major, why don’t you be a businessman?” And they helped him start a company when he was twenty-one years old. He never went to college, and now, five or six years later, he’s very, very successful.

The whole concept of the book is if you’re really thinking long-term, do you really need college? So it’s called, The 100-Year Education. I am not here to sell books, but I did want to tell you that part of the reason why we coauthored this book is that — we’re so passionate about this 100-Year Mindset.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That totally resonated with me, and I love that. I love how you applied it to education and thinking about family, and that’s just really powerful. What’s the one thing –

Teresa Kuhn: If I may add something to that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh, please go ahead, Teresa.

Teresa Kuhn: So we used the 100-Year Saving Solution to fund my son’s business. So you know it’s all part of the same conversation, and the 100-Year Education was when he was eighteen years old ready to go to Colorado State University to study entrepreneurship, it was like, “Wait-wait-wait, there are other options. You don’t have to go to the college route. If you want to be a doctor, a lawyer, or a CPA engineer, yeah, maybe.”

But look, we have money sitting that we set up for ourselves, for our son that was going to be used for college, we could do something different. You want to be an entrepreneur, we can use that money for entrepreneurship, and so his requirement was to do an apprenticeship for two years, and at the end of the two years, he was about twenty or twenty-one, then we took the money that was in reserve, in cash, in the saving solution to start the business and it’s going very, very well. Thank God and the product.

The product, who he is today as a man, as a businessman, what he knows, what he understands about business, you know you don’t learn academically, and the vision was, “Who do I want my son to be a hundred years from now? What opportunities do I want to give him today that will impact the trajectory of that path? Is sending him to college and spending 200, USD 250,000 on the college the best path for that?”

Or, “Hey, we can take that money, he can learn the business, and even if the business fails, he will have learned practical knowledge application on every aspect of the business since we were starting it from the ground floor.” So that’s what I would add to that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s very powerful. I love that. You two did just write the book. Obviously, you live this work, and this is your life’s mission, life’s work, and I’m glad you brought all that knowledge and wisdom to the book because now people like me can kind of share, and expand on it in our own ways and take it upon ourselves to build our own sort of version of the hundred-year strategy, so that’s powerful.

So, Rick and Teresa, it’s been amazing. It’s such a pleasure having you today. Thank you for sharing your stories and your experience, of course, with not only me but also the audience. The book is called, The 100-Year Savings Solution: How to Create the Financial Foundation for Yourself, Your Family, and Your Legacy. So besides checking out the book, where can people find you two?

Rick Sapio: T, you want to go?

Teresa Kuhn: Sure, teresakuhn.com.

Rick Sapio: For me, mutualcapitalalliance.com and what I focus on, I started my company thirty years ago, and I focus on giving private company owners liquidity. We sell private companies, and we have intellectual property around that whole process and so part of why Teresa and I got together is we help company owners liquidate and go through a really rigorous process but ultimately have success on the backend since everyone knows, most private company exits fail.

Teresa helps manage the money and manage those resources in an effective way post-transaction. So anyway, they can find me at mutualcapitalalliance.com and her at teresakuhn.com.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. Thank you two so much for joining me today, I appreciate it. Congratulations on your book and becoming a number-one bestseller, that’s so fantastic. I hope you guys can get to continue celebrating, and I hope to see you around for another book possibly. I feel like this 100-Year Strategy applies to everything in life. So again, thanks you two, I appreciate you.

Teresa Kuhn: You got that right, thank you so much. I appreciate the time today.

Rick Sapio: You’re welcome.

The post The 100-Year Savings Solution: Rick Sapio and Teresa Kuhn appeared first on Author Hour.

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What is success? We all have associations with the word, but the true definition is hard to pinpoint because it’s relative. The meaning isn’t universal, but the formula to get there is.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by author John Ply, who is here to talk about his new book called, You Can Be the Best: Life Lessons from The Butcher and The Business Man. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m super excited to have my friend John with me today. John just launched an amazing book, and he’s here with me to chat about it. I’m super excited to have you, John. Thanks for coming on the show.

John Ply: My pleasure.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, man, this is great. So the book is called, You Can Be the Best: Life Lessons from The Butcher and The Business Man. But before I get into the book because it is juicy, it is really good, well-written, parts of it I just didn’t want to put it down, but I have to sleep and get up early and all that good stuff so—

But other than that, before we get into the book, I want to give our listeners an idea of just who you are, your personal background perhaps. Maybe where you grew up, and maybe if there’s a person in your life or an experience in your life that led you down the path you are in now, I’d love to share that a little bit.

John Ply: Well, like many others, I guess you could say I’m one of those rags-to-riches stories that you hear about, and growing up in a very poor family and seeing what that life was like. I mean, funny, we didn’t feel poor probably because there was just so much love in our family, and my dad being a butcher, worked two jobs and brought home lots of meat, a benefit from being a meat cutter butcher.

But he was by far the first person to really hit me with an example. It took me years to put it all together, but he really was setting the example to do your best in anything that you did. And I took that lesson really through every single part of my life. It just kept going from one journey to another journey, to another journey throughout my life, where the message was, just do your best. There’s nothing else you can do.

Never give anything less than 100%. And that type of incentive just really changed my life from a little boy to where I am today.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful, man. I very much resonate with that story because I, too, had a very influential father who worked really hard, and he was an artist, and he taught me a ton about just life experiences and whether it was through action or mere reminders or simple quotes here and there. I love those people that come into our lives and really shape it long before we realized how much they shaped it.

Thank you for sharing that, I really appreciate it. Let’s dive into your book a little bit, John. Can you share a specific experience from your life that taught you the importance of persistence and resilience in achieving your success?

Persistence, Resilience, and PassionJohn Ply: Well, early on, athletics was the first thing that I really partook in and I was gifted to be a great athlete. And it led to a lot of accolades as being the best basketball player in my grade school and the quarterback on the football team, and it led to future success in high school.

So, athletics was the first thing that I just worked really hard to excel in. And then in eighth grade, I wanted to go to a private Catholic high school because all my other friends were going there, my basketball buddies were going there and my parents could not afford to send me to the high school. So I didn’t know what I was going to do, but a friend of mine suggested I come caddy and he said I could make good money, and so I went off and caddied.

Again, this idea of becoming the best you can in any endeavor, I took that through my first real paid job as a caddy and I was able to actually earn enough money to pay my way to high school, and my parents paid for my first semester to help me get started and I paid the rest of the way through my caddy income.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s amazing man, and what did being a caddy teach you about just the discipline because I mean, it’s not easy work necessarily but what did it teach you?

John Ply: It taught me several things. First of all, we got to be around many unique, different, yet typically successful people. So one of the first things it taught me was to aspire to maybe be like one of them. One of my regular caddies, amazing successful banker through his career, had a beautiful home, belonged to country clubs that we as caddies, learned about, and I wanted to be like him, obviously. I want a life like his.

We got to be around these people and we learned. I think we learned a lot of life lessons, we learned about working hard. The better you do as a caddy, the bigger the tip. So great lessons, life lessons. And it was hard, those are long days. I’d arrive at our club at 7:30 in the morning and I typically would not be back home ’til 8:00 at night throughout all of the summer months.

What made it a little harder was as I would be riding my bike to this club about five miles away, I would pass by a lot of friends who are out doing summer things. Playing games and what have you, and there I was, going to caddy. So I learned that go out and work hard and get what you want to achieve.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that, man, because it’s that early on learning to discipline yourself that really, I feel like for many people, it resonates that early on, put the pleasure just a little bit further in the distance so you can work at the thing that you were trying to get better at right now, and it all pays in dividends later, which is very powerful.

In your book, you emphasized the importance of pursuing one’s passion. However, that doesn’t come with ease. Can you share a time when you had to take a risk in order to pursue your own passion?

John Ply: Oh gosh, I share one of these stories in the book. When I got to college, and by the way, I did get to college by receiving a caddy scholarship, a full four-year scholarship at the Indiana University as a result of working hard as a caddy. But when I got to Indiana, it was my sophomore year, and my passion at that time was basketball. That was my life.

Basketball, basketball and I didn’t get a scholarship to college, at least nothing as good as the Chick Evans Scholarship. And of all schools that I went to, Indiana University was a superpower. And because basketball was my passion and it was still my passion, I decided I would take the leap and try to walk on to Indiana University’s basketball team.

So I spent my first year there getting in the best shape I could, practicing my game. Then my sophomore year, I went out for Indiana University. It was a risk. The likelihood is it wouldn’t pan out, but I would regret it the rest of my life if I at least didn’t try. So I went and did it, 37 of us tried out.

Every day for almost two weeks, they would eliminate various players, and finally the last day, I was still there and there was seven others and myself and unfortunately, they cut us all and ironically, that year they did go 32 and 1 and the next year, 33 and 0 national championship. My timing wasn’t the best to try to walk on one of the best basketball teams in history.

But you know what? I pursued my passion. I didn’t have to look back and say, “I didn’t try.” So it will stay with me forever that I did it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s so powerful. You discussed the importance of using all your tools to achieve success, and I think for young entrepreneurs, young people who are out there trying to chase those dreams, this is very powerful. Can you share an experience where you had to get creative in order to overcome a challenge or obstacle?

Getting CreativeJohn Ply: Are you talking about for in business or–?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, let’s talk about business. I mean specifically, young entrepreneurs today, it’s like sometimes you got to work with what you got, you know? I’m just curious to know. I’m sure that happened with you plenty of times, what’s one experience that stands out?

John Ply: The first one that really stands out where I had to pursue something that was, as I look back on it was, probably somewhat idiotic, but I went to work for a company and learned what is called the dry food blending and packaging business. It’s a form of contract manufacturing, and when I left that company, I decided the only thing I knew was that. So I decided I was going to start my own tiny little company.

Unfortunately again, my timing wasn’t great. I had to overcome something that was pretty much, you think, insurmountable. I went looking to borrow money to do this and the prime rate was 21%. I got thrown out of every bank I went to. Finally, I was losing time and opportunity because I had a client who was willing to go into business with me and had plenty of money.

So I had to come up with at least my half of the investment, and finally, my parents, I went to them and they loaned me the only $15,000 they had and gave me half my money. I finally went into another bank, the last bank and I just said, “I’m going to go and borrow a dollar, a hundred, whatever.” And this bank worked with my old company, and they knew me and I remember, they asked me, “How much you need?”

I said, “I need $15,000 to get my investment to total up to 30” They said, “Well, John” they asked me about my collateral, and I didn’t really have anything but a car, and they said, “Well, your collateral wouldn’t even cover our legal fees, but we’re going to give you this loan because we like you and think you’re going to do great.” And so, at two over prime, I borrowed at 23% interest to help launch my first company.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, so tell me more. What happened after that? So you got the money, you got the funding; what happens when you started this company?

John Ply: Oh well, it was hard. I figured to help this company succeed, I hired one helper and myself. We started—well, first, I had to go out and buy a few pieces of equipment, a forklift, a mixer, a sewing machine to sew up the bags after we filled up 50-pound bags with powder, and other small pieces and get a facility, locate one, and found this little place. And two months after I left my old company, I blended our first product.

I had planned on only paying myself $12,000 the first year to keep the company alive. It turns out, I had to pay myself $18,000 just to be able to pay our expenses at home. But pulled it off that first year, and every year thereafter we grew a little bit more, keep investing, buy a second blender, buy a packaging machine, and you just go little by little. So I overcame probably the toughest time in probably our financial history of our country. I don’t think interest rates ever got higher than they did when I was doing this in 1981.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: How remarkable. I love that one layer at a time. When I started my little T-shirt business up in Portland, I relate to these stories because that’s exactly right. I mean, it’s just like one little order at a time, one little machine at a time and you just slowly—it doesn’t even feel like you’re growing. It just feels like what you have to do in the moment and the sacrifices that you have to keep doing.

But eventually, you look back or one day you look back, and you have, “Wow, this thing has X amount of employees, and we’re doing this—” it’s just because you’ve had your head grinding it out, and I think that’s powerful. However, I think for me my biggest thing to move forward in my business, and stuff was really to go out and be involved in the community as much as I could, and I knew that that would come back in the form of work.

In the form of potentially being remembered to be the T-shirt guy. That for me was this idea of practicing kindness, and I know you talk about that in your book as well. Can you share a story of how kindness played a role in your own success, in your own businesses?

Kindness in BusinessJohn Ply: I learned from my previous employment that I learned, I guess it was a negative experience. The only company I worked at, he had the opposite philosophy. He thought you have to be tough and mean to be successful, and so I started using kindness from day one in my companies and never stopped using kindness.

And I am not talking just kindness to employees. My goal was to be this great employer as I could possibly be and treat everyone with respect and kindness, which I did, and it paid unbelievable dividends. But I also did that to help create business, new clients. I also showed kindness throughout not just individually, but throughout our company. We showed kindness to even all of our suppliers. And I found that being kind and generous in your business dealings, customers and suppliers, and kind and generous to your employees, that’s a powerful, powerful formula.

It paid dividends in business and of course, the greatest dividends of all with kindness come outside you, in your outside world. In the area of friendships, I am blessed with so many friends in the stage of my life, and I believe showing kindness to others is the foundation to achieving success in anything you do in life.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s very powerful force man; you’re right. It’s right up there, along with gratitude, right? It’s one of those things that the more you practice it, the benefits are exponential, and it sounds like it had a profound impact on yourself and of course, your business. Your book also talks about the importance of giving back to others. Can you talk a little bit about that? Can you share a story maybe of how you used your own success to make a positive impact in your community and in the world?

John Ply: Well, obviously, when you are fortunate enough to be successful in at least your business or career and you start to attain financial wealth, it’s amazing the various organizations, charities, what have you that you could help. We were taught at a very young age when my dad would take us to church, and even though he didn’t have much, he always had an envelope for church.

He always had a smaller envelope for us with a nickel or a dime, or a quarter. So we were being taught kindness and generosity, giving back and basically, giving back to your church. So as I became more successful, I started to realize that it doesn’t matter how much wealth you have. If you’re not doing something good with it, why work so hard to build it? You can do so much for others, and it doesn’t have to be dollars. It could be time.

In my retirement years, besides financial gifts or benefits to others, I’ve given a ton of my time to mentor younger people to help them in their life. So, giving back is, I think, really the truth of why we’re even here. It’s a form of just doing good. Giving back is a never-ending, you use the word job of anyone that is fortunate to achieve levels of success in their life.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s very powerful, man. I mean, I feel like the ideal of giving back is almost—I think it is the most essential component of really any part of life. I think beginning, middle, end, it’s something that you practice, like you said, whether it’s nickels or dimes, a couple of dollars or your time, your advice, your thoughts, and something like your book that you currently wrote, I think that’s a part of giving back to the community.

Because what is 10, 15, $20 let’s say, for something that can give you—that you’re investing in yourself? It’s a beautiful way to continue that effort of giving back. So kudos to you, man. What was your favorite part of pulling your book together? What would you say you learned from the book writing journey?

Favorite Part of Writing the Book

John Ply: Well, the first thing I learned is what a daunting task it is to write a book, okay? I mean, it’s, I think I was afraid for so long to do it, and you did talk about that in my book a little bit. Sometimes we don’t do things because we’re afraid it won’t work out, and I was faced with that a little bit on this idea of writing a book, which I had several people tell me when they hear my story, my father’s story.

They go, “Gosh, you should write a book. You should write a book.” Well, easier said than done. So pulling the book together, there is so many cool things along the way because it is a journey of ups and downs. Even the final path that the book took, we weren’t sure exactly where it was going to go until later on. We figured it out that I did a story, my story, my mentoring stories could use to inspire other people.

My dad being the extraordinary man that he was. The other reason for writing the book was to leave a legacy for him. And as people learned his story, they’ll know why he deserved it. Pulling the name together of the book, the titles, it was crazy experiences. Just so many wonderful little things and I had a fabulous writer who helped me along the way. The bottom line is, the journey was really amazing and we kept striving to really kind of live up to its title.

Let’s write the best possible book we can write. I think I achieve that with this wonderful book that I think can help a lot of people.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man, that’s amazing. John, I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show today. Thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences with me. I think it is one of those books that, like I said, it’s just hard to put down because there are so many amazing stories and literally, like you say, the lessons from your father, of course and how they shaped you as a business man, I just appreciate that so much.

The book is called, You Can Be the Best: Life Lessons from The Butcher and The Business Man. So besides checking out the book, where can people find you and connect with you, John?

John Ply: Oh boy, I haven’t really set up a lot of that stuff yet. I guess through johnply@scribemedia.com would be the first place, and hopefully I will have additional places for them to contact me with either through Instagram, Facebook, some of the social media locations.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I’m pretty sure you’re on LinkedIn too, and I think that’s where I’ll be reaching out to you. But other than that, this has been amazing, man. Thank you so much for coming on the show and really sharing about yourself and your book. It’s been great, and I can’t wait until this book gets out in the world and really creates the impact that you hope it makes.

John Ply: Thank you, and thanks for your time this morning.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely.

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Profit is your key to surviving. Without profit, you cannot maintain or grow your business. Without profit, you cannot serve your customers or provide benefits to your employees.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by authors Jason Tanner and Luke Hohmann, who are here to talk about their new book called, Software Profit Streams: A Guide to Designing a Sustainably Profitable Business. Let’s flip through it.

Hello friends, and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m Hussein and I’m here with my two friends, Jason and Luke, who are here to talk about their new book, Software Profit Streams. Welcome, you two. I appreciate you coming on the show.

Luke Hohmann: Thanks for having us.

Jason Tanner: Thank you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, this is great, man. I mean, we were just talking about it off-air but I loved how easy it was to just navigate through your book, it was beautifully designed. So good job on that but before we get into the book and really, the beef of it all, I want to kind of share with our audience a little bit of your personal background, perhaps where you’re from, maybe a person or an event that, shape the path that you’re on. Luke, we’ll start with you.

Luke Hohmann: Well, I’ll give two things because they’re kind of extreme. I grew up in North Tonawanda, New York, which is outside of Buffalo, which means I grew up in a lot of cold and a lot of snow. Now I live in Silicon Valley, and I moved to Silicon Valley at the start of the .bomb Internet hype in the way back in 1996. I like to say that once I moved here, my blood thinned and I love being warm and I loved being in Silicon Valley.

Jason Tanner: So I actually live now where I lived when I was in the end of elementary school, in the middle of middle school, and then we went off to Europe for about three years. I went to the International School of Brussels. I got to travel all over Europe for sports when I was in high school before coming back to finish school in New Jersey.

So from there, off to college, I was in the Marine Corps and then stumbled my way into tech by getting a job at the telecom company and then getting into software and product management.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Very cool. Well, how did your two paths cross?

Jason Tanner: I recorded a webinar with a software company. One of the early product management product companies hosted a weekly webinar and I got on the webinar and talked about what it was like to transition from a requirements-driven, document-driven product manager to an Agile product manager. Luke happened to watch that webinar and he called me out of the blue one day and said, “Hey, I’m going to come in, have you ever thought about consulting? Because your webinar is what our company does.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh wow, that’s really cool. That’s amazing, and then you guys started working together from that point on? How did that work out?

Luke Hohmann: Well, then Jason came on board as a contractor as part of our extended network, and the company evolved. It evolved in such a way that we really needed a new leader to run the company, and so I asked Jason to take over as CEO and come on board full-time. He said yes, and it’s been great ever since.

Cultivating Space and Accommodating for the Value Your Company BringsHussein Al-Baiaty: Wow, what an incredible journey. It sounds like not only are you two friends but also, you work together. I’m sure that relationship has had a few bumpy roads in business but what I love is how you two came together and created this book from all your knowledge and wisdom, especially around software. I mean, I think that’s one world not everyone knows deeply of but I feel like it is our world today. It’s everything.

Can you share a story of a time when you sort of had this big idea that doing what you’re doing matters to the tech industry in a way and how to make a big impact on the profitability of your business? What did you learn sort of from that growth experience that you share in your book?

Luke Hohmann: One of the things that Jason and I are both known for is our leadership in the Agile software development community, which is a movement that started in the early 2000s as a different way to write software or to generate systems. Over the last 20 years, that movement has blossomed and evolved in some really wonderful ways, and we see higher quality, more useable, and more effective software because of Agile practices.

The challenge is that the Agile community and software developers were starting to over-rotate — you would hear people talk about, “Let’s deliver value,” and they were not quantifying value and they were not putting a number on that value, so they weren’t able to price their offerings in a way that creates sustainable businesses.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s really interesting. So what does your company then do to go help create that profitability impact? I know you talk about the importance of understanding and harmonizing like this monetization. Can you give an example of how applied systems sort of grows in the space?

Jason Tanner: So in Applied Frameworks, we really use the techniques that we wrote about in the book to help our clients actually work through the canvass that we designed and described in the book, starting with understanding customer benefits, and once you understand benefits, you can more accurately align your solution and how you’ll actually exchange the value you’re delivering with the product for money based on rationalizing the price across different market segments.

That’s one untapped opportunity for a lot of companies, that it’s all one price for every segment, which tends to leave money on the table. There are some segments that will pay more because they’re going to get more value from additional benefits and other segments may not be willing to pay the same price or are seeking a lower price because they only need a subset of the benefit. So walking through the entire canvas actually unlocks a lot of opportunities for our clients to identify those opportunities that they can pursue.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s really powerful. How could a small business that may have a limited resource tank apply the profit stream canvas to their pricing and licensing choices? Are there any tips or strategies that you can share for maximizing this profitability in that kind of scenario?

Luke Hohmann: Yeah, the small business and the large business are following the same process. There are some differences in how the framework and the canvas is applied. What’s curious about Applied Frameworks is our customer base does span tiny companies that are in startup mode to some of the largest companies in the world but all of them have one thing in common.

They have to put a price on the software assets that they’re creating, and the process that Jason described where you’re starting with an understanding of how you’re providing value and who you’re providing that value for and quantifying it, putting a number on it is the same whether you’re a startup or you’re a large company. One thing that we find that startups tend to discount is the intangible value of their offerings.

So when you think about a product, there’s both tangible features. Like if I’m getting a gaming console, my tangible features would be, “How much memory does it have or how fast does it render the games?” but there’s also the intangible qualities of, “What games can I play and are those games fun?”

And we find that small companies tend to discount the intangible benefits that they bring to the customers they’re serving and by understanding all elements of value, you can create a superior price.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s really powerful and of course, increase your profitability once you fully understand the packaged deal you’re presenting. Man, I remember when I was young and graphic designing, I would — I was so shy of just charging what I thought was fair because, [I] not only wanted the client, of course, and all those kinds of things but I didn’t value how much —

I would take hours sometimes just sketching up concepts that of course, the client may or may not see just sketching, but I didn’t weave that into what I charged, and I always felt like I was getting less than what I put into the effort. Obviously, this is on a very micro scale, but I can see how this idea could apply as you scale a business and that look, you got to recognize all the energy you’re spending around this product and what that value is really at as opposed to where you think it should be.

That’s really powerful. Can you speak to the importance of long-term relationships, especially with customers, suppliers, regulatory agencies, and achieving that sustained profitability? How can — especially now, I mean, with everything going on post-pandemic — how can businesses cultivate and maintain these relationships?

Jason Tanner: We described that as one of the applications of the profit stream canvas in the book in terms of an existing product and how to continually add value, how to think about price changes as the value increases, as additional features and benefits are added to the product so that the experience is so great that customers want to continue using the product.

They’re getting more and more value, and as their needs change, we identify those ongoing benefits to add more capabilities so that we can evolve the product with the customer’s journey, Part of that, to your point, is the need for the organizations that are building these software-enabled solutions to actually think through the alignment of their business model with their license agreements and ensuring that they have the appropriate safeguards in place to ensure compliance with their agreement.

So for example, if the business model is built around a per-user model for the price that I have a way for the software to actually monitor the number of users to ensure that the customer’s actually paying for the number of users that they have consuming the product. So that’s partly the business model and the thinking of the alignment of licensing and compliance but it also requires the producer of the product to actually ensure that the architecture could support that.

There’s a series of choices within the system represented by the canvas that enable all those decisions to interlink and really ensure that there’s an alignment across the product.

Luke Hohmann: That notion spans the different kinds of businesses that are out there. So when Jason was talking and he was taking about the nature of the relationship, that license agreement or those relationships occur over time. In the consumer space, we often think of a shorter time relationship.

But in the business space, you can find that those agreements span five, 10, 20 years, and so those relationships as embodied in that license agreement are including, are inclusive of the idea the product is evolving over time but the relationship is set up to be very stable over that period of time because it benefits both the producer and the consumer.

The businesses that are transacting in that manner, they know that they have a relationship so they can really work together, quite collaboratively in many cases, to ensure that the consumer — in this case, the business — that’s acquiring the software is getting what they need and you can see this in business software.

Imagine, for example, a financial system that helps a business manage its finances or a marketing CRM solution that is helping the company manage their customers or manage their customer relationships, these are all mission-critical to the business and those agreements can span many, many years.

Profitable Solutions For Long-Term ImpactHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful, man, just understanding the importance of just maintaining relationships just with colleagues and people around you and how impactful it is to maintain relationships in business culture and how these businesses and suppliers really — I mean, they’re the backbone of what we do.

I used to own a little print shop up in Portland, you know? A T-shirt print shop. I remember relying heavily on my T-shirt suppliers and every bit of information I can get from them, all those good things, and maintaining that relationship. They were really cool in like bringing me up once or twice a year to just learn about new products and new things.

I just felt sort of loyal to working with them, and it’s just so powerful when you just exercise one’s humanity with the people that you work with, and the vendors and of course, the suppliers, it’s so powerful.

What advice do you give to software-enabled startups looking to create profitable solutions with long-term impact? What are some common pitfalls to avoid, and what are the benefits of following the strategies outlined in your book?

Luke Hohmann: To think of things as static and the annotate to that is to realize that a startup if they’re successful is going up the solution market life cycle. So I’m developing my offering, I launch it, my early adopters start using it, I get a little success, I move on to my early adopters, my early majority, my late majority, and as I’m going up that curve, I continue to provide more value.

But as that solution is evolving, my pricing strategy, my pricing numbers, my pricing metrics, my license agreements, all of those things are also evolving, and one the real challenges that we do see in startups is they often fail to raise their prices in a reasonable manner. We worked with one software company earlier this year, they were a small company, and they hadn’t raised their pricing from the moment they had launched their product, and it was now a two-year-old company.

So for two years, they were growing and providing more value, and they had never raised their pricing or adjusting their prices. Larger companies have learned that as they improved their solution, they’re going to adjust their packaging and they’re going to adjust their pricing. That is a lesson that smaller companies often forget or never adopt and that can be seriously harmful to that small company.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful, and I deeply resonate with that with my small company back in 2010. For three years, I didn’t raise my prices on the printing, man. It was because I was just trying to gain business, and it was detrimental because the moment I needed to, I lost a lot of business, and I knew why. Jason, do you have anything to add to Luke’s statement or a bit of conversation?

Jason Tanner: The one that I have is avoid the trap of copying what everyone else is doing. The most common webpage you’ll see for a software company is three different price levels, and it’s good-better-best without any thought behind who is actually the target customer segment for each of those offerings and the thought process behind that is not necessarily need to be three levels. It may be four levels, and it may actually be a completely different product configuration that’s going to lead to the highest profitability and sustainability for the product. So when we think through that structure of how we’re going to actually go to market and advertise and promote and talk about the product when we treat our customers differently based on who they are and what segment they fall into, we actually can offer more direct solutions at different price points that are actually better for the customer and better for the provider.

That is the one pitfall that I see a lot of startups fall into is, “We’ve got to have good-better-best. We’re going to have three different price levels and we’re just going to describe them as a collection of features,” and as you go up the levels, you’re going to get a different collection of features. It’s really not a whole lot of thought put into what that means to the buyer and the buyers are different.

Going back to what you said, we think of them as people who have needs, who have problems to be solved, our software-enabled solutions means different things to different people. Maybe the same product with a different configuration but it is offered at a different price for a reason. So it is not 59-79-99. It’s actually probably some different strategy and different series of price structures that would actually benefit everyone so much more dramatically.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Even if it costs more, it is more tailored to that experience or that pain point, it’s that much more worth it. So powerful. I love that.

Luke Hohmann: Well, keep in mind that costing more can be a valid strategy. One of the strategies in the book and when we talk about taking a step back, people just put a number on a price, and they don’t have a strategy. Well, there is actually a number of strategies that are thoughtful and inform many other choices. So, a particular pricing strategy that we talk about in the book is a premium pricing strategy.

It’s kind of the pricing strategy, if you imagine, in the luxury car market. Mercedes starts with — it’s an expensive car. Ferrari, Maserati, Bugatti, we start with, “We make expensive cars, do you want to buy one?” and part of the value, going back to that notion of where value becomes a part of the equation is, this is an intangible value. I am purchasing something that is exclusive, and the value is I get to show off my wealth.

Now, some people care about showing off their wealth, and some people don’t, but for the people who care about showing off their wealth, buying a premium offering just like a gamer who brags about buying Alienware computers, which are some of the most expensive computers and some of the highest performance computers but nonetheless, they’re super expensive. They love to brag about how much money they spent on their rack.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful and in that perception, there is either a ton of value depending on where you place that value and the benefits package. I think that’s really powerful how you guys display those and talking about the book, I know like I said we talked about a little earlier, man, I fell in love with how your book came together with the designs, the graphics, the whole thing.

Honestly, I’ve flipped through the first couple of pages I was like, “Oh, this is a cool beginning to a book like how they laid this out. It is very graphically appealing,” and then I kept scrolling, and I’m like, “Oh wait, this is the whole book.” So I love that because it just, I don’t know, it definitely spoke to my design aesthetic and design appeal, but I know it was a journey because, again, it is not something we normally do at Scribe.

Can you guys talk about, maybe, what was your favorite part about pulling this book together? I know you guys talked about sketching this thing basically by hand in the beginning but what did you learn from this journey of just putting this book together? Luke, we’ll start with you.

Luke Hohmann: We had a great time in putting this book together — and we knew that we had to be intense because Jason and I felt and we were early on the curve but we actually sat down and talked about when we wanted this book done and we picked the early second quarter of this year because we felt that the macro-economic trends were such that we could be heading into a recession.

Once we agreed that we felt there could be some significant macro-economic environmental needs for a book like this, we said, “Well, how are we going to get this done?” I think for me personally, the favorite part of writing the book was [that] we did writer retreats, where Jason and I would fly to a city, get an Airbnb home or a Vrbo home and we would lock ourselves up behind a door in a home and we would sit down and write from about seven in the morning until about 10 at night.

We would do that several times, and it accelerated the production of the book tremendously. It enabled us to really explore visually “how do we want the book to lay out”, “how do we want the book to feel to the reader”, and “how do we honor” — and I’m so glad you said that the book is beautiful because we actually said we don’t want to write just a content book. We want to write a beautiful book, one that is accessible and rich, and deep, and we’re very proud of what we’ve created that way.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love it, man. I want to interject here, but I want to hear what Jason has to say because, man, it is — I felt like you guys did such a good job of just making the whole thing like an art piece, but that’s just my personal perspective. We’ll get into that later, but Jason, what do you think?

Jason Tanner: The literature that you’ll find that is somewhat related to this topic, you’ll find a lot of books about product management. You will find a lot of books about pricing; however, there is not a whole lot that you’ll find that really is specific to what we wrote about, which was software-enabled solutions and pricing and licensing and figuring out the business model, really focused on software.

We start with, or I should say, I started by writing in Word and it was hard. It would have wound up being another textbook similar to what exists in the marketplace. So the creativity that we unlocked by writing, drawing, and sketching really, I think, was the best part about this. The interaction that Luke and I had and with setting our design, it was great. When we were in- person in California at one point, we were writing a page and handing it directly to [Fed-A 0:23:15.3] and 30 minutes later, we had this beautiful layout.

It was fantastic to experience that type of collaboration to produce something that, like Luke said, is actually usable, and you don’t need to read through all at once. You can grab the pricing section if you are dealing with a pricing problem. Just thinking that went into [it] and [the] discussions that we had about what are we really trying to describe and how can we model it in a way that’s useful, follows a logical progression I think is what would really be most valuable to the reader.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. It’s funny hearing you guys talk about this — not really funny but I just see the correlation of how what you talk about in the book in a lot of ways you apply to how you built this book in and of itself, right? Just the philosophies are just — they cross paths, and I just kind of enjoyed that from a distance. I get to see a lot of books; I get to read a lot of people and meet a lot of amazing people like yourselves.

The more people take care in how they approach putting a book out is really cool. It is a process; it’s a love-hate relationship at first. It goes through its phases, you know it’s a journey. There’s times where we hate it and there’s times where we just love it, but I think when it all comes together, the hard work, like you said, the collaboration aspect, the idea is really working towards like in a way like not just a canvass masterpiece.

But just something that really helps the reader become a better version of themselves or approach their work a little differently. So that brings to my last question, you know, after a reader goes through your book and experiences what I got to experience, what do you hope they feel after putting it down? Jason, we’ll start with you.

Jason Tanner: I hope they feel really confident in the decisions that they need to make to create a successful software product. In a way, some of the writing I felt like I was writing to myself 15 years ago because there’s some things where I was fumbling in the dark trying to figure things out as a product manager who is new to the job, and I had to deal with a lot of vexing problems and really the feeling of confidence and more skill and capability in doing the job really well and to really create a long-lasting, sustainable solution.

I mean, ultimately that’s our objective is to support all the people out there that are doing great work, and we want to make them feel a lot better about what they’re doing in their roles because they have all the tools that they need really to focus and be successful.

Luke Hohmann: Well, it’s funny, I actually thought the same word, and I think that speaks to the fact that that word, confidence, was something that Jason and I would talk about repeatedly when we were writing the book. How do we have someone who in a sense — Jason and I are designers and we’re designing an experience that produces a business result for someone. So what was the single word?

And many times, the word that we were after was confidence, and the reason the book has such a focus on the visual appeal or the graphic element was because we wanted them to also feel that they could make these decisions quickly. Some of the the classic books on pricing and licensing, it will take you two months to read the book, process, and understand what the author was trying to say, and you’re like, “Okay, what do they really mean?”

Where in our book, we at times even tested by timing people saying, “Look, how quickly can you read this section in such a way that you can understand it?” and people would say, “Yeah, I read it in half an hour, and I got it.” The pictures and the words together helped, and so it’s not confidence, it is also moving with speed because sometimes these product managers and these business leaders have very little time to make decisions about their pricing and licensing models.

So you need to move with speed and confidence, and we wanted our book to support them in that process.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful. I love that because it cuts through right through the noise, man. It’s so powerful and I am glad you brought it full circle for me. Jason and Luke, it’s been an absolute pleasure just having you on the show. Of course, sharing your experiences and stories and obviously, the width of your wisdom, which I appreciate so much. The book is called Software Profit Streams: A Guide to Designing a Sustainably Profitable Business.

Besides checking out the book, where can people find you two and connect with you and maybe ask questions or you know, hit you up after reading the book?

Jason Tanner: We’re almost on LinkedIn daily, so you look me up on LinkedIn and appliedframeworks.com and profit-streams.com.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Great. Well, thank you two again. Congratulations on your book launch, I’m sure it will do so much good out in the world. So thanks again.

Jason Tanner: Thank you.

Luke Hohmann: Thank you.

The post Software Profit Streams: Jason Tanner & Luke Hohmann appeared first on Author Hour.

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My next guest invites you to explore HR leadership centered around curiosity and grit and not the standard “been there and done that” playbooks from best practices.

Welcome to the Author Hour podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by Dr. Susan Chen, who is here to talk about her new book, The Death of Best Practices: Reimagining HR through Cultivating a Growth Mindset. Let’s flip through it.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m Hussein and I’m here with my friend, Dr. Susan Chen. Susan, how’s it going today?

Susan Chen: It’s a lovely sunny day in Singapore. So I’m feeling great and can’t wait to chat with you about the book.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much. Thank you so much for joining me. I’m really excited. I got the chance to go through your book here in the last few days, and man, I got to tell you, it’s one of those books that’s kind of easy to read, easy to pick up, even though I’m not in the HR world, you kind of gave me a scope of what it is like to work in that world and that’s kind of been your work.

But before we get into the book and your work and all that good stuff, I want to tell our audience a little bit about who you are, where you grew up, and what got you into this line of work. Was it someone that inspired you or an event that made your route go this way?

Susan Chen: Great question. Well, maybe I’ll start with a little bit about my background. So well, I’m Susan. I was born in Taiwan, so I speak fluent Mandarin but I moved to New Zealand when I was ten. So for those out there listening to me wondering about my accent, that’s where — New Zealand, a bit of a mixture. Then I was in New Zealand, where I have most of my education, and then from New Zealand, I went to London first, I cannot forget that.

I’m in London doing my master’s degree, working, and then from London to Norway when I did my Ph.D., and I’m also working. Then from Norway to Singapore, where I currently am. Although between now and the not-so-distant past, I also took an en route to Jakarta for about four years before coming back to Singapore. So, been sort of living around the world a little bit.

But to cut back to your question about what got me into HR, I don’t want to say that it was accidental. I do see there quite a lot of my fellow HR professionals that have come into this world by accident because it has evolved so much as a profession. For me, it was probably more initiated by growing up in New Zealand, which is a small country, quite far away from the world; I knew I wanted to experience the world outside New Zealand.

I knew what excites me, interests me is some combination of learning, teaching, psychology, and sort of legal. At the time as a young, sixteen-year-old, I remember going through my options, I go, “Ooh, I would like to be a lawyer. Ooh, I will love to be a teacher, ooh, I will like to be a psychologist.” Then I realized, all these professions actually abound by sort of geographical licensing.

You can be a certified or a registered psychologist in New Zealand, for example, but that wouldn’t allow you to practice in America or in Europe without going through a whole new set of learning paths, and I kind of go, “Okay, let’s take a step back. What really excites me?” What I realized is, I just enjoy learning about people but not necessarily just as individuals, but the power of collective.

The power of people within organizations understand organizational impact within society and I was in HR before it was called HR. So now I’m telling people my age, so don’t count on that, but I started when it was more like organizational psychology, organizational studies, and that’s where I sort of started diving a bit deeper academically into the world of HR.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. I mean, think about all these paths that have to sort of weave together to kind of land in a place where you can sort of practice these things that you’ve been fascinated by growing up. I know for me, it was a trend for me too. I went into architecture, I went into business, and tried multiple things because so many things interested me.

I resonated with that when you brought it together and you’re like, “Oh, this is a place where I can actually invite all of these parts of me to work together to solve a problem,” and there’s no better feeling than that. I think for me, it’s like, that moment in time is where you realize, you are kind of going down river, you know?

In a way, where you’re still challenged and all, but it’s just like, you love what you do. I just love that and I wanted to make sure that we embed that in this episode because that’s a big part of who you are as a leader. I love how you opened up your book with a story around technology, how we can take that in HR and the intersection of the work that you’ve been doing.

But really, that an app isn’t going to help the HR department. We need more than an app and I just love that because you just take us a little bit further. Can you kind of talk to us a little bit about the intersection of HR, technology, leadership, where you found yourself, and why you wanted to write this book?

Susan Chen: Great question because you know, I almost feel like writing a book, especially as we saw in our last few months the growing and all the blowing up of AI technology be[ing] able to break in the way that people feel like it surpasses a lot of the human touch. I think people might feel like writing a book is pretty old school now, right?

And I do think that the more technology takes over our day-to-day, the deeper we need to look into our human practice and be more connected with who we are as human beings and the sort of connection of individuals as humans. What I mean by this is that we can never ignore technology, right?

So we’re not going to see that, the apps out there aren’t helpful with the work that we do either as HR professionals or as leaders or as individuals but I think we recognize not everything is right for everyone. So how do we connect with teams and leaders, and individuals at the human level and understand what is needed for the scenario for that time, for that problem space that we are solving? I think that is what I’m really advocating for.

Growth Mindset, Curiosity, and GritHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s so powerful because I think we’re definitely at a time where I feel like every industry needs to look at a way to reform, and of course, HR is one of those places that, especially in the last few years, is an immense thing to take on, you know? It’s a heavy lift and so your work is very [instrumental]. Can you share a story of a time when you personally experienced the benefits of having a growth mindset in your work as an HR leader?

Susan Chen: You know — and if I go back to thinking about growth mindset, what does that mean? Because I find sometimes people do say, “Oh, growth mindset, it’s so abstract,” right? It feels like, is it something that you’re born with? Is it so difficult to channel? One thing that we want to do, at least in this book, is almost sort of unmask this concept of growth mindset by being really clear, what are those capabilities?

So I talk about activating curiosity and also practicing grit, being those two key components of bringing growth mindset together. I think I have both being the — hopefully — the person who practices sort of activating that and really channel into my own growth mindset but also, be able to experience growth mindset and almost intentionally look[ing] for it in my work and in my teams, I see that really having a drastic impact in our work or in our personal lives.

If I start with maybe a more personal story around growth mindset, it’s actually — let me tell you about this book. What you see of this version of the book is actually the third book I wrote. So I actually wrote two other versions where I think it wasn’t really conveying the growth mindset that I was actually talking about because we’re actually talking about not having a single solution to a scenario.

So the book actually took a few different formats, and one of them was actually me sharing my experience working in Southeast Asia, emerging markets, and how we could approach emerging market problem solving differently to what’s happening in a more mature market. As I [wrote], I realized I was almost talking in a way that as if there’s a best practice or the way to do certain things in an emerging market, which is absolutely against, I think, the philosophy of the book and how do we think about problem-solving and sort of connecting really deeper into the human and collective needs.

That’s where I took a step back. I stopped and I said literally, to a certain extent, rewrote the book and I think growth mindset is — that’s very much about practicing grit. So if you think writing one book is hard, this is actually probably an outcome of writing three books but pushing it through, it was four years. I think I wrote a little bit of that in my book as well. It took four years but I think that was the right thing to do and by being curious, by going, “Okay, what does continue changing in our environment?” and making sure that it took me four years and then in this time, the world has changed actually a lot. We’ve gone through a pandemic; we saw the different sets of movement with even technology and different industries, ups and downs of the startup world, which I have been operating in a very long time.

So definitely, I think personally, growth mindset is very much through this kind of curiosity and grit and professionally, I also look for these individuals and teams that really show through their growth mindset and the grit and curiosity through whether it’s working together in the interview process and a lot of time, I see a project that was stuck for quite some time.

Things are not moving forward. By activating that curiosity, asking these questions; how can we do things differently, are typically how we can unblock some of these challenges and roadblocks for projects and move forward, maybe in a direction that wasn’t originally thought as the planned approach but is the right way forward that gets us across the line in terms of getting that organizational outcome we’re looking for.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s so deep. I mean, the work is so interconnected. Can you give an example of how — you talk a lot about this in your book — how curiosity and grit have played a role in your own sort of problem-solving approach, as an HR practitioner?

Susan Chen: I think a lot of it, if I want to sort of summarize it, is about asking questions, right? How do we ask questions to yourself or the teams that you’re mentoring, or the leaders you’re partnering with? So as you could see in the book, we actually try to practice this at the end of the different parts and chapters. You have reflective inquiry practices and this is actually a great way to activate that curiosity and grit, right? Because curiosity is by asking the question.

And practicing grit sometimes is realizing the answer, actually, the very honest answer may be isn’t as connected to you or what you’re hoping to achieve, right? So for example, I talk about, I ask one question and I have had some – a few feedback from readers say, “Wow, I never sort of sat down and ask myself these questions. How do you speak about best practices?” Right? Like how do you do it on your day-to-day because sometimes, we may not be as intentional and thoughtful about the way we talk about it, especially as leaders, right?

For those senior leaders out there, do you go and ask your team, “What’s the best practice of this? Can you show me so we can use that as a baseline for solving problems?” Do we think about how we use it, right?” And how do you feel about it? So something we — again, that curiosity goes deeper than just about how do you do something but how did that make you feel, how does that make your team feel about it?

I think these are sort of through the book, we really want to connect this, not just by this concept of asking questions, and we’re going to be asking you a few questions that hopefully get you to reflect and think about it as well and part of the curiosity, for example, is about deep work.

We’ll get you to reflect on, “When was the last time you did? Describe that, what were you working on? How does that make you feel?” Through the book, we wanted to show you that curiosity action by asking questions. So I think professionally, a lot of time is for me as a leader not to be in sort of either meetings or interactions where I kind of be like, “I have all the answers.”

I will actually be as open and say, “I’m not going to let my assumption bind you or myself, so let me just ask a question,” and I think, personally and professionally, that really has been helpful as I continue to develop as an HR professional and also as a leader.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So important. I love the curiosity approach because it is really about, yeah if you’re feeling good working on this project, but now we’re working on this project that’s way out of left field and you are not feeling good, I think that lack of communication then the stumbling starts to happen and then spiral downwards. But opening up that communication curiosity, that’s what can really help people stay attracted and I just love that.

In your opinion, what are the most important steps, though, that an HR leader can take to cultivate a growth mindset culture within their organization?

Creating a Culture of GrowthSusan Chen: Great, great question. I think again, if we think about growth mindset really as part of a broader learning culture, if we talk about it within an organizational setting, is how do you lead by example but also build an ecosystem within the organization that allows growth mindset to foster, right? It is building a growth mindset culture and again, there is something about asking questions as an HR professional.

Be a coach to your team and to your leader and be mindful of what you say, right? So if you see sort of the third part of what we really talk about in HR growth and mindset framework that other else you think about building that as an HR professional — and again, reimagine what is HR role in organizational learning not from a content perspective but activating curiosity perspective because a lot of time, organizational learning takes a little bit more programming and say, “This is all the things you need to learn” rather than, “How do we build a culture of learning?”

I think HR function actually takes a critical role in rethinking about that role in the organization and also organizational learning and again is then a second part of that activating that growth mindset is through that leadership of self, your partners, and the team and then we go a little bit deeper talking about embracing authenticity. How do we empower sort of kind of growth mindset, so vulnerability, which is allowing people to make mistakes, right?

Part of that curiosity, part of that grid is learning from the mistakes, having a safe space to make those mistakes as well, which for example, it can look really practical. I work with my team where they outline monthly basis, and everyone shares. We don’t frame it like sharing your mistake but we do frame it like, “Share a learning that has really captivated your attention and your bend with the last month.”

They typically share a story that may be something that didn’t go so well and they have learned to do things differently. So how do you build this kind of open conversation with your team, also with the broader organization? That is kind of like the starting point of building that growth mindset. Again, as I continue to go through, there is building a curious learning culture, becoming a T-shape expert, which we’ll dive a bit deeper in the book as well, right?

T-shape is really about being sort of understanding generally across the board what you do but having that deep expertise that anchors some of your thinking, your curiosity, and your growth because we do see – part of curiosity, I talk a little bit more in the book. They say it’s not just because you are excited to learn about a thousand things, a world that will make you curious.

It is actually how you gravitate and go deeper into some points of curiosity and make you an expert because I think with curiosity, that doesn’t have the expertise to practice, it just becomes a distraction actually. So having the ability to really captivate, are you being curious right now or are you actually being distracted? And then of course, at the end of the day is practicing that.

Being that advocate, being that coach, which will be really important, that holistically become that growth mindset or growth-minded HR professional.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That is so powerful, you know? Just the whole idea of not just how curiosity just leads the way but this idea of creating space that we need to make mistakes, to be able to fail forward and to learn from that and you know, in positions where that is it’s okay to make a mistake but what else are we not doing to you know, whether are we not training you? Are we not providing the right tools?

All these things, it’s a two-way street as opposed to it’s always your employee’s fault, right? That’s huge, I think that mindset and that culture really allow for growth. It allows me to want to come to work and try my best and not be scared to. So I love those ideas and how you sort of woven them together; it’s very powerful. This is your third book and I guess, [in] a lot of ways third iteration.

As you get deeper into this work you realize how much deeper we can go, right? This idea of not having distractions, I love that so much. It’s all about getting curious about the projects you’re working, and going deeper into the project. Curiosity and creativity kind of obviously go hand-in-hand, you know? But yes, if I’m over here doing X, and then I’m looking over here while Z and Y are doing their thing, then yeah, I want to do that.

Yes, it is pulling me away, there are distractions but awareness is huge and I just love that. So what’s been your favorite part of pulling this specific book together, and what did you learn from that journey?

Susan Chen: Well, I think my favorite part of writing this book is actually having those critical conversations with myself, a self-discovery process of not just about how I’m thinking about HR as a professional but when you started this conversation, you talk about making easy to read. That was actually something I have to learn to do because having a Ph.D., I have a tendency and you have the feedback of maybe writing a little bit too academic, right?

In a way that is not always as interesting to read, and that was a big learning, to remember that it is your voice, that is your thoughts but there’s also your audience and audience from the sense that is not about, “Oh my god, you want to be the number one bestselling author.” What you do want, though, is to write in a way that even if one person reads it but they read it and they go, “Wow, I’m going to activate my own curiosity and practice growth because I do want to continue to channel my own growth mindset.”

That is what I want to do, I want the HR professionals, the leadership, to read it and say, “I get it. I connect with these,” and I think one this is also understanding these are not rocket science concepts, right? It is not a concept that no one has ever heard before but it’s how you connect that together meaningfully within the context of the HR profession, I think it was something that I wanted to do and worked really hard towards, and as I started writing and go deeper, the version of the book I realized, “Wow, this is a lot harder than I first imagined.”

I almost feel like this is harder than a Ph.D. Because in Ph.D., there is a clear research framework, and you write in a way that is it’s more geared towards that academic publishing, right? So that was a whole new ballgame of writing to reconnect with myself and then making sure that connects with the future audience or the audience that I am writing for.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s amazing. As I was reading it, what I mean by like it was easier to read is that you wove such good stories, right? It made me want to keep flipping through it and I think with writing – like you said, it’s a very personal thing. So you are kind of always in your thoughts and trying to pull out the things that you believe the reader would really receive well.

I think for me, I like all different types of topics. I mean, I am a book fiend. So for me, it’s all about like where do I relate to this, right? Where have I experienced this? And honestly, across the board, if we ask ourselves whether it be financial books or real estate or anything, you just ask, “Where am I in this book?” And I think the ones that connect with the most are the ones that are speaking directly to me and come on, oh my god, I can’t tell you the amount of HR madness I went through as a young man, right?

From “Tuck your shirt in” to “You’re late a minute” to “Put your phone away,” it’s very disciplinary, right? It feels like I’m in school, and when I finally realized I wanted to open my own business because I didn’t want to deal with that anymore and it is one of those journeys that you talk about that most people experience in some way, or shape or form and I think it’s really powerful that you sort of led that space in HR.

Congratulations because writing a book is no easy feat, and being on your third one is certainly no easy feat because it doesn’t get easier. I don’t care what anybody says, the books get harder, so congratulations. Now, when your readers pick up your book and begin to read through it and, hopefully, start absorbing this content, what do you hope they feel after putting it down?

Susan Chen: Ah, good question. I think I want them to feel – I think one is, to your point, connect to some of the self-discovery through some of the questions that we walk through in the book. Just for easy reading, we have the collection of all the questions in the appendix for easy referral because we do think that is a question you should continue to ask yourself at different times and different spaces, and maybe you were stuck on a project, you don’t know how to approach something, come back to these questions and ask yourself these things.

So I hope that is a book that you want to pick up again in the future but maybe not to read it end to end, right? It’s to say, “Ah, I remember that chapter talking about deep learning. Let me go back,” just read a short chapter but go back to those reflective questions. Go back to some of those and think about it. So I want them to walk away thinking, “This is the beginning.” This has opened a way of thinking that is just a starting point as a mindset shift that will hopefully allow people to go deeper and further figure out what does that mean for them, right?

The book provides some sort of baseline framework for you to be able to articulate, think about it, practice it, but again, there is no best way, right? For me, what deep learning means for me will look very different to you, Hussein, and then so it is about how do you then ask the question about what does the work mean to you, how would you practice that, and then continue with that consistent practice is what I would love people to find this as a journey that they can then continue to go on by themselves. So that’s what I would love for the readers to be able to get from it and feel.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Susan, it’s been my pleasure today. I honestly have learned so much. I feel like HR is one of those things that people don’t think about too much, but let’s be honest, HR world think about it a lot because it is their world, and I feel like if you work for an awesome company and you have awesome culture, it’s probably because you have a good HR department, a group leader that’s leading the company in a way that really drives not only results of course but you know, company health and wellbeing.

I think it’s so much further than the profits and the PNLs and all those kinds of things but I feel like the well-being of a company is really a reflection of the people that work there, and obviously, if that’s great, then all these other components sort of take care of themselves and you’re obviously a driver in that space and I am very grateful to have not only met you today but just really dive into your work and your book.

So it’s been my absolute pleasure. Thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences. The book is titled, The Death of Best Practices: Reimagining HR through Cultivating a Growth Mindset. So besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Susan?

Susan Chen: Being an HR professional, I’m definitely on LinkedIn. So please search my name, you’ll find me there. I’d love to be connected, I’d love to hear about what you think about the book. You will also be able to find me and my partner in cogrow.company, which we are a boutique HR consultancy that looks and think about HR as a function that transforms as well as thinking about the future of work.

So hit us up, we’ll love to chat with you and tell me what’s keeping you up at night, and then let’s work on how we can potentially collaborate and transform the function together.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. Well, thank you, Susan. I appreciate you, it’s been an honor having you on the show today. Thanks again and congratulations.

Susan Chen: Thank you very much for having me.

The post The Death of Best Practices: Susan P. Chen, Ph.D appeared first on Author Hour.

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Patterns rule everything around us but we are often unaware of our most prevalent ones. When we are conscious of our patterns, we usually feel incapable of changing them even when we know they aren’t helping us. We want to upgrade our lives to have more success, wealth, purpose, and happiness but something is holding us back.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by third-time author and number-one bestseller, Dr. Tracy Thomas, who is here to talk about her new book called, The PatternShift: Transform Your Reality through Intentionality. Let’s flip through it.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Author Hour. I am here with the special Dr. T. Thomas. That’s Tracy Thomas for those of you who don’t know. She’s here celebrating her new book launch, The PatternShift. I’m super excited. Dr. T, welcome to the show.

Dr. Tracy Thomas: Hello everyone, great to be here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I’m super excited to have you because flipping through your book, so many of your stories deeply resonated with me and the way you spoke and the way you kind of pulled me into these stories was fascinating so I appreciate that and I can’t wait to get into the book, however before we get into that, I really like to give our audience a little bit of personal background.

You know, who you were growing up, what was it like, and maybe who’s a person or an event that kind of led you on the path that you’re on today?

Dr. Tracy Thomas: Okay. Well, let’s see. Who have I always been is somebody that is very scientific, somebody just really observing and seeing how things work, really analyzing things. No shock that I became a psychologist because I also felt like in the business world, you’re a psychologist. It was like, I was in the business world but knew I really wanted to help people with their whole reality and so I went into being a psychologist.

Because as I talk about in my TED Talk actually, from the first memories, I can really remember being in my family and just observing and kind of going, “What’s going on here?” and thinking, quite honestly, life was a little weird and I didn’t always understand what was going on and why people were quite honestly, freaking out a lot of the times and so I just began to really look at what is actually occurring.

I don’t know if I had this exact language when I was younger but later on I started to realize that back when I was little and I see things, I would think to myself, “Somebody’s in a program, somebody’s in a pattern,” but I don’t think I had the exact words until later but I could see like the same conversation. If you’ve ever been in an argument and you have the same one and it’s like a pattern, right?

It’s a series of things that are going to go back and forth, and so I just began to see that there were patterns everywhere, and I could also see that when people were in some sort of a struggle, Hussein, and then they finally decided to make a shift and go forward and start to focus on what it was that was going to be better, what they were going to do with their intentions, that’s when everything started to get easier.

Although we all know that, I really could see that, this is what I see all the time in people. When somebody would go to what I refer to as a lower pattern that is not working for them and when they start to make a shift and get into a better state, a better set of intentionality and so I also, because I didn’t like all that intensity that I experienced when I was younger and I still don’t by the way.

So I just would find myself offering this simple phrase even as a young one like, “Well, what’s your intention?” and right away I would start to like, move the person forward and start to have them focus because when you speak about your intentions, you actually start to be in a higher frequency and now you start a momentum in the other direction and so this really became a way of life for me.

It’s really being able to do a PatternShift, which is what the book’s named after, is something that was about shifting into a higher level of purpose but it was also a survival mechanism for me because I was a really sensitive being. So I really picked up on everything and people now call this being HSP, highly sensitive person or being an empath and so I just had to also figure out ways that if I felt something really uncomfortable that I could make that shift and know that I have control over my circumstances and over my reality. So there’s that. So what was the other part of the question?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right, you know, someone or an event that sort of helped you make this shift, I guess, or made you realize something within you that made you make that shift with your life.

Needing A Pattershift At a Young AgeDr. Tracy Thomas: Ah, okay, it’s a pretty important thing in my life and I actually—I don’t think I’ve really shared this to the extent that it was very impactful to me before, so this is a scoop. When I was 12, I started to develop an eating disorder — and I know people think they kind of know what that is and I just want to let everybody know, this is a kind of a living hell where you are in a pattern.

You have difficult feelings and then, there are all these ways you’re trying to cope and just like whether it’s alcohol or any other thing that somebody does to cope with feelings that are difficult and just in your environment by the way, this was really a living hell. It went on for years and no matter what I did, you know, I was just a young person, so if I went down a lot of weight, nobody seemed to pay attention or notice.

And if I then went any other direction and started to gain weight, nobody seemed to notice that I was really struggling and I actually reached out to my—I wrote this letter to my mom, which was to, really, for all four of my parents, my stepdad and my dad and my stepmom as well and I wrote in this letter. It was like a really courageous thing that I did about how much I was struggling and that I needed help.

I needed, I don’t know if I called it treatment or just something saying, “I really need professional help” and I wrote in it that I don’t I don’t know how to commit suicide but I don’t want to be here, right? Because remember, I’m a teenager. So by the time I write this letter, I’m 16 years old. My dad picked up the ball even though I didn’t live with him full-time and he took me to a therapist and in a couple of sessions, the therapist said, “This is a family issue. There is too much intensity or too much chaos going on in her environment and we really need to have the family make changes,” which is by the way Hussein and everybody, it’s often the case that the young person is experiencing something really stressful, it’s because it’s manifesting through them and the environment. So unfortunately, when this doctor said that, he triggered something in my dad that made him never want to go back — because so many people can not want to deal with certain issues.

So that was a really bad moment because my dad said, “If you actually tell anybody any more stuff about us, I’m not going to be there for you.” And that’s the first time I’ve actually said this out loud to someone outside of therapy. Then my mom and my stepdad—I wanted them to pick up the ball and do something with it.

But I basically got the message that it was not okay to have a difficulty and that people were uncomfortable with that and also what I know too, is that people can be over their heads and that’s what I generally felt about emotional issues in my family. So what happened, this long story boiled down into this important piece is that I knew that I was basically on my own with figuring this out, and while that sounds like a very sad story and it is to some degree, it also was the birthplace of me understanding that I needed to become a person who could elevate my own reality.

Who could shift my mood, elevate my emotions and I began like, more as a scientist again like to go into what were the ways that I could make myself feel better and get out of that situation. That’s why I’m even talking to you all here today because I do this and all my books are about giving people techniques that help them elevate themselves because a lot of people have people around them that are not capable of giving them the support that they need.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s very powerful. I think — thank you so much for just opening up and sharing with vulnerability about such a young intimate time with yourself and obviously, your family. I’m very grateful that you shared that because your book again, is really about this idea of making the shift and how one really starts to make this transformation.

And you go through a variety of this idea of like negative to positive, fictional to factual. I love these PatternShifts that you talk about. Is there one pattern that you find sort of particularly challenging or maybe rewarding to work on?

Dr. Tracy Thomas: Hussein, I’m really glad to be opening up and sharing more with everybody and the good news is when we all do this, then we’re contributing to a more healthy society. Then also, these things that we think are difficult, everyone, these are it’s like the solution that you need is the solution that you’re here to bring to the world. That’s really the cool thing about it.

So in all The PatternShifts, I would say my favorite one is — shifting from backward to forward and so I’m going to give that one first, which is because when you go forward and you are in your intentions, that’s the easiest way, really, to elevate your emotional state and to get the momentum and to gain mastery and capacity over yourself and your reality. This is also one of the most important ones that I utilize in my life that makes it so—

Instead of going backward, and ultimately what’s happening, everyone, when we go backward is we’re really having flashbacks, and some flashbacks can be the worst kinds of things that people experience. Sometimes it’s just flashing back because our culture tends to speak about things in that backward fashion rather than speaking entirely about intentions and what you’re doing going forward.

So my favorite thing is to speak — even though I just told you the story — to speak in intentionality and that’s what the book is about because it’s The PatternShift, which is all about transforming your reality through intentionality and the issue everyone, is that if you hang out going backward too much, which if you’ll all start to pay attention, you’ll notice that there are some people in your lives that that’s all they do, that everything they talk about is going backward.

Then you’ll find that the people that are the most successful in this world are the people that know how to use all of that same energy but put it going forwards and the good news is — and I do believe this really saved my life is that, I am much more of a forwards person dispositionally. The good news everyone, is that if you’re not or you’ve been conditioned to go backwards a lot, — this is what we do at my company, The Empire Company, we train people and program them in a forward reality.

So everything they think and feel and speak is taking them forward because then you’re creating a reality in the future rather than when you are constantly, as some people do, speaking in the backward, in the past, all you’re doing is literally recreating it. So that one’s probably my favorite because there’s so much that can be created when you shift gears that way.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful. When I was like, just fresh out of college, I had a little T-shirt printing company, like tiny, tiny little thing and someone told me to read The Power of Intention, which was by Dr. Wayne Dyer. Oh my God, that utterly and I was—I’ve always been like, optimistic thinking forward, all those good things and I was always eager to learn. Hell, like, I was a refugee and I got to grow up in America.

So all the opportunities were at my fingertips, at least that’s how my dad framed it, right? Or my mom and it was just like, “What do you do every day to take advantage of all these opportunities?” And that could be a bad thing too because I felt like at one point, trying too hard at too many different types of things but that’s because I was just really excited and I feel like a part of that was if you were to take my DNA and unfold it, it’s just these aren’t just my dreams.

These are [the] dreams of my ancestors and my heritage and I feel like, I just had this hurt now that I’m in a position and in a place where I can practice writing, practice painting, I could literally do whatever I want. It felt that way, right? But what do you do? So it’s like, “All right, well, I’m going to study architecture, I’m going to throw events here, I’m going to try this T-shirt printing thing” and you know as a creative, you’re trying different things.

I failed at, oh my God, so many things but then I realized, “But that’s where I was learning the most was through failing”—I didn’t speak English, that didn’t come natural to me. So just speaking in front of people was fear. It was just utter fear but, you shaved that off, you know? But when I read that book, man, it made me feel like I’ve always been on that path but it gave me the language to now understand myself a little bit more and understand the world around me a little bit more and I can tune it further and be more intentional.

So I love the book because it really reminded me of literally, one of my favorite books of all time because it helped me so much with just who I am and how I am, but really, more—get it more focused, more refined and more intentional, right? So I just wanted to share that with you. That’s what your book reminds me of and I love how much it resonated with me just from those points of perspective.

Dr. Tracy Thomas: I love this Hussein because Dr. Dwyer, he really brought intentionality to the forefront in this blast, or this big era of transformation and the booming of the transformation industry.

So number one, I think of him as a family member and as like being related because same thing, somewhere along the line, I saw him I think on TV, maybe on PBS or something and it just stuck with me because I was like, “Oh wait, I already do that” and also kind of answer to the other part of the question you asked.

Even though this has been a lifelong practice for me still sometimes one of the hardest PatternShifts to do is to go from a reaction to an intention. So even though that is a lifestyle for me, what happens is the more you rise up into more of your purpose, the stakes get bigger and so you could then have these old kind of reactions.

So what I was able to see all along the way in my life and thanks to Dr. Dwyer as well is that at some point in whatever it is that somebody’s struggling with, there comes a moment just like I said about what I learned when I was younger is that, you finally go, “Okay, what are we going to do about it? Okay, let’s go forward.”

And I just remember thinking, “I wish my family would just cut the rest of it out” and go right from whatever the difficulty is—go right to what’s my intention because then you’re creating more intention in your life to what you said and when you do that, you’re just going to get to live a life of more of the things that you actually want to do because you’re spending your life in intention and the minutes are ticking by anyway and so you might as well do that.

And yet, I wrote The PatternShift because this is still one of the most challenging things for people to do because it’s like flipping the switch in life because when you really do these kinds of shifts, you can actually go from living a life in one direction to living a life of intention. That’s a bigger deal than I could probably even describe and everybody would have to just contemplate what that would be like if you could live out your entire intentions from the beginning of your life all the way through.

The Fictional to FactualHussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful. I love all the connections and I love that you just called Dr. Wayne Dwyer family because I have always felt that way. That’s so awesome. So your book again highlights so many—this idea of the negative and the positive like I said earlier but I really like this idea of your 7th pattern, which is the fictional to factual and I love that it emphasizes the importance of making decisions based on facts rather than assumptions.

Oh my god, do I make assumptions and don’t we all? I feel like everyone is assuming things about us of course, right? And it goes around and round. Can you share a time when you made a decision based on an assumption and how you learned from that experience?

Dr. Tracy Thomas: Very interesting. Oh my gosh, there are so many to your point Hussein. Yeah, this is a big one everyone, because this is all running on energy, of that everybody is creating stories and then there are stories that are just running on automation or what I refer to as they’re programs that are running. So it’s a lot of fiction in the world and because we have so much entertainment and content, we are really saturated.

I mean, when I look at Netflix and Amazon Prime and the way too many channels and streaming services that I have, there is so much story and there’s the drama and oh my god, the Criminal Minds and all of this stuff. So our airwaves, our reality field that we are all immersed in is full of story and the way physics works, it doesn’t know “Is that a Netflix story?” or is it something else, right? Is it, do you mean it?

So just to give everybody an idea, even when I’m watching a program that is dramatic, I’m enjoying some part of it, I am also realizing that I’m like programming myself to be in more drama just by watching it. So it is kind of an entertaining thing to be able to be like, “That’s them and I’m sitting here just being entertained.” So to answer this question, while I am talking I am trying to think of a specific time about assumptions and I don’t know, but let me think for a second.

So being able to be factual and tell yourselves the facts of something, is the way to essentially pull all of the drama out of something and ultimately make sure that you are not operating on the entire field of what is very dramatic, right? Being a person is kind of a dramatic situation. So when you just tell yourself the truth about something, it really stabilizes your reality, right? It just kind of contains you into what it is that is the only reality that you can really know and then making assumptions on that or making determinations.

So I don’t know why Hussein, I’m going to let myself off the hook. I am not thinking of a particular time, it’s not coming up. What I want to finalize this part with is say, however, if I start to feel it, which happens regularly everyone because I am not sitting here being a hermit, right? I’m interacting with new stimuli and people and this stuff all the time but when I start to feel fiction come up, I absolutely start to go, “What are the things that I am aware of, what are the facts? What is the situation?”

And most importantly everyone, I start to go, this takes only seconds for me at this point but I’ll start to just ask myself, “Tracy, what is your intention?” that is what matters most of all in this situation anyway and then that begins the story that you want to tell anyway.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful because again, just bringing it back to that grounding, that anchor and the intention is, “What is the intention here?” and like in movies when everything just zooms back into place. It pulls back the curtain so you can kind of see the bigger picture in a way, more focused, but the bigger picture and you just realize like at this moment, “Does this thing dictate my intention or my intention dictate this circumstance of my life?” or whatever it is.

It is such a powerful as you said, you know it is a switch and it is a hard one to be aware of, to learn how to actually click on and off and all those kinds of things but it is a practice. It is a yearlong—not yearlong, forgive me, lifelong practice.

Dr. Tracy Thomas: Lifelong.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Tracy Thomas: Well Hussein, let me—I just thought of one that I think is really important—is that here’s one that I knew it would show up because I put the intention there, right? So it’s going to actually start to come into my mind. So one of them for me is a situation where I needed help with something and I begin to do what a lot of times humans do but people in my position who are the doctor and the helper and the leader and the transformer.

I didn’t want to ask for help because I thought I would be burdening somebody because that’s a pattern in my family. That’s a pattern in a lot of people feeling like if they asked for help it’s a burden, right? Then I just said to myself, “What is true about that? What is real about that,” and when I looked at it, I just went, “Okay, people asking for help is a burden” and I just had to laugh almost immediately because my favorite thing to do is help people when they ask for help.

So even just going into the facts, which is when you ask for support on something, we’re collaborating now and everybody now has a chance to be purposeful and so just that kind of thing of going, “What’s the pattern that’s running? What’s really actually factual about that?” and again, it starts to shift you into what is real and then it’s funny because you can’t really argue with that. So I like to set things up that make it difficult for people to deny what it that I am teaching them.

Moving From Scarcity to LuxuryHussein Al-Baiaty: No, it’s very powerful and with the utilization of just like not only your perception, your wisdom, your value but also, these are scientific methods if you will in a way that, just the mind is so powerful but it’s like understanding our own thoughts, understanding just that level of awareness. I feel like for me was that it—I feel like within a week because now I was aware, I just saw things just a little bit differently.

It almost feels like we put on a new pair of glasses, you know? Things just become a little more clear and that is a beautiful ground to then lay out more intention now and more future perspective in how you want things to kind of transform. I think that’s so powerful. Finally, in your book, I mean you emphasize the importance of moving from scarcity to luxury. What advice do you have for readers who may be struggling with financial scarcity and how can they shift their mindset towards abundance and prosperity?

Dr. Tracy Thomas: Okay. So one of the things I’m going to first say is I want to speak to what you just shared Hussein and then I’ll add onto that, which is this is what’s exciting everyone about The PatternShift and about coming into a process of transforming your reality through intentionality, through these shifts and this is the most powerful thing you can do because Hussein what you’re saying is you do it and then your reality alters. Now, you’re aware of something else.

That’s what I really want everyone to know is that by doing these shifts, you are programming your reality with intention different than the one that was just programmed when we grew up when we didn’t even really know that we were being programmed or different than whatever is just coming into our field of awareness because the whole universe is programming us.

This is a way that you are selecting the programs that are going to run in you, so as you do that, you alter the reality field. So you start to make one of these shifts, you start to make two a day or anything like that, your reality is now different and now your field of perception is now different. If you can imagine that you really get yourself into PatternShifting and all the fuller aspects of the technique that’s in the book here, you are ultimately altering your reality so much that it will then keep feeding to you the things that you want it to.

Which, people call this the law of attraction, it’s just physics. The more you have an intention and an awareness of that, the more the reality will feed you more of that and it starts to create an intentional or positive feedback loop instead of a negative feedback loop. So that’s what I’m really inviting people to get that. So that goes into any one of these shifts and if we take something like shifting, a pattern of scarcity, everyone, this is basically the pattern that makes financial difficulty because it is seeing life or experiencing life in the negative, in the backward, in the opposite pattern than you want to.

So when people have financial issues, it means they have scarcity programming and that’s understandable because I am going to be really generous here, 10% of the population in the world is living in luxury and 90% of it is living in let’s just say material scarcity but in reality, so much of programming that’s going on and all the humans in our world is scarcity, which is why we see so many, excuse my language, f’ed-up things going on in our world because it’s a perception of lack.

So this is why if people see things through what isn’t happening, what somebody is not doing and everybody is constantly complaining to each other, you’ll find scarcity all the time. “This isn’t good enough, that’s not good enough.” If that’s happening, it will impact you materially and very much your bank account. When you are in scarcity, this is the difference between—there are people that are multimillionaires, billionaires, et cetera, and people who spend their whole life and they’re 70 years old and they’re still having the same issues, okay?

So when you can break down that a money issue is not a money issue, it’s an emotional programming scarcity issue, now you can start to shift it and why I like to do these shifts everyone is because your psyche will take a shift when it’s even easier when it sounds similar. It’s like a little trick where scarcity and luxury sound pretty similar but these are two entirely different realities.

So when we take something that is already there rather than trying to—like a lot of times Hussein, people do abundance, abundance, abundance, right? Even though the pattern is scarcity. So when you start to put luxury or wealth because these things sound very similar, you are now tricking the psyche. It will take this upgrade in and now, it will be easier because it’s already working with that sound that’s very similar.

But you can make a night and day shift in your whole reality by starting every time you have a feeling of scarcity and you just start saying, “Oh, my intention is luxury, my intention is luxury” and you start to make that shift and you keep doing it and doing it until such a point that all of your programming it starts to extinguish the old one because this new one is set enough times, which they say habits only take about 28 days to change.

But you can then utilize something that is two opposite ends of the spectrum to start to shift it where now, when your programming is for luxury, just like you said Hussein, now you’ll start to see luxury showing up in your life and now you keep leaning more and more into that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, mind shift man, it’s everything. I love the title of your book. It breaks down quite literally the world and I love that because it’s just—it is all in that, how we see things and I think for me coming from a different place of the planet, having lived in the middle of the desert and then growing up in the northwest, right? Where it’s just green and lush and you know, it just expanded what I thought was possible for me and what is in my world.

It just made my imagination explode in a way. That’s what I’ve leaned into since I was a kid but as I said, it’s books like yours like the amazing Wayne Dyer and remarkable people who just reminded us, that come on earth and just reminded us of how important it is to think about what we want in our future and to be positive and to think in a way that is, you know, constantly elevating our reality.

I just love that so much. I love that that’s been a part of your life and really your life’s mission to help so many because this is not your first, or second, this is your third book. Congratulations Dr. T, this is amazing. So I want to just say, what has that been like for you? What’s the third book been like for you? What was that journey? What was your favorite part about pulling this book together?

Dr. Tracy Thomas: You know what’s fun, everyone? Is that doing books for me, my team always says this like when we’re—when I am doing an upgrade that’s going to take me to another echelon of consciousness and therefore, another level of life, it’s like going into the studio and an artist recording something and they always talk about—like time to go do a book because they know there’s something big that I want to grow through.

So each of the books has been really amazing because you know, came to understand that something that was naturally easier for me was harder for other people, which I think is what everybody’s purpose is, right? Whatever is easy for you, this is what you are bringing to the world or the thing that you feel you’re making it easier. So intentionality was so awesome to me that I was like, “Oh, I need to explain it in more depth to people and help them.”

All my clients and all their realities and everything we’ve ever upgraded put more awareness to the things that people needed to understand. So each book is about a set of techniques. People refer to these as steps or we call them protocols for making your reality and by the time, you know, the third one came about and was so much more fun because we’ve been doing this PatternShift process with our clients.

They tell us how valuable it is and then it’s like, “I’ve got to get this out to the world.” So I feel like it’s becoming easier and easier and book number four and five are already basically almost written out because I have so much fun doing this everyone, so stay tuned for more.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much. Dr. T, thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences with me and the audience as well today. The book is called, The PatternShift: Transform Your Reality through Intentionality. So besides checking out the book, where could people find you, Dr. T?

Dr. Tracy Thomas: Yeah, everyone check out my website, theempirecompany.com, just like it sounds and you can follow me on Instagram. The handle is The Mogul Maker Dr. T, so @themogulmakerdrt because just to give you an idea, when you really get great at PatternShifting you get to become that top creator in your reality and then Facebook, you could follow me at the—and go and check out The Empire Company and/or Dr. Tracy Thomas. You can look me up either way.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much. Dr. T, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the show today. Thank you so much, congrats on your book. This is going to be amazing and I know it’s going to make a huge ripple in our lives, so thank you.

Dr. Tracy Thomas: Thanks, everyone.

The post The Patternshift: Dr. Tracy Thomas appeared first on Author Hour.

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Risk; it could be kryptonite for investors, no matter your investment amount or level of experience, but like many obstacles to success, risk is a challenge only overcome by facing it head-on.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by Tom Basso, who is here to talk about his new book called, The All-Weather Trader. Let’s flip through it. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. I’m here with my friend, Tom Basso. Super excited to have you, Tom. You know, I was a little afraid to open it up because I was like, “Oh man, here we go, trading, stocks,” and then to my surprise, it was actually really easy to navigate, really easy to read. My fear subsided. So, Tom, it’s great to have you on this show, I’m really excited to get into the podcast.

Tom Basso: Oh, thanks, Hussein.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely my friend. So before we get into the book, I really want to get people to know you a little bit. I know we were just kind of chatting before we hit record here, and you sound like a really fun guy, easy to talk with, but I would love to get our listeners to know a little bit about your personal background, perhaps where you grew up and maybe a person or an event that sort of helped you get on the path that you’re on now. I’d love to know a little bit about that.

Tom Basso: Well, when I was twelve years old and a paper boy, I started investing in mutual funds, and a mutual fund salesman came over to the house. My father listened to the spill and turned it down, and I went ahead and put my $10 a week into this mutual fund and held it all the way through college. That started my interest in investing, but at the same time, I was very interested in chemistry and math, and that speaks of chemical engineering.

So I went and got a chemical engineering degree in college at Clarkson, up in Potsdam, New York, way up where it gets really, really cold, and one thing led to another and I combined the two interests, sort of the engineering and math and computer science and all those things, information processing, together with my desire to try to solve the ultimate brain tease, which is to try to make money as a trader in markets that go almost randomly up and down and that brain tease exists in my mind today.

Even after some fifty years of trading, I think combining together the data processing gave me a bit of an edge. In the early stages, you have to go back. I’m not sure how old you are, but where definitely if you get back into about 1980 when the IBM PC finally came out, before that you are on pieces of chart paper and using calculators that added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided, and that was your technology level.

Forget mobile phones or smartphones. So I think what I had an edge in is trying to deal with a lot of data that comes into the industry and has to flow out that you have to make trading decisions on and making those decisions fast and effectively, and then transmitting those orders back to the world of the brokerage industry and the floors and the various exchanges, and so I had a nice twenty-eight-year career and shut it all down when I was fifty-one.

I’ve been in retirement nearly twenty years now and have enjoyed it. You know, I put a smile on my face the day I retired, and it’s been there ever since.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that man, it sounds amazing. What a journey. Well, thank you for sharing a little bit about just you growing up and basically trying to figure out this very interesting, and I would feel like, very definitely risk-oriented career. However, like I feel like those types of careers are, they kind of match a different personality or you got to have a certain…it doesn’t have to be like you’re something that you’re born with, something that you could definitely train yourself on.

But it’s one of those things that I feel like, for me, I was always scared of it because I thought it was so…you know, I had to be like a mathematician to go do stocks, and that’s not true at all, right? Like, it’s such a young fear. However, I was an artist, I was a graphic artist. So growing up, different things and what kind of path, what leads you to that and starting at twelve years by handing over ten bucks, way to build repetition at an early age, man, that’s amazing.

Tom Basso: It disciplined me to put the $10 a week into the thing, and so I was a good saver, and they gave me a bite of a strategic mindset, which is to worry about where we’re going to be in ten years, five years, not be too concerned about what happens today, and I think traders, it’s very easy for all traders, investors to get sucked into the news, the headlines and try to predict what’s going to happen.

Is World War III going to start? Are the Feds going to raise the interest rate? You know, all these different types of things that go on out there or the news headlines, and I think that’s not good trading, actually. It’s actually throwing your psyche to the upside, to the downside, all over the map, and most people just get overwhelmed with it and they get very frustrated by it. In my case, I was able to separate people’s opinions from data and having that little bit of an ability in my mind to say, “Okay, this guy is predicting what’s going to happen the next six months.”

“This data is XYZ,” and I can take that, plug it into some indicators, and that is going to be the way I want to trade and not get rid of all these prediction nonsense and keep risk managed all the time, keep everything as simple as I can make it so I can reproduce it every day and that was the key to success, it turns out.

Becoming the All-Weather TraderHussein Al-Baiaty: I love that because you’re not putting your trust into sort of the day-to-day, and it feels, obviously we know this, but like maybe it’s not so obvious, but I feel like most media is constantly just trying to get a reaction out of people, right? It doesn’t have to be like an actual action but just to feel a certain way, and let’s be honest man, I grew up, a lot of the things that I watched growing up, they were essentially fear-based.

And so if I’m fearful of taking a risk on a potential opportunity based on all these other factors that have swayed my emotion one way or another, I think then, yeah, the risk even goes higher, right? But it sounds like what you did was kind of look at like, “All right, I’m not going to lie, all these things sort of infiltrate my mindset because that’s where you know, a healthy mindset is where I can make good decisions from.”

So I want to know a little bit about your journey and developing and executing this sort of, this idea of the all-weather trading plan. How did you come up with this philosophy?

Tom Basso: Well, the first thing that happened when I was in my twenties, just coming out of chemical engineering degree and now working, designing chemical plants for a few years. I realized that with very small amount of money that I started with that I blew up about half of the money in one or two trades, and the shock just went through me like you couldn’t believe it, and I thought, “I got to like, get a handle in this risk thing.” I can’t spend my whole life doing it this way.

So, I learned a lot about getting enough capital in your account to do the job right, worried about position sizing, and wrote a book on that previously called, Successful Traders Size Their Positions, and that’s available out there, and they sold thousands of copies, and it’s simple math but, that you learned in probably 7th grade, but it ends up taking the problem of how much do I buy and answers it with simple math, and I think that a lot of people have quoted it.

A lot of people use it nowadays, and I think it helps them take some of the heat off of the trading process because it’s one thing to know where to buy and sell, and everybody seems to always focus on that, but it’s far more important mathematically to your success to size your positions properly, and it’s even more important to have your head screwed on straight and to have the right psyche and to be calm and collected and neutral.

Any one day that starts out in my life, in my trading life particularly, the market could go up, the market could go down. If it’s going up, I’d like to be long, and if it’s going down, I’d like to be short. I don’t really care which way it’s going to go. I go into the day dead neutral, don’t have an opinion, and I think that that’s the types of things that once I finally figured out through getting beat up a few times and then listening to clients, I had clients that weren’t as knowledgeable in this stuff as I was.

So I was a money manager, and I manage 600 million dollars for several hundred clients all around the world, and you start hearing the comments they make about what you’re doing, and it kind of hits you, and you say, “Yeah, okay, that makes sense. How about we manage this a little bit more this way?” and try to satisfy what the clients are looking for but while still sticking to good trading principles, which is a difficult balancing act it turns out and one that I don’t have thankfully right now in retirement. My clients are my wife and myself, so that’s why I have a smile on my face today.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that man. So it’s very interesting that you take this idea of saying, “You know what? I’ve gone through this a few times, I’ve made the sort of the mistakes or whatever it is, but how can I start to mitigate, how can I start to strategize a little bit better and really think about it?”

And it sounds like just removing the emotional aspect of it and going in, not having a sense of like, “Okay, I’m going to lean this way because, you know, I heard this thing, and I’m going to lean this way on this thought” whatever it is, just really going in and looking at everything in a way that is, you know, very data-driven, very clean-cut and making strategy from there.

That sounds like, obviously, a learning curve that most I would feel young investors, of course, I feel like this is who you’re sort of writing for, in a way, the younger version of yourself. Can you elaborate on why creating a case for why many investors seek out this idea of like, a perfect strategy? I know you talk about it a little bit in your book, but like, this idea that a perfect strategy doesn’t really exist.

My father used to always send me like a perfect painting doesn’t exist. Like it’s the practice of painting, it’s the practice of creating. That’s actually what just makes you better, and it’s the enjoyment of that, and so, I found a little bit of resonating things in there, but can you talk about that, can you talk about this idea of a perfect strategy?

Tom Basso: Right, the perfect strategy doesn’t exist because, let’s take you and me. If we were to reveal everything about ourselves, our skill levels in all sorts of different subjects, ranging from writing, to computer programming, to math, to everything that involves your knowledge of, say, future’s trading. I’ve got fifty years on me; you may not have ever made a future’s trade.

So, when you look at the two of us, that’s just an example of a very small, microscopic speck of the trading world, which is around the world twenty hours a day, you would realize that we both have financial challenges or I like to put it, a financial puzzle to solve and my financial puzzle is very, very different from yours, and the answer to solve those two different types of puzzles is going to logically be very, very different.

So the success for both of us is to find the answer to our unique puzzle, and I think too many traders I know that contact me, I get direct messages and emails and things from traders all around the world, every day, and I try to answer as many as I can get to and do a pretty good job of that. I have to say, when I look at what they’re all trying to copy me. “What do you do?”

Well, what I do is design to solve my financial puzzle. If you are a trader in Africa trading $2,000 in the FX markets at some shop over there that I’ve never even heard of, I mean, the solution to your problem is going to be a whole lot different than the solution to mine where I’m in retirement, and I know what I’m doing, and I can manage the risk, and I’ve got automation, and it’s a different thing.

So it’s not to say that people might not learn things, and I hope this book talks through how I came up with the concept of all-weather trading early on and tried to gravitate my entire career and my trading strategies towards solving the issue of trying to make money when the markets are up, try to make money when the markets are down and try to make money when the markets go sideways, which then allows you to be more all-weather.

You don’t really care anymore about predicting or whether the market’s going to go up or down or sideways, you got it covered. You’ve thought it through, you’ve developed a plan, you can execute that plan because it’s designed around what you have as your skill levels, as your capital, as your ability to spend time on it each day. It still takes me roughly a half an hour a day to manage my portfolios.

So I have to schedule that time, be disciplined about it, run my processes, try to make decisions if there’s something that comes in that’s an anomaly of some sort that I have to deal with, but basically, I can get most of that work done in just half an hour and then I can go play golf if I want to or go out to dinner or whatever. I don’t have to be glued to a machine like the stereotypical traders thought to be.

I really, step-by-step, adding more and more risk control, volatility control, extreme diversification, how to deal with sideways markets, how to deal with designing new strategies to do what I call “filling the potholes,” and that’s a description I use, courtesy of Laurence Bernstorff, who was a friend of mine now over in Portugal and he calls it, taking your track record.

When you have a drawdown, that’s a pothole. You don’t want to have a drawdown. That’s not any fun, you’re losing money. So you ask yourself the simple question of, “What kind of strategy could I employ that would help to fill that pothole?” And the answer is, usually, pretty sort of easy to come up with. Then the hard part is to figure out what would it do during the rest of the period when you didn’t have a pothole because you don’t want it to cost you a lot.

But there’s lots of things you can do that let your mind wander, and I hope this book is very stimulating to traders and get them thinking about a lot of how they operate and what can they do to make themselves a better trader. I think it’s a great roadmap for a new trader, but I think even experienced traders will probably get one or two things out of it that will probably pay for the price of the book and then some.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, that’s so powerful, and it kind of reminds me, as I was reading it, it gave me a sense of…I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book The E-Myth, and it was a book that changed my business strategy. So I owned an apparel printing business for almost fifteen years or so, and when I read that book about two or three years into my business, I went from just basically working for myself and working myself to the ground to like setting up systems and hiring people and all those things.

Tom Basso: Yeah, exactly.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: And exponentially grow my business, but what I learned –

Tom Basso: Smart is working smarter instead of harder.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man, but what I learned was the implementation of processes, right? Like how can you remove yourself to a degree that is comfortable for you but also has you sort of manage the growth of a business or whatever, and it sounds like you applied some of these ideas of course, your discipline, right? Showing up every single day and taking repetitive actions that can overtime help you reduce the amount of time that you have to spend with it through automation, through different means, new technologies.

Whatever it is to help you reduce the amount of time you actually sitting in front of a machine but rather leaning into the formulas, the experiences that you’ve developed to kind of create this picture, this overall picture, and I love that because it very much sounds like it’s not that you’re taking the thinking out of it, you’re actually applying a lot of thinking around a certain process so much so that it’s like you can identify if something is off because it almost waves a red flag, right?

Like, it’s approaching it like a chemist would, right? Like a scientist would, which is what you went to school for, and I think that, all of those things, this is why at the beginning of the conversations usually, I always ask like what led you to this path. It is usually like a set of events, right? A personal conversation, a mentor for you it was really this idea of discipline.

I mean, every time I’ve looked at anyone that I’ve admired or been inspired by, they have been like the most disciplined people on earth, right? Like they don’t do anything, like out of whack.

Tom Basso: It was something like a thirty-year overnight success.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, there you go. Yes.

Tom Basso: Thirty years of very hard work and that’s exactly right. The process, I liken it this way, human endeavor that, you can choose to do something in any moment in time that is very repetitive that if you could see yourself do this today and tomorrow, you do it exactly the same way and exactly the same flow of data goes and for that, that’s not a lot of fun.

After about a few days, your brain numbs out, and you’d say, “Well, I want to be creative. I want to go paint a new oil painting. I want to compose a new piece on the piano. I want to do something artistic” and the human mind is the only mind that can do that. There’s AI who will never do it because that’s a set of programs that is calling on a lot of data and spiting it back and making it sound like it’s coming from a human being because they’ve taught it how to speak properly but don’t delude yourself.

It is just a database inquiry that is going into this massive cloud database and returning whatever the human being is programmed it to return, and what you end up with when you start looking at two forms of human endeavor, which would you prefer to spend your time on? Well, the creative is so much more fun. So if I had to choose to spend my day doing something, I would rather research a new trading strategy or try to work on automating a new trading strategy and then test it and work it and pulling it into production each day, that’s creative.

Running the orders every day is the same thing, bring in the data, apply these set of decisions, ship out orders. A computer could do that because it’s the same thing day after day. So I’ve always tried to separate that out, and the way I ran Trendstat Capital Management was exactly that way, anything that could be automated was automated and anything that could be creative was what I gave the employees to do.

I think we had a good crew back in the day, and I still have fun with trading, and here I am, seventy years old and enjoying life and enjoying trading and enjoying writing books and have doing interviews and everything else.

Advice to Future TradersHussein Al-Baiaty: That is awesome, man. I just appreciate you’ve sort of over-expanded outlook on the whole thing, right? It’s not this one field, this one specific area. It’s really a combination of things. It is very malleable in how you think about a career. It’s long term, right? Everything is long term. If we can sustain, you know, like you said, creativity and discipline over a long period of time, remarkable things can happen.

So what’s your advice, or advice that you’d give to, let’s say, retail investors who are just starting out and implementing your all-weather trading plan. What are some common pitfalls that they could be aware of or perhaps avoid?

Tom Basso: The one I see the most is obsessing over how to buy and sell and not worrying about how much to buy and sell. That’s the single one that I see a lot of rookie traders make, and they typically get over-leveraged, the markets deal them a bad day or two or a week or a month, and they’re shell-shocked, and they disappear and go chase some other crazy investment idea.

That’s probably the easiest and most profound way, a widely available thing that I see out there, the various emails and direct messages I get, and the second one is, I think, quit trying to predict. Try to measure the now, try to say, “Today, right now, the stock market…” let’s say, as an example, is on an uptrend, “So I should be long.” Don’t give it any more thought than that, just say, “I should be long.”

But if tomorrow you ask yourself that same question and the answer is, “Now, based on what I see, the market is definitely in a down trend.” Then you should be short or in cash or something, some protective thing. Don’t try to predict what the market is going to do next week, next month, next year, they use the term investor. I think that’s a way of lulling retail investors into turning their brain off because, in reality, you get that monthly statement, and you see that you just lost $20,000.

Most investors turn into traders at that point and sell the position and fire the broker and financial planner or whatever, and I think trying to be all-weather means that you’ve got something in place to take care of all types of weather, all types of market conditions and I think that most investors don’t think that through. They don’t think how they’re going to react to loosing 20 percent of their money.

Even if it’s just on paper, it’s still going to feel like it’s real, and the psychology is so important. The chapter I did on psychology in this book, I covered everything I could think of that would help an investor who tried to think through, how to react to, what they’re going to face as a trader, and I say everybody is a trader because I don’t care if you’re Warren Buffett and you buy, you know, some insurance company or something.

Sooner or later, it’s going to be sold. He’s just a long-term trader. The guy, trading doesn’t have a time limit to it, you are still buying and selling or selling and buying because sometimes you sell first and buy second, but the round turn is always for the day trader, of course, it would be inside of a day. A weekly trader would be inside of a week, a long-term trader would be maybe years but still trading, and all the same psychological pressures will hit you no matter what, in a time length that you get involved with investing.

So as far as I am concerned, that’s one of the most important chapters in the book is just to simply understand yourself and be comfortable with the process.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Very powerful, man. I mean, I just feel like it’s one of those things once you learned the difference between reacting and responding, by responding is like just developing all the things that in case this thing happens, I have all of these tools or whatever it is, right? To where reacting, which is sort of the stuff that I grew up on, I was unfortunately had gone through a refugee camp.

So like, that experience traumatized my young mind, so like today in my mind, I’m always like, “All right, we need to constantly have a few gallons of water.” All the little things, you know? And my wife was like, “What’s happened? Like, why do you always think about…” It’s just the way that makes me feel comfortable, right? It’s like, how do I respond if something were to happen.

Tom Basso: Why would anybody buy fire insurance? You’re not wishing yourself to have a fire, but if the fire is going to burn down the house and then you got to rebuild it, it be nice to have something to manage that risk, and the same thing is true on the stock market or the future’s markets or the currency markets, there is risk, what do you do to spend a little bit of your effort and time mitigating that.

I think this whole book is about a lot of those topics, and there’s so many different ways to do it, and of course, I covered a bunch of them, probably not all of them, but the ones that at least I’ve used and so it’s kind of an autobiographical story of my trading life a little bit and how I came to these conclusions that I needed to have something to solve this problem. So I came up with this, and then I had needed something to solve that problem.

So I came, I added that, and little by little, I am building up this all-weather strategy to where I feel like I am a pretty all-weather trader right now at seventy years old. So it kind of covers the whole lifetime of figuring out this stuff, and I think it will be easy to read for people. I write in a very simple tone and try not to use multi-syllable words any more than I have to.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, I can attest to that. I mean, I have found myself really just finding at ease perusing your book, and I really enjoyed that. You know, sometimes I feel like these types of books are written specifically for, you know, traders and people in the stock world, which they can understand the lingo, the vernacular, the vibe, but it sounds like you really wrote it not only to help those individuals of course.

But in a way that anyone that’s introducing or coming into that world, like I said earlier, it sounds like you very much wrote to your younger self, which I love those books because those are the types of books I write, always writing to my younger self, right? But with that, what was the writing journey like for you? What was your favorite part of pulling this book together?

Tom Basso: I’d say the graphics finally, when I finally got to the point where I was pulling the tables. You know, I knew I could make a point, but then I had to do some simulations and run them and seeing the results and make them look good and have a format that I think almost anybody could look at and say, “Wow, that’s pretty impressive. That makes a point.” That was kind of I knew the book was getting near the end.

I had covered what I wanted to cover, I knew the length of the book was about right to keep people interested. I didn’t feel like I needed to add anything else, I really felt like I had covered my life from start to finish in the trading world, and I think that at that graphics point, I kind of knew that the book was nearing the end and true story, I guess I am a sentimental guy or something, but I got all done with the graphics.

I put it together, and I read it before sending it over to Scribe for the final editing and proofreading and everything, and when I got to the final paragraph, and I read it, those final words, I broke out in tears. It was exactly what I wanted, it covered everything I thought I could say, and I thought it’d be very helpful to a lot of people in those this too. It was an emotional response that I didn’t expect, but I just broke into tears. It was a happy moment.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, it’s what happens when you work towards something since you were about 12 years old, right? You know, it’s that idea that not only were you accumulating and building your wealth, of course, but you are also, you know, becoming very disciplined. You are leaning into your strengths, understanding the world differently, seeing the world differently, and I think all of those emotions probably – not probably.

I’m sure came through in that moment, of the intense amount of hard work that it takes to do these kinds of things and the amount of risk, and I am sure the few gray hairs that have grown along the way.

Tom Basso: Yeah, I’ve got a few of them, and you know, in addition to that, I have less of those hairs. It’s getting a little thin up there.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Another attribute, right? That’s so great. Well, Tom, thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences with me and the audience as well today. The book is called, The All-Weather Trader: Mr. Serenity’s Ideas on Trading, Come Rain or Shine. Besides checking out the book on Amazon, where can people find you, my friend?

Tom Basso: The easiest way is my website, which is enjoytheride.world, not .com, .world. Com was taken, world was not, and I have people that know me all around the world, so it seemed to fit. The Enjoy the Ride website is an educational website for traders. So it’s got recommended reading, it’s got all my research papers that I’ve ever written all throughout my life. It’s got a bit of a history and philosophy of the way I like to view trading in the website and why I did it.

It’s got all the interviews that I’ve ever done that I could get a copy of or a link to, so they’re all collected in one place, and people just listen to those while they’re working out or taking a walk, and I’ve gotten so many emails from people saying they love this interview I had with, you know, fill in the blank, and I talk a lot about a lot of different topics that don’t just involve trading but involve things that might affect your ability to trade, and so all of this is at one place.

Besides that, you could look me up on, I think, Twitter, I’ve got almost 50,000 followers, that’s @basso_tom, and it’s blue-checked, so don’t fall for a con job from somebody. I mean, I’ve had about a dozen imposters these days, and then the Facebook, I’ve got – I am on LinkedIn, I’m on MeWe, I’m on Parler, Gettr, Truth Social, I write a sub-stack piece called, Thoughts from Enjoy the Ride.

Every now and again, when the mood strikes me and I have the time. It’s not every day you don’t get to lose. So if you do sign up for that subscription, you’ll get an email with what’s on my mind at that point, and it will come right to your emails, tom@trendstat.com is my email. Feel free to email me questions or comments or congratulations or whatever you’d like. I try to get back to as many as I can, and that’s pretty much how you can get a hold of me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, thank you, my friend, I really appreciate you coming on the show today. It was a privilege just learning from you, listening to your experiences. So thanks again for coming on.

Tom Basso: Hey, it was fun, Hussein.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah.

The post The All-Weather Trader: Tom Basso appeared first on Author Hour.

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As customer behavior evolves, simple hacks and tricks aren’t going to cut it if you want to make your content into page one.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by authors Christopher Day and Ryan Brock, who are here to talk about their new book called, Pillar-Based Marketing: A Data-Driven Methodology For SEO and Content That Actually Works. Let’s flip through it.

Hello friends and welcome back to the show. I’m here with my friends, Toph Day and Ryan Brock. They’ve just launched an amazing book called Pillar-Based Marketing and I’m excited to have you two here. Thanks for coming on today.

Christopher Day: Thanks, Hussein, we’re excited to be here; it’s going to be awesome.

Ryan Brock: Yeah, this is the first real big, you know, show or anything we’ve done specifically for the book, so that has me feeling really energized today, even though this is the third podcast I’ve recorded today.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love it, man, well, I hope to do it justice because you guys have written something really phenomenal and I’m excited to get into it but before we do that, I always like to lay the foundation down and share with our audience our guest’s personal background, perhaps, where you two grew up and maybe what’s – you know, somebody that influenced you or you know, inspired you while you were growing up to be on the path that you are on now.

We’ll start with Ryan and give us a little bit of a shpiel of where you come from, man, and who inspired you. And then we’ll jump over to Toph.

Ryan Brock: That’s a good question. So where I come from, it’s a little bit of everywhere, actually. I was born in Germany to two Air Force veterans and it was actually West Germany at the time. I was only there for a little while, came back to Northwest Indiana, Chicago Land is where I’m from.

So I’ve lived in a bunch of towns, Crown Point is where I graduated from high school, that was my home for the longest time and went to college with my high school sweetheart in Indianapolis and we stayed down in Indianapolis ever since, got married three weeks after we graduated college and now we’ve got a three-year-old son Charlie and just living the dream down in Indie.

But in terms of who inspired me, I was raised by a large family of quasi-immigrant women actually, like a lot of old ladies who were born here but raised by Hungarian parents and yelling at each other in Hungarian, and they forced me to learn to get loud, to get heard when I was a kid but also my grandmother, she was always just such a positive influence, helping me read and pushing me to pursue thoughtfulness and intellectual activities and things like that. So I think without her, I probably wouldn’t be where I’m at today.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh, shout out to grandma. I love that. Great story man. What about you Toph?

Christopher Day: Yeah, so I grew up on a small farm, about an hour north of Indianapolis, and we were German Baptist, which I call Amish folks with wheels basically, and I remember taking a horse and buggy to church on Sundays. No TV, no radio when I grew up, paid my way through college. I went to Purdue and then I left Purdue, I headed down to Atlanta for about five years and did projects across the southeast and southwest.

Always based out of Atlanta and then I moved back in my late twenties, I moved back to Indianapolis and had been here ever since. I’d say, the people that influenced my life, [were] my parents, my father; I learned work ethic and how to think three steps ahead on the farm. I do remember my grandmother used to sit me down when I was little and curl my eyelashes, that’s a big memory, and then I think, you know, mentors, I was just really lucky to work with people throughout my career that I just watched and learned and listened from.

So gosh, I hate to mention names because I’ll leave out some names but I knew when I was fifteen years old, I worked for a commercial developer, a German named Jim Cochran, and first shot out of college and a brief stint with a company with a gentleman there, Al Wurster. A big influence on my life and in my entrepreneurial career, one of my partners, Todd Brighton, and I had multiple businesses together, a big influence on my life.

One of our investors and Demand Jump, Bill Godfrey, probably doesn’t realize it, but I watch and listen and learn a lot from Bill and Ryan Brock, right? Coauthor here on this book; I learned a lot from Ryan. So yeah, I mean it, and I’ve just been blessed to have incredible relationships both personally and professionally throughout my life.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much. I think it’s one of my favorite things about this question with authors how much it brings out in the sense that, you know, no matter how much we think, we are completely the authors of our story. There are so many characters in that story, right? And I just love just paying homage to them.

In that way and I think, what I’m interested in is, how did you two meet? Where did you guys end up working together, where did you two meet?

Christopher Day: We met in an iconic bar; you want to take it away, Ryan?

Ryan Brock: Looking back in time, it feels like a very fateful moment, you know? Because this was like late February 2020. So we’re in a giant crowd of people, COVID-19 has already ravaged its way around the planet, we just hadn’t heard of it yet and we’re in a bar venue called The Vogue Theater in Indianapolis, Indiana, where there’s a startup community event called Powder Keg and I owned a content marketing, it was called Metonymy Media for a little over a decade.

And I was a partner of their organization, the Powder Keg Organization, hoping to serve software to service companies and marketers and different tech comp firms and things like that and just so happened up on the same little side riser to the side of the stage, a company called Demand Jump was also a vendor with the booth and Toph, we sort of maybe looked at each other across the bar, right?

But who I met first was Shawn Swagman, Toph’s cofounder at Demand Jump. Shawn just starts going off about, “We got this technology and we’re going to change the way people think about SEO and we have this completely different way of thinking about like keyword research and how we target our content and I want to write like 500 articles, do you want to talk?” and I just thought he was insane because you know, that’s what happens at these events.

You never know who you’re talking to. It turns out, I walked away and I was like, “Huh, I should probably follow up with that guy,” and Toph, I think he probably went right over to you, right?

Christopher Day: Yup, that’s right. I walked in and I was probably about fifteen, thirty minutes late to this event, and I walked in and the Demand Jump team was already there, and I walked up these risers and my partner comes over to me and immediately says, “Toph, we got to talk. See that guy over there?” He pointed to Ryan sitting on a dimly lit bench and he said, “That’s Ryan Brock, he’s the CEO of Metonymy Media.”

“He totally gets what we’re trying to do; we need to work with him.” I think we said a brief hello, Ryan, that evening.

Ryan Brock: Yeah, I think it was. I do remember just a little, “Hey, what’s up? Nice to meet you, bye.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: How great encounters start, right?

Ryan Brock: So then of course, three weeks later, we were locked in our homes for a year. So it’s just like – I think that’s why it’s so easy to look back on that night because then we had a few conversations and started working together and then really started building what we wrote about in the book together and that all started as the world burned to the ground around us. So I don’t know, I’ve already got some nostalgia for it, I guess.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s crazy. So you know, for those of us that are not familiar with this, pillar-based marketing concept and methodology that you begin to implement and work on, take me through the next parts of the story. So you go through COVID, of course, all the madness, but you’re sort of in the background kind of building this thing. Talk to me about how you all came together to start this sort of marketing path.

Pillar-Based MethodologyChristopher Day: Yeah, as we were building Demand Jump, we were kind of solving several pain points and a lot of math involved, a lot of data and a lot of math, and you’ll see in the book, we kind of shy away from, we don’t use the terms like AI, etc., because we think they kind of get misused.

At the high level, Demand Jump was all about trying to help marketers wake up every day and know what to do more than guessing what to do and so as we were going through, probably about five years of solving various pain points, one of the folks at Demand Jump said one day, he said, “Could we apply this math to content?” and the whole concept of knowing what content you should write that would actually be aligned to your customer’s journey.

Like to know if it’s aligned with your customer’s journey and if that would put you in a better position for people actually to see the content. I think this data is 96% of web pages and blogs never get seen.

Ryan Brock: 90.63%. Yup.

Christopher Day: Yeah, 90, yeah, 90.63% of blogs or webpages never get seen. Just imagine waking up every day and knowing for a fact that 90% of the things you were going to do that day didn’t matter. That would not be very compelling and so we put the chief scientist, you know, on that path to say, “Let’s see if we can apply this math to this issue of content,” which led to what we were trying to solve with, could we solve SEO in a real way, right?

Not whack hat things, not box, etc,, but really solve it in an authentic, genuine way and so they went to work on that, right? I think the initial solution we had was like, twenty or thirty algorithms of different types of math involved in trying to solve this. It’s a very complex issue and we finally got to a point where like, “Let’s try it,” and so we had this short article written.

We knew from the math that one of the customer bases we were going after, we knew cared about a simple question called, “What’s a good CAC?” CAC stands for customer acquisition cost and so we had one of our marketers write a short blog about what’s a good CAC. We posted it and I’m looking at it literally right now during this podcast and on April 19, 2019. April 19, 2019. is when we had this blog written and it’s still on page one in the number two spot today, years later and we’ve never touched it.

And so that was the moment, and it went to page one literally within, I can’t remember exactly, but it was quick. It was within maybe days or a few weeks and it has stayed there ever since because it’s aligned with how the human brain works and thinks, which is the Internet’s nothing more the next day, right?

The Internet today is an absolute reflection of the human brain and so we knew at that moment, holy cow, we were on to something and so we started doing more and more testing with our customers at the time and then we started testing it on ourselves as well, for our Demand Jump content and that’s when the relationship with Ryan really verged in because we engaged his team to write a bunch of content and that’s where I will hand it over to Ryan to head for that next phase.

Ryan Brock: To take a step back, when we’re talking about the world of marketing, we’re talking about search engine optimization, that’s SEO. Like marketers trying to get their content to show up at the top of the results because that’s where all the clicks go and people are looking for answers to questions, right?

There has been an industry around this for a long time but it’s always been wrapped in mystery. There’s always just been this notion that the search engines make the rules, and they don’t really want to tell businesses what the rules are because the rules aren’t there to be [a] shortcut. You’re not supposed to have loopholes; you’re not supposed to just like check some boxes and win.

What search engines want is for the people who have the most authoritative responses to queries to be the ones to show up on top. They want to find the best information and put it right there. We talked about the 90.63% of blogs and webpages that never get any traffic, I spent ten years as an agency owner selling content, talking to businesses, and trying to convince them that, “Hey, instead of just advertising to people who don’t want your ads in front of them, why don’t you write some content so that when people are actually looking for what you have to offer, you can give them value.”

But it was always so hard — even with traditional methods like keyword databases, there are tools out there that will help you figure out what keywords drive how much traffic and who else is competing for them and all the stuff but at the end of the day, we’d still guess at we think based on what we know about our business, our customers, the ones we’ve spoken to anyway, this is the direction we should go with our content.

We should write these kinds of pieces and put them out there and we know, I lived this, nine out of ten of them would never go anywhere, and the 10% that did go somewhere, it takes six to twelve months. So by the time I met Toph, Demand Jump had gone implementing this content-focused solution. This innovation around, “Hey, if the Internet is a human brain, then search engines are sort of the speech processing center of that, right?”

It’s like where people go and in their most honest self because you’re not talking to anybody, you’re talking to a search engine, you’re just telling the search engine what you want and, if we could access that information and we could look at a macro level at all of the different ways people search for things, we could probably find patterns and we could find that even though no two people have the exact same search history, that a lot of people end up searching for this term or this term.

Or you thought it was this way of phrasing it but it’s actually this way of phrasing it, and so you know, we started working together and they started letting me into their platform to see this data, and together over time, we sort of trial and errored the thing, found a sort of step-by-step process that every time we did it, if you pick this kind of a topic to write about if you develop a strategy and build it in this hierarchical way if you link it together if you make the articles so long, just do these things.

Every single time, you find yourself going from no rankings on page one, none of your content is visible to people who are searching, to a ton of it is and that’s without all of the stuff that other people in search engine optimization have been wasting a lot of time on over the years like link building or scammy-spammy things. When Toph said black hat, he’s referring to people trying to trick Google into putting them in the front.

What we’re saying is technology’s advanced to the point where we can pretty decisively understand the broader conversation around a given topic and use the data we have available to us to tell marketers and businesses, “Hey, if you want to serve people, if you want to provide value to your customers before they even buy from you, these are the things you should write about and by the way, if you do that you’re going to drive more traffic to your website, it’s going to be better quality than the traffic you get from ads and your business is going to grow.”

And together, over a few years, we tested this system, we put it to work, we watched my agency grow as a result, and we watched Demand Jump grow as a result. Toph eventually offered to buy me a drink and said, “Hey, why don’t we get married in a business sense?” Demand Jump acquired Metonymy and we came together and it wasn’t long before Toph and I sat down and said, “We have something here; we have a methodology that is like step-by-step and works every time, let’s write it down,” and I think that’s what brought us here today.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Amazing, what an amazing journey. It all started with, “Hey, what’s up man, nice to meet you,” and then the madness of 2020. I love this story so much, it’s so good, and you all, and honestly, there are parts of your book I still don’t want to put down because, again, it’s so easy to read and access, and it started giving me ideas about how to think about my own content for my website and stuff.

So I just love that and it’s really powerful. How do you see the field of organic content marketing evolving in the future, and how can marketers stay ahead of the curve with their strategies?

The Evolution of Organic MarketingChristopher Day: Yeah, I think you just hit on something that’s really interesting. I think the pace of change that’s actually happening digitally is not fully appreciated by humans in general and so a couple of examples I’ll give here are, so we see about 22% change in networks and content like things are changing so rapidly because we have so many more smart devices, right?

So we’re talking to things today and so if you search for something using one word or two or three words, which is how people used to do it twenty years ago, and then today, people are like I literally search in full-on questions that are five, ten words long, right? Or I may not even put a question mark, but basically, any search, even if you’re not asking a question, it is a question, right?

You’re trying to find information, and so the two things, the increase in data that’s happening like exponentially today, humans simply can’t keep up with it and when you look at the month-over-month change that’s actually happening, this is absolutely impossible to keep up with.

I don’t have the data memorized anymore, but Ryan, I don’t know if you remember the data chart that we put together but it’s a… I don’t even remember the word, it’s you know, we’ve blown way past terabytes; it’s like child’s play at this point, right?

Ryan Brock: Petabytes, yeah.

Christopher Day: Yeah, petabytes. The number of petabytes and the growth over the next three years, like all the world’s data, was created or 90% of the world’s data was created within the last like ten years or something and it’s just that today, right now, as we’re speaking is the slowest rate of change that you and I will ever experience and so this problem is only going to get worse.

Ryan Brock: Think about this, Hussein, it’s so funny because we wrote this book last year, we wrote this book in 2022 and it doesn’t talk about AI at all. It doesn’t even touch on like ChatGPT or Bard in Google or Bing and how they’re all… all these, you know, search engines and also a lot of marketers are looking at AI.

Generative AI or conversational AI is like, this is the future, and so already, just in the last three or four months since the manuscript of the book got locked, the conversation that’s happening in marketing, especially digital marketing, is completely changed and now we’ve got to think about a world that’s coming up soon where some of the basic questions that companies out there might have wanted to address in their marketing, they know what they’re competing against is no longer their business competitors but it’s an AI system being powered by Google.

And so as we proceed into this year, and it’s going to happen fast, I think what’s going to happen is, we’re going to very quickly understand this as a society what’s the kind of question that’s simple enough that I can ask it and I’m going to trust an AI response in a search engine and then what’s the kind of question that is complex enough that it’s worth my time to scroll passed that AI response and see what a lot of people have to say.

So sort of what I think is the key to pillar-based marketing and like the methodology in our book, even though we don’t address AI, we’re sort of providing the blueprints for how to start thinking about that in your marketing in 2023 and to realize that all that’s going to happen is behavior is going to change. People are still going to be searching; they’re still going to be looking for information.

Now, what needs to happen is brands need to listen to what those people are searching for, more than ever, so we could start taking the critical steps of understanding like, “Where should a brand be involved? Where is their subtlety? Where is their difference of opinion?” and let’s make sure that we keep that but also, let’s acknowledge that there’s going to be some level of information moving forward that’s just so basic, the computer’s got it and that’s like crazy to me to think about it.

Like that would have never even entered my brain even six months ago and here we are, it’s the reality we’re dealing with.

Christopher Day: Yeah, if we thought the rate of change was fast previously, it’s nothing compared to what’s going to happen next, which makes this whole approach that much more critical. It will literally mean – I don’t mean to be dramatic but I can’t remember who put this article out but it’s predicted that the future CEO, the majority of the time, will come from the marketing side of the business because the ability to break through the noise will become more and more critical.

So marketers out there that read this book, great news for you, if you embrace these types of methodologies, that’s going to get you a seat at the table, at the strategic table, and put you in a position to get those promotions, to get those bonuses, right? And to rise through the ranks. Folks that, you know, there’s still a lot out there, right? To kind of do things just the way they think it should be done, they’re probably going to have to move to a different department.

Ryan Brock: Um, I love it when you get dramatic, Toph.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, I love this man because you guys are right, I feel like we’re going through like a sonic boom right now with everything with ChatGPT in, it’s just like, “Whoa,” and it’s kind of caught everyone, now I don’t want to say off guard but just like, “What is this, how do we…” now that all the question’s around it.

How do I grow, how do I grow my business — all these things, and I feel that you’re 100% right in that, we don’t even know how fast we’re going to be able to go because there’s a whole new vehicle now. I feel like human nature, who we are, doesn’t change very rapidly. I feel like human behavior is slowly adaptable, right? So how we choose to adapt even technology and all these things, but what I love is that the roots of all of these things are human emotion.

You know, that’s the stuff that we could all connect on that’s always going to be there and so this idea of just listening, you know, I really appreciate that. Can you share maybe a success story of a company or organization that you have implemented pillar-based marketing with and what kind of significant results they’ve seen?

Ryan Brock: Yeah. Well, there’s one company in particular that I know has used this pillar-based marketing approach. It’s a great success, and Toph, I feel like we can reference him out loud because he wrote a blurb on our book, right? But yeah, there’s a company called Collective[i]. Stephen Messer, you’ll see his name in print on our book if you buy it; he has been an innovator in the business space for a long, long time.

Toph can talk a little bit more about that in a moment but long story short, you’ve got this company that is one of many AI-driven, machine learning-driven software startups that’s come out in recent years, where their whole idea is using sophisticated artificial intelligence, they can provide to sellers, salespeople within organizations prescriptive insights into what they should do next to drive revenue and it also [has to] do with sales forecasting, right?

Sales forecasting is this crazy thing that all businesses do because we have to because our investors need us to because we need to know how much cash we’re going to have to spend and how, you know, like what we need to do to get more of it and it all comes down to this activity, which is kind of completely counterintuitive if you think about it. Sales forecasting is, “I’m going to try to build a model to understand how much money I’m going to be able to bring in, in the future,” like what am I going to be able to sell.

Historically speaking, the only information you have to go off to build that model is historical data but if you’ve ever invested or seen a commercial for a financial advisor or listened to the advice in a financial column, you’re probably familiar with the phrase, “Past history is not indicative of future events” right? What happened yesterday does not guarantee it’s going to happen tomorrow, and you have to say that if you’re telling someone, “Oh, we got really good returns on our investment somewhere” or something.

So the long history of sales forecasting has been, “Oh, we can use Excel now and that’s going to do some math for us and make our models faster and then we can use machine learning to do things like scan our emails or take our communications the customers and then if we put it through like a fancy algorithm, we’re going to predict like what percentage of the deals we have right now are showing the right signals then we’re going to close the deal.”

But Collective[i] comes along and says, “Forget all of that. That’s stupid because crystal balls don’t exist, and you can’t know what’s going to happen in the future based on what happened in the past. Instead, we’re going to start collecting data from a broader set of signals, including your CRM like where you host your interactions with the customer, what you know about them but we’re going to start building like smart data sets out of social signals,” like stuff that’s available out there on the Internet.

I am sure I am butchering some of the technical aspects of this but this includes like on an anonymized level, how other people who use this software are engaging with the same companies you are engaging with, and at the end of the day, it’s able to say, “Hey seller, you feel really good about this deal that you’ve just said you think is going to get over the finish line in the next two weeks.”

“But we know from signals we are seeing from six different places that that company hasn’t spent money on a new contract in like six months. They are on a hiring freeze, they are on a spending freeze,” whatever, “Instead go here,” or they could be like, “Based on everything we’re looking at, we believe the person that you are talking to at this company is not going to be the right person to sign in a contract because they don’t have purchasing power but this person is their boss and they do. Here’s their contact information.”

So it is about empowering people to move forward. Now, that was a really, really long explanation. We could probably trim that down in the post a little bit but the point I’m trying to make here is that you have this new tool that changes the way people think. It completely destroys the need to get a better future prediction because, instead, you can just make better choices to influence your revenue; how do you market that organically?

How do you write content that is going to be found by people when they’re searching for tools? You can’t write prescriptive sales forecasting because that doesn’t exist yet. There’s so much you want to say but if you write about it, no one is going to find it because they are not looking for it. So they’re a really good example of somebody who can actually look at the benefit or look at the network of search behavior around a topic like sales forecasting.

See what people are actually asking about and surprisingly, a lot of it is like, “How do I build a sales forecasting in Excel?” or “How do I build better sales forecasting in Excel?” or “What is qualitative sales forecasting?” It is the sort of stuff that somebody who wants to do better at forecasting is looking for at Collective[i] Innovative because not only do they have a product that’s different and changing the market.

But they were willing to say, “Maybe we should write about how to build a really good Excel sales forecast and while we’re doing that, we can be right up front and say, by the way, you’re wasting your time. We’ll tell you how to do it, we’ll show you how to do that, but if you want to actually like fix your revenue issues, come here and talk to us about this product instead” and you know, over just a few months with some very targeted content, they were able to make a huge splash.

Drive a ton of revenue in a marketplace in a category that they were kind of creating, and it all happen to do with listening to the current conversation, providing value where possible, and then waiting for the right time to move the conversation toward what they had to offer instead of trying to force it on people. That’s just such a good example of what it looks like to leverage technology but still be superhuman.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, man, I love that. What a deep sort of understanding of not only the work you do but how you genuinely get people to see the value in your marketing strategies in these pillars. So go ahead, Toph.

Christopher Day: Hussein, the word you just used, genuine, is so spot on, right? There’s a little analogy I like to use and so let’s say in real life, let’s say you are driving home, it’s before Thanksgiving, and your spouse calls and says, “Hey, you know can you pick up a frozen turkey at the grocery store?” and you decide to wheel in because you’re thinking about buying a new car, so you wheel in some car lot across the street and you’re like wheeling through looking at an Audi or something.

But you’re not ready to buy, you’re just kind of thinking about it and maybe you’re interested, maybe you’re not, maybe you’re in fantasy mode, you know, decision mode, research mode, whatever mode you’re in, but you drive in a parking lot and you drive across the street and you go look at the butterball turkeys to pick one out and all of a sudden that salesperson from the Audi parking lot shows up at the aisle of the grocery store shaking a flyer at you like, “Hey, you want to buy this Audi” and you’re like, “Well, that’s kind of weird.”

You turn around and there’s a Porsche dude on the other side and he’s shaking a flyer, “No, no, no, you want to buy the Porsche and that you buy the red one,” like you would think that’s weird and you might call the cops but for some reason, we think that’s okay. When I say we, not us but in general, there are a lot of people that think that’s okay on the Internet, right? You just throw stuff up against the wall and hope somebody engages at some point.

Well, that’s one way to do it, or how about you engage in authentic conversations digitally with your ideal customer profile and meet them in the moment when their brain is thinking about what you ultimately solve, the pain you’re looking to solve. I always think it’s like people do two things on the Internet. They are trying to solve pain or there is some desire there they’re trying to fulfill, right?

I don’t mean that in whatever way; I am talking about buying a basketball, and the desire to play basketball, right?

Ryan Brock: We’re from Indiana, we love basketballs, yeah.

Christopher Day: Yeah, it’s like those are two big buckets and so if you meet them in the moment when they’re in exploration research decision mode and you are answering whatever is going through their mind and then oh, by the way, your solution happens to be sitting there, they’re much more likely to, especially in e-com, they can buy right on the spot or in B2B, they’re like, “Wow, these people understand me” and then they see your product page, they’re much more active to engage, just like the networks in real life.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s very powerful, and thank you for that sort of real-life explanation. I mean, it feels like anytime in real life we’re out here doing our own things and then sometimes just talking about something and then it shows up on your phone or on your computer or whatever, you know, it’s no coincidence because it’s all set up that way but you know, in the way that you all share how to approach content and creating content to meet that customer is really powerful.

I know writing a book is no easy feat, and I’m sure that was a journey for both of you. What was it like maybe perhaps your favorite part of pulling the book together? Let’s start with Ryan.

Ryan Brock: Yeah, so I’m a writer first and foremost. I got into this by being a storyteller and being a writer and someone who loves that. So the process itself is not something that I am afraid of, it is something that I am very familiar with. The process of sitting down with another person and saying, you’ve got your story in your head, I’ve got my story in my head, and then there’s a lot about like the methodology that we teach that we both know.

That we both understand and then, of course, there’s my perspective and as a marketer, as an agency owner, I have a certain closeness to the subject matter. Toph, being the founder of the company that runs this stuff, has that too but he is thinking about it from a different perspective, and finding the middle ground and finding ways to like balance each other out was really, really cool to me because I don’t think we ever failed in that endeavor Toph.

I don’t know what you think but I feel like we learned a lot about each other and ourselves and like how we need to position ourselves to communicate effectively to the world. I had to pass through your lens, you had to pass through mine and at the end, I think we ended up with a book that’s greater than the sum of its parts because of that.

Christopher Day: Yeah, I totally agree with that. I thought it was an awesome process, and I felt like I learned a lot. I learned even more about our own subject matter just by spending so much time with Ryan and all those interviews and laying everything out and going through the editing process but I agree with what Ryan just said, and the real magic, I think, happened because we both know a lot about the same topic but from two totally different places and we share that.

That’s kind of how the book starts out, right? Ryan shares his journey from his vantage point and then I share my journey from my vantage point and then we come together and how this creates magic for your team. I think if we were both like if I was the same level of expertise as Ryan is with his skillset, it probably wouldn’t have been such a beautiful experience, you know?

Because we’d probably be arm wrestling for, “No, we’re going to say that word or that word,” but I think if you’re going to coauthor a book, you probably got to make sure you start off with a deep mutual respect, right? It probably works better and then if people have different backgrounds, experiences, and skillsets talking about the same topic, I think it’s romantic. It’s created in bringing it to life on multiple levels at more depth.

Ryan Brock: Yeah, so when Toph says a deep mutual respect, which is certainly what we have, I think that it’s important to note that what that allows is for you to have fun with yourself. For example, in the first chapter of the book, that’s my story of the stress I was under trying to find a predictable methodology for again, the content, and how I was just really conscious all the time that I was asking my customers to wait six months, twelve months.

To let me spend a bunch of money, write ten articles, and maybe one of them succeeds, and like that’s no way to run a business. It’s hard but it’s how we’ve been doing it for a long time and so it is all about my anxiety I think the chapter is called, “Marketers Don’t Sleep” and it’s talking about why I’m afraid of this perception that we’re wasting people’s money and then Toph, his chapter is chapter two and it’s called, “Marketing is a Waste of Money.”

Christopher Day: Because that’s how I felt for twenty-five years.

Ryan Brock: Exactly so not only do we need their respect so that we could rip on each other in that way but if we were coming at it from two different perspectives, we could have never had the two sides of the same coin conversation, starting the book, which I think is going to make it easier for readers of any background to come in and say, “Okay, these guys aren’t taking themselves too seriously but they do have serious issues that they needed to solve and I can trust that they were doing whatever they can to solve them.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful. I love that. Well, I am just – man, the level of depth you all bring to the table right now, I’m just blown away and I feel like you are the people to hit up, to figure out a marketing strategy because you’re around content creation and reaching a level that I feel like I’ve never been able to get to myself because you’re right, I’ve thought so traditionally about SEO that you know, it is evolved.

It’s grown, and who knows how much more it’s going to evolve, so what are the new tactics and techniques that we can deploy to kind of meet that?

Christopher Day: Yeah, Hussein, I think there is a moment in the book where I think I say, and by the way marketers, I don’t think this is your fault, right? I truly mean that. I think that technology couldn’t keep up with the pace of the growth of digital in the Internet, right? In all of the different user cases and marketers have been, they’re the most, and I sincerely believe this, they’re the most underserved department with technology in any organization.

What I mean by that is every single other department has a piece of technology that you can input data into and it spits out how you can do that better because you know the data, right? Finance, right? It’s numbers, it’s your financial numbers even warehousing, right? Did the box you know, arrive, and did it exit or not? You know, just simplistically. So every department has a piece of software that tells you what to do to make something better, except for marketing.

This is one of the first real components, there is so many channels in marketing today. I sincerely believe this, I see it today with what I do and company after company, you can’t see, touch and feel the Internet or the data within the Internet or the customer journey or the customer consumer behavior within the Internet until now.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s very powerful; what an incredible tool. I think it is going to change a few different things and how we approach it, certainly. Oh man, again, I can keep going. I feel like you guys have so much more to share, but is there anything else you two want to add? Is there anything specific that we haven’t touched on just yet? Toph, Ryan?

Christopher Day: One high-level thing I might mention is I think there’s an overarching message in the book. This is more than just about marketing or about page one, or about, SEO or about pillar-based marketing. This is about enabling deeper professional relationships across the department and I think if like Mr. and Mrs. Pacman, like a match made in heaven when they bounce together in the heart, you know, it’s like sales leaders and marketing leaders can finally work in lockstep, right?

Can work in concert, they can drive not only many more leads but many more qualified leads for what the company’s trying to specifically sell and whether it’s a widget, right? Like a pair of reading glasses or whether it’s a piece of software or anything in between but it is about more than just having content that actually ranks and people actually see. This is about the strategic direction of a company in informing the CEO at a much more sophisticated level of where to take the organization.

We even had public companies at the board level leveraging the data in the platform to make acquisition decisions, right? I feel like the used cases just become massive. I want to layer that on that like this is a solution that enables so much more than just producing good content. It’s transformative for your inner department relationships and the trajectory of the company as a whole.

Ryan Brock: Yeah, and that’s the only other thing that I wanted to say is we’ve talked a lot about data and we talked about things like keywords and content. This is a methodology for that but it all does come back to the same idea and something that we talk about early on in the book that like Toph, he just said something to the effects of marketing doesn’t have that tool that you can just say, “Here’s the situation. Tell me what to do differently.”

There are plenty of tools in marketing for finding more data like there are tons more data available in marketing. There are keyword-building tools and there are SEO tools and there’s audience research and demographic tools, there’s all this stuff but like who cares? If you have a whole ocean of data and you don’t have a boat, you’re just going to drown and you are not going to be able to make a good decision if you can’t see the shore.

If you don’t know which direction to go or anything but if you can get just a little bit of help, a push in the right direction, data can actually have the chance to transform not just your marketing tactics but like Toph said, the way you as a business understand the market and your place in it and the future and where it’s going lead and so just like in my story about Collective[i] and prescriptive sales forecasting, that’s what we’re talking about here.

We’re talking about the beginning of something in organic content marketing, which is a discipline that’s been sort of fuzzy and soft for a long time. We’re saying not only is there data that’s better than the data you’re used to getting to inform that process but it’s got to actually give you direction. It is going to prescribe steps to you and that is where this methodology is different from anything else you’ll find in marketing or in market research and just listening to the market itself. So we’re really excited to get that into people’s hands.

Christopher Day: Yeah, pillar-based marketing is the only appreciating asset in the market.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: What a powerful note to end that with. Toph and Ryan, thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences with me today. Man, I thought that was really powerful at the end there like it’s just – because you’re right. There is so much to think about when it comes to marketing, however, in a lot of people’s minds — especially as a creative entrepreneur when you think about creating content and all those kinds of things, there is a lot of hope involved, right?

Not seeing information that can really help me develop the next thing in the trajectory that is best fitting, that’s really powerful, man. So I think you guys have something remarkable at work. Of course, the book is going to help people get there. The book is called, Pillar-Based Marketing: A Data-Driven Methodology for SEO and Content That Actually Works. So besides checking out the book, where can people find you two and connect with you and maybe even learn some more?

Ryan Brock: Yeah, so for me, search me on LinkedIn, Ryan Brock. I’m there, I’ve got a new newsletter called The Pillar Column. It is a weekly newsletter where we get into what is happening in organic content, SEO and technology, and pillar-based marketing specifically. So just Google The Pillar Column on LinkedIn or find me and my bald head on LinkedIn, and I’ll be happy to connect.

Then if you want to learn more about pillar-based marketing methodology and how to put it into play in your organization, obviously buy the book first, then check out university.demandjump.com, where I’ve got hours of coursework designed to help certify people in this new way of thinking and drive some results for them really fast.

Christopher Day: You can find me on LinkedIn, just search for Christopher Day, and I’ll be the one that says Christopher, and in parenthesis, Toph, Day, and my ugly mug will pop up.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right on. Well, thank you two for joining me today. I’ve learned so much, I know our audience did too. Your stories are remarkable. Thank you two, man, this was great. Congratulations on your book, I know it’s going to hit some number-one sellers because I know that you know what it is that you’re doing in that space, this is how you do it. I love it.

Christopher Day: Thanks Hussein, you’re the man.

Ryan Brock: Yeah, thanks, this is awesome.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Great man, yeah but I appreciate you two. Seriously, a wealth of knowledge today, lots of gold gems. So for you listeners out there, get out there and get the book. It’s a good one I promise you, super easy to read. Again, congrats you two on this remarkable journey. Thank you.

The post Pillar-Based Marketing: Ryan Brock and Christopher “Toph” Day appeared first on Author Hour.

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What kind of relationship do you have with your brain? This important organ shapes who you are, so it’s important to make sure it’s performing at its best. Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by author Laurie Leitch, who’s here to talk about her new book Brain Gain: Timely Tools to Tackle Life’s Heavy Lifting. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to the show. This is Author Hour. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty. Today, I’m hanging out with my good friend, Laurie Leitch, who just launched her book Brain Gain: Timely Tools to Tackle Life’s Heavy Lifting. Laurie, thank you so much for joining the show today. I really appreciate you.

Laurie Leitch: Oh, thanks, Hussein. I’m really excited to talk to you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. Laurie, I’ve watched your whole journey from the beginning to now the end, as far as publishing. Well, the new beginning is publishing, but I got to have the pleasure of really watching you come to the guided author workshop and really start working on your book. You’re always so positive and forward-thinking about your book and the ideas in it. I’m really excited to get into it because it deeply resonated with me. You’re thinking around resilience is way more than spot on, so I’m excited to get into that.

However, before we get into the book, I usually like to talk a little bit about maybe a little bit of your background, your personal background, and where did you grow up? How did you get on this path? Was it someone or a certain situation that led you down this road? I’d love to know a little bit about that. Then we’ll jump into the content of your book.

Laurie Leitch: Okay. Well, I grew up in the Midwest in Michigan and went to college at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Then I moved to Washington, DC, where I raised my children and had my clinical practice. I had a psychotherapy practice in DC for many, many years. Also did evaluation research along the sides of that practice. I loved working in Washington, but I’ve ended up in New York, where I’ve lived now for not quite ten years. It’s pretty good up here too, though.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. What a journey from the Midwest and then to Washington and up to New York. But your work has always been around, so tell me a little bit about your work and what got you into it.

Laurie Leitch: While I lived in Washington, a group of colleagues and I discovered this man named Angelo Boleo. He was teaching a course on brain structure and function and processes, which doesn’t sound very interesting, but it was fascinating. He talked to us, all of us were psychotherapists, and he talked to us about how you can change the brain and how you can help people who need a little bit more thinking capacity and clarity with exercises and fun things to do that could strengthen their capacity for conceptual thinking and that kind of thing. I don’t know, it was spellbinding — Hussein, and from there, I really got interested in neuroscience. He was a big influence.

Then I heard about a weekend workshop by a group who were affiliated with Peter Levine’s work in somatic experiencing. I went to that weekend, and I got excited because that was a more practical extension of what I had already learned, Peter’s SE work. I took his training — it’s three years, and it was very expensive, but I took it, and I went through it. At the end of my, about second year, I guess it was of the three, was when the Thailand tsunami hit. I was one of the ones that he invited to go on a team to southern Thailand and work with people who had been in the tsunami. That was a life-altering experience for me.

When I went, I also collected the data for that project in my doctoral program. One of my specialty topics was Quantitative Research Methods. I did the research for that project, but it was just life-altering to go into that level of trauma and realize that there were things that you could do to start to help the mind-body system restore its natural resilience. That was one of those seminal moments that many of us have that takes us down a path that we hadn’t necessarily expected. After Peter’s training, several of us got together and began to put together a model that would not cost as much as Peter’s training could be done by all kinds of people. Over the years, it’s evolved, and my version of that is called the Social Resilience Model.

Actually, when I started writing the book, it sounded a little bit stuffy to me, the name Social Resilience Model. I just thought, well, what could I call it instead that would be a little livelier? I chose Brain Gain Program. Now I’m using both because SRM, Social Resilience Model, has been used since about 2012. It’s a long time out there, and many people have been trained in it, and I’ve trained groups of trainers in it. I didn’t want to leave it behind, but I decided to use a livelier term like Brain Gain Program. But it started back with Angelo Boleo and Peter Levine.

The True Meaning of ResilienceHussein Al-Baiaty: That’s amazing, and what a journey it’s taking you on. I mean, especially that experience that starts to alter the way you see where your capacities lie. I think that’s really powerful. I love your definition of resilience. Can you share that with me a little bit and how you use it throughout your book?

Laurie Leitch: Well, a lot of people use resilience in a pretty limited way, which is to bounce back after adverse experiences. I think it’s a very outdated way of looking at resilience because of the brain’s capacity to change. We have this wonderful process called neuroplasticity and also neurogenesis, the growth of new neurons. Now we can change the brain through or by certain very practical skills, which is what brain gain lays out and describes in a lot of detail. It’s really the summary of my many years of work. I feel like I’m offering it up to the public in this book.

We can begin to help people stabilize. It’s one of the reasons I could take it to Rwanda or Nepal or China or Haiti, all the different places around the world we’ve worked, and not be guilty of a Western bias, taking a Western methodology, which is often insight oriented into cultures that aren’t interested in more insight. They’re just interested in having their capacity to contribute to their communities restored. That’s what this set of skills is.

My definition of resilience has three parts. It’s a set of tools for being able to bounce forward after difficult times, [and] to be generative during times of relative stability. Well, those are the two keys. I always say to people, if you’re sitting in the dead center of your comfort zone, you’re taking up too much space. If we’re going to really be resilient, we have to have times where we stretch outside of that center of comfort and expand ourselves beyond it. I think that’s the most dynamic definition of resilience. Get out of the center of your comfort zone and stretch.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. I love that so much. It deeply resonated with me because like my book coming from a refugee camp was around resilience, but really in how it shaped me through art. I feel like art was my crutch, if you will. Obviously, every person defines it for themselves. It’s like success, but really resilience has the same internal structure of just this idea of, yeah, not only bouncing back really but really pushing forward. I love how your book really gets our focus around this idea of moving forward. You share a really amazing personal experience in the Kenyan refugee camp that, again, I deeply resonated with, but it inspired the opening story of your book, and it focuses on resilience in the brain. Can you share a little bit about your experience there?

Laurie Leitch: That was an amazing experience, you’re right, because in Kenya we were there after the post-election violence where people were really fighting with machetes and horrible machetes injuries, and the government, in an effort to quiet things down, offered villagers a small stipend of money to leave the village until they could get them settled down and send them to these internally displaced persons camps, IDP camps. We were going to go leave Nairobi and go about two hours up into that central plateau area and work with people in those IDP camps.

Oh, my gosh. They were pretty horrendous places because they were established on really just fields of dirt, no greenery, no trees, no nothing, just dirt, and which meant dust. The people were covered in dust, and in the first two camps we worked in, everybody was in their tent, and it was just a sea of dust. A water truck would come every day, but there was nothing people could actually create or have. But in this third camp, it was completely different. When we got there at the end of the day, all of a sudden you saw tents, but you saw gardens growing next to the tents. They had – people were planting their own vegetables.

I said to the woman who had brought – I was there to talk to the teachers, initially. I said, “How come this camp is so different?” She said, “Because the people in this camp made a decision to pull their stipends, their government stipends, and they had enough people that when they pulled the stipends, they had a lot of money, and they bought the land that the camp had been put on.” Well, first of all, the fact that people came together in a relational bond was just stunning to me.

One piece of brain food, something that the brain must have is positive attachments in order to thrive. These people had come from trauma and had overcome that fear response to pull their money. Once they own the land, you can only imagine, and you especially, having been in these kinds of camps yourself, people started investing in that land. They started buying plants and seeds. They began starting microfinance endeavors.

There were baskets being made. They were saving up when I was there to buy a school bus to take people to school, but also to take the women to hospitals so that they could have their babies in a hospital. It was just a thriving, energetic community. They had one big school tent. They had smaller tents for these microfinance projects. It was thrilling. I was so glad I saw it at the end of the day because it was really like this, a little wave of hope about, wow, what people can do when they bond together in healthy relationships was a great example of resilience.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. I love that so much. You really weave it throughout the beginning of your – I mean, it sucked me in right away because I obviously very much resonate with that. I had a different experience. However, a lot of what you talked about was eye-opening in the sense that the people can really dictate what happens in there. Even if it is a refugee camp, you can still dictate what it’s going to be like to a degree, right, with help, with working together.

This idea of operating not from fear but really about love, and it’s this idea of coming together, bouncing ideas, and letting those ideas swarm the refugee camp, and then people collectively started coming together. If you’re proposing something positive to look forward to, something to work towards, I feel like people are more eager to sign up for something like that, rather than just dwelling and walking around this camp and waiting endlessly and those waiting days.

I remember early on in our refugee camp experience, they were excruciating because they are the most boring. It’s like a mental prison because you’re not doing anything, you’re not taking action towards anything, you actually start to dwell on what’s happening to you on a very deep level and out so many people. Oh, my God. Spiral into depression.

Laurie Leitch: And despair.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: And despair, and lack of hope. They don’t want to trust anyone. It just gets worse and worse, sadly. What I love about your book is that you highlight so many stories of where that spiral went the other way around. It spiraled upwards.

Laurie Leitch: Well, you know. There’s also a story, one other story that’s negative that was really impactful to me and made me determined to do my work in a very particular way. It happened when I first moved to New York. I was invited by someone in a high city agency to come and talk to her about training her staff in SRM. I went in, and she asked me a little bit about it. I was describing some of the neuroscience pieces. All of a sudden, she looked with, I think, disgust may be a little too strong, but disdain. She waved her hand, and she said, “That just sounds like so much jargon.” This jargon — being parts of our human nervous system.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah.

Laurie Leitch: Like the amygdala or the parasympathetic nervous system, she said, “Why do they need to know that language?” It was such an objectification of people and especially the people that I was there, I was working with, in the city, [many of] who were formerly incarcerated people. Certainly, it had a hard – a lot of hard knocks in life. Some of them are not highly educated but are motivated. They deserve to know the names of the parts of their body that determine their resilience. It was such a great lesson for me in attitudes that hold people down and diminish people and especially in marginalized communities, people in marginalized communities. It really made me determined and excited to work with even more people in those communities.

If you notice in my acknowledgments in the book, I acknowledge a group of students called Navigator Students. These are all formerly incarcerated students that I’ve worked with at John Jay College of Criminal Justice over the years. They have taught me so much about resilience and dedication and determination and rising above. I dedicated my book to them because of what an impactful experience it’s been working with them.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. That’s so powerful. I love that you felt the heat from that comment or those sets of comments that, obviously, resonate deeply in politics. These agencies that — sometimes you feel like they’re there to help. When you offer up something that is really important that’s not technically, I guess in a way tangible, as if people in refugee or in situations where they’re in despair that they can’t learn to come out of it, that they are human and they can — to understand where these things are impacting.

I’m 38 now, and I’m just like in the last, I would say, seven years was when I really started to understand my own traumas, my own fears, my own things that I went through, and I haven’t been able to understand them and unpack them. It took me a long time to do my own research, my own understanding – you know what I mean? The work that you’re doing, I guess, is what I’m saying is that you’re essentially championing how we can really understand not only our resilience but how our brain works with resilience and this idea of building it and bouncing forward.

Laurie Leitch: Well, and that we can do it. Anybody can do it, and so my book is inspired by my work in underserved communities, whether they’re international communities or here in the United States. But it’s also intended for people who just are stressed by the way they have to live their lives to support themselves economically or for whatever reason, that we’re all wired exactly the same way in terms of what structures and processes we have in our mind-body system. We can all benefit from – because of those concepts, those processes I mentioned earlier of neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. We can really have a major effect on our resilience.

We talk a lot in the book about the “RZone,” or the zone of resilience. When you’re in that zone there’s a certain nervous system rhythm, and you’re thinking is clear, you can be mad or sad in that zone, but not at a level where your body is churning out toxic stress chemicals. The skills that I teach in my model that are derived from Peter Levine’s really help people deepen that zone of resilience so that it takes a bigger thing to bump you out. I think every human being on the planet, frankly and use skills like that. The good news is that the more you practice skills like that, because of neuroplasticity, you begin to wire in a deeper zone of resilience. It’s so simple, and yet it’s like the best-kept secret.

Notice Where Your Attention IsHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. I love that. I feel like your book is taking it from the secret realm and bringing it into the world because it is much-needed information and especially your stories that deeply resonate. In your opinion, what is the most important thing people can do to develop a healthy relationship with their brain?

Laurie Leitch: The main thing that they need to be able to do is notice. The process for almost everything that wires into our brain is a very basic process that every single human being uses probably a thousand times a day, which is attention, and the things that we pay attention to are the things and the ways that we wire our brain and the things that we stop paying attention to are pruned away. Maybe at some point in school, you learned your multiplication tables, and you could do them after a practice that wires it in. You could do them successfully, and you got good grades on your multiplication tests, but 20 years later maybe you haven’t done any multiplication in any speedy way, and your capacity to do it would start to be pruned away.

The whole process in the brain is dominated and shaped by the things we pay attention to and the things we don’t pay attention to. What we wire in and what we prune away. In my model, we teach people first to notice because if you don’t even notice where your attention is going, you’re just on autopilot, the organ, the little – we have a smoke detector in our brain. We have two of them actually called amygdalae, but it’s easier to say the amygdala, that little smoke detector, is always functioning to watch for novelty in your environment that might pose a threat.

If you’re not tuned into it, you’re just giving that little smoke detector its way instead of deciding, is this where I want my attention to go? If you, for example, at Scribe have an argument with a staff member who really matters to you, and you’re suffering, and you’re mad at that person, and you’re ruminating, but you’re not – you’re just on autopilot, that’s what your brain is going to do. But if you notice that you’re doing that, you could shift your attention away from that and focus on the things that make that person important to you, and the times when that person has come through for you.

If it isn’t that person, the time other people have come through for you and before you notice that your reactivity will start to drop down and you’ll come back into your resilient zone, you won’t be producing the stress chemicals of reactivity, you’ll be able to think about a strategic way you might want to deal with the problem instead of just doing a lash out or a shutdown. When people are stuck on “high” outside of the resilient zone, they’re stuck in very activated kinds of behaviors like anger and pain is one of those signs, anxiety, things that are outward-oriented, and when you’re stuck on low below the resilient zone, people feel shut down and numb.

It’s just a process that every human being on the planet goes through. We all have a zone of resilience. Some peoples’ it’s really, really narrow. If you drop your pen on the floor you get mad. Other people have a nice, robust resilient zone. Those are usually people who have pretty healthy relationships, and they have some satisfaction in their life. It takes more to bump them out. Then meditation, monks who’ve been meditating for years are known to have really deep resilient zones because that focused attention on stability has wired that very strongly into their mind-body system.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. It’s so powerful. I’m glad you brought that example up. I think everything you’re saying, I mean, it’s taken years. I feel like what you’re talking about is are things that I’ve lived through, so that’s why like –

Laurie Leitch: Yeah. I think that it sounds so good.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. I mean, I remember growing up, just my temper or my agitation or whatever was just the window was very small, right? Like the level of patience was limited.

Laurie Leitch: It sounds like you were a stuck-on high person.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh, yeah.

Laurie Leitch: Because if you have anger and agitation and that’s the outward directed, but it’s also full of stress chemicals.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. It was just unprocessed emotion and all the things. It wasn’t until, like literally, like my mid-teenage years and into my college years. Now really adulthood that I’ve been slowly just unpacking these things. It wasn’t until I got therapeutic help like therapy that I really started to put things, at least like you said, bring awareness and language to what I was experiencing and feeling.

Laurie Leitch: Yeah.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Now that I’m able to communicate that with family members, my wife, whatever. Like, I can now, I have the words and ways to communicate that. It’s so powerful. I can’t agree with everything you’re saying more. What was your favorite part of pulling this book together? Because I know, from watching you, it’s a journey. I watch you start from the beginning and now we’re here, where you launched your book out in the world. Tell me what that experience was like for you. What was your favorite part?

Laurie Leitch: I think I was unusual, at least in the other Scribe folks that I would listen to on your – the hour that we would do, and later with those of us who were close to publishing because it was a total pleasure for me. I had this one jolting experience with Tucker when I got to the Scribe workshop, but after that, when I, through him gave myself permission to write the book I wanted to write, I really loved writing it. I wasn’t sorry when I’d finished it, but I missed the structure of sitting down with some of those stories. It really was like a trip back through my professional life of all the different people who had shaped my attitudes and my skills and my sense of myself, and all of that.

I never had trouble sitting down to write it. When I read it the first time, I was so frightened because I thought, “Oh, my gosh. What if I don’t like it?” I read it. I thought, you know? I said what I wanted to say. The only thing I wouldn’t let myself do is, I wouldn’t let myself record the audiobook, because I was afraid what would happen is I’d be reading along and I’d think, well, I could have said that better, and I’d interrupt myself to correct a sentence or something like that, so I decided to use one of your readers so that I wouldn’t do that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. It’s so powerful. Your journey is amazing. I loved watching, when you came on those calls there were times when you asked questions. You had so much value to the group, I believe. Your enthusiasm. Again, I think for me, to be creatives, to be scientists, artists, whatever it is like showing up to a group and asking questions and being involved is something I just genuinely appreciate.

I’m a big fan of building and creating community and being supportive. You really showed up, and I’m grateful for that. I just wanted to tip my hat to you because I sensed your presence when you were there. It was always amazing. You always had something great to share. Now, of course, with your book, it’s going to make an amazing difference in so many people’s lives.

Laurie Leitch: Oh, I hope so. I’m eager to hear from people. I leave my email at the end of the book, and the last chapter of the book is about how to become a resilience messenger. I give a detailed description of how to use my skills card in communities that matter to people. I’m hoping that – and I’m going to be offering classes and how to use the skills card on my website and things like that so that people who read the book have a place to come with questions and to learn more, and to be effective if they want to be a resilience messenger in their church or in their community or in their neighborhood or on their job site or whatever.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. It’s so powerful. Well, thank you so much, Laurie, for coming on the show today. I’ve learned so much. I loved your stories and experiences. I’m definitely going to be finishing up the book this week. To all of those out there, the book is called Brain Gain: Timely Tools to Tackle Life’s Heavy Lifting. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Laurie?

Laurie Leitch: Well, I have two websites. One is the book’s website which is www.braingainproject.com. It’ll have the classes and all the sorts of things that are coming out of the publication of the book. Then my general website at Threshold Global Works, that’s www.thresholdglobalworks.com and which has my blog, it has all my published articles, it has information that people can use. It has a — I redesigned a survey tool that can be used on intake interviews that incorporates resilience and not just adverse childhood events, it’s called Paces.

It has a lot of resources beyond the book website, but I have a feeling the book website is going to expand itself, as people who want to be resilience messengers in their communities, we’ll put a little group of them together and meet regularly and that thing. It’s worth taking a look at both of those.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. Beautiful. Well, again Laurie, thank you so much. It’s been an absolute pleasure not only watching your journey but now getting to celebrate your book, so congratulations. Thanks, again.

Laurie Leitch: Well, thank you. I was so excited to know you were going to be the one interviewing me because I didn’t know it would be a stranger or somebody I didn’t know well, but you’re so familiar. I remember you well from those first three days at the Scribe workshop, so it’s really been nice to talk to you, and thanks for your thoughtful questions, too.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Laurie, it’s been my absolute pleasure, seriously. I have just really enjoyed your process. Yeah, so grateful I got to be on the journey with you. Thanks, again.

Laurie Leitch: All right. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Bye.

The post Brain Gain: Laurie Leitch, Ph.D appeared first on Author Hour.

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If you’re tired of being undervalued, micromanaged, and overworked, and you’re in the medical field, this episode is for you. My next guest talks about exciting, lucrative career options that go far beyond a standard employment contract or even winging it with your own private practice.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined today by Tod Stillson, who is here to talk about his new book called Doctor Incorporated. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the show. I’m here with my friend, Tod Stillson. I’m super excited for him because he just launched an amazing book called Doctor Incorporated. Tod, thanks for coming on the show today, man. I really appreciate your time.

Tod Stillson: Yeah Hussein, it’s great to be with you, I couldn’t be any more excited about this book launch.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, this is really exciting. You know, books like yours — we were just talking about this, right? They’re very niche, and they speak to a very important audience, and I think there are so many components in your book that as I was kind of swimming through it, that, I was learning just about the profession of being a physician and what that’s been like and how you sort of, kind of went off and did your own thing but in a very special way.

But before we get into the book and the nitty-gritty, I’d love to get to know you a little bit, talk about and share with our audience a little bit of your personal background, perhaps where you grew up and maybe someone or something that maybe inspired you on the path that you’re on now.

Tod Stillson: Those are good questions, Hussein. I’m from the Midwest, I grew up in Indiana, and so I’ve really lived there all of my life, and I’m a primary care family doctor. I was really inspired as a young person by our local little hometown pharmacy and pharmacist. I grew up in a town of about three to 4,000 people, a very small rural community, and that little pharmacist really made a difference in the community, and so I went off to school thinking I was going to be a little local pharmacist.

I went to pharmacy school before medical school, and it turned out that a number of events happened in my life that led me to eventually decide to leave pharmacy school and go to medical school to become a doctor, with the idea again, of making a difference in a rural community as a family doctor. In fact, that’s what has transpired. I’ve been practicing in my community now for over twenty-five years, right back in the same home county that I grew up in.

I came back to make a difference, to touch people’s lives, to really love on people and provide great medical care, and I’m glad that I’ve been able to do that, and so I love being a doctor. It is, perhaps, what I consider the greatest profession in the world, and I love our entire tribe of doctors. One of the things that have happened in my life because of my passion for medicine is I have five children, and my oldest has decided to follow my path to become a family doctor as well, and he’s in training.

In his first year of training at this time down in Texas and the idea of this book really began forming when I began to think in my own life, “What do I need to tell my son, who is going to be a family doctor, what he needs to know to thrive as a doctor in the future?” And so that’s kind of the genesis of why this book was written.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that, man, what a cool story. You know, I got to pause you for a second because what’s cool is, you’re not only were you inspired by the person that’s the pharmacy, right? But also kind of that led you down that path, which of course opened up your eyes and your world to more of that, and then there’s like the double-layered inspiration, right?

To get to this book and to really encapsulate your knowledge and your wisdom to kind of pass that down to your children and, of course, you know, other people who can totally benefit from this. I think that’s really powerful. I think you’re probably one of the first authors that answered with like a double inspiration.

Tod Stillson: Thanks, all right.

Why Doctors Should Seek an Alternative Employment ModelHussein Al-Baiaty: That was really great. So you know, I would say what inspired you to write this book, but I already know that, and it’s really powerful. What do say — the experiences that led you to discover this idea of the alternative employment model that you present in the book? I think that’s really powerful.

Tod Stillson: Yeah, the whole idea of kind of professional micro corporations, which is the idea that I present in the book was unknown to me. I just didn’t know it existed, and then frankly, a lot of doctors in my generation moving forward aren’t very aware of the opportunity to start a professional micro corporation as supposed to the idea of going into private practice.

Most of us are aware, you can kind of go into a private practice, but quite honestly, private practice is really challenging today, and in today’s economic world, the large corporations they’re just kind of squashing and buying up and putting their thumbs down on this private practices, and it’s just really difficult for them to make it work in our country nowadays.

And so the mindset is, “Boy, it’s hard to do that now, so you know what? It’s easier just to go work for one of those big corporations, become an employee, collect a predictable paycheck, and not have to manage a practice, and have them hire all the employees and they bring the patients to you, and you do your work, kind of a win-win-win-win, okay?” And it works great.

There really are a lot of positives about employment, and that’s the path that I chose when I came out of my training is to kind of go that route. There were some circumstances that led me to do that, but in the end, that’s the path I chose, and in the beginning, it works great, Hussein. It works fantastic, but what you learn over time and most of your listeners who are doctors will know exactly what I’m talking about, overtime when you’re an employee, you lose more and more control of your life because your employer controls you and you really start to see professional autonomy get reduced further and further and further.

For me, that kept going and going and going until I reach a breaking point of about a little more than ten years into practice where frankly, my employer wasn’t valuing me. They were trying to pay me less, where you can strike my contract and lead to a whole bunch of garbage that a lot of the listeners, as doctors, will be familiar with, and it caused me to kind of pause and go, “Is this the life I want?” because it was just burdensome and it was really near burnout.

And so I decided on my own to go hire some professional consultants to say, “Hey, this is where I’m at in life, what would you recommend that I do?” because I frankly couldn’t see it. I was blind to what was available to me, what the options were, and these business experts. Some of them are just plain business people, some of them were in the healthcare business, but they kind of came up with the idea of the micro corporation and incorporating that into employment into what’s called an employment-like contract, and basically, that sort of set in motion what I did, and that’s really what I did.

I didn’t change jobs so to speak, I didn’t change employers so to speak. I didn’t change what I was doing with my patients, so to speak. I just changed the fact that I slipped in a micro corporation between me and the business that was paying me. So now, it was a business-to-business relationship, not an individual-to-business relationship. That began the process of restoring my autonomy, and my control and really got my life back — that’s been a little more than ten years ago, and it’s a story that I want to share with other doctors because I believe it provides a roadmap that many doctors can benefit from.

That’s really my inspiration is that I reached that point of pain, and I found and discovered something that helped me get out of that place, and I think a lot of other doctors could benefit from discovering what I learned.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s really powerful, man. Yeah, and it’s the best way to conjure up that wisdom, right? It’s having to go through an experience that, especially all the way out to the edge, right? You’re back to help others in a beautiful way.

Tod Stillson: This is not just theory, this is not just kind of like, “Hey, just trying to sell you something.” I’m actually trying to point these guys and girls in our tribe of doctors in the direction of, “Hey, this is the best path for you in the future.” And I want to share what I’ve learned. I made this road that simple.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, certainly, it’s an alternative path that can help you regain your focus, regain your humanity because working for others can be — especially in the medical field, I would imagine — is a very intense type of environment, where there’s so many, I don’t want to say, barriers but barriers. I guess I don’t have a better word that you have to work within, and you know, you talk about this later, which I want to bring up later.

You know, you kind of lose the creativity, innovation, and a certain type of drive, things that people need to thrive in their own work culture. So, you talk about this, but your book emphasizes the importance of building a team to support the physician business. Can you provide an example of how a physician can effectively build the team and what challenges they may face in doing so?

Tod Stillson: Yeah. So again, a lot of doctors, we’re altruistic people. You go into medicine because you want to help people and you want to make a difference in people’s lives, and so with that in mind, what a doctor likes is that patient in front of them and that little drip of dopamine that we get when we help somebody at the end of the day, you feel like, “You know what? I made a difference with somebody’s life.” And that’s what we love doing.

So really, it is a business kind of interaction that happens in that way. All the work of running a business and operating a business and kind of constructing that in a business envelope, just is a little bit burdensome and tiring for doctors. They’d rather not have to deal with that, so a lot of them, again, think that employment is the best option because you get to offload all that management, that’s the route they take, and in fact, studies show that that’s about what 90 percent of new graduates are choosing employment, okay?

And this is now, the majority model in medicine is employment, but in reality, in a micro business, first of all, it’s a single-member business. It’s not like a private practice or group or a large corporation, you’re a single member, and you really just managing yourself. It’s pretty simple, you know? Self-management, you do this every day and so – but, there are some nuances to running a business, and frankly, most doctors are not taught a lot of business skills in their medical school training or even their premed training, and so it’s sort of novel or new.

Now, doctors consider themselves one of the quickest learners on the earth. They can pick up anything. So it’s a lot of do-it-yourself doctors and a few members of your audience to say, “Well, I’ll just figure this out myself.” And that’s great, you can but I think the majority of doctors have that mindset that I mentioned, which is, “I’d rather not manage and do all this myself because it can be a little complicated.”

So how do you get out of that? You outsource to a team of people who can help you manage your business. That would include an accountant, that would include a lawyer, perhaps, that would include maybe a wealth manager to help you know what to do with your money, and a business coach. You know, these are kind of some of the core people that doctors need in their lives because they also tend to be a little bit financially illiterate and business illiterate.

So having a team of people in your life to help you with those things are really powerful. The most common model for doctors to do that is to have what we call silos. In other words, I’ve got my lawyer, I’ve got my accountant, I’ve got my business or wealth manager, and I’ve got a business coach, and they’re all in silos, they don’t talk to one another. In fact, they don’t want to talk to one another.

They want to just tell you what to do and then make you choose whose advice should I follow. The ideal is to have a team of people who are working in unison together for you, for your benefit, okay? That’s ideal. So model A would be to hire a team of people, and you manage and build that team, and they kind of work together, you’re still the center point of it.

The other option B, which I think is the best model, is for you to outsource to an agency whose purpose is helping physicians and they — in one place, in one location, with all those professionals together — at one table do this together with you and that was my experience. That’s what I actually was able to do.

I wasn’t planning to do it, it just sort of happened, and all these people landed at the same table, in the same room, looking at one another, and it’s amazing what can happen when professionals look at each other eye to eye respectfully, talking about your stuff and they kind of develop consensus decisions together with you involved in that decisions.

It’s like a CEO and a boardroom kind of feeling, okay? And that’s the ideal outsourcing that doctors can benefit from with having an agency around them to even do this micro corporation stuff. It’s not real complicated, and it’s not super expensive, but yet when you have these professionals helping to support you, you really end up doing better in the long run usually.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, the importance of just setting up those systems, right? People, of course, drive those systems, however, it’s the setting up that network around you, and they’re all kind of working in unison to help guide your path forward. I think that’s really powerful. What a great way to put that together.

Tod Stillson: And I think those professionals, they are reaching you, right? You’re part of the team, right? And you don’t always know everything, and so they’re providing their expertise, you’re communicating about that back and forth, they’re not just being directive with you. It’s all a learning process because they’re there for you, right?

They’re supporting you as a team, and that’s what a good physician agency will do, and there are a few of them around out there in the country. I actually know, you know, SimpliMD is one that I’m a part of that can do that, but there are a few others out there, and they’re very important for doctors.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that, it’s really important. Considering how demanding your work must be, right? In the sense that you have to not only know so much but have such a deep level of experience to work with your patients day in, day out, through all kinds of – I remember, our family physicians, I came here in 1994, and we were giving this – assigned because we were refugees and all that stuff.

So we were assigned to a family physician, and he was like Pakistani, right? So like, it was great because he didn’t know Arabic a whole lot, but he understood our culture, right? Coming from Iraq and stuff, that was just beautiful, and he remained our family physician. I mean, I was eight years old, and the last time I saw him was before he retired, which was like just a couple of years ago.

He just had that beautiful connection. However, as I got older, I would always ask like, “How much time do you spend here?” And he’s just like, “I’ve spent my whole life here.” You know what I mean? In his office, right? Like their whole life there, but you know, it’s rewarding, it’s this, and he talks a lot about setting up systems and, you know, all kinds of people running around.

He is obviously the main physician in his little office, but you know, I always found that really profound, and when I started my own little business, I kind of picked that up, you know? He’s like, “Just have someone at least handle your books” or “Have someone handle your whatever, someone that’s really good at that, and let them teach you things.” And I love that you said that because it just resonated so deeply with me.

Tod Stillson: But it does, and you’re exactly right, physicians are very – in their day-to-day work, they’re very used to this sort of coaching, managing, being a quarterback if you will, whether it be in their clinic setting or even in the hospital setting, depending [on] the acute care hospital setting, where they might be in an OR or they might be in an ER, they might be on the floor of the hospital, in ICU.

There are all sorts of environments, but at the end of the day, often the doctor is in that quarterback position, not being a cowboy, solo, just doing their thing. They have a system of team people around them, whether it be the nurses, the pharmacists, the social worker, you name it, who are working in unison with them, and doctors do that every day all day long, and so systems are important both in their medical practice but also in their micro business practice.

Barriers You Must Hurdle to Make the TransitionHussein Al-Baiaty: It’s the – yeah, working in the business and then on the business, yeah, definitely. So your book challenges the traditional employment models, of course, and suggests that physicians can achieve greater financial independence and perhaps early retirement through personal corporations. How have you responded to this concept, and what are the barriers you think that physicians have faced in trying to make this transition?

Tod Stillson: Yeah, so first of all, it really comes right from the beginning of when you come out of your training, and there’s a Y in the road, kind of if you choose to incorporate yourself right at the beginning you are going against the grain. First of all, most doctors, right at the beginning of their career, they don’t incorporate themselves in a micro corporation. I believe very firmly that every physician should do that.

They would benefit from doing that regardless of any job or work situation they choose down the road and how they incorporate that micro corporation into their professional life, everyone can benefit from it, and so that’s the first kind of step, and so what is more common is what you referred to, and that is somebody that doesn’t do it. They then later on in five, ten years later, like in my experience, you’re like, “Wow, the plan was great for a while, and now it’s a burden.”

Now, it is burning me out. I need some sort of change, and the most common change that a doctor will make in those situations is they go, “Oh, I just need a new job.” So they go look for another job, same employment arrangement thinking that that’s going to be greater for them for three to five years because it’s relieved some of the pressures, and that’s what they do. They go walk from one employment structure to the other employment structure.

What they are missing is, is not so much the job. It’s the system of employment that is really the breaking point for all doctors. So for us to kind of get to a point where doctors can thrive and do better, it comes back to systemic changes. Now, there are a lot of systemic changes Hussein that none of us can make. The cow is out of the barn, so to speak, but there are some progressive micro changes that we can make.

One of which is micro incorporation to protect and preserve your professional autonomy, so that it can be used in virtually every employment environment that you can imagine, including the traditional employment structure that doctors typically go into. Now, an average employer is not going to offer you this employment light option right from the beginning. There are a number of reasons for that, but that’s one of the biggest barriers.

They’re not going to voluntarily go, “You know, I was thinking you’d probably be better off if I did an employment light agreement with you, and you formed your own micro corporation.” They’re not looking out for you. As much as you may think that they’re being kind and thoughtful and care about you, you’re simply a business cog in their wheel. Their job is not to look out for you. You know who has to look out for you? You have to look out for you, okay?

Many doctors get lulled to sleep into thinking that their employers, their best buddy, you know, and they’re recruiting them, they are promising them this and making them thinking the honeymoon phase and everything is perfect, and they give them what they want and so forth but you find out that was a dream that you really are just a cog and you begin to feel undervalued. So you have to take care of yourself.

The way you take care of yourself is you form that corporation around yourself, again, a micro corporation that can be used in virtually every environment, whether it be employment, whether that be in locum tenens environment, whether that be in a side job that you might have even if you are traditionally employed, you have a lot of side job opportunities for doctors, whether that be in one of the other modern movements that are happening with doctors who are kind of moving away from third-parties as a whole.

Kind of their response to the system encroaching on them is to just avoid the system altogether, and you see these direct care doctors, okay? Who are doing direct primary care, direct specialty care, no third parties, no insurance, no corporations micromanaging them, it’s just them and the patients, back to that traditional model of a doctor and a patient, and we’re seeing a big upsurge, and a big uptick of that.

There’s lifestyle medicine, there are all sorts of models of direct-to-consumer medicine, there’s telemedicine, there are all sorts of things that are just growing and evolving, and all of those situations, a doctor having their own micro professional corporation will allow them to thrive and do better from the standpoint of both financially but also from a tax standpoint, and then the third element is from a liability standpoint.

Probably a fourth benefit is more individualized benefits, and greater retirement funding options through a micro corporation, there’s really a whole bunch of benefits that fit in that package that you don’t get as an employee.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful to me. I mean, you break it down in your book so well. I got to tell you, it seems complex, but as you said, it’s simple in the way that you lay it out and the way you talk about it. I found myself just very easily perusing your book. So, for listeners out there, what Tod is explaining and talking about through experience is actually really powerful.

But the way it breaks down is really simple in the book, which I found just really powerful. I mean, I am no physician by any means or anything like that, but I found a lot of the components that you talk about, I’m like, “Man, I could totally use that, or I can apply that.” And so even when you start to just view it like that, that’s a very powerful tool.

Tod Stillson: One hundred percent. So you know, there are a lot of people in your audience that are non-physicians but are professionals in various fields of life who, again, really act as sort of freelancers, independent contractors, have their own micro corporations, it’s a very common business model in our gig economy, so to speak. I mean, it’s not just the US. I mean, a lot of us are doing work internationally all over the world, okay?

Those doors opened up by having a virtual micro corporation that allows you to have business-to-business relationships and virtually anybody, or they may have a business individual relationship with virtually anybody in the world and doctors, there’s a whole generation of doctors — so if you kind of go back to, I don’t know, approximately 1950, 1960 before that, every doctor just knew that they were a business.

They opened up a private practice, they operated a business, and it was just part of, you know, being a doctor, right? Then we had third parties get involved, then we had the insurance get involved, and the government got involved with Medicare and Medicaid, who are the biggest providers of medical insurance, all of that began to move doctors away from private practice and more into employment because of a whole lot of pressures.

What happened is doctors all through that generation, and really almost one and a half generations have slowly lost their mindset about being their own business. In fact, a lot of doctors have no idea that they really have the power to be a business. They didn’t even know they could incorporate. In fact, I would say probably the majority of doctors that graduate in the past ten years probably are even unaware.

That they are like, “Oh, you mean I can form a corporation? I thought that’s just if I got an MBA and I wanted to be an entrepreneur and do something really crazy.” No, it’s something you can do and should do if you’re just a regular old doctor who is practicing medicine in today’s world and can do it internationally, and so it’s not complicated, but what’s happened is we’d become blind to the fact that we can do it.

That was part of my story, if you go back to the beginning of our conversation, I was blind to the fact that it was an option, and it wasn’t until some business coaches said, “You know, you could do this” that I’m like, “Oh, you’re exactly right.” That’s part of the messaging that I have for our audience in general, but physician specifically, you can do this. You are empowered to do this, and you should do it.

Doctors on average, right? Their medical debt to get all their degree, you know, is around 250, $300,000. It’s a steep, long investment in themself. So, the average doctor takes twelve-plus years to actually graduate and become a doctor, begin practicing medicine as an attending. It’s a large financial investment in themselves, so they’ve got all of this put into themselves that really for functionally twenty, thirty, maybe forty years that they are going to use all of that.

It only makes sense to think of themselves as having this value that’s innate, that’s built into all that work, and to incorporate that, to preserve it, to protect it, and to use it in the future rather than just kind of blindly going, “Oh, big corporation X, I’ll just sign up and give it to you. Here you go. Now, I am under your control. You’re going to use all my business powers for your benefits, and I am just a cog in your wheel.”

That is not what you spent twelve-plus years, and you know, a half a million dollars to get to. You deserve better as a doctor.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Definitely, yeah, and opening up your thoughts to other ways of approaching your profession not just from a career but also business and monetary, and of course, retirement, all those kinds of things come into play. I got to tell you, my nephew is in medical school, and he’s down in the Bahamas and he calls me every now and then, and he’s working on trying to get to being a surgeon at some point.

He just shares, he shares exactly your sentiment of like, “Man, this is just – you know, it’s a long road.” It’s a long journey, and sometimes he’ll call like asking for some motivation or whatever, and it’s great. I love him for it, but yeah, it is, you’re 100 percent right, it is a long journey ahead. You know, when you get out, what are you going to do with it, and how do you take your value and put it in the right place?

Of course, you may need to work a few years to kind of get some stuff under your belt I feel like with every profession, right?

Tod Stillson: Let me put it in this perspective for you, Hussein. Like all the stuff we just said, how hard it is to get there, all the investment of money to get there, and then understand, and you know, doctors expect and should expect a good life, right? I mean, we are high-income earners, we help people all day long, that combination is an amazing combination. You make good money helping people.

I love that, okay? Now — but then take into perspective that the current burnout rate for doctors is greater than 50 percent. Literally, it’s a role of the dice, one out of two doctors who put hundreds of thousands of dollars and investing all that time into work get out, become an attending physician, and it’s 50-50 whether or not they’ll get burnout and leave the profession. That’s a crazy statistic that it should not be that way.

That you put all that work into something including your nephew in the Bahamas and he’s just hoping that he’ll be not in the greater than 50 percentile that get burned out, he’ll be the one that doesn’t. Well, I think we need to be proactive to make sure that we are not a casualty of those current statistics, which are, I believe, directly related to the current system of medicine and employment, and the way we can respond is by trying to preserve our autonomy in every way we can, in every model we can.

That includes the micro-corporation process that helps reduce the chances that you’ll become burned out and improves the chances that you’ll hold onto your autonomy. That’s how you get a good life, that’s how you thrive as a doctor. You know, I just saw a statistic from Medscape, who is a company that does a lot of work with physicians and does a lot of surveys with physicians that the average doctor who has their own corporation makes 20 percent more per year than the doctor who is employed, 20 percent more.

Our high income, let’s say your average is $400,000 a year earned income, 20 percent more you get paid. So what’s the 20 percent of 400,000? Roughly 80,000, right? And so if you add in $80,000 doing the same work per year at that time thirty years, you know how much more money you’re going to make by having your own corporation than just being a traditional employee? It’s a huge amount of money.

At the end, Hussein, that money can help you find greater freedom too, financial freedom but also individual freedom because you become in a position where you are not depending on others any longer, and you don’t even have to work if you don’t want to. Although a lot of doctors who reach that point of financial freedom do by the way continue to work because they love patients and they love people.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow, what a beautiful system, the setup and get you going on the right foot. It sounds like, you know, you’ve obviously proven this through your work and your practice, and I’m grateful that you kind of packed it all in this book and shared this wisdom not only with your son, but hopefully, other people like my nephew and so you know?

Tod Stillson: That’s exactly right.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I’m going to be definitely sending this out. Again, Tod, this has been amazing, but I got to ask you, what was your favorite part of pulling this whole book together, and what did you learn from that journey?

Tod Stillson: Well, again, doctors are life learners, and I am no different. I love learning a new skill, and I love just the process of it was a two-year process for me to take kind of what was going on in my brain pinging around, getting it down on paper, and then again, working with a team of professionals who help me improve and enhance what I, my best effort of putting the book together.

But they’ve made it infinitely better, and that was one of my great joys is really listening to others and having to help me kind of tweak it and make this book better. So I’m just excited to be able to have something that I can share with others that I think is going to make our tribe of doctors healthier, happier, and thrive, and that journey for me was enjoyable just having others help me be a better writer.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, Tod, thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences with me and the audience today. The book is called Doctor Incorporated: Stop the Insanity of Traditional Employment and Preserve Your Professional Autonomy. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you and connect with you, Tod?

Tod Stillson: Well, they can connect with me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, which are three of the social media channels. I also have a website called doctorincorporated.com that I would definitely recommend that they sign up to receive my newsletter and weekly blogs talking about professional micro corporations, and then I also have another company, an agency called Simply MD that they can reach me at simplymd.com that helps doctors actually do the incorporation process and forms a team around them to actually do this work. So it is a great outsourcing agency to help doctors.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Love that, beautiful. Well, thank you again, Tod. I appreciate your time today. Congratulations on your book.

Tod Stillson: Thank you.

The post Doctor Incorporated: Tod Stillson, M.D. appeared first on Author Hour.

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Hey, if you’re a fan of movies like Top Gun, The Hunt for Red October, and Forrest Gump, you’re going to love this epic tale of struggle, tenacity, and heroism.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by authors, Steve and Ron Lambrecht. We’re here to talk about their new book, called Boundless Brothers: Two Warriors from the Heartland, One Mission for the Homeland. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the show. I’m super excited to have these “boundless brothers” with me today. Steve and Ron, welcome to the Author Hour show. How are you guys doing today?

Steven S. Lambrecht: I’m doing great, thank you for the invitation.

Ronald A. Lambrecht: Yeah, it’s great.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, thank you for coming on today. I really appreciate you. So I had the privilege of sort of swimming through your book in the last 12 hours or so and just kind of picking up some golden nuggets here and there and I learned a lot man, you two have gone through so much, and such an experience and so many stories.

I’m really excited to get into them. However, I always like to set the foundation out and share with our audience a little bit about who you two are, perhaps where you grew up and maybe one person that’s sort of had a really positive influence on your life. We’ll start with you Steve and then we’ll pass the ball over to Ron.

Steven S. Lambrecht: Okay, well, I grew up in Southwest Minnesota, out in the country, near a small town called Ivanhoe, Minnesota. I was born 18 years after my older brother Ron, who is the coauthor for the book and my growing up experiences were significantly different than his.

I spent a little time on the farm but grew up out in the country in a different house than he did with some different experiences and those are all chronicled accordingly in the book. In terms of who had an influence on me, I would go to a couple of examples and you know, one would be my older brother, who having been gone 18 years ahead of me and eventually joined the Navy, steered me in the direction of the military, which is where I ended up for 39 years.

And I would also add that I had a handful of people that were very influential but one teacher in particular who was my shop teacher who happened to be in the enlisted Navy reserves who got me pointed in that direction and I enlisted while I was in high school and attended boot camp between my junior and senior high school and then drilled in the Navy reserves my senior year that had that program back then.

And that really got me going in the right direction along with my guidance counselors and some other teachers. I think it raises the point of you know, you never know what one thing you’re going to say that’s going to have a big influence on somebody’s life.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, so powerful man. I love that and I can definitely share many stories where there are a lot of similarities in this. Ron, how about you?

Ronald A. Lambrecht: Well as Steve said, I’m 18 years older and the experiences I had growing up were completely different. The family, we have a family farm and it’s rural in the true sense of the word. My very first school was a one-room school, I have one classmate, I was in kindergarten in first grade and then I moved on to another one-room school and I got a new classmate. It was the only time I was in the top two of my class.

As I joined the military and started sharing my stories with my fellow naval officers, I realized that my experiences were completely different and unique from my peer group. You know, growing up in Minnesota again, growing up on the farm, we didn’t have running water when we first moved into the house.

Eventually, we got running water but we never had an indoor bathroom the whole time that I grew up there, which is a real inconvenience in the wintertime in Minnesota as you might appreciate. Focusing and being interested in my stories, I progressed in my career. Every two to three years, I’d have a new audience because I’d have a new command and as I share in my stories, I realized there’s a lot of interest usually more out of curiosity than envy, I assure you.

I decided to write them down and so the book started with basically talking about growing up where I grew up and as I got through that part of my life, I realized Steve, being 18 years younger than me probably had his own and so I asked him to join me in this endeavor and that’s how the book kind of evolved.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s so powerful and you know the power in sharing our stories, even for curiosity to feel that urge to know things about other people, that the things that they’ve stepped into. Like my brothers, like I said were in the military and I just never saw myself there but those stories were always so hard to hear, so hard to digest but it always kind of exemplified the strength and the courage of men and women who put themselves in those situations and so I think that’s really powerful.

So obviously, you both served in different branches of the military. How did you manage to stay connected during your deployments and how did you just support each other during these difficult times that I’m sure you’ve had all throughout your careers? How did that bond really start to sort of flourish?

Steven S. Lambrecht: I think that through shared experience comes a shared bond and that’s true across the military and within military organizations and for Ron and I, that was not an exception. We had shared experiences and sacrifices and all those sorts of things by virtue, just of our time spent in the military, even though we’re 18 years apart, we didn’t grow up together obviously.

So, Ron would come home and visit throughout my childhood years and we would bond to whatever extent we could at that point, and then once I joined the military, we had a lot more in common, frankly. We spoke a common language and I was able to on occasion travel around the country for the military to pay him a visit and I think that probably helped to enhance our bond.

Ronald A. Lambrecht: Again, we keep hitting on this 18-year age difference but it really made a big difference in the way we each looked at our individual careers. My career basically happened before Steve’s. I was a lieutenant in the Navy when Steve was still in junior high, believe me.

So I was able to I guess, influence in some regards. We had what was called a tiger cruise where we could invite our dad and brothers out on the ship and I did that on the USS Kitty Hawk. Me, Steve, and our dad rowed the ship back from Hawaii to San Diego and I think that was definitely an influence on Steve and his choice in deciding to go into the military as well.

Steve Lambrecht: Yeah, absolutely, that was a turning point in my life. I mean, there were two things. I was 14 years old, and there were two things that happened then that made a difference in my life—all of this is described and articulated in the book and throughout the course of the stories but up until the point I was—I went on the tiger cruise, I was the definition of a troubled child.

Frankly, I was goofing off in class, I had gotten in trouble for stealing a car, which is not something that happens every day in Ivanhoe, Minnesota, population 765 people, and I was always in trouble with the teachers, and just had a bad reputation all around and I went on the tiger cruise and that gave me focus on what wanted to do with my life and I came back from the tiger cruise and walked into the shop class where just one year prior, the shop teacher had—

Which was the first time I’d had him for a class, pointed to me and directed me to the front of the class to sit down where he could keep an eye on me because my reputation had preceded me, and after the tiger cruise, I walked in and it was a different tone altogether. He said to me, “Do you want to go to the naval academy?” and I immediately said yes. I had no idea whatsoever what the naval academy was, I had never heard of it but it sure sounded good to me and from then on, I had a new focus, a new direction, a new inspiration for what I was going to do with my life and it started with those two events.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that because you guys go really deep into sharing a lot of these stories that kind of help to shape those perspectives, even throughout your careers. You cover the pursuit of sort of this identity and inspiration spanning the decades of selfless military service. How did your experiences in the military shape your personal identities and your perspectives on life and how have you applied these lessons to your lives since leaving the military? And we’ll start with you, Ron.

The Effect of Military Service on LifeRonald A. Lambrecht: Again, growing up on the farm, our dad was a disciplinarian in the true sense and we had a very tight schedule. We were dairy farmers, we spent somewhere around six hours a day in the barn, seven days a week. When I finally decided to join the Navy, the lifestyle basically was not foreign to me.

I had that kind of background to begin with and so I felt somewhat comfortable being guided, certainly during my enlisted days but then when I applied and was accepted into aviation officer candidate school, from that point on my life really came into focus. I became an intelligence officer after aviation officer candidate school.

I had wonderful career opportunities right from the beginning because I was part enlisted, I flew in an anti-submarine warfare aircraft. I had 400 hours in the airplane and after I finished intel school, I was detailed right back to the antisubmarine warfare squadron. Out of all the intel officers and all of the squadrons, I was probably the only intel officer that had that kind of experience in the airplane and so I brought that to the job.

Those kinds of experiences, the success I had right from the beginning as a naval officer, evolved into opportunities in terms of other commands that I was selected to join and I ended up going to basically a training command after my initial operational command and where I got to then start training other basic aviators and naval flight officers, enlisted folks on the kinds of things that was trained to teach and that was basically the Soviet threat.

Steven S. Lambrecht: Yes, well as for myself, I think, growing up the way Ron and I did as Ron mentioned, we had a disciplinarian as a father. He was also an extraordinarily hard worker and so was our mother and you know, that instilled in us a work ethic that carried us a very long ways and I think that as I had mentioned the book any time I may have lacked intelligence or natural ability in something, I was able to make up for at least a component of it through brute force that is from work ethic and I think Ron would say the same thing.

When I, either it’s an organic piece I think to human beings and then there’s the nurture piece, you know, the nature and the nurture piece. So, when I got to the naval academy, that’s when I really, I think evolved professionally as a human being, as a leader, as an officer.

So that took me a very long way, the honor code there, all these things that just help shape you morally, mentally, and physically to lead and you know, that set me up well for my next career path, which was the Marnie Corps and all the challenges that came with that and I think that just over time, the experiences you gain and for myself, I’ll just say that there are a lot of challenges along the way, a lot of difficulties, a lot of opportunities, and when you face those and you conquer them or sometimes you don’t, the failures and the successes alike are the things that shape you into who you are and those opportunities wouldn’t have been there for me if I hadn’t gone the military route.

So between nine and a half years after the Marine Corps, after the naval academy, after enlisting in the naval reserves, then I ended up in the Vermont International Guard where I’m about to retire after about 23 years. So I had a whole other group of all the same things, experiences combat experiences, domestic emergency responses, and all these things that we do in the guard that all served to shape me into who I am.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful. Having you both of you on here is wonderful and I want to kind of bring that to light a little bit. The book highlights the importance of brotherhood, both between siblings and of course, between fellow service members. How do you believe the bonds of brotherhood that you formed during the military service have influenced your lives and what advice do you have for others who are seeking to build strong bonds with, you know, their brothers and the brotherhood community in their own lives? I’ll channel this back to you Steve.

Steven S. Lambrecht: Well, I would say the military in particular but it’s not exclusive to the military. You know, it’s a mentality of service. If you have the ability, you have the obligation and that’s not [to] just your fellow service member or your family member or your sibling or what have you, it’s to your fellow man. Sometimes in life, things aren’t always what you would like them to be.

Certainly, in the military, we have our enemies that we have to face in combat and we have to do that and for all the right reasons but in terms of the goodness that comes with the bonding of brotherhood and service and family, I think that it’s part of human nature that we have that and seek it and so I think it’s important to try to form those bonds as best you can.

Ron will tell you, if you want to challenge the bonds of brotherhood, write a book together. We’ve had our times of controversy for sure, it’s not an easy project to undertake to begin with. We’ve had our bumps along the road for things we didn’t agree on and we, you know, we work through them. That’s what life is, you have your disagreements with folks and you work through them. The important thing is that you don’t lose the relationship or lose the bond that you have along the way.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much, man. Go ahead, Ron.

Ronald A. Lambrecht: First of all, I really don’t have anything more on that particular subject to add than what Steve just said. What he said about writing a book together is absolutely true. There were times when you know, he and I have been wearing our sword, someone was going to die but we worked through it. It is not related to your question but more to the way we laid the book out because again, of the age difference and our different experiences as a result of that.

When we wrote the book together, we tried to initially thread our stories and then that just didn’t work right because mine started 18 years before Steve’s. So what we did was we broke the book into three parts. The first part was called Hay Seeds and Mascots, which basically is stories that highlight our growing up southwest of Minnesota. The second part is called Frontal Lobe Development.

As it implies, that part describes the past we took in pursuit of our individual careers. In my case, I had grown a frontal lobe before I could develop it and the last part is Boundless and that basically highlights our career experiences and accomplishments. By doing that, we were then able to thread our stories. You know granted the very first part of Hay Seeds and Mascots, my start, start that part but Steve was able to interject as my stories evolve.

But once we got up to Frontal Lobe Development and Wellness, then the age factor no longer really was an issue. We could talk about how basically we pursued our careers and thread our thoughts and our experiences accordingly and then of course in Boundless, our individual careers and the missions and so forth that we each were involved in were totally independent of age at that point.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Being on the book, on the topic of the book and I love how you all laid out sort of the lay of the land and where the threads actually come together, I would like to know because I mean, writing a book is no easy feat. What was your favorite part of pulling this book together and what did you two learn from that journey? We’ll start with Steve.

Steven S. Lambrecht: I think it’s worth mentioning that as we started this book, Ron started before I did. As he mentioned, he had written all of his growing-up stories and he was looking to tell a story sort of like Garrison Keillor might tell them. He had put together a nice group of interesting and humorous stories mostly from his growing-up time and then we got involved in conversations and that’s around when he said he invited me to join them because he knew my stories would be different.

He asked me to join him and it probably took me four years before I even wrote the first story. I just didn’t know where to start and I knew that most of my quality stories were later in life, from you know, the age of 18 and above, I had more to talk about and so I was having a hard time getting started from the perspective of writing stories that would be complimentary to what Ron had already written.

So I started out writing stories that were more from my time at the Naval Academy, which were also very funny in my opinion. We’ll see what the readers think but you know, those were complimentary and Ron coaxed me to go back to my younger years and write from there and so as this book evolved, it kind of evolved from what started out as a group of stories like Garrison Keillor might tell to our memoirs, which is what we ended up with.

It starts out with mostly humorous stories and then evolves. By the end, we’re talking about some pretty intense combat missions and operational stories that happened across the globe. So to answer your question what was the most enjoyable part about writing a book, I think for me it would be just recounting and therefore, remembering some of the details and events that are in the story.

I had to reach out to some folks that were involved in those stories and were involved around the periphery to put the facts back together again and in doing so, they reminded me of things that I would have never remembered had I not reached out. So, the book is much more full of content as a result. I have a lot more information and details in there than I could have summed up for my own memory.

So I think that was a very fond aspect was just going out and gathering the materials and the resources and the stories themselves to be able to put together into the book.

Ronald A. Lambrecht: In my case, I want to say well, the book was enjoyable. For me, it was a real learning experience in regard to what Steve did in his career. Until he wrote it down, I really didn’t know to what extent he was engaged in combat and those kinds of missions, so that was eye-opening to me.

Steven S. Lambrecht: I’m not big on talking about myself frankly and that’s you know, that’s why—that’s probably why I didn’t know.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: You know I find that interesting because here you are, two brothers, you know you obviously have fostered a bond over time but even with that, I mean, it goes to show the intensity at which we experience things, and what we decide to talk about and share and what stories we really are comfortable with and you know, it takes time to process those stories and I feel like sometimes just having to write them helps you a little bit with that processing journey.

Yeah, I feel like when I wrote my book and I got it out there and some of my friends you know, they called me were like, “Dude, I had no idea you struggled with this or that” or whatever and it’s like we have a close bond but it’s like yeah, there’s still a part of me and a part of us, all of us that, it’s harder to expose, right? I think something about a book, it kind of creates this sort of invisible shield, where you can kind of explore those stories and experiences.

Where you get to share them with the page and then decide later if you want to share them beyond that. I think that’s what attracts me the most about books and the book-writing journey. It does kind of undress us in a way, you know? At least get us to talk about things that we don’t normally talk about so that’s cool and it sounds like perhaps that helped your bond grow, would you say that Ron?

Ronald A. Lambrecht: Well, yeah, definitely. All of the siblings have stayed close throughout our lives even though there’s this big spread in age. I don’t want a prospective reader to think that the book is about the bond as much as it is about the paths we took and the experiences we had and the stories themselves I think are entertaining and not everybody is done.

Steven S. Lambrecht: Yeah, if I may, Hussein, I would add that in terms of the content of the book and I think this is true of everyone when they lived their lives, when you are in the moment and you are experiencing these things, you don’t really stop and reflect on the historical significance of what it might be.

In our case, if Ron and I as we started putting these stories together and this is why one of the descriptors of the book is, you know, we talk about if you like Top Gun, if you like The Hunt for Red October and if you like Forest Gump, you’ll like this book and it’s because as we put these stories together, my sister read the manuscript at one point, one of our sisters did and she made the comment that it reminded me of Forest Gump.

Because we had gone all over the world and done all of these things but we never really stopped and thought about, you know, how historically significant many of them were. Ron has a story in there about zip to zap, which is an event that occurred in Zap, North Dakota, which nobody has ever heard of and you wouldn’t know it except that it was a big deal at the time and it’s in the book and there’s a Wikipedia page on it.

And then, we started going through some of our operational stories and Ron served in Somalian Operation Restore Hope and Black Hawk Down. The movie is based on that and I flew combat missions in Bosnia and Behind Enemy Lines is a movie that was made about it and there is a painting made, Moonlighters over Edina, that’s about one of the strikes that we did.

The movie Top Gun obviously and now Maverick are both relevant to our experiences or you know, mine in particular and you know, et cetera, et cetera, and so you go through these things and again, you don’t really think much about them but then as you put them together, you start to realize, “Wow, we were there for a lot of historically significant things throughout the course of our lives and careers” and we never really thought of it from that perspective.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. Man, I love that. So much experience in decades of serving our country in such unique ways and having positioned yourself to be courageous, to put yourself on the line, to experience the things that you did and of course, now, share with all of us these remarkable experiences and how they unfolded from your perspective and your truth.

I love that, I love how these books help bring us even closer together as men like you said. Steve, I appreciate that so much. Again you two, Steve and Ron, man, thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences with me and the audience. I am certainly moved, I’m excited to continue reading your book throughout the week, just learn more about your experiences.

The book is called Boundless Brothers: Two Warriors from the Heartland, One Mission for the Homeland. So besides checking out the book, where can people find you two and connect with you two?

Steven S. Lambrecht: Our website for the book is boundlessbrothersthebook.com. So you can go there and sign up for email notifications and explore a little bit more about the book. You can follow us on Facebook at Boundless Brothers Book without the “The” so Boundless Brothers Book. You can find us on Facebook and follow us there and then finally, on Instagram. We’re on Boundless Brothers the Book, you can find us on Instagram that way. We’re posting photos and teasers from our stories and can go there to find out more.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love it. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, Ron. It’s been a pleasure and an honor speaking with you today. Again, thank you both so much for your service. Have a great day.

Steven S. Lambrecht: Thank you, Hussein.

Ronald A. Lambrecht: Yeah, thank you very much, this was fun.

The post Boundless Brothers: Steven S. Lambrecht and Ronald A. Lambrecht appeared first on Author Hour.

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School systems nationwide are struggling to excel as they lurch from crisis to crisis, teacher shortages, school shootings, high turnover rates, weak discipline systems, and so much more. These things can pull the focus of school boards away from why school systems exist to educate students.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by AJ Crabill, who is here to talk about his new book called Great On Their Behalf: Why Schoolboards Fail, How Yours Can Be Effective. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the show. I’m here with my friend today, AJ Crabill. AJ, thank you for coming on the show today, man, I really appreciate you.

AJ Crabill: Yeah, Hussein, thanks for having me. It’s good to be here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, man, this is really exciting for me because I feel like your book is one of the first books I’ve come across in the last, I don’t know, maybe several years, to be honest with you, that lay the foundation of around education, that I haven’t seen before. You know, I’ll be honest with you, I grew up kind of foreign to the American educational system.

I came here as a young refugee boy and I was about eight or nine years old, and I started in the third grade. The coolest thing ever happened to me, man, for me, my teachers didn’t smack me around to try to get a point across. They’re actually really sweet. They’re loving, they were kind, and as I grew through the educational system, there was so many amazing things that I got to experience.

However, I feel like there are some components of the education that, you know, of course, could be better, improved, you know, whether it be classes, teachers or courses and things like that, but again, you know, there is this sort of time that we’re in now. We’re going through a huge shift, I feel like, and I really want to get into that. So in the core of your book, you talk about, you know, a reform of our education system.

So I want to just start right there, man. I want to start with how you’re thinking and sort of what you’ve, I feel like you’ve dedicated most of your life to this work and the educational world. So can you just tell us a little bit of a brief background of how you came into this educational world and what you’ve been doing and then we’ll sort of jump into the book and the core principles.

AJ Crabill: Actually, I think your experiences and my experiences aren’t that differentiated in that it was the remarkable kindness and expertise of teachers in the public education system that often were the ones stepping forward and making a real difference for me as well and so certainly, I’m both benefited by it and inspired by the teachers that I experienced growing up and really, every student should have your story and my story.

That we experienced amazing teachers, and there are things that school systems can do that increase the likelihood that that is the case and part of that school system is the school board, and so having served on school boards, having served with schoolboard members, having helped coach and support schoolboards along their journey.

Now, I find myself writing down some of the key elements of that journey and some of the things that school boards can do that in the face of some of the challenges that are out there, school boards can do to really create the conditions from proven and student outcomes, create the conditions, such that your story and my story are increasingly common.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, man. You know, I got to tell you, I love that connection because, you know, I genuinely do feel like—I mean, I can almost close my eyes and remember the teachers that really made an impact on me, and I truly agree that that is an experience that most, if not all students should experience and to a degree, I feel like we do.

You know, there’s always that one that kind of just stands out a little bit, but you’re right, it’s, you know, the leadership plays a significant role in that model. In your book, you know, let’s jump into it. In your book, you talked about various reasons why school boards often fail. Can you share specific example of a school board that you know just feels like it failed and what contributed to that sort of mess?

Is there something specific that we, as sort of outside those school boards, can look at and say, you know, and identify characteristics that could lead to the school board not, you know, being optimal.

Focusing on the MindsetAJ Crabill: Yeah, one of the challenges, and this is really unfortunately common across the country, is that the training and the expectations that school boards are setup with really aren’t aligned with what event and experience tells us are the things that make the biggest difference for children.

So, for example, you would expect the boards would set goals and monitor progress toward those goals. What is it that we want students to know and be able to do and then how are we tracking to make sure that the school system is delivering on that promise and so because those are some of the most key behaviors that school boards are engaged in, you would think that among the requirements and the most commonly offered trainings that schoolboard members received would be about setting goals about student outcomes and monitoring progress and making adjustments and pivots organizationally based on what that data tells us.

That’s just not the reality that we found. You know, my team and I conducted a study looking at school board trainings available that very often the topics that were covered weren’t these. In fact, in the study we did, less than 5% of the time were the topics that school board members were offered at conferences really about what is it that students should know and be able to do and how will we know if that’s happening in reality?

In addition, when we did a different study looking at what are the required trainings that school board members have to go through and specifically looking for what are unique trainings that are unique to school board members around setting goals and monitoring performance to really know our students and getting the quality of education they deserved and what we found is half the states really don’t have any type of expectations that are unique to board members and only four of them that we could find of the states that did have any type of training expectations for board members had anything to do with whether or not students were learning around setting goals for what students should know and be able to do and for monitoring progress toward them.

So this is one of the things that we open the book with is just this call for that school board members want to be effective. This is why we run, this is why we raise our hand to serve, but the systems that are in place really position us for effectiveness, really aren’t helping propel us toward the greatness that we want on behalf of the students we serve and that’s something that you know, any of us can take a moment to advocate for.

We can reach out to whether our board members or our state representative, state senators and make the call for more effective training, training that’s actually focused on student outcomes, make the call for required training that’s really dialed into what is it that students should know and be able to do and how do we build school systems that actually position students to learn the things that we want them to learn.

Right now, those aren’t the norms that school board members are experiencing, but if they would, you know, our belief is that that could make a real difference for the students across the nation.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful because that shift that is happening, I feel like, the need sort of for a new outlook on things, starts with that and that I love that you brought that up. It starts with the training, it starts with what is the system that we are actually trying to get these kids to adhere to, but what is missing, and it sounds like the missing element or a couple, you know, one of the missing elements is just better and improved training around those kinds of things.

So one of the steps that you outline for effective school board governing is to focus on mindset, which I found really interesting. Can you share a story of a school board that successfully maybe changed its mindset and how that impacted the district?

AJ Crabill: Yeah, the reality is if you randomly grab a hundred school board members from across the nation and ask them, “Are you focused on student outcomes?” a hundred school board members will be like, “Well, absolutely and that’s why I ran”, and they won’t be lying to you or trying to mislead you.

But more often than not, they may, in fact, be deceived in thinking that what they’re doing is aligned with the focus on student outcomes rather than that, and so part of the training that needs to happen is to be able to differentiate between what are adult inputs, you know, the books, the buses, you know, the mills, all of the tangible things that go into it, how do we differentiate between those things and actual student outcomes.

Once board members have the knowledge to do that, the mindset shift involved is, how do we go from having the adult inputs the center of our work, to making student outcomes the center of our work and not only does that require understanding of “What do we mean by student outcomes?” but also requires willingness to let go of many of the things that are not a focus on the student outcomes.

And that’s the part of the significant mindset shift is a willingness to confront the reality that many of the things that we focused on as a board right now aren’t in fact directly aligned with improvements and outcomes that we say are most important to us and that instead is a set of all the inputs that are important and necessary but that even if we get those perfect, that doesn’t mean that students will actually be better off.

So the first mindset shift that is offered is, “Are we willing to instead of having this center of our focus be the adult inputs, am I willing to have the center of my focus be the student outcomes?” even though that is a very different approach to governing than the style of governing that I may be accustomed to or what my colleagues on the school board may feel comfortable with or even what people in my community are calling for.

The challenges that often — if I’m in the grocery store just kind of looking for produce as a board member and a member of the community recognizes me and comes up to me and asks me questions about what’s going on with the school system, most often they’re going to be asking about adult input.

“Hey, you know, my kid didn’t get picked up by the bus in time”, or, “How come this person is in this school district? I don’t think they should be employed by the district” or you have all these issues around what’s happening in the world of adults. It’s actually fairly infrequent as a board member that what people are approaching a board member with are things around, what is it that we want students to know and be able to do.

There are things that certainly have a relationship and have some type of tangential connection that is not the same thing as being completely dialed into what is—what are the student outcomes that are most important to us and so being able to have a shift in mindset where I’m making that the focus of my energy, the focus of my time, that can be really challenging because so many of the messages that I’m receiving and so many of the incentives that I’m experiencing are aligned with the focus on adult inputs rather than a focus on student outcomes.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, man, I love that so much because it just, you know, it’s a reframe of how we actually see, I guess, “issues” with school boards, school systems, just schools in general and I love this idea of like, you know, taking our energy and instead of focusing on almost – sounds like, almost sounds like the politics in the administrative components, down to let’s refocus our energy as to what are we actually here to do?

Let’s put all these others side, you know, what are we here to do? And I think that’s so powerful because you know for me man, growing up, you know, I didn’t see too many men or women of color giving lectures, you know, teaching me whatever not that that was a bad thing or a negative thing. It was just like, I didn’t see it, right? I didn’t have too much cultural connections with many of my teachers and admin.

So growing up, I went to school, I got my architecture degree, I became a small business owners, all those good stuff that happened in life, but then I went and started speaking at schools, and I started, you know, just kind of, I wanted to be what I didn’t see, right? And that’s really all up to us, you know what I’m saying? That’s a choice, it had nothing to do with anything else and I knew that my talks, my mini talks at different schools and different things and organizations really meant something to, you know, I wanted to just impact those immigrant and refugee kids, right?

Sitting in the back, exactly who I was, and I think that’s really profound, you know? Instead of saying like, “Oh, there’s not enough people of color, this or that”, it’s just this constant argument as opposed to like, “You know what…” I literally just reached out to one of my old professors, and I was like, “Hey man, what can I do to help? Can I come in and just share my story with the kids, you know, inspire them, motivate them?” whatever it is.

And he was so—he’s like over the phone, you could just feel like the weight like, “Yes, please come up.” It was one of those things, and I always tell my friends, my colleagues, you know, people like, “Man, just go to a school and just do a talk.” It feels so good, and those kids freaking love it, you know? To see who and what they can become and have these choices, right? It’s like, that idea is so important.

Especially in a world where sadly, systemically for a long time, these schools and educational systems put up a lot of barriers, and I feel like it’s riddled, right? Across the nation with things that unfortunately swayed education one way or another, and of course now, you’re doing the work of sort of untangling these things and saying, “Hey look, let’s get to the principles, let’s get back.”

I love that so much, but with that comes this idea of monitoring progress, which is another key that you sort of outlined. Can you share a little bit about, you know, the effectiveness of what monitoring the progress means and the impact it has on student outcomes?

Progress, The Importance of Opportunity, & Aligning ResourcesAJ Crabill: Yeah, I really appreciate your reflections on, you know, any of us can step forward, any of us can choose to get involved and get personally invested in the lives of the young people in our community and our schools. That is certainly been a part of my story, and just glad that it’s part of yours and it’s something that you advocate and push for.

Similarly, you know, each person in the community has a role to play, has something that they can do that can be a significant difference maker, whether it’s like you, telling your story, like me volunteering, you know, as a big brother, big sister or is the cost of volunteer. Board members are similar in that they have a role that allows them to maximize what is the difference that they can make.

One critical piece of that is taking the time to actually monitor, “Are things actually improving? Is the education, you know, a little Hussein, a little AJ are receiving actually improving over time? Are they growing in what they known they’re able to do?” and this is partially such a critical part of the community’s role because if we look at the data and we don’t see significant improvements for children educationally, then we have an obligation to call on the school system to make a pivot.

To make adjustments and to go on a different direction and sometimes, that pivot is entirely internal to the school system and maybe changes in budget and allocation, but sometimes that pivot involves bringing people from the community more fully in the partnership with our school systems, whether as mentors and tutors, as volunteers as folks like you and I just making time to get personally invested in the lives of our students.

And so whether it’s through that or whether it’s through doing the monitoring at work the boards are expected to do, these are critical roles that really contribute to what it is that makes public education in the country successful.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I think it’s powerful in that, it is public education, but you know, the way, I guess I’ve always, growing up from different culture and all those kinds of things like the importance of this idea that it takes a village, right?

It still does take a village to raise a child. It still does take. I feel like different people coming in and out of their lives to help shape, you know, the mindsets, the possibilities, the opportunities and let’s be honest, I came from a sense of poverty, right? Like, if I’m not exposed to different things.

However like, Beaverton School District did something really interesting. It took these kids from impoverished areas of Beaverton, embedded them into, at one point, I think I was like eighth grade or something, they reshaped where kids can come from to what school and the schools were a little bit higher funding and all those kinds of things.

They were intentional about getting kids that were from low income, basically, to be in those schools, so that they are then making friends with I guess, people with a little bit more sort of upper class, right? So like, you’re just exposed to more different types of people, right?

I didn’t realize this of course until later, meeting with teachers and going to school boards and all those kinds of things and I found that that’s really powerful. Like, what’s your input on this idea of, how can schools or schoolboards think in this way of, you know, channeling the opportunity of, “You know what? Let’s mix these kids in this area to create a more prosperous area in the future”, right? Because that matters, right?

Me being exposed to not just a bunch of kids that were smoking weed. Let’s be honest, right? From where I was growing up to now, kids who are really wanting to pursue basketball and go into astronomy and in theater and that changed my perspective, right? As to what’s open for me and so that’s really powerful. What are your inputs about that?

AJ Crabill: Well, this is one of the things as I visit with parents across the country. I hear it commonly as it would…one of the things that they really value about their public education experience for their child is exactly what you described. It’s this opportunity to meet folks who might not be from the exact same walk of life, who might have a different story, a different background.

I think that diversity of the student body that public education brings in a lot of places across the country is a really powerful benefit of the public education offers. One of the things you described, though is actually a step beyond that and that there are policy decisions that school boards end up making that even further disrupt some of the natural geographic boundaries. What often happens is students will go to school in the geography where they lived and so the students that they’re around will tend to be the student who live in the same neighborhood.

What you are describing is the school board. It sounds like actually made the policy decision that it wanted to make seats throughout its school system available to children from many neighborhood, and so this has you hopping on a bus and going to a different part of town. One of the benefits I hear you describing what you got from that is it further enhanced just the diversity of students that you’re experienced to the diversity of life experiences that you got to learn about through your classmates.

These type of decisions are challenging. I certainly don’t advocate for one policy position over the other in the book, but what I do advocate for is if this is a value that a community has, then it is the job of the school board to listen to that value, to codify it in policy and then to monitor, to ensure that the district is actually living out that value in the way that it operates and your stories of real example of that playing out of where a community has espoused to this value.

That we really want children from all over the community to be able to interact within, learn from and grow with other children throughout our community to the extent that that’s the value the community had. The board took that and turn it into policy, and then the administration took that policy and turned it into practice, and this is part of what it looks like to govern effectively is the board’s represent the vision and values of their community.

I mean, it’s listening for them and it means codifying them and then monitoring to make sure that the administration is actually putting it into action and then fast forward a few years and we have your story to tell for it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s really cool that the idea of look, the core principle of these group of people coming together, this board is really to absorb what the community, like you just said, the community’s values and how we can yeah, explore and enhance that through the decisions we’re going to make because the decisions that they are going to make are going to impact the next three, four, five, you know, 10 plus years, right?

I think in my scenario, that’s exactly what happened. It really impacted that whole region for years to come, and I know a lot of ways they still work around those kinds of ideas to better create experiences, you know? I think there’s amazing, I would say, corporations like Nike and others are in the area that were also heavily investing in the region, if you will, right? Because who’s all working there, right?

It’s these amazing people that are also creatives and lawyers, and they want what’s best for them in the region as well. So I always tell people like the foundation of education is really interesting to me coming from a different, you know, part of the world. I think what’s interesting about it all is that it literally is like every policy you make, every decision you make, sometimes people want—we want decisions to take effect right away, right?

But really, with education, that’s like planting seeds and seeing how it evolves over time, and I think there are times, of course, where there are boards where they need to make quick decisions, of course, all those kinds of systemic type of things. However, those seeds really play a role in the future, and I think that’s really powerful and speaking about the future, aligning resources is a critical step that you talk about in your book and achieving that kind of success.

What can you talk about when it comes to boards that struggle with aligning those resources and how they impact the district? I know resources are huge as far as money and funding and budgets and the endless array of the student body needs. I grew up always like really questioning like, “Why are these kids selling cookies when we have gajillions of dollars we spend on…” you know, this is just my personal mental note.

Although we’ve spent gajillions on bombs and all these things like this is ridiculous. There was a time where I just couldn’t play basketball because I literally couldn’t afford it. It was like $300 to get on the team, you know? Unfortunately, I had given out all the, I guess financial aid money to a few other students, which is great, and they were more talented. Again, all fine but I realized that the funding and resources and things like that are very temperamental.

As I got older, of course I started to understand the educational system just a little bit more, obviously not to the extent that you do. Where does aligning resources kind of come into play here for you?

AJ Crabill: One of the things that you said was that often the work of school boards is a lot like planting seeds and that you do something today, but you may not be able to harvest the fruit from that for years to come and that’s a lot like what you’re asking out, is this idea of what is it the board’s do to align resources. Recognizing that often even when we make significant resource changes today that we may not see the benefit of those resource changes for years down the road.

If we make a dramatic investment in early childhood education today, it may literally be 13 years down the road before we begin experiencing students walking across the graduation stage having benefited to the full extent of that investment, and so because this is such a critical set of resources to apply well and because it has such long-lasting effects, it really is seed planting that it’s absolutely critical that when the board is engaged and aligning resources that the focus be aligning them to the vision and values that the community’s articulated.

The way the board does that, what we describe in the book, is that they listen for the vision and values of the community and write them down in the form of what we refer to as goals and guardrails. Goals represent the vision of the community, what do we want students to know and be able to do, guardrails to describe the values of the community, what are the non-negotiables they have to be honored.

Because the resource allocation is so vital and has such long-lasting effects, when the boards are going to approve the allocation of those resources be they large or small, they have to be aligning them to something that is about the long-term vision and values of the community and so that’s why being articulate about what are the goals and guardrails and then being intentional about looking at all of the long term expenditures to figure out, “Are these things designed to get us to that long-term vision or is this going to grow the type of tree that we wanted to grow not just this year or next year but over the next five years, the next 10 years, the next 15 years?”

This is a critical part of the work that school boards play. It’s not just having this near-term focus in resource allocation but having this long-term focus that’s grounded in the community’s vision as articulated by the goals and grounded in the community’s values as articulated by the guardrails.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. I love that goals and guardrails, I feel like I need to apply that to my life, man. This is a powerful tool.

AJ Crabill: Definitely, there are times in my life where I’ve definitely put in place my own personal goals and guardrails, what are the things that that will accomplish and what are the things that I need to step away from because they are not getting me towards that vision.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right, yeah, it’s so powerful to remember. Thank you for sharing that. I am interested in sort of kind of getting your input on where do you see and then from a positive outlook because you do share a lot of that, of course, from a positive outlook, where do you see I guess this reform in education really leading us to in the next 10, 15, 50 years? What does that look like in your vision?

We begin to apply the healthy systemic sort of revolution, if you will, throughout our educational system, where our focus is back to the health and wellbeing, and properly educating a young mind so that again, we can ensure prosperity for everyone moving forward, how do you see that unfold? What does education look like to you? Do we have three days’ worth of school, or is it still five days?

I mean, come on, we’ve got to work together here too—I just remember all the homework and all the madness, and I know they even implemented at one point students were not showing up. It was so early like 7:30 am, we had to be in class for high school and I remember they bumped it up to eight and that helped a little bit of course but, these are just the little things that education systems try to improve but where do you see our reform going into in the future?

The FutureAJ Crabill: There are two parts of that, there is what’s the really big picture really long term at the macro level and I certainly have ideas about that and then there is the thing that you describe, which are the much more near term micro level of what are the specific things that are right for each individual community and we currently have around 14,000 school systems across the nation and they each have their own school board.

One of the benefits of such a decentralized approach, there is definitely some drawbacks but one of the benefits of those is that whatever the vision and values of a particular community are, they get to elect board members who will represent that on their behalf and who will set goals and set guardrails and then monitor progress toward them and align resources toward those visions and those values that are match for that particular community.

So if you have a community that wants to see start times earlier or you know, “Instead of taco Tuesday, can we have taco Thursday?” or whatever the interest is that those can be realized in that localized context, and so that is one of the benefits of having school boards at the local levels that they can be responsive to the local vision, responsive to the local values. If I am working with the school system that is on the gulf coast, maybe what they’re most interested in is their children knowing about underwater welding because there is apparently underwater welding jobs along the gulf coast that I didn’t know anything about because that’s not where I grew up.

But then I work with another school board that’s in a much more rural community that focuses on raising corn, and maybe their bigger interest is around agriculture and animal husbandry, and I think that’s perfectly fine for each of those communities to have this set of values that match their local interest and that have a vision for the children should know and be able to do the match, what’s true and relevant for that particular community, that’s one of the benefits.

The amalgam of it all though is a different conversation. I see long-term the benefit of highly effective public education systems is that we are all not only just in this nation but across the planet, as a species, we are all benefited by each individual person being able to experience the maximum expression of what they have to offer as a person and the more that we invest in this maximizing of each individual participant in our society, the more all of us benefit from that.

The more that instead of accidentally losing track of the next Einstein, the next Feynman, instead that those folks are given a full opportunity to share their gifts with the world in a powerful way, and I think that is something that is a unique possibility that public education provides.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: AJ, I’m not going to lie to you, man, that kind of made me tear up. I just love that vision so much because I feel like had I not been planted in America and I came from that refugee camp, which is in the middle of the damn desert, there is no—mind you, this refugee camp was inside of Arabia at the time, right? So one of the most wealthiest countries in the world could have easily absorbed me and my family.

Put us in their culture, in their educational system, and I could have prospered there, however, I was not. I was put in a camp, and then for someone else to deal with, and that someone else just so happen to be the American school system, if you will or the American system, and I got absorbed here. I got to you know, in a lot of ways, maximize and see what my full potential is, and I feel like, in a lot of ways, I’m still maximizing, and I am still learning.

I am still growing. Here I am talking to authors. Never in a million years would I have experienced this, you know what I mean? So you are like, when I say spot on, man, I mean you hit a nerve with me in the sense that, like, I just want my future kids and my nephews and nieces and, you know, everyone to have an opportunity like you just said, to just explore their gifts and see where those things can take them because you’re right.

I had gifts and talents in art, and what I was able to draw and paint, and one of my teachers made me paint one of her walls because I was literally—I didn’t even know how to speak English man, she basically commissioned me to do like a half mural in her room because she just saw me doodle because I couldn’t connect to the class, but it’s when that teacher sees this opportunity in you and lets you shine in front of these other kids, you feel so welcomed.

You feel so appreciated and it’s those moments that truly add up in the future to make me now not just want to paint this wall but paint my community, go out in the world and offer my gifts to whoever wants to explore them. So very, very well said, my friend. Your book is phenomenal, I have so many friends in the educational world, and I cannot wait to share with them this remarkable book.

If you’re out there, this book is not necessarily just for school boards, it honestly just lays out a beautiful vision of what our educational system can be, and you really laid out a beautiful book here, man. I got to ask you, though, what is your favorite part of putting this book together?

AJ Crabill: Well, so there is definitely a part in the middle, and you know, I read about this online, but it’s like, “Yeah, that won’t happen to me” there is definitely this part in the middle it’s like I completely hate writing this thing. I didn’t like my current draft. I had rewritten a couple sections like two or three or four times and, “This is garbage. No one is ever going to read this crap”, and so emerging on the far side of that.

I really have kind of stepped away from the project for a couple of months, and then I came back to it, wrote a little bit more but then I shared it, some pieces that I had written with a group of colleagues is really one of the first times that I was getting external feedback, and they shared just some of their reactions to the section that I had provided them with and certainly, they had some ways that I can improve upon it.

But the fact that it connected with him and touched them in the way that it did really gave me the inspiration and the thrust to continue with it, and so just the kindness of folks who helped nudged me out of my lethargy and into onward to completion was just a real blessing.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Isn’t it amazing how mentors and colleagues and people around us, you know, from youth until adulthood, they’re still there, and they’re still important for feedback?

AJ Crabill: Nonstop.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: You know? I love that, so I commend you for all your work, commend you for your wisdom and the audacity and courage to really step into the space and voice a change that you foresee. I love that so much, AJ. Thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences with me and, of course, our audience.

AJ Crabill: Thank you for sharing some of your experiences with me. I really appreciate that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a privilege and an honor to just be able to—like, I get what you’re talking about it. I see it, and I obviously relate like I grew up in this madness, and it’s not so bad, it’s just what can we, you know again, our gifts are just, you know, they don’t just grow in those school system, it’s so that we can use them for the community, right? So I love how you kind of come full circle and decided to serve in this way and really dedicate your life to this.

Much gratitude to you. The book is called Great on Their Behalf: Why School Boards Fail, How Yours Can Become Effective, and besides checking out the book on Amazon and all those good places like Barnes & Nobles and everything online, where can people find you, connect with you because I know you have a coaching program, a consulting program and all that good stuff. So where can people connect with you?

AJ Crabill: Yeah, if folks are curious about the book, they can learn more and join the community, learn more about becoming a coach. If people feel drawn in that way to serve, they can go to the book’s website just, greatontheirbehalf.com. No spaces, no dashes, just greatontheirbehalf.com or folks want to reach out to me, they can go to my website, which is just ajcrabill.com, and I’m just happy to connect with folks who are on the journey.

Want to be of service to children as well and want to talk through how that journey can be aided by supporting their local school board, it being more effective on behalf of the children it serves.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Love it. AJ, it’s been an absolute pleasure and an honor, my friend. Congratulations on your book, I wish you nothing but pure luck and success. I know a lot of hard work is going to go behind all of that luck and success, I’m sure. I pray that a lot of people get their hands on this book. So go out there; if you are listening, go get the book. It’s an amazing read. It’s easy to read, easy to navigate, but an amazing ways forward in our educational system. So thanks again AJ, it’s an absolute pleasure.

AJ Crabill: Thank you.

The post Great on Their Behalf: Airick J. Crabill appeared first on Author Hour.

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Do you ever feel like you were meant to do something but you can’t quite figure out what? Have you felt out of alignment with your true purpose? You’ve come here to live a life of satisfaction and joy. You’re here to live a life that was planned for you, by you. My next guest offers up some solutions along with some practical tools in ways of reframing our thoughts to get that alignment back together.

Welcome back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by author Robin Jelinek, who is here to talk about her new book called, Choose Your Universe: An Exercise in Freedom. Let’s flip through it.

Hello friends and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m here with my friend, Robin Jelinek who today, you know, she’s launched this incredible, incredible book. It’s called Choose Your Universe. You guys, I am extremely excited because Robin has a beautiful, unique way of bringing this wisdom to us, through her book and you know, besides getting into the book, I just want to say, Robin. Thank you for coming on the show and giving us your time today.

Robin Jelinek: Thank you for having me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, Robin. I was telling you a little bit before we hit record that I fell in love with your book because it was so easy to get into and navigate and you laid such a beautiful foundation on for me to really kind of get to know you, get to know the work but before we get into that, I’d love to give our listeners an idea of who you are, your personal background, perhaps where you grew up and maybe a person that inspired you or an event that inspired you to be on the journey that you’re on today.

Robin Jelinek: Oh okay, well, was originally born in Waukesha County in the little town of Merton, Wisconsin and that’s where my parents were from. My father was a water well driller and my mother was a stay-at-home mom and we live there for a good portion of my life and around the junior high age, we moved to Rhinelander, Wisconsin which is a northern small town where my father continued his well business there and where I actually met my husband and we ended up also running a water well drilling business.

I met my husband at the age of 13, that’s another story all in itself. We’re still together, coming on 50 years since the day that we met and there was just a real knowing of the first time that he walked in the room that this would be the person that I would end up with, that I’d be married to. In fact, it turned out to be true.

So what can I tell you more about myself? I would say, I really enjoy being a mother, it was something that brought me a lot of pleasure and I worked aside my husband in our business so I was able to be at home with my kids or bring them with me to work, which I really appreciated and did that for the period of about 20 years and I would say, probably before the kids were born in my early 20s, I had a really interest in metaphysics.

I was very interested in past lives, interested in mediumship, just about anything that I could get my hands on, I was reading and it really resonated with me, and would talk with my husband a lot about it but at the time, it wasn’t really the right time for him. He was busy running our business and I had more time for such things than he did and so it wasn’t that he wasn’t for it at all, it was just that it wasn’t really good timing.

So that we didn’t spend a lot of time doing that together and then I would say, over 20 years of during this time of a lot of reading, a lot of study, a lot of different practices that I was interested in, I had what was called, a kundalini rising, which was really a pivotal moment in my life and it’s really where I experienced that everything that I had read about, everything that I had thought was true was kind of confirmed to me in that experience.

So I felt really lucky to have it because I know that a lot of people read things and they believe them to be true but to have a firsthand experience with something like that, that was otherworldly, that’s the only way I can describe it, really laid the foundation for me to believe that I was definitely on the right trail. There’s way more to life than what we originally believed that there is and so that just sent me on another journey for the next 20 years.

Trying to figure out what this meant, why it happened to me and I read just about every book that you could read on Kundalini energy and I would deem myself pretty much an expert at it because not only have I experienced it but I’ve also read a vast amount of material about it. So it’s still going on to this point but I think it had a lot to do with what occurred with me. I ended up being what is called a channeler and I think that when you have a Kundalini awakening, not all channelers have one.

But usually, ones that have a Kundalini rising, it is something that generally, following that in some period of time end up becoming channelers and that’s in fact what happened to me. So it’s still continuing, there are lots of different things that occur with that. You have lots of Kriyas, lots of bodily movements, lots of facial expressions, and the odd thing about it is they’re all happening without your control.

So what I learned by that experience was that we are all channelers, you would not be in the body that you are in. There’s a consciousness that’s flowing through you that’s operating this vehicle or this body that you’re in and so I just kind of temporarily step aside and I once in a while, different consciousnesses will use my body to communicate through and it really feels quite natural.

I know that sounds kind of out there, I’m a woo-woo person. If anyone that knows me, knows that this is not the typical Robin but it’s where I find myself. So all I can tell you is that it’s happening and it’s true and it’s quite an experience to be going through.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow, I would love to know a little bit about your experience and so this sort of shift that kind of occurred where you realize like, “Okay, I am now going to sort of, in a way, surrender to this process and become a channeler.” Like, first of all, I want to know two things. How old were you when this sort of experience happened and can you walk us a little bit if I may ask?

Robin Jelinek: Yes.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Sort of and what happened in that experience? And then, we’ll kind of go deeper from there.

Kundalini AwakeningRobin Jelinek: Many people are very interested in Kundalini awakening because they find it to be a passageway or a key that unlocks the door to them and so I find that that is a really concentrated area of interest when it comes to me when I talk with clients or even other people because this is something that a lot of people want to achieve.

However, they are very anxious about wanting it quickly. They want this to happen overnight and what I would tell you in my experience and I can’t say it’s true for everyone’s but I think it’s true in many is this can be a very many-year process and even a lifetime-to-lifetime process. So it’s not something that you’re just going to wake up and it’s going to be complete.

Once the Kundalini rises, it has a lot of cleansing processes that it goes through and it takes many years to do this and there will be an upheaval of a lot of stored emotions, whether it be from this life or past lifetimes that will come up to your cognition, yeah? And so you’ll have to let go of a lot of those things, not really worry about them so much or where they’re coming from.

It’s just a process and what’s really happening is, even though those energy centers have been opened and that energy is on the move, now it is actually moving through the Nadi’s or opening up all of the tiny little intricate centers of the body that are really where all the wisdom and knowledge is stored from the universe basically.

So it is not something that is very quick to have happened, it takes them time and so that would give you a little bit of an idea of what’s been going on with me. Now, I’m at age 63 now. I had the Kundalini rising when I was 43 years old and the thing to understand about this energy is that it is a consciousness that is separate from yours. It moves at its own rate, its own pace, it has its own idea, its own agenda, there’s nothing you’re going to do.

You can’t put that genie back in the bottle once it has escaped, it is out, yes? And so this energy just starts running and coursing through your body and it is quite a process. Now, there will be times that it will be very active where there will be lots of experiences both out of body and in body but then there will be periods off time where nothing will be happening at all.

And humans will get a little anxious sometimes and want to speed that along or try to focus on it to get it moving again but I would tell you that that’s really not what’s causing the movement. This energy has its own agenda and it’s based upon what’s within you. The amount of time that it takes what it has that you have stored within you as far as emotion or experiences from this life or past lifetimes and so you just kind of have to give that up.

You have to give up otherworldly experiences that are occurring, out-of-body experiences that will happen. You can’t get attached to any of those things, you can’t make them happen, there’s nothing you’re going to do about it. So you have to get very comfortable with the idea that this is going to be a process that does its own thing.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow, so powerful. I love that because it’s sort of this relinquishing of everything we’ve been taught, right? I think for me, personally, right? Like, everything that we’ve been taught about this world and the dynamics of it and you know, just this world in of itself and how it’s constructed and designed and the laws and the policies and the rules. In a way, I feel like this being, this place that you speak from is so powerful because it’s not bound by any of these things and it’s almost, it sounds like you know, I asked my father one time, like, what, you know, “What is the Most High, what is Allah?” you know?

It’s just like, he said that you can’t fathom it because it’s so beyond our comprehension but the way we can kind of get to it is, you know, this idea of no time, space or matter can bound it and so you know, just on our imagination, the average human being, it’s hard to think outside of these elements, right? And so how you are kind of shaping this to be, it sounds like this energy it makes from this sort of space where it’s not bound by anything.

I think that’s just really profound. In your book, you discuss the importance of self-love and I think it’s really amazing because I feel like the last few years, you know, this idea of self-love, what that actually looks like, you know, all these things of, you know, all these questions and conversations that have come up, which is great but how have you personally struggled with self-love and what practices have you found to be effective in cultivating this idea of self-love?

Self-Love and AthenaRobin Jelinek: Yes, that’s a very good question. I would tell you that in the beginning, on the spiritual journey, I felt as though, there was something I had to achieve. There was some level of greatness, some level of perfection, of doing everything right, of not having any bad thoughts, of not having any negative experiences, of never getting irritated with other people and so I really held this package of beliefs and that’s what they were on how a spiritual person needed to be in order to be worthy.

And I think the greatest gift in all of this and what I’m really offering in this book is none of that is true. You really are enough just as you are. You are human who is an experiencer and you are using your human, your tool for the experiences that you are having while you are here. There was never any agreement to doing them all right, that you would never make a mistake or that you would always feel proud of everything that you were doing but you were going to learn from it.

That was the whole agreement that you had and I think everybody that is listening knows they’ve done that. Somewhere along the line and I think even in this metaphysical awakening that is happening at this time, people have adopted the belief that there is some form of perfection that one must have. You have to eat a certain way, you have to behave a certain way, you have to look a certain way in order for you to be worthy of the knowledge and wisdom that by the way, is available to everyone at any time, anyone.

And so the people that…I call them people, I should say the entities that I channel have really come here to teach people that this is not the case, that you are worthy just by the experiences you’re having and that, the more that you can accept this truth, this is what self-love is. I love you even though you have made some mistakes, I love you. Even though you are angry at someone, I love you no matter what it is that you do because you are having experiences and you are in a contrasting plane and you are human and this is natural when you are human.

And so once you really get this concept and you begin to love yourself, you kind of rise in this feeling of worthiness, this feeling of self-love, and when this happens, you become the perfect match to all that is and this is where all the good stuff is. This is where all the things are that you really want, they’re the things that you have asked for that you maybe sometimes thought that you couldn’t get.

Really all that happened is you were not loving yourself, so you were in that in the vibratory tone where you could actually match or align to that what you’ve become because of the experiences that you have contributed with your human. So I think for me, the number one without question, benefit that I got and that I hope others will get from the book that has been written by the group that I channel is that living is enough to make you worthy.

And that in that love of self, in that acceptance of self, what will happen is your human, the behavior will change. The behavior will become what you have desired it to become, just because of that wanting and so it’s a very natural unfolding that will occur once you give up this idea that somehow, some have planted into you that you have to be the one as the human to change yourself because really, you are not doing it. It is the high part of you that does it and it does it through your loving of yourself.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful. Robin, you talked about Athena in your book and you know, this idea that you channel Athena or rather, she chooses your body and forgive me for… if I’m not using the correct language or vernacular, I’m just trying to articulate to the audience how this sort of process works between you and the group.

But perhaps, I’m assuming that Athena was one of the first sort of few entities that sort of started becoming the channelers that come through you. So can you tell us a little bit about that relationship in which you sort of needed to develop between you and Athena or was there a relationship? Or was there sort of, yeah. Can you please talk on that a little bit?

Robin Jelinek: Absolutely. What I would say in response to that, just to give you a little bit of a background, there’s nothing that is incurring in your life in the exchanges that you are having with those that are close to that you are not the creator of, that you are not the drawer of or the picker of and we know that for most people, I‘m saying we, they’re in here too, sorry, but I am telling you that many people don’t have this awareness.

They think that life is just happening to them, they think that somehow, good things happen and bad things happen but really, you are the attractor or the caller of these things to yourself. So what really occurred for me was I was having a problem with confidence. I kind of had it my whole life. I was a chubby girl as a child and got picked on a lot and really didn’t fit in very well and then, even though I thinned out and have a very nice life and a husband, I kept that baggage or that noose around my neck.

It stayed with me where I just felt at times that I couldn’t feel as confident as I would like to and one day, I was sitting by myself and I asked myself, “When am I going to get my confidence? I’m 63, it’s got to be coming pretty soon.” I’m really tired of not feeling as though I’m good enough, as though I can keep up or whatever it is that I’m doing where I lose in, and in that moment, I had a breath drawn me and I knew it wasn’t me.

That’s when it first happened and the speaking in my head was the first signal. There was a talking that felt like it was not me and the voice said, “I am Athena, this is how it would feel to be in confidence” and I can honestly tell you, in that moment, that was the first time I ever really felt what it would feel like to be confident and so from that point on, I kind of knew that something was happening and I went out of town a week or two later.

I did have a lot of mudras, which are automatic signing or things with my hands that would occur very graceful mudras that I had no training in on the way that I could know how to do these things and so a lot of these phenomena was occurring. I didn’t know at the time that it was the group that was entering but it actually was. So I would say, a couple of weeks after that first breathe came from Athena, I was out of town with my husband and my son and I was talking to my son a little bit about what I had been experiencing.

And right away, I felt as I talked about them and then by the way, they are thought-provoked. The minute I think about them, they start to talk. When I was thinking about them, he saw my body start to move and he said, “Well, whoever you are, why don’t you come out and talk?” and this was the first time that they actually spoke and so it was pretty exciting night for us. I am fortunate that my husband is very open and my children are open and I have a surrounding of family and people around me who are believing of what it is that I do.

So I didn’t have that comfort zone or that cushion, let’s say that, yeah? To be able to let that out. So at first, it was very difficult. It was strained, my voice box hurt a lot, I felt very, like it was a big effort, it actually hurt in my voice box but whatever occurred over the next three to four weeks, that went away and it started to smooth out and there was little turmoil in the beginning because there was more than one that was wanting to speak and so they very quickly decided that they would go under Athena, who was the one that she claimed breathed to me first.

So she is the speaker of the house but what they actually have told me that they do is they merge their consciousnesses together and they are all communicating. They are all adding wisdom and knowledge in the work that I do and she is more the deliverer of that knowledge, that’s kind of how it works.

So really what happened, you know, I believe that I drew it to myself, something I asked for and a lot of humans don’t really understand but when you ask, the universe wants to deliver to you what it is you’ve asked for and many people don’t understand themselves. They don’t understand when they think negatively, they think, “I have to stop doing it, I have to make that go away, that’s a bad thing that I’m doing.”

“I’m going to create things that I don’t want to if I keep thinking that way” and what I have learned is that a lot of the emotions and a lot of the thoughts that you have coming to you are coming because you have asked. You have asked, “Why am I not getting the wife I want? Why am I not getting the job that I want, where is the money that want to have?” and when you ask the universe, guess what? It’s going to open you up raw.

It’s going to unload out to you, “Hey, you got some worries around money” or “You don’t think you look very good” or “You don’t think that you’re the right age” or you’re too old. It will actually start telling you the reasons why you don’t have what it is you are asking for but the human will think that they are thinking negatively and this is why, they kind of have it backwards to some degree.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, it’s very powerful and this idea that basically, you’re creating a mirror around you in whatever you really believe that’s what the belief is going to come back as and this idea that if we can change those thoughts, those experiences, instead of saying, “I am broke” this is something I used to do, right? Growing up. Like, “Oh man, I’m so broke right now.” Just saying, “No-no-no, I am wealthy. I’m actually healthy” and that’s actually the most…that’s the wealthiest thing you could be is being healthy, right?

Like and you know of course, lots of people around me, my father, my mother, you know, always reminding me that my health is my wealth but also, now from that space, I can generate the wealth that I want. What it means for me to be wealthy and successful and sort of start thinking in that direction and the universe start unfolding and that perception that’s where I was able to build a business and go on to college and all these beautiful things that I‘ve been able to do coming from a freaking refugee camp where I feel like your humanity is stripped away, right?

Your dreams are stripped away and so that recalibration, definitely took me time and I love that because you talk about that in your chapter of manifestation, which you kind of, you know, alluded to a little bit here. Can you maybe talk about one or two of the most common mistakes that people try to think about when people talk about manifesting their desires? What would you say are the common mistakes are?

Photo by Negative Space from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/fashion-woman-notebook-pen-34072/

Common Mistakes When Manifesting DesiresRobin Jenlinek: Oh, I would tell you the biggest mistake that they make is that they decide that they have to change themselves that they have noticed something that they don’t like. They start to focus on that thing that they think is preventative and all you do when you focus on that thing is produce more of it, you see? You have to turn your attention to the desire that you have, the thing that you want to achieve rather than focusing on the negative or something that you are feeling is a preventative.

Many humans will be trying to suck up their thoughts or screening everything that they are thinking about think that they are doing a good thing only to find the thoughts start multiplying, multiplying, multiplying. This, you have to understand how this universe works. There is no good and bad there is no right and wrong. There is nobody out there that is determining to make you a victim or to harm or hurt you in any way.

There is just you and you, you see? There is just one thing that emanates all things. So as you are emanating, as you were looking at another and you see them in distaste or disgust or something you are not liking, the universe now likens you to that. It simply is a duplicator of what it is you are emitting. It is quite simple but people have a real problem because they move into justification.

They decide, “Hey, that guy did that crime” or “He did that thing” or he is that loud mouth or he is this or that and it’s justifiable. We’re never going to tell you that it’s not true but what we are going to tell you is that as you focus on what you see that you are not in the liking of, you are now that very thing, you see? You get nowhere that way. The only way you can get anywhere is to emanate the feeling of what you want returned.

If you are looking at something that you do not like and you feel you’re justified in it, you’re not getting anywhere.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: This is so profound for me because when I was reading this chapter, I thought a lot about the thoughts I’ve had in the past and where I am today, right? Like I’ve always wanted to live in a warmer climate. Well, two years ago, my wife and I moved down to Arizona, right? I’ve always dreamt I want to buy a house like that’s something I want in my life. You know, it is something like I lived in a tent for four years.

Robin Jelinek: Let’s stop there for a minute, one minute.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah.

Robin Jelinek: Yes? Because we really want you to understand in particular living in that tent, what was born of that, that energy? Here is what a human doesn’t understand, they want to deem everything that’s good and bad and is right and wrong but they have no idea that everything that they live is for them. Everything that you were doing is building energy. Do you think that all that is does not know when one is living in a tent that they would really like to be in a warm place and a nice home?

Of course, it does and so what happened really? You had a great desire because of the life that you lived and all of that energy got packed away. It’s yours, it’s on your tab, nobody is picking it up, nobody can have it but you but what happens is you decide to align. You get in that happy state, that satisfied state, that’s the best place to be and then all of the things that you have become by the experiences that you’ve had start to unfold in your experience in a positive way, you see?

So there is no positive and negative, that ball of energy that was built by the life that you lived prior to getting to where you are is what supplied all that is with what you have.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it is profound to make the connection between you know, I feel like when my father used to say things like, “No, whatever comes from the Most High is welcomed by me” and I just love that because in those dark times, he didn’t see what was happening “to us” he rather saw it happening for us and he always saw this sort of beyond the horizon accumulation of what will come, right?

Again, I was very young and he was deeply spiritual and so for me, as I grew older I started leaning into that spirituality and thinking like, everything is temporary and I’m going to live here as best as I can and the best way I can do that is through my art, is through writing, is through being in this moment with my wife, you know? So those are the things that started to accumulate.

But you talk about in chapter five and I really love this, it’s perception. I think the one thing, growing up as a Middle Eastern kid in America, there’s one thing I always got from my peers was, “Man, you really helped change my perception” whatever conversation we were talking about. I always thought that was such a gift that I was able to sort of carry, this idea of perception.

Can you talk about that? You talk about how when we change our perceptions to better align with our true nature and perhaps maybe some practical tools that readers can use to shift their perspective. Perspective is huge for me because I feel like I have seen two different parts of the world but some others have not.

Robin Jelinek: Yes, when we or you adopt your father’s understanding that there is everything in life is unfolding for you, that you are not determining anything as good or bad or positive or negative and you are willing to live through these experiences and you become a master and what is a master? A master is one who feels, you are going to feel what it’s like to be a human. That’s never going away.

You’re going to have negative emotions, you are going to lose people, you are going to go through experiences that are both pleasant and unpleasant but as a master, you start to realize, “Hey, I am an emanator and what I emanate is what will be returned on.” So very quickly, you will decide how you’re going to choose to feel around an experience in your conscious moment, your now moment as opposed to unconsciously letting your life unfold based upon what has been lived in the past before you had this knowledge or wisdom, you see?

Many humans are living their lives and they are unconscious and what is unconscious? It’s whenever you go into an emotive state. You are unconscious, did you know that? And as you are unconscious, the life just starts automatically unfolding, sometimes in very unpleasant ways because you are stuck in an emotive state and you have no idea that your emanation is calling more of that to you, you see.

But when you get in the now moment and you start to be conscious of how you’re determining, “What do I want from this experience? What do I really? It didn’t feel good, I didn’t like it, I’m willing to admit that but what is it that I do want because of it?” It is for you to form a preference. Once you have formed a preference, now you go with that. How would it feel to have that preference? How would I like it if that actually happened and I could feel that way about it.

You start to be very grateful for the experiences that you have deemed positive or negative and you start to just use them or leverage them so that you can get the best for yourself. There’s no way that you are ever going to get the best for yourself if you continue to live unconsciously and by unconsciously, we mean flying off into emotive states and not really paying attention to what they were born of or what it is that you want because of the experience you’re having.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Robin, in the book you encourage readers to listen to their guiding system. I think that is one of the most profound things that I heavily aligned like just resonated deeply with me. My dad always used to say, there is a compass inside of you and the more you listen to it, the more you, through prayer, right? In the cause of communing, right? The more you commune, the clearer that path for that navigation to really take place.

And everywhere you go, there is a mission that you are going to be a part of and an adventure and you’re going to unfold and so this idea that where you’re going is actually dictated by how much you know yourself and I just, as a teenager that was really hard to comprehend and as I got older, it made a little bit more sense and as I have conversations like this with the many people, mentors, coaches that I’ve had in the past, I felt more trusting of that guidance system inside of me.

When you eluded to that, I was like, “Did she talk to my dad?” like what happened here, you know? I love that because you say that when you know yourself, you know everything. You know, you know everyone else, right? In a way, so I love this. Can we talk about this a little bit? How could readers recognize and connect with their inner guidance and what advice would you give?

Connecting with Inner GuidanceRobin Jelinek: The most important thing to understand about the guidance system is that it is always between you and you. You can take everybody else out of the equation because they are just mirrors or more opportunities, let’s use that term, for you to look within yourself to see why it is you are experiencing what it is you are experiencing, you see, and when we say between you and you, we mean many humans will decide that someone has irritated them.

Someone has caused them in some way to feel negative and they want to put the blame onto someone else but really what is being responded to by the high part of you to you is that the way you’re feeling and thinking right now is moving away from your source. It is not going to provide you with what it is you’re calling for if you continue to emanate that way, you see, and what does it mean?

Does it mean that the person that you are interacting with didn’t do anything wrong or that they are not a good person or a bad person? No, it doesn’t mean that. It just means it doesn’t matter. See, none of that matters. The master realizes I am not going to argue with anyone. I am not giving away my goal to anyone. I am keeping it for myself because the minute I decide to judge another person as being bad even if they are, we’re not saying that they’re not, the minute that you do that, you become the emanator of it.

You become the same thing, you see, and now, you are getting this attracted to yourself. So the guided system, the most important thing for you understand is that communication is for you, about you, to you, from you. It has nothing to do. You can immediately, when you fly off the handle, when something happens and you are thrown off your equilibrium, you can immediately take the players or the actors right out of the picture.

They’re not a part of it. You have to know that the way you have chosen to move or think in that moment in that interaction and by the way, they wouldn’t be there if you were not a match to it that it’s why they are mirrored to you anyway but you have to decide in that moment the minute the controversy starts, I’m emanating something and the way that I am feeling, do I want that back? Is this something I would like to have produced or coming back to me?

So after a while when you become this master that we have talked about and you really get to understand this communication, this guidance system between you and you and the intricateness of it and the way that it is working for you in support of you that that horrible negative feeling you get when you are in conflict is because of conflict, period. It’s not because the conflict is true or not true.

It’s because you are now same. As you push against or oppose something, you are in the same energy of the one pushing and opposing and so you have to get this understanding of the guidance system and know that you’re high self always communicating to you, about you and the way that you were thinking and feeling about everything you are dealing with in every second, in every moment. It never leaves you, it is the most perfect, intricate, connected thing that you can ever imagine.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Robin, what was your—I have to ask this because I feel like, putting a book together is one of those things for human beings, you know, it’s a journey in and of itself, right? Sometimes it’s a yearlong, sometimes it’s a few years long. What was your favorite part of pulling this book together?

Robin Jelinek: Realizing I could do it. You know, I am not a writer, I would not claim to be and I know it’s really funny because I feel like in this process, I’ve learned that this journey that you are on is really magical and surprising and fun when you allow it to be and I remember being younger and I remember trying to sit down and write a book and think, “I think I’m going to write a book” but I had nothing to say.

It just wouldn’t come to me and I think even back then, something in me, this was coming, this unfolding was coming and so once the channeling thing happened and I decided, “You know, maybe we should write a book about this” and my husband said, “Well, how do we do that?” you know? And so I just sat down and I asked and all of a sudden, my hands just started going and I had no idea that I could channel through typing.

Because when I channel, I always have my eyes closed and the words just flow out just effortlessly for me but I had never known that they would channel a book and I simply sit down and say, “Well, what’s this chapter going to be about?” and they’ll say, “Well, let’s title it this” and then I’ll say in the morning, “I’m ready for a download for the book” and through it comes and so I think that it’s important to make the note here that there are many people who are doing this, who are not channeling a group like I am.

But they have flow, a connection to themselves that comes through in this way that makes it effortless, that makes it feel easy, that it just flows. I think people have it with music, they have it with their art and they don’t recognize it. They think, “Oh, this is no big deal” and the most important thing I would tell you is if you knew how natural this felt, if you knew how effortless it is and how effortless life is supposed to be, there is like this flow going on.

This natural thing just like fish that swim upstream at a certain time of year, nobody goes and tells them all, “Hey, it’s time to get going upstream” they just go. It just innately happens and the only reason your life isn’t unfolding the way you want it to is because you don’t have the understanding that it can. Once you get this real connection to yourself and you grasp this understanding that to get into the flow state, what is that?

It’s like when you get into this positive state where you’re just looking at things that you’re admiring and you are loving life and loving the people that you’re with and you’re letting go of conflict and you’re deciding, “Ah, they can be right, it doesn’t matter.” Does it really matter? It doesn’t and so you start to kind of let go of all of these things and what happens is, you drop into this stream and that’s what it is.

It’s a stream of consciousness, a flow where things just drop on your lap and you are just picking, “Ah, I like that, I like this. That would be great, let’s have that” and no more are you struggling. No more are you going out. There’s nothing to do, it just is like this automatic very natural state that one gets into and you start to realize that your life is already there. It’s already laid out and all you have to do is allow, is stop trying to control it.

Stop opposing people, stop arguing about things, stop looking at things that you don’t like, stop repeating bad news and when you do that, you drop into a stream of consciousness, of possibility, of magic, and a wonderful life.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Robin, I am certainly blown away. I am literally going to take the rest of the day to finish up your book and not only that but honestly, like that as I hear you speak, I am – how would I even say this, I am inspired to lay out my prayer rug and just sit there and commune and do my meditation because you know, it is one of these topics that I feel like you said earlier, you know, it’s like this idea of just flowing down river.

The more aligned I feel and I can speak from a personal experience, the more aligned I feel in the ways that I want to just allow myself, give myself permission, you know I didn’t paint for like, I don’t know, 12, 14 years. I stopped painting during college and I just picked it back up this last year and painting is a huge visceral – I mean, my father painted his whole life, my great grandfather was an artist, you know this identity of artistry and poetry is just huge in my lineage.

The more I’ve leaned into that in the last, I would say, a year and a half, two years, I feel more of myself than I ever have and so your work, you know for me just resonates deeply with this sort of new trajectory and just giving this idea of giving myself permission and it’s so beautiful that you speak just in the sense of like, you know, when I sit down and I just let go, I say, “You know what? There is no expectation, I am just here to write because I enjoy this process.”

Oh my god, those days, that writing is just smooth. I don’t care if it’s good or not. It just comes out though but the times where I’m like, “Oh this needs to be good, and what if so and so sees it?” and the ego comes into play, it’s eliminated. I don’t even want to write, I’d rather do the dishes, you know what I mean? So that resistance, so it’s beautiful that you really talk about these moments and your experiences and how they can benefit the reader is really profound.

I have one last question for you and you’re off the hook Robin, one of your readers picks up your book and begins to read through it like I have, what do you hope they feel after putting it down?

Robin Jelinek: I hope they are inspired to get the life that they were meant to get. Some humans think they have to suffer in order to do that and sometimes that happens but we want you to know that nothing is for nothing and that every bit of energy that you are expending as you were living as a human is being tallied. It is being kept, it is not for nothing. It’s available to you, it is in your universe.

We tell humans all the time, you have the mass consciousness, the universe of thought, of everyone’s thoughts, you can follow that if you want to. You can decide to listen to all the studies and all your news and join the masses and what it is that they believe and that can become part of your experience or you can decide that you have a universe that it’s you and you are the one that deposits in that universe by your focus.

What you choose to think about, what you choose to view, who you choose to spend your time with, all of these things are your choice as a sovereign being and our biggest advice to you would be to know that, that you are a sovereign creator, individual, all on your own and you have the ability to make a beautiful life for yourself all by yourself. You don’t have to join the masses out of fear.

What is fear? Someone asked us that question the other day, fear is feeling out of control. That’s the best way we would describe fear and once you eliminate that fallacy that you know you are the picker, the chooser, the sovereign creator, you are the one that decides and you are in control, never again will you be fearful once you adopt this way of living.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful Robin, thank you so much for sharing your stories and your experiences with me and our audience as well. The book is called, Choose Your Universe: An Exercise in Freedom. Besides checking out the book on Amazon, where can people find you and perhaps connect with you Robin?

Robin Jelinek: Yes, I have a podcast under Athena In Truth, I do that for free in a lot of listeners really enjoy that from day to day depending on what I’m experiencing, different situations come up, we address them on there. I also do YouTube once or twice a week and I do channeling with other channelers and then I also do separate channels with Athena, they’re about 45 minutes to an hour apiece.

People really enjoy those and I do private sessions for people and you can find me at www.athenaintruth.com and there’s a scheduling device on there that you can make appointments for that if you are looking for a session.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful. Robin, thank you so much for coming on the show, Athena, thank you as well. Thank you for your wisdom today, your knowledge, your expertise, your way of words, and certainly, your spirit. I am profoundly grateful and Robin, I know we’ll be in touch, I’ll be reaching out and saying hello in other ways. So thank you again, Robin, have a great rest of your day.

Robin Jelinek: Thank you, I really appreciate it.

The post Choose Your Universe: Robin Jelinek appeared first on Author Hour.

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If you want rapid, healthy, and sustainable growth for your business, there’s no shortcut. Hacks and tactics promising 10x growth might yield short-term results but won’t provide you long-term gains. It’s time to rethink chasing hack-tics and shift your growth mindset to unlock the hidden potential within your business that can quickly generate ongoing waves of profitability.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined today by author Scott Martin, who is here today to talk about his new book called Grounds*well: The Unseen Wave of Business Growth*. Let’s flip through it.

Hello friends and welcome back to the show. I’m super excited to have my friend, Scott Martin on the show today. Scott, thanks for coming on, man.

Scott A. Martin: Thanks so much for having me, Aloha.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I’m super excited. Dude, I got to tell you, perusing throughout your book, I loved all the graphics and fun, creative ways that you put that together throughout the book. I got to give you some props on that, it looks really cool but other than that, yeah.

Scott A. Martin: There’s 66 of them.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, there is a lot of them for sure, I noticed.

Scott A. Martin: It was an ambitious project. Let me tell you, three years later.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: For sure, yeah man, but I like that man, it kind of keeps it slow going but also man, your book is really easy to navigate and get pulled in by. I think sometimes business books, marketing books, those kinds of things, they’re all great. However, sometimes, it takes a little while to warm up and get into the flow of the content.

I found yours pretty easy to navigate and get into, man. So, I got pulled in quite a few times as I was perusing it in the last few, I would say, I usually have about 12 to 24 hours to do some research. Yeah, so it was good man, it was good for me to just navigate through it.

I’m really excited because I picked up some questions along the way. But before we get into all of that man, for me, I love getting to know you, laying down the personal background. I’d love to know a story or two of you growing up and sort of what led you down this path.

And of course, there are many people who inspired me to get on my path, including my father and things like that, and I’d love to know if there was someone in your life that perhaps inspired you and maybe push you along the way in your path and journey right now.

So, let’s start with that, let’s jump back in time a little bit and share a little bit of a personal background, if you will.

Scott A. Martin: No problem. I think there is a lot of people that I can draw from, but probably my first was my father. A self-made entrepreneur. Watching him be incredibly successful to the point where he retired, it seemed like quite an early age, in his 30s, and ended up volunteering for the span of about, it seemed like about five or six years, and that had him volunteering and traveling around the world. And we ended up moving to the Philippines for a number of years and I was a missionary kid.

I had a pet monkey and all the rest, I went to private school up in Quezon City in the Philippines. I was there for a couple of years and that experience really, the combination of being an entrepreneur and having impact is really the origin story of Groundswell. I mean, if I really think back about what was the inspiration, and just seeing someone who dedicated his life to making income and then basically not working and volunteering. And when he came back, through changes in the economy and situations, he had to go back to work.

He had to go back into business and it was really heartbreaking to see him initially struggling to come back. And I guess for me, looking at like, “Wow, there’s someone that I just admire,” and I’m like, “He wanted to make an impact,” and I’m like, “Is there a way, maybe it’s a question I’ve been asking myself subconsciously, to sustainably do that, to be of impact and going and start a business?”

So, if I had someone I ever want to have to, it probably be my father for sure, but business and sort of shaping what’s grown into you, what’s — I guess now, my practice of over 25 years in marketing and advertising, I would say the second is, of many, is Don Peppers. Don Peppers, he’s an author. He and Martha Rogers have written several books and one day I saw him speaking, talking about one-to-one marketing, about personalization.

It just captivated me about the possibility of creating business engagement and experience on a one-to-one personal level. So I really see that as being another major component that combine my practice, whereas applying what he created as a framework was just called, get, grow, keep in business. How do you get customers, grow customers, and keep customers? I actually apply that to all my clients over decades and I modified it and that’s really what this book is about.

The Hack-TicsHussein Al-Baiaty: I love that man, it’s such a powerful, I would say, origin story, which we’ll get into a little bit later of course, but I love that. I love giving shoutouts to people who — whether they know it or not sometimes, they help shape our thinking, help shape our stories, especially the ones that are super close.

Sometimes they don’t actually — sometimes it’s people that you just meet or strangers or someone that has an impact on you, and I think where I’d like to take this conversation is about that, it’s about building connections. It’s about building those core values in and around your business, and you really emphasize that, the importance of building connections with your audience throughout your book and how you approach growth.

Can you share a story about a time when you personally established a connection with a client or someone that you had a significant impact on your business, and how you were able to grow perhaps their business and how they were able to grow?

Scott A. Martin: That’s an interesting question. Across the board over, we’re talking hundreds of brand redesigns, clients, probably now in the thousands of campaigns, there’s patterns and we identify patterns. And usually when people are looking at marketing or doing things, they identify patterns and then you look at, “Well, let’s differentiate those patterns and find which ones do create a difference,” and then you create your new patterns.

And patterns that I saw was that these successful businesses that were actually bringing down their cost of marketing doing things differently, were building relationships with the customers in a more meaningful way. Then the differentiation of pattern was businesses that were brands that actually meant something to the relationship, it wasn’t transactional. It was something deeper, and that deeper relationship culminated into a more lasting and a bidirectional relationship, if you will.

Then finally, creating patterns is I started testing and trying building community, and applying some of my thinking with various different clients and those relationships, having a relationship with your client that allow you to do certain things for their business is one. You have to have a deep trust relationship, but I would argue that any business relationship that I’ve been in, for the most part, I’ve had a deep relationship. My focus has been how clients in businesses deepen those relationships in a way to make deeper meaning, and that deeper meaning is what I call a growth loop.

And when I break down my book in my four sections, it’s the last component, which is transform component, which is when you ultimately actually created deep, meaningful relationship that is so meaningful, it goes through three different stages. The first is move. You move a relationship, you move products, you move things that transactional it’s functional. That’s how you move your hand from one, any person to just move over to grab the other one, which is Old Spice or something, right?

But the next step is when you change. I was a PC user, now I’m a Mac user. I was a Right Guard, now I’m an Old Spice, right? That’s changed, and sometimes there’s emotion that’s there but it takes a little bit more of a relationship or an emotional state to do that in business.So when you’re trying to change behavior, being an agent of change as a lot of marketers are, you have to have some level of relationship with them and on a commodity like antiperspirant, it’s more of a brand emotional connection.

On a deeper sense, we have direct contact with your clients, you have to have engagement. You have to have some level of dialogue and relationship with them. And then last is transform. When you actually are able to transform the way that they see the world, to transform the way they will never buy antiperspirant the same way, they’ll never do business in the same way, that’s when they basically are compelled to tell other people.

So the first one in move, I don’t tell anyone. When it changes, when I’ve changed from one to another, I might tell. It’s word of mouth, that’s where most businesses live. But when you change somebody, and just think of your personal relationships, when I’ve looked at any relationship from a client to anything, when you just move them with a message or an idea, then I can even shout from the rooftops.

But if you change your way of thinking, they’re going to probably tell the people like, “This guy has really good ideas.” But when you transform them, they will tell everyone that they know. So to me, those are called depth of impact, which is what you’re describing, which is depth of relationship.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s really powerful man. Because it differentiates you from the idea of creating. I know you talk about this in the book too, you call it the hack-tics right? The hacks and the tactics that we use to grow a certain campaign or the ad spend and all that good stuff. You can get this uptick in your sales of course, but then it falls back down to the baseline and that’s unhealthy, right?

And we got to look at this thing, whatever it is that we’re marketing in our business, all those good things, in a more sustained fashion. And you blend traditional forms of marketing of course, with modern ways of thinking without the need of trying to hack our way through something, and I really appreciate that. But one of the key things I really enjoyed in your book is the value of patience and achieving sustainable growth.

Can you describe a time when you had to resist the urge to take a shortcut or implement a quick fix? Because dude, there’s been so many times — like I owned an apparel printing company for almost 15 years and there were so many times where that I used to take the quick fix. Of course, when I was younger, it did not pan out. But later, I learned I got to be patient, I got to apply the right processes and all these kinds of things. But can you tell me about a time where you resisted that urge and how that paid off for you in the long run?

Scott A. Martin: Yeah, this is a big topic. The heading on that chapter is “Patience is the new growth hack.” I’m a recovering shoot, aim, fire, individual that was chasing all these hack-tics and the shortcuts in the effort of growth. So there’s multiple examples and I have one example that’s probably the most salient for me. I started up a company called Swellness.

It was my own company with — I had a business partner, Melanie, she’s lovely, and we ended up working for a year, building a subscriber base. We had an app, we had followers, we had hundreds of videos shot in Bali, Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and California. And those videos were trying to create a more modular workout model, where somebody could have this surfer style workout and have these workouts and not have to do the same workout twice.

Somebody who really valued variety, valued like, “I just want to show up and just always be inspired by the place I’m working out in,” and then you could group them and you can go, “No, I want to do the same repeat pattern once.” If you want to you can as well but the goal was, you technically could not actually do the same workout in over six months. It would be the potential.

So we did this, it was all video. It was all delivered online platform and a year later, we broke even and had different expectations. So she said, “You know, this isn’t making the money that I wanted. I think this isn’t for me, I’m going to move on to things. I don’t know if this is what I want to do,” and I was like, “No, just hang on.” It’s like, we just built this thing, I can’t even believe we broke even the first year, right?

She didn’t want to and that was fine and we shut down the business. Eight months later, COVID happened. That was a salty taste. That would have been a multi, multi, multimillionaire with that product and it really galvanized that chapter. That is really what I really reflected on multiple past patterns, different patterns that I saw and I saw in businesses, I’ve always seen in businesses, where often you’re focused on, “What’s the immediate ROI?”

As opposed to, “What’s the depth of relationship this is creating what the brand, with my audience, the people that I want to aim to impact and the long-term residual effect of my brand?” I think you need to be mindful of cashflow and this type of activity but far too often, most businesses, either by the fact that they are not managing their bottom line carefully or well or not willing to invest or they’re just not patient, they tend to find themselves in multiple situations where they’re really leaving a lot of value on the table by not being patient and playing through.

Connecting and Creating Your GroundswellHussein Al-Baiaty: Man, what a valuable lesson to learn, impatience. That is so powerful in the belief and sticking something out a little bit longer, but everyone changes. Everyone comes to things a little bit differently of course but yeah, that’s a very valuable story. I’m glad you shared that because I want audiences to know that like man, entrepreneurship is one of those things that it’s like magic.

It feels like it’s happening in front of you and you don’t know what’s happening, but the back end of what’s actually happening, how the trick actually comes to life is so hard and demanding and requires a ton of patience. And I think testing something out for a year, people test things out and you know this, right? You interview a lot of people for years, if not, decades sometimes before something works.

And sometimes, you’re a little bit ahead of the curve and sometimes you’re behind the curve, and that happens in business of course but ultimately, we have to learn from it. And so learning from that, you talk about how your approach advocates for giving value to your audience without expectation. This idea of the give and take, but in your scenario, how you approach this is just give without expectation. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Scott A. Martin: Yeah, I think the world that we’re in is so competitive now that the idea of just somebody going, “Hey, let’s just go get customers,” the thought of just these strategy of they’re cattle to be roped, type of thing. It’s just a mind shift change going, “What’s our gift to the world, what are we giving? What are we actually doing here to make a difference?”

Now, what I’m describing this book, for the most part, is really aimed at impact-creators. I mean, this is really a perfect hit for them but it affects everybody or it could be applied by everybody. But to me, at the end of the day, if you’re looking and you look at the models that have been created, look at freemium models, look at Dropbox, its growth model, its growth loop started with a give, right?

They shifted their moneys off of marketing, they gave the money to the people that were sharing space, they got more space and they gave space to the people they shared it with. That was a give. That was actually Shawn Elis’ innovation for Hacking Growth, who was on my podcast, and I made a comment in my book because this really is a little bit of a secret for marketing, but now it’s become a little bit of a table steak.

So if you think of freemium, how many times have you seen, “Hey, we’ll try it for a month” or “It’s the puppy dog closing. Try it and then decide if you want to continue on.” Now, that free doesn’t always mean free. The focus is, give is the new get. It’s like, “What are we giving?” If you start from a place of, “What are we giving the audience that we want?” And so you look at the rise of content marketing. That’s about give, give, then get.

If you think of a very famous, Gary Vaynerchuck, who I mean is, five Ds program since like, I don’t know, I think that was like back in 2000 and I think it was even, 2019 or ‘17 actually, and he had a book called Jab, Jab, Right Hook. That’s really, jab, jab, jab is, give, give, give. You really need to be thinking about it in business now is not just like, “What am I giving?” but if you give it the energy of like, “I want to get,” it just doesn’t work as well.

When I see people in business and brands that give something with no expectation of return going, “This is our gift. This is our gift for you.” Because the shift that happens in that moment is not a transaction. It’s the difference between what I call buy and buy in.

Chuck from Public Enemy, he’s got a famous quote that says, “People don’t buy from you until they buy into you,” and I think that that is exactly what I am talking about is this, by doing this, you’re getting people. You are not trying to sell them and then go, “Oh, you got me.” It’s like, but I want you to buy into me and to me, it changes the dynamic of the relationship, which we started with, which is this now starts the relationship with a much more deep and meaningful level.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, I love that so much. I mean, it really ties into just the foundation of how you set yourself up. You talk about this, we mentioned earlier the importance of finding your company, this epic origins and the story that unfolds around that in order to create a compelling brand identity. Can you tell me about a time when you sort of helped a company discover or rediscover their epic origins and how that impacted their growth, their – not just financial growth but just growth as a company to realign that?

Scott A. Martin: Yeah, the epic origins, the details of the chapter was something like this: It starts with the founder. So often times, founders want to hand over the keys to a branding agency or marketing company go tell me what, “Well, how do we even market ourselves?” and that works. To me, this is very different. This is going back towards, it’s going to be the origin story of you, the founder.

What’s in alignment with your values? What’s your epic outcome that you want to have? I find these brands that have these leaders, that have this desire to go back to the origin story and the why of when you started this, let’s go back to some of the stories and start it ourselves, because we love, as people, the story. We like the intentionality, we like the start of somebody really bringing forward the origin of their brand within themselves.

I think of one of my clients, Mitch Hancock, he had a brand that he acquired. It was a brand that has been around for 60 years and it just became clear that they needed to rebrand, which would have been a tough decision if you imagine a brand that’s been around for 60 years. And we renamed it, and the naming process and the why we brand that way was it started with his love for backcountry snowmobiling, and just the stories that he would have of connecting with his family and friends in the backcountry.

The fact that going back to the basecamp, these camp fires or whatever, where they started at the parking lot before they went into these expeditions was the inspiration for his brand called Basecamp. And today, that brand, that origin story has connected so deeply with people that it’s created a groundswell, as I call it, where what has happened is he’s a dealership, a dealership for a larger brand called Skudu.

Spends millions and millions of dollars to promote their product brand. His customers spend $2,000 or something of that range per Skudu wrapping our brand, Basecamp over their Skudu’s. And why did they do that? It’s because they want to be a part of something. It is about belonging, it is about community, and it’s because the origin story is true and it’s connected to the founder who is building out and following through on his values, connecting with that audience in a meaningful way, they want to be a part of it.

Now it becomes their tribe, it becomes their shop, it becomes them, and they’re part of something. So to me, when you look at, that’s just one example of many where I really connect the founder-owner with the origin story, because you find these little truths that people feel, taste, understand, and connect with.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man, that’s so powerful. I love that you went there because here’s the thing, for me, I started this thing – the reason I wanted to bring this up is connecting stories, my personal story, I was a refugee. I grew up in a refugee camp and then I came here in the States like ’94 or whatever. I’ve always had this urge to want to help refugees or at least shed a positive light on not only them but that situation.

The idea of I didn’t just choose to wake up one day, just choose to become a refugee, the circumstances of life led me here. So I owned an apparel printing company and I started this thing called Refutees, and it’s like when you order with us, we give back to the local refugee community in X, Y, Z way. Man, having been vulnerable and having written that story, and now, I have written my book and all this good stuff.

It’s great, but connecting that to the campaign that we were doing that we started, which is the run-walk-play for refugees on World Refugee Day. And man, I can’t even express to you how many people connect not just because of my story that’s there but just the idea that like, “Oh, this makes sense.” We call it Refutees and we just started having fun with what does this mean, and just shedding a light on this world that is sadly, always looked upon as a sad story.

But there are so many amazing remarkable people, right? They have tons of resilience and knowledge, wisdom, and stories, families that I really just wanted to share. So I love this part of your book because I deeply connected to it and I know when I instilled my story and made that the antithesis of why we’re doing what we’re doing, it just – man, it made people just really want to sign up, be a part of it, you know, ask me to come and chat.

So I totally agree with you in the sense that the power of recognizing not only why are you doing something but really who you are and how that connects to things, which is why earlier in the conversation I’m like who inspired you because there’s always someone or perhaps something.

Sometimes it’s like, I’ve had an amazing guest talk about his pet dog and how that inspired him. And it doesn’t really matter, it’s just what thing transformed you, who came along and shared a story or an experience that transformed you, how do you talk about that? And that’s really cool man, I’m glad you brought that up in your book because it is very important.

Scott A. Martin: It’s human. It’s human. It’s the truth and that’s what people are. They’re not customers, humans are not customers. People do not want to be, they’re looking and wanting and hoping for things that are true and authentic and meaningful in their life. The days are gone. I mean, there’s always going to be room for commodity or price or these type of things but there is a segment, a growing segment, a groundswell of people that want their money to do more.

That’s what this book is about, it’s about being a groundswell for good. It’s by leaving this world a better place, people, planet, and purpose. You know, really looking at connecting with people when and why, I mean, that’s like almost going back to how we began. It is like creating more of a community of people that care and more craftsman-like.

There’s a joy in the fact that you know what you’re supporting as opposed to the fact that, “I just got this great product but I have no idea what’s behind it.” Or you find out later that there’s some nefarious way that some child labor was used for it. Just, you feel you’re a part of it, right? So I think that this is shifting.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Definitely man, I totally agree. I mean, I feel like with so much presence of fake avenues that live online unfortunately, we are seeking more of our truth. We are seeking more people who are truthful and just honest, and the best way to do that is to share your story and be vulnerable and really expose what you’re trying to do in a most authentic way that you can. And I think hearing our stories does that in amazing ways.

But with all that, what was your – I know writing a book is no easy feat, man. I mean, it is a huge thing to undertake and go forth on especially while running a business and in your case, especially while doing a podcast and all these things. So what did you learn from putting this book together? What was your favorite part of that journey?

Scott A. Martin: Getting my ideas organized. I think that that’s probably, the clarity of which I can communicate my ideas now because I have gone through the process of writing a book is exponential. The lesson I learned on this first book is now how to write a book. The impact I’m having is I’m able to more succinctly organize my thoughts to basically create the outcome I desire, which is really about positive impact for people and communicating my message.

There are so many people that have a beautiful message, they have an incredible mission, they have a vision for the world but they come to me usually for marketing because they are trying to really get that messaging out. I really now advocate heavily going write a book because it gives you something to point to for sure. I mean, I can’t wait for the people that I impact that are reading it.

But even if nobody ever reads this, I’ve already had massive success because I’ve been writing this thing for three years. The success I had while I have been writing this, my business has blown up because I understand and clearly communicate the power of what I’m doing. So yeah, amazing.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, very powerful. I can’t agree with you more. The same sort of recognition happened for me when I wrote my book. I was just able to organize the stories, the thoughts, the messaging. It was not only developing but really putting them in place. That is very true throughout the journey, that does happen, and the clearer you become about your message of course, the easier it is for us to then take it and expand on it, or put it out in the world in a way that actually impacts.

Scott A. Martin: A confused mind never buys.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Dropping gems on it, man, I love that.

Scott A. Martin: It’s not my quote, it’s someone else’s but it’s true, right? So buy or buy in. Whatever you’re selling, we’re all selling. We’re selling where we’re going to go for our date night with our spouse, we’re selling our ideas. We all, in some way, shape or form are looking to make impact, make meaning in our life. So the clarity in which that you created, but if you understand the steps of influence, a deeper sense of what can move people, stir people and more importantly, create a groundswell.

That’s really what this book is about, it’s not just communicating that message. It’s like having a combined message-purpose and almost blueprint so that you can really create a massive outcome of, the real baseline of this book is around, sustainable growth marketing. And if you want to create a message, how many of you have created a message, it worked for a bit and then kind of went away?

It’s like campaign messaging, right? It’s like it worked and then it didn’t sustain and you are constantly changing and evolving. That’s normal. But when you can really figure out how can I create something that this message is resonated, so it’s sort of like that exercise where you tell somebody a sentence and you say to the person beside you and they go all around the room, by the time it goes the other end, it is not even the same message, right?

It’s because, part of it is you had to remember the words, the sequence, and exactly the order. But when the feeling, I call it the brand manager, what’s the feeling you want people to have? People remember how you made them feel and that’s how you communicate to them, the stories that you tell, people remember the stories that deepens it but if you have a compelling message and a mission and a vision of creating impact in the world, that’s what I call creating groundswell.

When you actually create a growth loop, when you are giving something to the world, you can grow deeper with them and transform the way they think. What happens is other people are compelled to tell your story and if you can clearly communicate it, all the better. This is what creates a rapid and exponential groundswell.

Don’t Just Be Interuptive; Magnetize, InspireHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man, very powerful. Speaking about feelings, I mean, I feel like going through your book I certainly felt, in a way, heard. I don’t know if that makes any sense, like there are so many things in your book that layout this, the foundation of everything you’re talking about but in a way, as a person who’s gone through business and managed and done the marketing and all these kinds of things.

Now, really saved a lot and just focusing on this very mission-driven social impact thing that I want to create around refugees, I felt heard. And I felt ,especially around the epic origins and being patient and extending the work long term and having a longer vision and just keep planting seeds, that’s how I felt. But what do you hope that readers feel when they walk away from the book?

Scott A. Martin: Beyond hope, they feel so inspired to build their own groundswell, to find their gift to the world and create a movement, so that we all – like really, it’s going to take all of us. It’s not going to be government, it is not going to be wait for the next person and to me, my impact and my hope for people is they’ll be inspired not just to go do good, this isn’t about that. This is about business, it’s a business book.

It’s about either shifting my business to become something of impact, to make a difference, to do business differently, to inspire other people to become a business of impact, but most importantly, it is my tagline for businesses, transforming business as usual into business is beautiful. To me, I believe the scourge of the world is here. I am a marketer and I am trying to tell people how to market without marketing.

That marketing can be economic ways that’s mostly interruptive, it’s actually becoming increasingly impotent and the reason why is because we want to find a place. We’re paying money like Netflix to not be advertised to. They follow us around. It’s like that interruption that to me is short term thinking is, “Hey, I just want to put some money and interrupt people and browbeat them with my message, maybe they’ll buy.”

It takes more work and time to magnetize, to inspire, to create word of mouth. To me, what I am hoping is that I am inspiring other people to market differently, to create a — why can’t marketing and be a beautiful experience? Why does it have to be something that people go, “I got to do it” or it becomes a separate exercise of the business itself? So in my book, what I communicated is a salient point where you are inspired to go, “I am actually marketing by just being not doing.”

By being right, doing the right things, by sharing my message and embedding them into what I do, it can be its own form of marketing. And a simple example of that would be a business that tries to go and they produce ads, they produce campaigns versus creating a program, and maybe that program is to work in the community that they want to serve and they provide something of service that helps them, inspires them.

I’ve done this multiple times in different programs where that actually activity is marketing, but it’s helping. That’s the give, right? It’s like, what are you giving? If you are really thinking about, “What am I giving my audience, the people, clients, the world that I want to serve?” it changes everything, and that’s my hope, is that people are inspired to give more and to really look at this framework as a way of impact and look at how can marketing be something that is not interruptive and what I call eye and noise pollution, really.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man, I love that so much. It is a very honest and transparent way of doing marketing. I am excited for your book to go out and make this impact in the world. Scott, thank you for sharing your stories and experiences with me. I’m very grateful to have had you on the show today. I’ve learned so much, of course, all the gems all throughout. The book is called, Groundswell: The Unseen Wave of Business Growth.

Guys, if you’re out there listening to this, please go get this book, it is remarkable. Besides checking out the book on Amazon, where can people find you and connect with you?

Scott A. Martin: Very simply, Groundswell Origins is my business, groundswellorigins.com. If you go to groundswelling.com, that will be the direct link to the book. So if you bought the book, go to groundswelling.com and they’ll be some expanded case studies, access to the community and a workbook that we’re going to be producing that’s going to breakdown the origins build, give, grow, transform framework.

You’ll be able to connect to other people and hear the stories of people that are actually building groundswells. And then lastly, just Scott Martin, @ScottAdamMartin on Instagram and Twitter. Easy, just hit search, Groundswell and Scott Martin, you’ll find me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Scott, absolute honor today, my friend. Thank you for coming on the show.

Scott A. Martin: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, good luck on your book.

Scott A. Martin: Mahalo.

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Pay attention to the people you meet by chance. Often, they are messengers sent to help you along your way. My next guest never had to look far for an advocate and mentor to help him overcome his greatest challenges, from his father’s abuse to the tragic loss of his son.

Welcome back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by author John Henry, who is here to talk about his new book called, Be the Dawn in The Darkness: The Relentless Pursuit Of Becoming Whom We Are Meant to Be. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the show. I have a very special one today because I have my friend, John Henry, here with me today, talking about his new book called Be the Dawn in The Darkness. Ah, such a good title. John Henry, thank you for joining me today, man. I really appreciate your time.

J. H. Parker: Thanks, Hussein, great to be here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. I was swimming through your book, and we talked about this a little bit off the microphone, but I found components of characteristics of who I am embedded all throughout your book, which I loved. So, before we get into the book and all the questions I have set up for you, I really want to give our listeners an idea of who you are, perhaps a personal background, and maybe someone or something that happened in your life that led you on the path that you’re on now.

J. H. Parker: Well, I’m a behavioral assessment analyst. I’ve been doing that for my career, doing individual and personal transformational work with business leaders and companies, but also for the last twenty-five years been working with, you know, transitioning veterans who are having major challenges and also their families, and so I spend a lot of time, in my free time, doing that work and write.

I really write, you know? I started therapeutically writing to deal with my own personal struggles with grief and loss and recovery and personal transformation, and it turned into authoring like my first book. I actually recorded my first book, and that’s more or less what it was, it’s about transitioning veterans and how we get in our own way and what to do about it, and it’s really a tribute project for my son who has passed away after he came back from Afghanistan — left the military.

This book is as well, it’s about therapeutically being able to process unresolved trauma, being able to mature through grief and loss, and it’s just a great amount of personal transformation that we all go through as we mature in our loss.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/group-of-people-holding-arms-461049/

Acknowledging the People Who MatterHussein Al-Baiaty: Such a powerful journey. I’m really excited to just have you talk a little bit about this beautiful person that was in your life that influenced you in such a positive way and had this sort of belief in you, and I think for me, that person was always my father but it’s different for so many different people.

He really saw something in me that perhaps I didn’t see in myself until honestly, maybe after he passed, and so you know, I want you to go there a little bit. Can you tell me about this beautiful person that was in your life that kind of helped shape certain experiences?

J. H. Parker: Well, he was an amazing guy, and I can say I’m so envious of him because he was successful in so many ways by the time he was twenty-nine to when he died that I can imagine who he would have become. He was, you know… he and I both grew up in the bad part of Southwest Phoenix, Arizona, where there are drugs, gangs, and violence, and he and I shared a couple of things right off the bat — is that we were able to get into the military because we didn’t have any felonies and all of our friends did, and that was his ticket.

That was my ticket out of our neighborhood and his name is Danny. I didn’t meet Danny until he was eight and a half years old, and I talk about it in my book. I actually had to go door-to-door in a neighborhood because I remembered dropping his mom off ten years prior to her grandparent’s house, and he was actually adopted by his grandparents, and so there’s more to the story than that.

But I was able to locate the house and knock on the door, and work my way into his life, and it was a challenging relationship. The way I characterized it in the book is it was beautifully broken just the way it was. And we got into the military, that’s where he found his calling, and unfortunately — he called me in, let’s see, August of 2001, telling me that they were asking him to re-enlist.

They were going to give him a stripe and a big bonus should he do it. He’s got a family, and we talked about it, and he made a decision to do it, and then a month later or less than a month later, 9/11 happened, and then he was in Uzbekistan, and by October, I think, 15th, helping to lock down the air bases there for the beginning of what would be the Afghan war or conflict, and so he’s just an inspirational guy.

I mean, he loved leading his men, he was – I’ve read his performance reviews, he was just super calm and collected in combat and just really, you know, just took care of whatever needed to get done and on one side, he was just really, really gentle, smiling, contagious smile, friendly, charismatic guy and then, he was a warrior. He was just one of the scariest people I’ve ever met.

So he really influenced my life in so many levels, and that it wasn’t a perfect relationship and it’s just the way it was, and I just accepted for what I was able to have. Amazing guy, he made it all the way home from Afghanistan, and then unfortunately, he needed adrenaline to deal with his PTSD and a lot of pot and some drinking — thrown in there — and one night, he was doing a 120 miles an hour down an unlettered road at midnight on his Harley and lost control of it and so that’s all we know.

So this book, for me it’s about the journey of life, it’s about telling his story, and you know, honoring.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that so much, man, because I felt like the only way we can truly connect to what my father I feel like gifted me with was to share about his story in his life and how he quite literally saved us from that refugee camp through his art, through his ability to communicate and be compassionate and loving with other people, and I think we learn so much from those human beings that come in and out of our lives that really shape our perspective.

And for me, writing my book was, again, like I said earlier, it’s just a way to say thank you and a way to just convene with and resolve with all these stories and sit with them, and they profoundly changed me and my trajectory, and I know that there are so many people out there that can relate to that.

There are so many people who have that special someone or special event or special thing that happened to them that helped them see the world just a little bit differently, and I think that’s beautiful. So in your book, you cover many challenges and experiences from tragic loss, of course, for your son.

Can you share a specific story of just how you decided to, you know, lean into overcoming particularly difficult situations, and how did you find hope and resilience in the face of such, you know, hardships?

J. H. Parker: Well, fortunately for me, I had a great aunt. Her name was Gladys. We called her Glad, and she was just an amazing matriarch of our family and a mentor — and when I was a young boy, she would come down from the cold winters of Canada, and she would stay with us in Phoenix for two months a year, just before Thanksgiving until just after New Year’s, and she could have stayed with my grandparents —

But she actually wanted to be close to my mother and my sister and brother and I; she could create some safety because my father was a really violent and alcoholic violent combat veteran from the Korean War and the Marine Corps and in Vietnam, but he would never take her on. He would never do anything but be a gentleman around her, and so she would stay — and I think the answer to your question the most is she provisioned me for my hero’s journey that had already begun without telling you that necessarily.

And every morning at 4:30 in the morning, she would get up and start making her Canadian breakfast, which was thick-cut Canadian bacon, cheddar cheese, toast and coffee cream, and maple syrup, and I would smell the bacon at about 4:30. I would get up, and I would sneak out of the room, and my brother and sister never caught on, and for those two months, I sat at her feet every morning and she would just really just inform me about the world and she was a very famous person in Canada.

She was the only Canadian war correspondent in Europe during the rise of fascism and the Nazi invasion of Paris, and she wrote a book about it. She’s got a Canadian history channel segment doing a documentary about her life. So I had the privilege of having this woman really, really represent to me what a strong, healthy, balanced woman was in my life, and she told me I would do extraordinary things with my life, and I believed her because she said it.

You’re very impressionable when you’re really young, and when you have that sort of level of gravitas, that magnitude, she’s the only one in my life that actually sat down and talked to me and asked me how was doing and talked to me about the hero’s journey and talked to me about this arc of maturity and finding my gifts and an important part of it was to pay attention to the messengers that you seem to meet by chance because they’re often the ones who are here to teach you the most.

I just became naturally curious about, “If I get a flat tire, who am I supposed to meet?” Like I’m in a bad situation, who am I supposed to meet? And so her guidance carried me through a lot of trauma and a lot of really terrible situations, and then when she passed away in my 40s, she became like the angel on my shoulder and like my son, Danny, she’s the other main character throughout the entire book.

To answer your question more specifically, she told me that God was love. She researched all the different religions of the world, and she said that if you take out the extreme aspects of all of them, they have one common denominator: God is love — and she said, “Do you believe that?” And I had to pause because my dad was like on the other side of a curtain, listening. She noticed I was nervous and she said, “Take me for a walk to the park.”

So we get there and she’s like, “You want to talk about anything?” “I’m not allowed to talk.” She’s like, “What do you mean you’re not allowed to talk? Did your father tell you, you couldn’t talk to me?” And I’m just – I really just clammed right up ‘till finally, she’s like, “You can talk to me on anything, this is between you and I. So, what is it about God that’s love that you don’t understand?” And I said, “God is love, that may be true for you, but it’s not true for me because why am I afraid all the time? Why is this happening to me?”

And so what came from that was an ongoing discussion where she said, “You are going to discover your purpose in life, and you’re going to discover for yourself at some point that God is love.” I always came back to that, but the funny thing about it is, of all the tragedies that I’ve had in my life and all the very, very violent, traumatic situations, just before the impact of what was going on, I cannot tell you how many times I‘ve asked myself, “If God is love, why is this happening to me?”

So I didn’t discover my purpose ‘till later in life, and I discovered for myself that God is love, and I also discovered the purpose for my suffering. “Why is this happening to me?” was to be given the gift of empathy so I could understand the pain of others. This whole writing project started out therapeutically to process unresolved trauma, and I just had all these different pieces of work, and then I watched a documentary called, Finding Joe.

It’s about finding Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey that he developed, and I did a screen capture of the hero’s journey graphic that they did a really good job with, and then I put it in PowerPoint, and I created all these little snippets of my life in chronological order that absolutely matched the arc of the hero’s journey, and then I wrote my table of contents, and then I started writing like, with a purpose, and I saved all the really, really bad stuff for last.

But it turned into a 600-page book, and then I had to narrow it down to less than 400. The therapeutic relief, it’s like I coughed up all these hairballs, and I was able to get it outside of my body, somatically, and I no longer held on to it, and I was able to look at it and feel it, but it was different because it was outside of me. So that’s really where it came from and how it ended up to be.

How to Find Hope in the StruggleHussein Al-Baiaty: It’s so powerful, man, I love this movement in your journey from your, aunt whom I just want to hang out with because she sounds like such a beautiful human being that took so much of the necessary time to help you see who you can truly become and at least planted the seeds, in trusting that they will sort of grow and manifest as they should, right?

When you go through those experiences. When you find what God is love to you and how you begin to define it, those things are all up to you to decide, but how she got to it and how she wants you to get there are two different things, and this idea of just planting the seeds and believing, how much do we crave someone believing in us and loving us, and it just takes one person.

So I love that so much that she was in your life and it really helped you cultivate a sense of intuition and looking ahead at the transformation that was bound to unfold, and so you know, your book is obviously filled with these stories of growth, transformation, and redemption.

What advice would you give to someone who feels stuck or struggling to find hope? How can people turn their struggles into opportunities for growth and positive change?

J. H. Parker: I’ve been there a lot; focus on who you’re becoming. Really, I think for me, I didn’t want to go to counseling, you know? Because I was in the Marine Corps, and you don’t ask for help. So focus on who you’re becoming, or maybe I’ll just use a story from the actual book that the trajectory of my life when I was really withdrawn, trying to figure out what I was going to do when I left the military, I met a messenger.

And there’s no other way to look at it, and he said, he noticed I was going to be getting out in a couple of weeks, and he said, “Can I give you some advice?” And he was a warrant officer, and it’s just some, a special type of person becomes a warrant officer in the military, and somebody who was enlisted and they went back to school and they came back in as an officer.

So they really know what they’re talking about, and he said, “You know, you’re going to get out in a couple of weeks, and you’re going to find out that the world doesn’t need another hard-ass Marine who can parachute out of helicopters at night and carry big heavy packs, they just don’t care about that, and if I were you, I’d go to the closest bookstore, and I’d go to the self-help section, and I’d find anything that jumps out the shelf at me, and I’d start reading about who I’m becoming.”

He said, “The world is exactly the same as when you’ve left home, but you’ve changed.” I only talked to him for like five minutes. This is definitely one of those messengers sent from Glad, where I shook his hands, thanked him very much, and I went directly to the bookstore. Now, they didn’t have bookstores on Marine Corps bases, so I had to go to the Air Force base about six miles away.

It was in Okinawa, Japan, and I had to ask the lady at the front desk. He told me, he said, “Do not go to the psychology section, go to the self-help section.” So I asked the lady where the self-help section was, and she took me over, and it’s just a big long bookcase, and he just suggested, “Look at all the spines and start pulling them off the shelf, make a stack and then pick three that really speak to you.”

The first one was The Magic of Thinking Big by Schwartz, and I’m like, “That just sounds like a great book. I got to get that one.” The second one was Psycho-Cybernetics, which was really a funky name, but after I looked at it, I was like, “This makes a lot of sense.” He was a plastic surgeon who made people beautiful, but they still couldn’t see it because of their history and their self-perception.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh wow. My god, that is – yes, continue. This is just so good.

J. H. Parker: Yeah, it is good, you know? Here I am in this impeccable Marine Corp uniform, but the outward projection that I put out to other people absolutely did not match the internal representations in my mind and in my psyche and my self-worth, it is called the internal cohesion of what you project to others is really seriously who you are, then that means you have a high level of internal cohesion, and I certainly didn’t.

So that was the second book, and then the third book was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Again, the title is just like, “That’s the book I need.” And so I would say to your audience, if you’re depressed, if you’re suffering like I was, the wounded healer for ten years after my son was killed, if I didn’t move my pain, it ate me alive, and I would sometimes sit in my apartment for days and really not even shower, barely eat, wouldn’t go outside.

So I’ve been there, and personal development, transformational development, finding people that I could relate to that were struggling with some of the same issues, part of it was finding a tribe of people who understood the difficulty — I had people say they understand when they don’t understand, being able to reach out and talk to people but also they don’t have many bookstores these days.

But the personal development store-side of Barnes & Noble or get on the Internet if you’re more of an auditory learner, just start filling your head with thoughts and ideas, understand what you are up against. If you’ve got some type of diagnosis, then learn about it. It is not a life sentence, but I’ve been diagnosed with some pretty severe things in my younger years — and I’m not on any medication, and I have a life that is fulfilling.

So there is a way through, and I really think personal development, and transformational development in combination, in tandem with seeing a therapist, I also discovered Native American healing rituals and vision quests, and then I ultimately discovered plant medicine journeys were the most impactful for me, personally. So lots more to talk about around that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, that is so powerful. You know what they could do too is also go pick up your book and audiobook because they’re both amazing, and I love that you really mentioned this idea of a messenger. I can’t agree with you more on so many occasions, there have been people in my life that have come in and out who have sort of pointed at something that I look at or pay attention to or just think about or dwell on.

I think those people are – they are just so, like you said, their gifts from the other side, and we may not know it at the time, but certainly in hindsight. I think that’s beautiful, and I love how you shared this idea of just going to the bookstore, picking up a few self-help books, and you know, what goes into your mind is what starts to swirl, and not everything is going to apply. You may not learn anything from those books.

But you just now absorb something of a possibility, perhaps, you know what? I think books are definitely for me, they are the water to those seeds, those seeds of thought and those seeds that Glad has planted, and even the seeds that your father or mother or whomever you grew up with that maybe, you know, we thought would be like a negative thing in our life actually transforms us in different ways.

I think by nourishing our minds with this knowledge to make sense of those past experiences, and to make sense of them can now enable us to turn them into fuel and see how they can serve us today, and I think for me reading did that, and it helped me reflect on my refugee experience in a much more positive way, not that that’s a positive thing is just how I started to reframe it and say, “Okay, well this thing happened. How can I use it now to sort of nourish my future as opposed to limit me or prevent me from doing things?”

I totally agree. I think the book that altered my perception of things was The Power of Intention by Wayne Dyer. It was such a deep, deep book, and it just deeply resonated with me, and so that led me on my path of course of opening up more books, really opening up my mind. So I love that, I love that part of the transformation is really, you know, going inwards and really unraveling those things.

Your book is a testament to the power of self-reflection, I think. It is obviously not just personal growth, but of course, resilience. What’s one lesson that you hope readers will take away from your story, and how can readers use that experience to find their own sense of purpose and fulfillment?

J. H. Parker: Well, I just think being curious and being a passionate learner. There is a quote that I love, you know, “Learners inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with the world that no longer exists.” That’s from Eric Hoffer, and I think I showed up in the world after the military learned, and I was hard-headed like a lot of people are. I didn’t want to take any advice, and I had to run into the brick wall myself and be curious.

I mean, really, really start looking at how you view things because, for me, it was about learning more things. There is only one thing that I know for sure: I know how to learn. And when I looked at what it’s going to take for me to get through the things that I’ve been through, there is so much I could talk about, but I’m just going to try to hit a couple of things. So the book is about this transformational journey.

I wrote it in such a way that I’ve read a lot of self-help books. You know, this is not the “seven steps to being successful” kind of book. There is plenty of books out there like that, but it is a deeply transformational body of work that’s kind of disguised as a narrative memoir. Any time I started noticing in my writing that I was starting to teach or tell, I immediately copy that content and put it somewhere else.

Because I want people to learn in the struggle vicariously like what actually happened, and I am transparently sharing that and what I actually learned and what happened for me because I learned and what came next. I say this a lot to people is that the teachers fall from the pedestals we put them on. So I am not a teacher, I’m not here to teach anybody anything. I am here to live my life and to share what my experience has been.

So people may learn vicariously through what I discovered like the layers of one of those Russian dolls. Every time I popped it open, I’d be excited because I’d made a huge breakthrough only to find that there was the hard surface of the next layer, and the more I kept on uncovering those layers, the more I started getting down to the core and then I really started discovering what I was up against.

For me, it was rage, it was retribution, and the smallest little nugget down there was joy, and so I had all this rage and retribution guarding my joy, and I thought, “That’s really strange. Why is rage guarding my joy?” You know? It’s a longer story than that, but there is just this relentless pursuit of becoming who we are meant to be is real. We learn, we grow, and we evolve.

You know, I am a behavioral assessment analyst, and I regularly survey myself annually and my friends and clients annually because we learn, we evolve, we grow, we fail, we mature, and we’re not the same as we were a year ago. We may have similar characteristics, but the more you put yourself out there, you know, into the world, and you become curious and you become uncomfortable, you know, the learning is in the struggle.

That’s what this whole thing is about, there are just so many parts to it. Speaking of parts, there is The Parts Work by Dick Schwartz, Internal Family Systems. I learned a lot about myself when I sort of understand that I may feel depressed right now but it’s not really who I am. Part of me is depressed at times, and so this whole thing about parts of ourselves are in conflict but not the whole self, we have moments, we have conflict.

We have parts of us that stay in conflict, but it is about resolving that part not necessarily changing our life and questioning who we are. So these are some of the insights that I picked up along the way that are in the book. It is a cookie crumb trail to help people look at where might you be looking. So the examples are, there are many chapters in the book about thought leaders that I went through their programs.

You know, I went through events and experiences, and I write about the epiphanies that I experienced, you know, like the warrior’s wisdom with Stuart Wilde and a weeklong trip out in his house in New Mexico and the wilderness doing all kinds of crazy outward bounds kind of experiential exercises, and then you know, getting into non-duality and then mindfulness with Adyashanti and Richard Miller and wonderful people that have actually impacted my life so profoundly that I don’t use their quotes without giving them the credit.

I have a synthesis of what’s mine, but I believe in dedicating time and effort to talk about these great teachers and how they’ve impacted my life. So this transformational journey is about self-discovery, and we can only do that by opening your mind and remaining open and curious.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so beautiful, man. I love that. I just feel like as you’re speaking, I like your kind of analysis on the hero’s journey to see yourself in it. As you’re speaking there are so many components in which I see myself in, and that’s really the beauty of writing. The beauty of writing, I feel like helps us get to that core of not only who we are but what we really want to share, which is an experience.

Once we tap into that, then I think there’s a fluidity and connection, and I think for me as I read throughout your book, there are so many components that I related to because we all are humans, we are experiencing difficulties and challenges, but it’s how we choose to kind of look at them, appreciate them, come up against them, and where the rubber meets the road is where the transformation happens.

I’m just grateful that you really compounded those years of wisdom and how not only you see yourself but opportunities for greater connection throughout your book is so powerful, but I got to ask you, I mean, writing a book is a whole journey in it of itself, what is your favorite part of putting the book together?

J. H. Parker: Oh man, opening up my phone yesterday and seeing that the audiobook is available today. You know, there is –

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Let’s go. That’s awesome.

J. H. Parker: I think when my wife and I, we listened to it, and when we heard “the end,” we both looked at each other and got very excited because that’s it, there’s no more editing. There’s no more editing like three years of editing, man. It was crazy-making, it was frustrating, and it was joyful — just the stress, honestly, of putting myself out there in such a transparent way has been the most difficult.

But after I heard it, I mean, writing the words, I was obsessed over the words, and I couldn’t stop worrying about it, but when I heard the audio version, I just instantly relaxed and said, “Okay, this is what I intended. This is exactly what I intended.” It came out exactly the way I wanted it to.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful, man. I love that so much. That was also one of my favorite parts of the journey was when it all got sewn together. I think my favorite part was holding it in my hand, you know? It’s like it is done. The journey in which we go on to make this thing come to life is difficult, it’s excruciating in some components, but it is here, it is done. I think not only did you do a good job of just pulling me in, but there are also so many parts where I was like, “Man, I got to put this down. I got other things I got to do.”

So there is that, and you did such a good job of just keeping the reader engaged, which I just really appreciate because that’s a really difficult thing to do. So, John, thank you again for coming on the show and sharing your stories and experiences with me. They are truly profound. I encourage everyone listening to go get the book. The book is called Be the Dawn in the Darkness: The Relentless Pursuit of Becoming Whom We Are Meant to Be. So powerful. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you, sir?

J. H. Parker: Well, obviously on Amazon, barnes&noble.com, you can also get it on Kindle, you can get it on Audible. You can also go to harvestingwisdom.com, and there’s information about the book and my first audiobook for veterans, those are the destinations.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, thank you, John Henry, I appreciate you so much for your time today. Your stories have profoundly impacted me today, and I feel good. It’s a Thursday, but man, I am feeling good. So thanks again for the call, I appreciate just learning about you today and learning about your journey man. Thanks again and again, congrats on your book. I know it’s going to hit some major number-one sellers, so I’m excited.

J. H. Parker: Yeah, I’m excited too. And really, doing a little research on your background was really great for me to prepare for this call, and thanks for making it really comfortable.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Absolutely, John Henry, it’s my pleasure, and I’m grateful that you spend some time lurking out there, looking at all the things that I’ve been blessed to do in the world, and I owe it all to my father, of course, and I know you owe a lot to the people who have come into your life. So I know we have that in common, and that is beautiful. So thanks again today, man.

J. H. Parker: Thank you, take care.

The post Be The Dawn in The Darkness: J. H. Parker appeared first on Author Hour.

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If you’re like many managers and leaders today, you’re struggling to stay on top. With ever-increasing workloads, demanding schedules and growing instability, it’s little wonder that our stress levels are rising while employee engagement everywhere is low. My next guests are here to offer up some award-winning solutions.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and my next guest is Laura and Dominic Ashley Timms today to talk about their new book titled, T*he Answer is a Question: The Missing Super Power That Changes Everything and Will Transform Your Impact as a Manager and Leader.*** Let’s get into it.

Well, hello everyone, welcome back to the show. I’m here with Laura Ashley-Timms and Dominic Ashley-Timms today to talk about their amazing new book called The Answer is a Question. I have a couple of questions up my sleeve but Laura and Dominic, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your time and energy.

Dominic Ashley-Timms: Thanks, thanks for inviting us.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely. So let’s start by giving our listeners an idea, a little bit about who you two are perhaps. Maybe a little bit about your childhood, your upbringing, maybe some people that inspired you all to be on this path that you’re now on. I’d love to get our audience a little bit of human characteristics, right? Things that we could all relate to when we were younger and sort of getting on track with our careers. So Dominic, let’s start with you.

Dominic Ashley-Timms: That’s very kind of you, thank you. Yes, my name’s Dominic. I’ve had an interesting career, I began in the oil industry but very quickly moved into consulting and I was very lucky to move into an area of consulting, which was focused on the human side of change. Many people I’m sure have experienced change done badly in organizations, you certainly going to work and find out your department’s being dissolved and you were told by email.

So the expertise I began to develop was, how do you properly engage with people and help them become a part of the change and that really was the inspiration for the start of our company back in 2000, Notion, where we set out to really provide support with helping organizations better engage their people through the change process, to make change easier to move through. That really has been a theme that has informed our work for the last 20 years.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. Laura, how about you?

Laura Ashley-Timms: Well, I’m going to go back earlier than Dominic. My story really started when I was just nine years old and I was reading a kid’s comic and there’s something amazing, one of the stories in the comic really inspired me to set my first goal. There was this lady in the comic that wanted to represent our country in a sport. So I decided I was going to set that same goal and it led to a childhood in sports but supported by coaching and I learned very early on that you got to be careful what you wish for.

If you set goals, you will achieve them. I went on to Oxford University and I had a really exciting early career in business, working for very fast-paced operational businesses in retail in London and New York and then other countries, while I was exposed to lots and lots of leaders and managers and if I’m honest, most had a pretty challenging command and control to tell culture and I knew how that made me feel.

I moved out of retail into media entertainment and had a lot of fun working for organizations like [inaudible] at the Teletubbies, where I was smiling a lot and I’ve also learned a lot about the challenges of fast-growth family businesses and the issues that they faced again with very little management capability at the senior leadership level. That along with my own development in coaching and developing their coaching skills myself, I then cofounded Notion along with Dominic and obviously over the years, we’ve been developing the management consultancy practice that we now are on.

Operational CoachingHussein Al-Baiaty: That is so powerful. I feel like the both of you had these unique experiences, right? Different industries but there’s a thread in leadership, there’s a thread in management and if it’s not done correctly, it tends to push people away and perhaps maybe attract the wrong people, right? And I love that you point to that but it kind of led both of you to an intersection of where you’re working, really growing in the areas that you believed in, management and management and leadership, ideologies can really start moving towards, which is very valuable.

Dominic Ashley-Timms: Yeah, that’s an important point there, which is when you look at the whole area of management, there really hasn’t been anything new on the management horizon for the last hundred years. This goes back to 1911 when the first scientific principles of management were laid down by Frederick Winslow Taylor but really, we haven’t had a good long, hard look at the purpose and the intention behind management.

I think that’s being thrown into stark relief since the pandemic, when so many people’s values have changed about what they want from their life, what they want from their work and from the workplace and the poor old manager is shouldering all of that responsibility for adapting and changing, yet they’re not being given anything new to help them to be able to cope with that — and that really is the focus of our work and it’s the focus of this book.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that so much. So let’s take a little bit of a deep dive and talk about the importance of learning how to use questions to empower one’s self and of course, impact others. Can you take us a little bit into sort of the coaching style and mentality that you all sit across from these amazing managers that you seem, that you know they need help, right? And they need the training and the ideas that you guys provide but where do you start?

Dominic Ashley-Timms: Yeah, that’s a great question. It really starts for us way back as we started to grow the company and we were engaged in helping organizations to manage their change process and engage people and we did that by working with project managers, helping them become more sensitive to the changes around them and how they would engage with their teams. Over the years, we start to develop real insight into how organizations are trying to use coaching within their businesses.

Actually, it was back in 2010 when we had a moment of clarity because we’ve been speaking to a number of our clients and many people who had been through quite long sometimes, training programs in coaching skills and we were hearing from our clients that there was no impact on their business as a result to doing that. So we undertook quite a long piece of research to really understand what’s going on here because so many people are talking about coaching yet it doesn’t seem to be having the impact in organizations they had hoped for and it was a really stunning finding.

When we were looking at this, we found that businesses when they started waking up to the power of coaching turned to the training market and the only training that existed in the training market was the training to teach people to become executive coaches and businesses lifted that up and dropped it into their own business, gave it a different label, manager as coach and that’s how coaching skills has been taught ever since that time.

The challenge is of course, you’re trying to teach managers to be a coach when they are first and foremost, a manager and so there’s a real conflict here with teaching them as a square peg to use coaching in a very round hole in their organization and the two don’t fit well together. So that took us down a very different path where we started to really look out then, what from of coaching can we adapt and help managers to utilize that would be of use to them on a day-to-day basis?

We began doing a range of behavioral work with a different group and often, very large groups and managers are working with — which led us to codify a set of behaviors, which also led then to a model we call the STAR®model and when we were showing managers how to use this model very effectively — they were substantively changing their behavior in the workplace to the point where we were asked to give that a name, “What’s really happening here, what are these people doing now?”

And so we coined the phrase, “operational coaching”, which is a descriptor for how managers are able to use coaching-related behaviors and the important word there is to use, to use coaching-related behaviors as a part of their everyday management style not to be a coach and that is a very important distinction there.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s really powerful and Laura, I know you have an extensive amount of knowledge in not just operations but managing your real behavior. So where does the STAR®really come to life as far as how these managers start to operate at a day-to-day level? I love that aspect of it because it really simplifies the concept that you’re trying to share and it makes it more actionable.

Laura, how did you, I guess in a way because in order to change behavior, it takes a lot of shift but where’s the reduction of the friction that happens in this concept being overlayed?

Laura Ashley-Timms: Yeah, that’s a really great question and you got to think about it, we talked about being a fast-paced operational business earlier, think about the current managers right now. I’m sure many of the people listening to this are managers or they work as mangers. Most people in this situation are stressed, they’re overworked, they’re expected to deliver more and more right now with less support and with even fewer resources than before.

Many, many organizations are under-resourced right now, there is so much pressure, it’s never been this challenging, hybrid management, all of the complexities we’re facing. So the one thing this has to be is simple and easy to use. So it takes a little bit of work but the minute you’ve mastered these skills, you can literally do things in a split second but the most important thing you’ve got to do as a manager is learning to stop.

So the STAR®model stands for stop, think, ask, and get the result and that S for stop is absolutely critical. The minute you can learn to build the triggers to stop doing what you would normally do, which is to go and solve a problem and to tell somebody what to do, to have that command and control style and in an instant, to learn how to stop and think and ask a question, that takes a split second once you’ve learned how to do it, it can change everything.

What’s really, really exciting is when you start to use these skills, don’t use the word “use” when you start to put these skills into action. The feedback we get, you see, you can get up to 20% of your time back, that’s one day a week. Just think about that, what would you do with one day a week back? The pressure that you feel under right now, will start to dissipate. You’ll feel less stressed, you’ll be… find it easier and everything gets better. So it is that S for the stop is that critical first step that you’re taking in this book and this program.

Dominic Ashley-Timms: Just building on that, as we go through our management career, that’s something we explore in the book a lot. How have we got to where we are today and again, people listening to this will perhaps reflect on what’s brought into where they are today, how they gained the skills and the insights and typically, we pick up the tips and tricks once we’re thrown in the deep end as a manager.

We may be going on a training course and we learn a bit here and a bite there and essentially, we ball those together to create the cocktail of who we are in our management style and so we develop these habitual behaviors so that perhaps, when somebody brings us a problem, we feel compelled to help them, compelled to solve that problem and actually, what Laura is talking about there, learning to stop as it really, really challenging thing.

Because we have these overriding habits which compel us to fix, to solve, to help and actually the minute we can stop, everything changes because we’re going to potentially take a different course.

Laura Ashley-Timms: And we have to recognize as well that what we’re currently doing collectively isn’t working because 80 to 89% of the work force is currently disengaged. The way we all collectively working as leaders and managers is not having to decide impacts that we really want to have. We’re all doing our best and yet, most people within the organizations we work in aren’t happy, so what we’re going to do that is different.

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The Intersection of Leadership and ManagementHussein Al-Baiaty: And really like sort of going in and getting people to think about how, not only to stop but really, the idea is to go from reacting to responding and by building a response system and slowly integrating into that habit makes you less reactive and now, like you said earlier, you’re eager to help because you have, you’re equipped with a way to deal with X, Y or Z. That’s so powerful because it’s a shift in mindset as opposed to taking on more things, relearning new things, new technologies.

It’s really a habit within you that you can start shifting and I love that. I think that’s so profound because t’s something very tangible, it’s something that creates the option within you. So where do you find the intersection between managers and leadership? Because you know sometimes, you look up to your manager and yes, they’re doing the operations, they’re working hard at doing several different types of things but where’s the leader starts to emerge in a manager? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Dominic Ashley-Timms: Yeah, that’s really great question. I think the first thing to say is we’re not trying to tell managers that everything they’ve been doing is wrong. That’s not it at all and we’re not suggesting that they should go to the far end of the scale and become social workers, that’s not it.

One of the things that you learn from the book is how to develop your own situational awareness, and how to tap into the different circumstances that you find yourself in every day. I’m going to give you a really short example. If we begin to think about it, we’ll recognize that quite often it’s the same people that come to us with the problems.

And the minute we can stop and think, we can start to ask questions about, “Well, what does this person need from us? What’s really going on here, why are they coming to me?” and you know, if I keep telling them what to do and sending them away, what’s going to happen? They’re going to come back again and again.

So actually, it’s only when we start to tune into those circumstances and ask ourselves questions that we can begin to determine those outcomes and I think that is a real indication then of thinking in the more leaderly way. I’m starting to proactively engage with the people around me and think about how I am going to be more purposeful in my management and when you start to make those shifts in your approach, then you are able to take a much more measured approach in the way that you’re interacting with the people that you work with.

Laura Ashley-Timms: There’s been quite a lot of research around this. We’re involved in a major academic study for our government and it was the research evaluation partner was the London School of Economics, it’s a very thorough and robust academic study and what people found and what organizations found across all sectors, there were 62 organizations in 14 sectors in this study, was that over a six-month period putting STAR® into practice had a massive shift from spending time doing and managing to really spending significantly more time coaching and leading.

In fact, 70% more time was spent in that coaching domain and more spent was leading. So one of the thing that STAR® is it helps elevate all people managers and to have more capacity for leading and coaching because they are spending less time doing other people’s jobs for them.

Dominic Ashley-Timms: I think to build on that, our work is very satisfying and we’re in a very positive business because of the outcomes that we’re able to generate but people are very kind and take the time to actually tell us about the impact that learning how to use some of these behaviors has had on their own careers and we’ve had people completely transformed their own approach and their own style in the workplace.

And [they’ve] become really magnificent leaders and magnificent team leaders because they are enabling the people in their teams to step up by challenging them with the questions and asking insightful questions that have those team members go away and think about what they can begin to do to themselves to solve the problem, handing back the responsibility and indicating the confidence you have in them to be able to do that, all supported by the question that you’re asking.

Laura Ashley-Timms: Another thing that is quite exciting in terms of the feedback we’ve received is that many, many, many people have written to us and saying they haven’t just got value in the way they’re managing their teams differently, it’s their cross-collaboration in working groups, with their colleagues, with their peers. People have written to us about how much easier it is to manage or even the challenging boss have it improved that relationship.

But for me, what is even more exciting is the stories we’ve heard about relationships with friends and family. The best conversation I’ve had with my teammate’s child in years and finally able to have really high-quality conversations and just really charming stories we get about marriage relationships are so much better now because you’re stopping and listening to your partner instead of offering advice the whole time and how they now feel about that. So really lovely personal stories outside of the business as well.

Answering The QuestionHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that so much and I am so glad you tied it into how this impact, that was really my next segue into the questioning was like how does all this impact the rest of our life? Where does it also start to sort of find itself and I know for me, the more I’ve really leaned into figuring out ways to empower our communication between my wife and I, the better I feel about really, it impacts everything else, right?

But wherever it starts, it could start obviously at work in your managerial experience and to learn coaching skills and then you start to automatically almost, as you built up this response system, you start to of course, start to apply it to other parts of your life, which there’s nothing healthier and more rewarding than I feel like your work, going in to help one avenue of someone’s life but it also infiltrates everything else.

Maybe infiltrate isn’t the best word but it gets into everything else in the best way where those people will start to feel like a more rounded person that can really communicate and I think that is the key that I loved about all of your work is elevating our way of communication especially with our self and taking that time and that moment to breathe and sort of analyze and then coming up with the correct questions or set of questions that can really help analyze the situation in a way that can provoke us into moving into a positive direction as oppose to of course, we all know what negative feelings are like at work.

They infiltrate as well and it makes us unhappy, so I love this work so much because it’s so important — I mean, name a place that doesn’t have a managerial staff? Name a place where leadership doesn’t matter and I think it impacts everyone and so I commend you for your work but can you share some ideas or some stories of helping a specific company. What’s something that you inspired them or you help coach them through and they were able to make these transformations that even they were surprised that it happened?

Dominic Ashley-Timms: Yeah, we’ve been working with a large digital services organization who have taken this, our program that we explore within the book in absolute detail and they’ve driven it right across their organization. What was really interesting was that it brought us into work originally with their middle management tiers but actually shortly before they launched, the leadership woke up to the fact that, “Hey, if we’re serious about this then we as a leadership team should be seen to be going through this as well.”

So you have this remarkable initiative rolling out throughout the business but you also, at the same time, you were able to see within the organizations the shift and the demeanor of the leadership as what they were learning and what they were starting to use and how they were adapting their behavior became absolutely visible and the remarkable outcomes this organization, they have certainly run by capacity.

They are calmer, that less is being done by brute force, better questions are being asked in each meeting and in fact, they have almost taken this away from us and run with it and we work very closely with our clients to really embed this skills but they’ve changed their language. They used to begin meetings with, “You know, what’s the purpose of the meeting?” very small changes.

They start their meetings now with, “What question are we trying to answer here?” and they’ll spend the first few minutes honing that question and just in doing that, they saved so much time because they work to focus down on the thing that must change or the thing that we must focus on as a result of that short conversation. So really focusing on actually what are we trying to answer saved a huge amount of organizational effort.

They have said now that that has given them absolute capacity to focus much more purposefully on their strategy and asking powerful questions really helps them to quickly chunk through work to accept or reject ideas much more rapidly because everyone understands where the questions are coming from and they’re working harder and harder to make those questions more deeply reflective.

It gets them there faster and I think that’s a really powerful example of an organization that’s taken the inquiry to heart and remember, these aren’t skills that we are taught. The best you ever going to get taught as we grow up is to ask open questions, which, where, when, how, why and actually there’s so much more behind inquiry that actually again, there’s a chapter in the book where we go into some detailed questions.

You’d be surprised to know there is very, very little scientifical academic research around how you structure questions to stimulate other people’s thinking and that is the work that we’ve done. We’ve really advanced the whole idea of inquiry as a missing superpower.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s very powerful. Laura, would you like to add anything to that?

Laura Ashley-Timms: Well, I think one of the things that I would want to add is what is quite a shocking statistic is that 71% of organizations openly admit they get no support whatsoever to first-time line managers. So we are literally all doing our best and as Dominic said a little earlier, we’re also the Frankenstein managers.

We are just made up of lots of different elements but having this one cohesive mindset and one approach of every meeting, every conversation, every interaction just thinking in that split second, “Is there a question I could ask here to really move things along more effectively?” like the example Dominic gave, who really had such huge ramifications and you know, other examples.

We mentioned the academic study that was right across sectors in a space of six months, all of those organizations improve their retention by a factor of six. That was a different impact it had. We were not expecting at that scale those sorts of results. That was a real surprise, a lovely surprise. We knew engagement was significantly improved through the program.

But when you saw it at scale across so many organizations and got statistics like that as well as the increase in the management behavior, the improvements and the shift in the type of work they were doing and the commercial results, they were all really, really strong but for me in the current market with the challenges people have recruiting and retaining their teams and that is a real win just this one shift can give and that was a big surprise. It wasn’t in one organization, it was in 62 organizations. So even more powerful.

Dominic Ashley-Timms: If I bring this back full circle to what Laura was saying earlier, it had to be easy and I think why we wanted to publish the book now, we wrestled with how much of our IP we should put in the book and actually, you know after the pandemic we said, “Look, this is just simply too important not to put out there.”

So anyone purchasing the book will learn all about the STAR® model in detail. We hold nothing back, we walk through the model. There are exercises in the book to really help you to begin to make new distinctions in how you go about your job as a manager and it is really important to recognize that you know, most of us take on our first management position because there is actually nowhere else to go in terms of our promotion and our career advancement.

In the UK, we call that an accidental manager and it’s thought that both in the US and the UK, over 70% of all managers are these accidental managers. We’re sort of thrown into it not necessarily promoted because we’re great people-people and as Laura said, we’re all making our best fits of it but there is nothing really out there that can really help us to engage people more effectively.

In fact, we probably run a mile because we’re so nervous about stepping on a social landmine or upsetting someone, we probably don’t — we perhaps avoid some of those interactions. So inquiry is completely agnostic, it is completely respectful. You are simply asking questions, which naturally engages people. So those organizations that have low engagement scores, I would say this to them: Raising engagement is as simple as helping to show your managers how to engage people.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Very powerful. What would you say the most challenging or perhaps the most rewarding part of putting together this book and what lessons did you learn from that?

Dominic Ashley-Timms: That’s a really great question. Both Laura and I might get a sense, we’re incredibly passionate about this work and I think –

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh yeah, I can tell. Trust me.

Dominic Ashley-Timms: The work within organizations now is more important than it’s ever been and again, Laura indicated that managers are being expected to shoulder all of these additional responsibility and again, none of us have been really shown the techniques to be able to do that. So one of the challenges in the book is that we want everything that we produce to be the best it can be.

We operate in an environment that we call creative tension and we recognize how that works but you have to be comfortable with that level of creative tension because by strongly debating what we should be doing, we always drive out a better result for that. So you know, writing a book that has the soul of what we have been doing for the last 15 years and delivering that in a way, which is digestible and accessible to the widest possible audience, we certainly have creative tension. Laura is smiling.

Laura Ashley-Timms: Yeah, Dominic is being very polite. It was a very big challenge and the greatest happiest moment I think was when we finally finish, not just the writing but then the design of the book, how to really help people to want to put this into action because we have just shared, you know, quite straightforward way the information. “Here is the model, here’s what you can do” but that isn’t how we really work.

We are about a hopeful change, so we have obviously tried to structure the book in a way that you can literally take bite-sized elements as you are working through it and go have a go. Go and see what it’s like to reflect on what you are doing well. It’s kind of almost playing through the same mindset we have put into the main program itself. So hopefully people will get some genuine value from it and that’s already exciting to get some of the feedback we’ve been getting on the book.

It is already exciting and we have had people that start applying to join the company because it’s changed the way that they’ve been thinking. It’s changed their relationships already just by reading the book. So we are already getting some really lovely feedback, just super exciting and I think as well for me, it’s the bigger ambition. So there’s a big hair-scary goal. We talked about goals at the beginning of this conversation.

We have set a massive goal having written the book, is that we are really passionate about helping managers all over the world transform their capability and we have set a goal of having a million STAR® managers, and what we mean by that is a million people out there in workplaces who are engaging their teams completely differently, who are asking questions for the benefit of their teams not so that they can get clever and learn more or so they can ask questions for their benefit.

But asking questions genuinely for the other person’s benefit and if we can achieve that, we believe we will create for them, we’re calling, epic workplace cultures everywhere and by epic, we mean engaging workplaces, productive workplaces, inclusive workplaces and collaborative workplaces and we’re super excited about that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s so powerful. I love that your work is truly very rewarding and I am so excited that you teamed up to bring your wisdom together and write this book because I know no matter how you look at writing a book is challenging but we all know that doing challenging things can be very rewarding and in your case, it’s rewarding not only to you two but it is really rewarding to the rest of the world.

Because let’s be honest, better management, better leadership just helps our communities in ways that we can’t even measure and so I am very grateful and Laura and Dominic. I just want to say congratulations because the book is a feat and I know you did your absolute best putting it together and I know it’s going to start making amazing impact in our world and I want to say, you know, thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences with us today.

The book is called, The Answer is a Question: The Missing Superpower that Changes Everything and Will Transform Your Impact as a Manager and a Leader, and besides checking out the book, where can people find you two to perhaps come work with you or you with them?

Laura Ashley-Timms: Well, to find the book, the book is obviously on Amazon all over the world, so that’s the easiest place to get it and the easiest way to get a hold of us is go to starmanager.global.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Love it. Well, thank you so much you two for your time, your energy and your resources today. I really appreciate it.

Dominic Ashley-Timms: Thank you very much.

Laura Ashley-Timms: Thank you so much.

The post The Answer is a Question: Laura and Dominic Ashley-Timms appeared first on Author Hour.

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Are you an entrepreneur seeking freedom of money to live the biggest future you can dream of? To have freedom of purpose to do what fascinates and motivates you. It’s time to get out of the Wall Street casino and take back control of your financial future.

Welcome back to the Author Hour podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by Dave Wolcott today, who’s here to talk about his new book, The Holistic Wealth Strategy. Let’s flip through it.

Hello friends. Welcome back to the show. I’m here with my friend Dave today, who just launched a book called, The Holistic Wealth Strategy. I’m super excited to have Dave. Dave, man, thanks for coming on the show today. I really appreciate you.

Dave Wolcott: Hey, Hussein, grateful to be here to connect with you and your audience.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, man. I’m excited because let’s be honest, man, wealth and wealth strategies and wealth building and all those kinds of things are on, I feel, everyone’s minds, right? But before we get into the book and the amazing experiences and stories that you share throughout the book, I really want to go back in time a little bit and share just a little bit about you, your upbringing, where you grew up, perhaps high school, college, all that good stuff, but really just highlight where you grew up and also what got you into this field of growing your wealth and all those kinds of things. I know some of the stories but want to share them with our audience. Let’s go back in time a little bit.

Dave Wolcott: Yeah, absolutely, Hussein. I was raised in a middle-class family, probably like many of the listeners out there. I was told that the path to success was going to school, getting good grades, and then you’re going to get a good job. That was the recipe for success, right? I followed down that path, went to George Washington University in DC and did the ROTC program, and got into the Marine Corps after that. The Marines was a phenomenal experience. I got to travel the world, really test myself, and really learn some things that they don’t teach really anywhere else in the world, which are things like leadership, teamwork, and integrity.

Then after the Marine Corps, I transitioned into the corporate world, got into the tech industry. I was really quickly dismayed because I found out that I lost that sense of purpose. I had that real true sense of purpose and mission that the Marine Corps was able to provide. Now it all became about quarterly results and things like that, lack of teamwork. And at the same time, my wife and I started raising a family and we had an eighteen-month-old at the time. Then on October 24, 2000, we literally had triplets. Hussein, we’d literally quadrupled the size of our family.

The first thing I did, of course, after drinking a lot that night was, let’s maybe say the second thing that I did was I went to see my financial planner, because I’m like, “Okay, you guys just moved the goal post like a mile down the field. How am I going to figure this out?” Right? It is really crazy. He told me what every other financial planner before that had told me was, “Look, the market’s going to go up, it’s going to go down, invest for the long term. You’ll make a 7% return and that’s a great return. You can invest in 529 plans for the kids. You’ll get a little state tax deduction, that’ll be good.”

I was just so frustrated. I’m like, “This is not going to move the needle in terms of providing for my family, or meeting the goals that I really had for myself.” This put me on this obsessive quest to really figure out how are the top 1% actually building their wealth, because I knew it wasn’t as a retail investor in the stock market. I started investing into alternative assets, everything from oil and gas, to multifamily, to office parks, residential, raw land, all kinds of different asset classes. I also became a business owner, built a tech consulting company, learned a lot about taxes and running a business at the time.

Fast forward to today really, Hussein, the book is really an instantiation of my learnings over the past twenty years of how can you really create a system out of building wealth in this alternative manner. A way that’s a comprehensive approach, a framework, a blueprint for you to put all of the pieces together to be able to really build your wealth and build legacy wealth like the top 1% are.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, man. That’s really powerful. The motivation to do that, right? All of a sudden, you have these three beautiful kids coming into this world, and you have four altogether, and of course, your family, just in general, and taking care of your health, and taking care of your mental. There are so many different things. I commend you for taking the night to really think things through because I’m sure it was a wild one to really think through. I’m sure it was also one of those moments in life where you feel inspired, motivated, and know that you can do other things to see if you can change this outcome and maybe bring that goalpost back closer.

That seems that push forward really helped you overcome some of those fears. But you talk about the three wealth disruptors in the book, and they can hinder people’s financial success. Can you share a personal experience or story of how you or someone overcame one of these disruptors, and what lessons can the readers learn from it?

Overcoming Wealth DisruptorsDave Wolcott: Yeah, 100%. I mentioned I had built a tech consulting company. The first five years of my entrepreneurship were amazing. We had double-digit, triple-digit growth, building out a team, an executive team, and working with Fortune 1000 clients. I mean, it was a fantastic trajectory, really exciting time. Like any young entrepreneur does, I thought of it as really sweat equity, right? We were building for an exit. I thought we didn’t pay ourselves much as the executive team, and just putting everything into building equity and value in the organization.

On the fifth year, we literally, Hussein, had just won the Inc. 5000 award. Then within a ninety-day period, we found ourselves completely upside down due to the fact that we had a bunch of government clients at the time. They had something called government sequestration, which actually was just a freeze on all government spending. Current projects totally got frozen, new projects weren’t going anywhere. We had expensive six-figure consultants on payroll, right? So that was really challenging. We lost a key employee during that time period.

One of my biggest lessons learned was that you should not have all of your eggs in one basket. Even though you’re so passionate about something, you know something’s going to work out, you’ve got to really protect yourself and have some reserve plan and strategy. I consequently set up an infinite banking policy, which is essentially a cash value life insurance strategy and a lot of the ultra-wealthy use this as part of their infrastructure. Now we can help our clients set this up. Essentially, what it is, is you have a life insurance policy that is a cash value, you can put cash into it, and it completely compounds tax free.

You can give it to your heirs, tax-free. Then in your later years, you can actually draw upon it and create an income stream. That’s tax-free, but you also have the liquidity of it to be able to borrow it to say, “Hey, I’m not going to get paid in my business for the next six months. I need some income source.” Right? Or I could pay for my kids’ college with something, right? That’s a really, really key strategy that I learned. I think there’s some of the three biggest wealth destroyers that are out there are taxes, number one.

There’s also having a proper asset protection planning in place. A lot of people unfortunately lose what they spend a lifetime to build because they don’t have proper measures in place. Then also, people are losing money in stock market losses, right? Because just because the market goes up, say 20% in one year, but then comes back down 10% the next year, you really don’t realize what it takes to get back to even where you were. Over time, your contributions in your net worth on that strategy and the equities markets really typically suffer.

Planners are really not advising the clients about things like inflation, taxes, and fees, which are likely only going up in the future. Really, you’ve got taxes, you’ve got stock market losses, and then the other biggest wealth destroyer is 401Ks, IRAs, any government-sponsored qualified plan where the government is telling you when you can use your money, how you can use your money, how much you can take out. All of those things are really putting people into golden handcuffs.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s really powerful. You also talk about Wall Street being like a casino, which I mean, I feel like I’ve made a few of those types of references, because, well, I’ll be honest I don’t know, I’m not an investor, I’m not a trade person. I don’t know the stock market like that, but it always feels like such a gamble. It always feels like a gamble. It’s a risk like everything else in life, to a degree.

This risk is completely out of your control, to where I feel like you’re learning and understanding what you are good at and whether you want to get into real estate or different types of things, understanding the way of the ocean, I guess. Can you talk a little bit about what the importance are of just understanding those values, and how you see potential for your future and how you go about – because I know this was a learning curve for you, as well. How do you go about really getting into the weeds of learning financial direction, so that you can take some of that freedom back?

Dave Wolcott: Yeah, sure. I think a lot of this is also really about autonomy in your life and creating some control. As you pointed out, I mean, I spent so many days and months and years in my life just investing in the market. You’re at the gym the next morning, watching CNBC and saying like, “Oh, my gosh, something literally just happened in China that has nothing to do with anything.” The fundamentals of the company, the leadership of the company, a market positioning, and your position is down 5% that day. I just felt so helpless. It just seemed so crazy.

Then again, if you just look at the averages of the S&P over a twenty-year period, you can see that maybe at best it’s making 7%. Again, that’s not even factoring in taxes, inflation, and fees. Once you do that, you’re actually only making a couple of points on your hard-earned capital. I think this is really a tragedy, frankly, in this country and why a lot of boomers are retiring right now and really struggling with having enough to be able to provide the financial means that they thought to be able to live on, today.

What I wanted to do was take back control. When you avoid and bypass Wall Street and invest directly in Main Street, you can do that. As an example, one of our favorite asset classes is multifamily apartment buildings, right? We’ll invest in a 300-unit apartment building in Phoenix, Arizona, that has a high job and population growth. At the end of the day, people need a place to live, right? You’ve got rent that’s coming in every month. It pays out passive income. You also get to apply what’s called bonus depreciation and offset some of that income.

Then we do basically value add to the property where we’re fixing things up and everything. Then we sell within three to five years, so investors make a return on the backside. What I learned, Hussein, is that by investing in these private assets that are typically reserved for accredited investors only, you can actually get really a three-dimensional return to your investment, which is having tax efficiency, having predictable passive income, and having some forced appreciation on the back end. Unlike if you have a security. Let’s say you have a thousand dollars worth of Tesla stock; the only thing that you’re hoping for is that stock is going to go up in value. That’s all you have. You’re just hoping. Hope is not a strategy.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. It’s interesting, right? Like you said, if Elon were to do something or send out a tweet or whatever, those kinds of things have almost too much influence, right? That’s where it gets iffy and weird and not in the realm of, again, what you can control. So bringing it back to the things that – like you said the Main Street, physical things that you can understand how people use. That’s really powerful to think about.

You argue that holistic wealth is more than just money though, but also includes mental and physical well-being, which I really loved. Can you share a personal story of your experiences of how you balance your financial goals, of course, with your overall health and wellness?

I grew up on welfare and my family were refugees. I came here when I was eight. I grew up – my parents didn’t understand the financial world here. We came from Iraq, a completely different world. So just understanding those things, man, over time for me has been huge. Just constantly peeling back the layers of understanding, not just money, but financials, that world.

I think it’s really powerful then, once you get this, I don’t want to say comfort level, but you get to the level where you’re just like, “Okay, the roof over my head is paid, the food, all this stuff is good, but now I got to take care of other things.” For me, it was instantly mental and physical health, but you talk about that. I just appreciate it, because I feel like a lot of wealth-type books, financial books, they do talk about, not all, about mental and physical well-being, but not all. It’s all about strategy in the financial world. That’s important to you. Can you talk a little bit about that and why you thought it was important to put in a book?

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/colorful-color-play-concentration-54101/

Health IQDave Wolcott: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what I found in my journey is that this all really starts with you. In creating your own vision statement for what it is you want to get out of life for yourself, for your family. Sadly, people don’t really spend enough time actually creating their own visions. So, if you don’t have a target, you’re going to miss every time, right? Once you get that clarity in terms of your vision and where you’re heading, you really first need to have the right mindset. Having a growth mindset where you’re constantly learning and you want to be a lifelong learner and inquisitive by asking questions. For instance, does it really make sense in my 401K to defer taxes until later years? Because that’s what all of traditional wealth advisors are telling you to do.

You say, “Okay, well, I saved on my taxes this year.” But all you’re doing is you’re kicking the can down the road to pay taxes in the future, which again, I don’t have a crystal ball, but I’m pretty sure taxes are going to be higher in the future. Wouldn’t you rather pay taxes on the seed rather than the harvest? But you have to have a really strong mindset to challenge the status quo and conventional wisdom to be able to get to the next level. I think that mindset is really important, and part and parcel to that mindset is also trying to increase your IQ and your IQ around financial IQ.

Looking at some of these different asset classes and the private investment space that are available to people. The health IQ, that’s when you’re talking about being holistic, and to think there’s so many different people that actually burn their entire health just to acquire wealth. Some of these high-paid CEOs and everything, people are working seventy hours a week, but they have no health, or they have a heart attack when they’re in their fifties. What was it all for? It’s so paramount to be able to have control over your health. Actually, that continues to drive your mindset, that having that growth mindset, thinking a lot bigger, and really trying to get out of life what it is that you really want to.

I found out, this was a real shock to me Hussein, but I was actually in my mid-forties, and I exercise every day, I’m big into cycling and cardio. I always worked out, but I took this proactive heart scan and actually found out that I had one artery that was over 50% blocked. My doctor said it was basically just a time bomb, right? It was a matter of when this thing was going to have some serious issues. Had I not been proactive in taking care of my health, the consequences could have been really dire.

How many times, Hussein, have you heard these phenomenal stories of people, whether it’s a TED Talk, a great podcast or something where people have went through this massive transformation in their lives, but it was brought about by a loss of a loved one, major health issue, chronic disease, or something like that. I implore people to, don’t wait for that chronic disease to hit you to be able to take control over your life, but go ahead and embrace it right now and get control over it, and the results will be exponential.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. It’s really powerful that you just mentioned the – I feel like the most important aspect of all of this is just being proactive, is being cognizant and proactive and doing things that, I guess in a way, make you feel uncomfortable and being patient. It’s a multitude of things that are being practiced, but if you start with one thing, hopefully that will lead to the other. I definitely agree with you and the idea that your mindset is the biggest thing that we have to understand first and foremost and lay out the foundation for.

Then from there you can build on, because like you said, yes, there are many books and action steps and so many people that share all these stories, but it does come down to, look, at the end of the day, your health, your mental health, your physical health, matters just as much, if not more than what you’re working towards. Because if you can’t get there because you’re unhealthy now then it’s a loss-loss situation. That’s very profound. I appreciate you bringing that up.

Finally, I have two more questions, but really, I want to know what was your favorite part of the writing journey? Because I know it’s no easy feat to write a book. Of course, there’s a lot of learning curves on that. What was your favorite part of bringing your book together?

Dave Wolcott: Yeah. That’s a great question. Maybe I can help the audience a little bit to understand my journey in this process. First of all, it didn’t even really start out as a book. What it started out was a concept in my head that I eventually put down into creating an infographic for this entire wealth strategy, which we lay this out in the book now, but it’s literally like one infographic that became a concept of what I was trying to articulate to the world to be able to have some impact.

Then I framed that out into the next step, it became an eBook which was a downloadable asset for different investors as people are trying to understand that. Then I actually moved into a ninety-day book, like a short leaflet thing. The framework and everything for the book was linear and incremental. Then when I got to work with the entire team at Scribe and everything, it was just a really great experience to get matched up with someone who really understands you and then can take your voice and communicate that into text, which was to me, that was probably the most exciting part is you think that in your head, it’s like only you who understands things in your head.

It’s really mind-boggling to write a book, to find the time, the focus time, and write down every little detail and get everything right. One of the things I learned from the Who Not How book with Dan Sullivan. I know Tucker Max talks about this a lot as well is, how can you leverage a team to really help you? Working with a team, like you’ve got a really good ghostwriter in Scribe on your team that can help you translate your vision and your comments into text, you’d be surprised at how fast the process can actually go.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I just appreciate your concise layout of this, because I love how you just started out with small incremental steps towards what would become obviously this book. In a way, it’s also you unfolding everything that you’ve learned in the simplest way you can get it. I think that’s something you really remember as an author or a person that’s reading this material. It’s, how can we simplify our knowledge? Because obviously, your knowledge spans decades. Sometimes, for certain people, it’s like, how do you synthesize this into a simple map that one person can just open up and see where they’re at?

Then from there, it’s here are the three next steps. Then from there, here’s in-depth about these three steps. I love this momentum that you built throughout your journey to really come up in. I think a lot of people think when approaching writing a book; I know I did and many people do, especially when you’re an expert in the field. It’s like the final product, the one that you hold in your hand, and it’s beautiful and it’s done, is actually not what you thought about it in the beginning. How we see the book and what actually comes out is sometimes, for many authors, a little different.

I think that’s really powerful that you mentioned that in a way. I just appreciate it, Dave. Dave, thank you. I feel like your stories and experiences just resonated with me. I’m sure they did with our audience. The book is called, The Holistic Wealth Strategy: A Framework for Building Legacy Wealth and Unlimited Freedom to Live an Extraordinary Life. Besides checking out the book on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and all that good stuff, where can people find you and connect with you hopefully to learn more?

Dave Wolcott: Yeah, absolutely. Easiest place is you can go to our website pantheoninvest.com/wealth-strategy. You can actually download a free eBook version of this as well. Then connect with us, be happy to connect.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Love it, man. Thank you so much for joining me today, Dave. I appreciate you and your time.

Dave Wolcott: Yeah. It’s been a pleasure, Hussein. I appreciate it.

The post The Holistic Wealth Strategy: Dave Wolcott appeared first on Author Hour.

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When the psychic pain of an old soul is ready to be released, that pain might cry out to us through trauma or disease, begging to be healed, loved, and liberated. But at the age of 36, diagnosed with stage three breast cancer, my next guest knew that she was embarking on two journeys at once, a physical journey through modern medicine’s chemotherapy and a spiritual journey through training as a priestess of Avalon.

Welcome back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by Annah Phinny, who is here to talk about her new book called, Lady of The Lake, Rise. Let’s flip through it.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. I’m here with my special friend, Annah, who just wrote a remarkable book called, Lady of the Lake, Rise: A Heroine’s Journey through Cancer to Wholeness, and like, I got to tell you all, sometimes you read books and you know, they pull you in in a way and for me, I’m very spiritual. So this book specifically and Annah’s journey really helped me, I don’t know, tap into a few things in the last 24 hours that I’ve maybe have just put away for a while.

So I just want to say, Annah, I’m super excited to have you on the show, so thanks for coming on today.

Annah Taylor Phinny: Oh, I’m honored, thank you, Hussein.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, this is going to be great. So Annah, before we get into the book and all the good stuff inside. I really want to share with our audience, a little bit about you, your background, perhaps, where you grew up and maybe a person or an event that kind of inspired you to be the path that you’re on today.

Annah Taylor Phinny: Okay, lovely entry point. All right, well, I grew up in Michigan and when I was 12 years old, my family moved to the mountains of Telluride, Colorado. So I sort of feel that both of them hold the place of home in my heart in different ways. I loved the lakes, swimming in the lakes in Michigan and we had horses at our house and I’ve been very connected to horses my whole life.

So that was a very big part of my childhood and the woman I am today, I’m a priestess of Avalon and have been studying and working with the land and moving through different kinds of initiations in Glastonbury, England, and I’m actually tuning in with you today from England, and my work is based on my education in spiritual psychology. I went to school in Santa Monica beginning in 2007, so a while ago now, to a master’s program in spiritual psychology with an emphasis in consciousness, health, and healing.

So my framework and orientation to life for most of my adult life has been through a spiritual lens and I was beginning my priestess training, where a year into my priestess training in my second tradition that I studies in when everything happened, that is the central theme of the book, my journey through breast cancer. So an event that shaped my life, I would say what’s really coming forward to share about is my relationship with horses.

Horses were really my first gateway into the magical realm and into understanding that there was a world beyond that which was seen in the 3D as a child because I could feel the telepathic connection to my horse and I had many magical experiences with my horse as a young girl and that carried over into my horse, who I spent nine beautiful years with as an adult, who is also significant to my story and the book.

But I definitely see horses as a magical gateway into the realms of the unseen because they’re so sensitive and attuned to the other worlds.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful. I love that this idea of this connection through other beings, you know, that roam around us and I feel like being of Middle Eastern descent, you know, I know my father was a big painter and he just loved – that was his favorite thing to paint was horses and you know, I’ve never got like a full answer but I assume there was like a spiritual connection, right?

Because the horse and the warrior and what the warrior means today, right? All of these things are, for me, so beautiful and our connection to this being that has served humanity for so long I feel like, right? Obviously, with the advent of vehicles and all these things today is just different. We don’t see that. We don’t see these animals that have taken care of us really and we’ve relied on them for so long.

But I just love that you brought that up and how your connection with these beings really brought forth a different dimension of understanding. So let’s dive in, can you tell us a little bit maybe a specific moment during your journey where you felt like you know, going through breast cancer, where you felt like just giving up and you know, that feeling of just wanting to I guess in a way relinquish yourself from this feeling.

You know, this giving up of who you are, your identity and what that meant to you. Did you ever get to that place where you really felt like that?

Breast Cancer As a Growing ExperienceAnnah Taylor Phinny: So many beautiful deep questions and I loved your reflections about horses, so thank you for that. That was beautiful. Well, in my journey and as I share about in the book, I made a parallel between my personal experience of being stripped. You know, I really felt that I was just completely being stripped raw of all the things that I identified with in my life, all the things that I felt were associated with beauty or femininity or my feminine essence.

You know, breast cancer is such a feminine disease and through my experience, as I work with many different archetypes of goddess and different myths and stories of goddess, there is a particular story of the goddess, Inanna, who is an ancient Mesopotamian goddess, who was the queen of heaven and her dark sister named Ereshkigal, who was the queen of the underworld and in the story, Inanna travels from heaven down to earth.

And then on her journey to the underworld to visit her sister, is met with seven bolted gates where she’s told by one of the gatekeepers to the underworld that she must release one of her royal garments in order to pass through each gate by and so she moves through this being stripped from her crown all the way down to her robe so she’s left naked and touring the underworld and symbolically, it’s a journey through the seven chakras.

The main energy centers of the body and all of the trappings of the outer world, all the things that she identified with that felt represented her status as queen and in order to face her dark sister who represents her shadow or the disowned or fragmented pieces of herself, she has to be stripped raw and naked and bare and having let go and release all those ideas of who she thought she was in order to meet this place of her with what is truly her power but her disowned power.

Through that, she can reclaim those parts of herself and make the journey of ascend out through the seven gates, reclaiming the items but they no longer make her who she is and so I really resonated with that story as I was moving through my journey because I felt that I was being met at the seven gates of the underworld and being stripped of you know, my hair. Any woman understands, I mean, everyone has a connection to their hair.

You know, any woman can imagine you know, being faced with losing one’s hair is a deeply emotional process and feeling of immense loss. I also had hair down to my hips and just never cut my hair and I didn’t even realize how unconsciously identified I was with my hair and having long hair. So there were several many multidimensional experiences I had of being stripped in different ways and ultimately, of the loss of my physical breasts through surgery.

But the way that I related to those experiences of perceived loss where you know, I mean, it’s all there. There’s so much to say about it but the way that I related, I’ll say this differently, I didn’t relate to it as a tragedy or something that was happening to me in a way that made me feel victimized. Of course within situations like that, there are tendencies to feel those things and there were parts of me that I needed to honor and acknowledge within myself at moments that did feel that way.

But the overriding sense of my authentic self continued to choose to see how this was in service to me as a divine being having a human experience and how I could utilize these experiences to support me in growing and expanding and expanding my heart and growing and evolving as a soul and so although I was met with a very intense situations and physically painful situations and emotionally, you know, gutting situations, I still held myself in that sacred container and held this very strong sense of faith that I knew this was happening for me and continuing to trust life, to trust spirit, to trust that there was a divine orchestration that was in service to me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. Wow, it’s so powerful and I was trying to warn the audience like we were going into an amazing episode. I’m just saying, I’m just saying, what a remarkable journey that you have not only experienced of course but you know, you associated it with this, sort of this really greater-than-life story, right? It’s a, you know, whether you call it myth, if it’s a myth or if it’s a legend or if it is our story in reality, in metaphor.

You know, however we experience that in connecting to this higher story, right? Which is I feel like in a way a representation for human beings, right? We all have to go through some sort of gate or a set of gates to sort of in a way, it’s a cleansing. I know from my understanding of my faith and Islam, there is that sort of the afterlife, there is a moment in time where there’s a cleansing period, right?

Sort of disconnecting from the human realm and then sort of reentering the spiritual realm or whatever, right? You know, there is something beautiful about every ancient culture, right? That has this connection to divinity and this realm, and I think it is beautiful and I think however we contextualize the stories, you could kind of relate as you go through life and you’d be like, “No, that’s actually me, that’s what’s happening to me right now.” I’m just retranslating it in this way, in this modern way that we’re living.

Annah Taylor Phinny: Absolutely.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I think that’s really profound. Yeah, I think that’s really profound, and you were able to sort of lean into that story and say, “Okay, you know, this is happening to me, this is happening for me.”

Annah Taylor Phinny: Yes, and that’s the power of –

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I’ve always recognized that in my dad. I got to tell you, I always – because there are amazing people around us, right? That experience really hard things and you’re like, “How are they just like they look like they’re skiing through this?” you know what I’m saying?

Annah Taylor Phinny: Yes.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: But there is this deep connection to what’s happening is for me and there’s a knowing, like a deeper knowing. I’m really interested in that, when did you think you developed this in a way, a sense of knowing that what is happening around you right now is ultimately like the fuel for who you are to become, you know what I mean?

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/stacked-of-stones-outdoors-289586/

Paradigm Shift with Spiritual PsychologyAnnah Taylor Phinny: Yes, yes and because that’s a huge paradigm shift. You know, our culture does not teach us to view things that way. It is very much reinforced through the media and through the stories that we hear for the most part that to respond in fear and that you know, we don’t want things that as if something like that were to happen, it’s bad and you need to go to this person to fix it and you know, there’s sort of that method is sort of implanted in our consciousness as kids.

You know, I think that it was really through my education in spiritual psychology that I learned to reframe that. I mean, I definitely longed for a deeper meaning and deeper sense of connection from a young age and by the time I was in my early 20s was really actively seeking that because it was like I just wasn’t satisfied with the status quo or with the ways that I saw people interpreting the world around them.

In spiritual psychology, the premise is earth is a school and we’ve come here to learn and all of our experiences are part of our earth school curriculum that we designed as a soul in collaboration with our soul family, other souls that are here to interact with us and to support us and growing and evolving and completing these contracts that we’ve made that all of it is part of our soul curriculum that we’ve come here to explore and learn from.

So that profoundly resonated and so I feel I’ve been navigating life with that framework for the last 15 years.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, such a powerful perspective. I’m just enjoying this idea of how we can not only reconcile but also become the next iteration of ourselves as we – you know, I love the gates, right? The metaphoric gates, it’s like it’s not going to just happen once. You know, you talk about the difference between the hero’s journey and the heroine’s journey and I really, really enjoyed that.

Can you share with our audience a little bit about the differences? Because I feel like you know, I didn’t see it that way to be honest with you and I feel like many people probably out there don’t see it that way as well. Can you maybe just share a little, you know, yeah anecdote about the difference between the two?

Annah Taylor Phinny: Of course. So the hero’s journey, which is the sort of the story that we often hear in mythology is of usually a man going out on a quest and he leaves behind what’s familiar, his home or whatever represents the world that he’s come from, goes out on a quest to learn a lesson or conquer a fear and then he, you know, retrieves that knowledge or wisdom and then comes back to share the wisdom he’s gleaned from that journey, from that outward journey.

So it’s a very linear journey going out to retrieve something, conquering something and coming back and I was really sitting with this as I was ruminating on writing the book and as the sort of ideas for the books were starting to flow through because I was very clear that I wanted to exemplify through the writing the feminine healing journey, which I refer to as the heroine’s journey, which is cyclical and spirals and it’s fluid.

It ebbs and it flows and it moves in different directions and it can start in present time at you know, the age that we are right now and with the set of circumstances in our lives that we have but then when we open up that door to heal from the root cause, that could take us back to a very specific memory from childhood. It could take us back to maybe a trauma we experienced in our body and then even further, it could take us back to the previous lifetime.

Our soul having traveled through time and space is just here for the evolution and so if things haven’t been completed in previous lifetimes in my understanding, they all carry over and will just bring the opportunity into the present to heal, to continuously bringing these opportunities into the present to heal them until that’s complete and then we can move on to the next thing.

So my experience was that I could be a 36-year-old woman who has an IV in her arm and was at the doctor, you know, in physical world reality receiving chemotherapy while also being aware of a very scared 15 year old inside myself and remembering things that were crystalizing in my consciousness from that age while also being aware of retrieving a magical priestess from a completely different lifetime and all of those things were happening simultaneously.

So there’s a multidimensional energy to the way that the feminine energy moves and flows and spirals and simultaneously is accessing material from the shadow and bringing it into the light for forgiveness and healing and acceptance.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful how you’re able to just navigate not only just articulating it but it just in a way also displaying it from experience. You know, it’s so powerful because I love the expression of both the heroine and the hero’s journey and I think you’re right and that you know, I think even for me there’s times where I feel like the things that I actually want to do aren’t just my own but a previous either version of me or connected to someone in my heritage that for example perhaps they were a farmer that always wanted to be a poet or write a book.

Now that I get to have this life and opportunity that sort of seeped into my bloodline, right? To you know, conjure up or manifest it now, you know, and I always think about that and –

Annah Taylor Phinny: Yes, that’s so powerful.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I always think about that and again, I think that’s what’s kept me close to wanting to not only identify with but also get to know my heritage on a deeper level because then it kind of can share like I’ll tell you a story real quick. I visited Iraq for the first time in 2014 I believe, and I got to visit my home country and where I was from, where I was born because when we left we were so young.

But you know what was really powerful? We were walking around As-Samawah, which is you know, I mean, we’re an hour away from the ancient city of Ur, which is like Mesopotamia, you know, at the heart of it all and I’m sitting there and I am walking through this little town that I am from and my dad is just waving at everybody and you know, this person and that person and I just have never felt more, in a way, at home, you know what I mean?

I just felt so connected to the people and I felt like I knew another layer, a part of me but there was fear going back. So you know that gate of re-cleansing and reclaiming, I just resonate with that because of those stories that I’ve had in my life. So you know in your book, you talk about this idea of reclaiming the seven gifts of a sacred birthright and you know, with the story that I just shared about sort of where I come from.

Just visiting it and knowing that I am connected to this deeper lineage that I was disconnected from because of unfortunate events in war and I got to go explore another side of who I am, right? The multitude like America, right? A whole different language, a different culture, a different style of everything but to contrast that with where I’m from, I really felt whole. So I love this idea when you talk about reclaiming. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Annah Taylor Phinny: Yes and that’s such a perfect story that you’ve shared about reclaiming your heritage, reclaiming your divine heritage and really allowing all of that cellular memory that is in your very DNA from your ancestry to really come online and activate through the physical energetic exchange of being on that land of your birth, I really feel that places carry so much energy for us too.

The land holds so much memory and has so much to remind us and to activate and awaken within us. So there is such a powerful exchange that happens when we travel to the places of our ancestors and yes, so reclaiming absolutely has been a big theme in my journey and in my work and I’ll say that it is founded on the concept of soul retrieval, which is the term used in shamanic healing that speaks to sort of fragmented aspects of our soul or of our essence that we have sort of left behind in traumatic events.

So this can even be within this life, when there’s some sort of trauma, it’s very common in the shock of that experience for an aspect of ourselves to sort of disengage and in a way, leave or retreat from our conscious energy fields or our presence and in order for us to sort of bring back these fragmented pieces and when we lose that energy, I’ll just say that that can from a spiritual perspective be the cause of illness, disease, addiction.

Just anything that’s kind of leaking or dispersing our soul energy because then we don’t have our full life force available to us in the present. And so this method of journeying, through going on a vision quest, an inner vision journey, I often go on inner vision journeys with music or working with the support of a practitioner to journey from memory or into a memory and reclaim or retrieve the part of us that was left behind.

In very much the way that you’ve been speaking about the cleansing, cleansing and bathing in love and forgiveness, that aspect or that memory or that younger part of ourselves and bringing them back into our hearts, bringing them back into our conscious awareness.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That is so beautiful. Annah, I could honestly probably just listen to you the rest of the day. I’m just going to say that, okay?

Annah Taylor Phinny: Oh, I’m grateful.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. Again, whoever is out there that’s listening, the power of this book is just really beautiful. I could just feel the vibes coming off of you know, a digital space even so it is just so powerful. Let’s take it to more of a tangible thing that people can really pick up from this because I know there’s some tangible things that you lay out in your book too. What advice would you give someone who is currently facing some difficulties through a journey of healing, whether it be physical or spiritual?

Trust Your Inner CompassAnnah Taylor Phinny: Yes, my message to you is that you have all the inner resources within you to navigate the situation and that I encourage you to really trust your inner compass and to really send out a prayer from your heart in whatever way feels authentic to you, however your relationship is with prayer. Whether it be asking for help to spirit, to the divine, to your higher self or going out in nature and saying aloud under the sun or the moon or to a tree something that you feel holds a great energy to just say you’re in need of guidance.

You are asking for help and support and to please lead you to the people and places and modalities or information that are most in service and aligned with your deepest level of healing and for your highest good and trust the information that comes to you, the people that come to you and know that you will be held every step of the way in your journey.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that. I really appreciate you saying that because it’s so – for me, it resonates deep. I used to ask my dad, you know, because we pray five times a day and all that good stuff and nor am I perfect now or anything like that, but I just used to ask, “Dad, why so many times?” you know what I mean? It’s just like why and he’s like, “Well, does a tree ask like why the sun is beaming on it all day or why it’s going to rain or why?”

It’s just like it needs that and it’s like for me, as often as I can come to this prayer rug is like I need that sunlight. I need that moment in time where I can just absorb this energy to just keep me going and –

Annah Taylor Phinny: Yes, well your dad —

Hussein Al-Baiaty: What you just said – yeah, what you said just reminds me of him so much because those are the kinds of things he would sort of advise on, you know? I just resonate with that, and I feel like there is nothing more powerful sometimes when you read a book and it connects you to someone else that you love and you resonate so much deeper because you’re just like, “Oh my god, you know, these two wise spirits must know each other.”

So I think that’s so powerful. I don’t mean to keep bringing it back to my dad, I just appreciate where it takes me.

Annah Taylor Phinny: No, I think it is beautiful that you are bringing it back to your dad. That’s so meaningful. It really means a lot to me to hear, to hear your reflections and the connections you’re making. It’s lovely.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I think you know again, with the power of words in our books, in our knowledge and wisdom and what comes through to the reader, right? Which is why I love this space and what comes through to the reader is not just logic, right? Through the words and how our mind takes all of these things and it turns him into something else, it is really the feeling that we also absorb, and I got to tell you that was really powerful for me reading throughout your book today.

So Annah, I can’t express how thankful I am for you sharing your stories and your experiences, but I do have one more question. What was your favorite part of writing this book?

Annah Taylor Phinny: Oh my goodness, my favorite part of writing –

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Come on, give me a good one.

Annah Taylor Phinny: So yeah, there’s so many things that I just loved about the process of wiring. I guess I’ll say that before I wrote this book, I didn’t really think of myself as a writer and I started writing my experiences because I just felt an overwhelming need to record them and I started sharing them with friends and they would say, “Gosh, that’s beautiful” or “That is so well-written” or “It’s amazing that you are able to articulate something so abstract.”

The journey, expressing my story kind of brought me in touch with this gift of sharing about the realms of the unseen and giving voice to things that are often difficult to give voice to and this provided me with the opportunity to do that. So it was like I got in touch with this whole new dimension inside myself, otherwise I don’t know how I would have discovered it. So it was such a gift to find that within me and then I created so many beautiful rituals around writing.

I think I’ll share that with anyone who is writing. It was so magical for me to have a real preparation. I would light incense, light a candle, I had the same shawl that I wore every time I wrote, the same crystal that I had in my lap, and I played the same music every time I would sit down to write. So I really had some specific things that dropped me into the space, and I did that every single time.

So that writing was this magical journey that I was entering consciously, and it just felt like it was very powerful to delineate between being on my computer and writing emails and writing my book.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful. I love that you created, you know, almost like a tradition, right? To come and just practice on a daily basis to just kind of commune and I think that’s the power of writing. It kind of realigns us with those moments in time where we’ve created really powerful traditions. You know, I think that’s the beauty of also becoming a human and really realizing not just becoming a human.

Really realizing our potential to be human and what that is actually like, and it really does start with those rituals, the things that we practice and start to practice and indulge in so what a beautiful response of course. Annah, I’m just blown away by your stories and your experiences. The book is phenomenal. People, go get it. The book is called, Lady of the Lake, Rise: A Heroine’s Journey through Cancer to Wholeness. Besides checking out the book on Amazon, where can people find you and connect with you?

Annah Taylor Phinny: People can find me on Instagram @avalon.calling and my website is also avaloncalling.co.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful. Well, thank you again Annah so much, it is an absolute privilege and honor to have met you today and talk about you and your amazing book. So thank you again for your time.

Annah Taylor Phinny: Oh, thank you so much. This was such a special experience talking to you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I felt that too. Thank you.

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Before you can effectively lead others, you must lead yourself. Once you learn to successfully guide yourself towards your vision and goals, then you could do the same for your team.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined today by author Bobby Harrington, who is here to talk about his new book called, Lead You: The Winning Combination to Achieve Personal and Professional Success. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, friends, and welcome to Author Hour. Today, I have a very special guest, my good friend Bobby Harrington is in the building. Well, he’s not technically in the building but we are chatting over the waves and I’m super excited to talk about Bobby’s new book called, Lead You. Bobby, thanks for coming on the show man.

Bobby Harrington: Awesome Hussein, good to be here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes sir. This is going to be great man, I’m really excited because I had the privilege of watching you literally start your book in one of our guided author experiences at Scribe, all the way to here, you know, listening to you now, talking about this book, which is going to be so great. Before we get into the book, you have an amazing set of stories that I really want to get into but I really want to lay down the foundation for our listeners, man.

I want to give them an idea of the man behind this book. I would love to give our audience a little bit of a personal background history if you will. Maybe where you grew up and what led you down the path that you’re on? Maybe somebody that inspired you to get on that path or an event that happened in your life, I’d love to hear some of those stories from early on.

Bobby Harrington: Yes, so I think from an early age, I learned to have an appreciation of leadership because my father was in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, and three tours in Vietnam. So he had a lot of knowledge leading people, leading men and I was aspired to be you know, sort of like him in some ways.

As I started to grow up in South Louisiana and, of course, I played football. That was kind of my first introduction to structure. And I write about that in the book. And then, from there, you know, I joined the Marine Corps. I was in the Marine Corps for four years and really, you know, between my parents and the Marine Corps is really what gave me the base foundation for leadership.

The Marine Corps, they teach leadership to everyone regardless of rank and they teach it the same way, and I believe that’s what makes the Marine Corps so successful. So that’s kind of how I got to being a leader and you know, I’ve been in the military, sports, private business, Fortune 100 company, recently retired and just want to take my 34 years and give back, you know? As a servant leader.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s really powerful. Can we talk a little bit about sort of what happened after joining the military and by the way, thank you for your service and your commitment to that, that’s amazing, and, of course, your father’s commitment and service. So applauding him and grateful for the opportunities that I get to have in living in the States, so thank you for the sacrifice. But on that note, where did that lead you? What happened next? What did you sort of get into where some of those leadership skills really start to come to fruition?

Challenges of LeadershipBobby Harrington: Yeah, no, great question. So after the Marine Corps, I got into oil and gas. I moved back home to Louisiana and it kind of seemed like everyone did that. And, you know, the leadership skills that I learned in the military really served me well because in oil and gas, there is a lot of structure, kind of like the military. Everything is not necessarily mission-focused but project-focused. So you know, it was sort of an easy transition from a leadership standpoint.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So man, I love that because your book talks about leadership but not in the sense of just leading others. It was really more in the sense of leading yourself and I think that’s an inversion of what we normally hear throughout leadership books.

Can you share maybe a specific example of how you led yourself and maybe that methodology has helped you or someone else transform their own leadership skills and maybe achieve some personal and professional success?

Bobby Harrington: Oh, absolutely. Before we lead others, we have to lead ourselves and what the Marine Corp did a great job is teaching leadership attributes. You know, decisiveness, knowledge, courage, showing up every day and that’s sort of a performance differentiator.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s really powerful. I feel like those interpersonal work and where you’re being taught that because I know, look, I went to university, I went to PSU, I went to get an architecture degree and it wasn’t…it was about the projects, the work, the art, the crafts, right? And I loved all those things. However, there was a part of me that loved teaching and I feel like teaching is sort of intertwined with leadership, right? But teaching is actually a lot of listening. It’s listening to the issue at hand or whatever it is, so that you can come up and formulate a strategy. And I think in your book, you know, you did such a good job of sharing those kinds of attributes that one has to sort of cultivate over time.

What would you say is like the biggest challenge people face when trying to develop their own self-leadership skills and how can they overcome those challenges?

Bobby Harrington: No, that’s great. I have a passion for teaching so thanks for that and when I teach, I learn. What I found over my 34 years is leadership is not taught in the industry per se. You know, folks hire for skills and not necessarily for character or leadership abilities. And, you know, that’s where I want to fill the gap. And that’s the challenge for the industry, is employers want—People already have leadership skills and qualities and people who go to these large companies, they want to get leadership training but most of these companies don’t provide leadership training or teaching.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s one of those things that you really…I feel like, unless you’re around some mentorship, unless you’re around, like you said, unless you’re in the military, unless you’re in a position where those attributes are displayed in a way that you can really gravitate towards, I feel like it’s really hard because you’re right, those things are not necessarily taught. Sometimes you’re naturally, you know, I feel like in my case, I feel like I was naturally leaning towards this teachability, speaking, all those kinds of – but it wasn’t refined by any means and I think professional career and like, learning and self-teaching, those are the time where I feel like the most growth because I was getting so uncomfortable.

So with that, in your opinion, what are the most important qualities for effective leadership or having effective leadership and how can individuals cultivate these qualities within themselves?

Bobby Harrington: Sure. You know, I think that’s focusing on the leadership— It’s kind of like three things: It’s focusing on leadership attributes, you know, choosing your core values depending on what stage you are in life and then really understanding what discipline is, right? Because now, discipline is sort of the core of everything. You can be taught, you can go to training courses but if you don’t have the discipline to cultivate these, just like you know, make a simple analogy of planting a seed., if you don’t tend to that seed and sow and water and pull weeds and stuff like that, then you’re not going to grow.

You know, it takes a couple of elements. One is receiving the training and two is going out and practicing and learning through your failures.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so important. I mean, I think the showing up every day and not worrying about what the outcome is of the day and the idea that you’re just trying to compound interest, right? Literally because you’re interested in the thing, keep showing up and let that compound because that will lead to sort of the knowledge and the wisdom and experience.

I love that because I apply a lot of that to my art and facing personal fears and all those kinds of things, it happens across the board, whatever thing you’re in or you’re into. It will, you know, I feel like fear has such a good way of showing up with different masks but in the idea of discipline and the idea of showing up, for you, what was that thing that you always leaned into and it kind of help drive that fuel if that makes sense, you know?

What is that fuel that you tap into to stay disciplined because it is a practice, it’s a maintenance. What is that or you?

Bobby Harrington: Yeah, so two things, you know, a desire and goals. When you’re in a leadership role, people are counting on you, you know? So for instance, football, if you’re on a team. So in American football, there’s 11 players. Well, there’s 10 other people counting on you, right? In the military, depending on if you’re in a fire team or a squad, there could be three other people counting on you or 11 others or the whole platoon. In business, it’s the same way. Your team is counting on you to accomplish a mission and I would say for me, I really never wanted to let down, you know, my organization, the person I reported to or my subordinates as well.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s really powerful man. I mean, I feel like it’s those individuals that you know, I feel like, when we close our eyes and we’re like, “I don’t know if I want to do this” and they sort of…they either speak through us or to us, you know? And voices in our head or they come to us through visions or it could be just like a memory and I think that is always a spark for me.

I just wanted to highlight that because there is some of the stories you were sharing really resonated with me. What advice do you have for individuals who are struggling to balance, you know, this idea of career success, personal fulfillment and family life? I know you talk about that a little bit and how can they use that self-leadership to achieve maybe a sense of balance and harmony in their life? I feel like it’s always an active balancing, right? It’s a constant maintenance but how do you approach this and what advice do you give?

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Achieving BalanceBobby Harrington: Yeah, no, that’s a great question. So I think, you know, I talk about this in the book, it starts with an honest conversation, right? To take inventory of where you’re at and where you want to go and start asking yourself the primary questions.

You know, “How did I get here, what do I need to do to change?” and then making a lean course of action and executing that course of action each and every day, a little bit every day because you know, the road is long in leadership, we’re never done. We’re never done. We’d learn every day and we’ll learn until we, you know, eventually retire, retire or you know, we pass on. Leadership is a lifelong endeavor and it’s something that you know, you have to do it or it will perish, right? It’s a perishable skill, to be honest.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s actually a very integrating segue. I like that you said that it is perishable in that you have to really continue cultivating it, continue growing it. I feel like when we think about leaders sometimes, we feel like they have it all together, right? Or they just know so much more than where we’re at. That they’re so far up the ladder or whatever it may be that they’re almost untouchable, right? And that’s honestly not the truth.

What’s your experience with that? When you got into those leadership roles especially in the gas industry where you had to make just from knowing you, you know, you had to make some tons of trips overseas and then to Africa and then to you know, parts of Africa, Middle East, whatever, what do you carry with you? What is that, you know, to continue achieving that balance, what’s something that you, I guess, in a way grounds you and creates an anchor for you to make sure that you have that balance?

Bobby Harrington: No, I guess it’s a drive to get better every day because I know I’m flawed. I’m not perfect. You know, to your point about leaders, you know, no matter how seasoned a leader is, they’re not perfect. None of us are perfect and I actually covered that in chapter 10. You know, there’s very, very few things in the world in life that are perfect and leaders certainly are not perfect. It’s a lifelong endeavor and it takes hard work each and every day.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: What’s interesting to me is in leadership, especially in your book and when you are talking about leading yourself, the biggest thing I think I learned about leadership growing up was just somebody pointed me to like a Nelson Mandela talk or something, like a speech he gave and there were some stories sort of attached around that and that he was always sort of you know, the reserved person listening to the people around him.

I love that a lot because in order to really know what’s happening, the listening to our self really has to happen first. You know, that was deeply profound for me. What are some things — you know for me it was prayer and meditation and once I kind of grounded myself in that space, I was able to really hear myself in a lot of ways and get more clarity and we talked about this I think in discipline and leadership and all those kinds of things. Just relying on somebody that has a sense of clarity is always appealing.

So what is it that you do or maybe share in your practice that helps you sort of remain in that clear-headed space where you can really strategize and think from?

Bobby Harrington: I try to keep a healthy sense of self-trust and self-trust is doing what you say you’re going to do and holding yourself accountable, right? Because the one person we can’t lie to is ourselves. So doing what you tell you’re going to do for yourself.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So I watched you not only practice this but I literally watched you write your book and you sharing your journey in our Scribe group. I loved it so much because it was like whatever terrain I felt like you were going through when you were sharing, you stayed consistent. You wrote pretty much daily until you got the first couple of drafts done, which was empowering to watch.

What was your favorite part of pulling the book together and what did you learn from this journey for the past year or so?

Bobby Harrington: Wow, that’s a big question and a great question—

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It is a loaded one.

Bobby Harrington: No, no, it’s great. You know, I guess what I gathered from playing football and the Marine Corp and martial arts, working in oil and gas is to keep moving, right? Recognizing that you’re going to have good days, you’re going to have bad days but guess what? Keep moving, don’t stand still. It’s kind of like decision making, you know, there is a right decision and a wrong decision and no decision and no decision is the absolute worst, just like stopping, right?

It’s easy to say, “Oh, you know I don’t want to write today” or you know, “Well, I am not really feeling good” just take the day off but you know, I hesitate to ever do that because then that will erode myself self-trust, right? So again, going back to self-trust. You know, right after self-trust is self-belief. You know, I can’t believe in myself if I don’t trust myself, same thing with believing in others. If we don’t trust them, then we can’t get past this. First we get to believe, if that makes sense.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s really powerful. What’s one thing you do to like, you know I guess, I don’t want to say build trust in yourself but what gives you that confidence? What’s something for a young man, you know I always think about the younger version of me, my 20-year-old self going up against the world, right? As a creative, you know for me, I cultivated that trust through confidence and confidence came for me was like I’m going to make a piece of art and I am going to put it out in the world and for me it was either sharing it, selling it or giving it to a friend, asking what they thought about it. That really helped me chip away at the fear of like people aren’t going to like my work or what I do or how I do it. So that I feel like helped me build my personal trust. What was that for you? What do you think helped really cultivate that trust with yourself?

Bobby Harrington: Well again, going back to doing what I say I’m going to do and you know, confidence, trust and confidence are things that are built through repetition, right? That is what I would tell somebody that is young. You know, you are not going to get it all in one day. Again, the leader’s journey is long. It’s like working out, right? You don’t go to the gym and get the 500-pound squat, you know, the second day.

Really I guess we could boil this down to knowing about and believing in delayed gratification, right? Knowing that you know, it’s going to take a while. It is going to take a while but there are things you can do. You know, if you read Lead Yourself, working on attributes, choosing your values, learning to live those, and I guess the main thing I would tell someone who is young is learn from your failures.

Learn to see failure as a learning opportunity, right? I talk about that in the book where there is a constructive side to failure and a destructive side. So I would ask people to shy away from the destructive side and look at the positives in it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful, man. I’m glad you shared that. I was hoping to get you there because yeah man, for me, I didn’t realize how much leadership has to do with really leading yourself. I mean, there are so many books about leading others, of course in your career, in your work and all those kinds of things and people find themselves in leadership roles but again, if you don’t have that personal trust, personal belief in self and those inter-workings sort of aligned in a way, then you can really scale in helping others.

I think it always start with ourselves, so I appreciate this book so much because you really put an emphasis on, “Look, before you really go out there and thinking you’re the hot shot of the show, you really got to know yourself and here’s some practical tips and tools to be able to do that” which I love.

Bobby, when readers pick up your book and finish it up and put it down. What do you hope they feel after putting it down?

Bobby Harrington: I hope they feel confident that they’ve got a place to start, right? Because going back to your comment about people being pulled up to be leaders, right? People nominally are pulled up because they did something great or they have the skill, right? And then they are thrust into a leadership position and all of a sudden, people are looking at them directly in the spotlight, it’s on them. They may or may not know what to do and I think by reading Lead You, you know folks will know what to do, you know? So leading themselves first.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful man, I love that so much. Bobby thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences with me today and the audience of course. The book is called, Lead You: The Winning Combination to Achieve Personal and Professional Success. So besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Bobby?

Bobby Harrington: Yeah, normally I’m on Instagram, I’m on Facebook and LinkedIn. Those are the main platforms where folks can find me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Very cool, my man. Well, congratulations on the book launch, amazing. Congratulations on retiring and becoming an empty nester, like man, you have it all going on right now, Bobby, it’s great.

Bobby Harrington: There is a lot going on brother.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man, that’s awesome. Well, I hope you get to enjoy the day. Again, congratulations to you on the launch of your book. It is going to be amazing and I’m sure it’s going to help so many people but mostly, thank you for your friendship and you know, just learning and watching you do your thing. And I know you’re working on book number two. I know that for a fact because I was there, again, watching you start your journey again. So that is really powerful, man. Keep up the great work. Again, thanks for coming on the show, Bobby.

Bobby Harrington: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Hussein.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: My pleasure.

The post Lead You: Bobby Harrington appeared first on Author Hour.

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My next guest reflects on her journey with Lyme disease, which is a complex condition that affects millions of people across the globe annually. Known as a great imitator, this confusing disease is often misdiagnosed as a myriad of other illnesses, leading to even more hardship on an already difficult path to healing.

Welcome back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined today by Cristina Randall, who is here to talk about her new book called, Hacking Lyme Disease: A Practical Guide for Reclaiming Your Health. Let’s flip through it.

Hello friends and welcome back to the show. I’m here with my friend Cristina Randall today and I’m super excited to have you, Cristina. Welcome to the show.

Cristina Randall: Yeah, thank you so much, I’m super excited to be here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, Cristina, you’ve written an amazing book, enriched with so much of your story and I’m really excited to get into it. The book is called, Hacking Lyme Disease, which again, we were just talking about this before we hit record that this is something a lot of people carry, and it’s obviously very important to you to get this message out but I love how you shared your story.

It was really deep and I found myself not only resenting some of the stuff, not because I have Lyme disease but some of the traumatic things that you’ve gone through, and just the chase and the hustle and bustle of life but then this thing kind of puts a halt, the stoppage in light, the big boulder that comes around and then you have to deal with that, and so you overcoming that is really powerful.

But before we get into the book, I really want to tell people a little bit about you, your background, where you grew up and what inspired you to get on this path that you’re on now or perhaps a person that inspired you? I’d love to know and share with our audience a little bit.

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Life Before LymeCristina Randall: Yeah. So my history, trying to think back, things that inspired me. So a little bit about my background, I studied computer engineering so nothing to do with health at all. I had a pretty healthy childhood. I didn’t really go to—I wasn’t ever in the doctor’s office. So pretty uneventful and then got into entrepreneurship and the startup world.

So throughout my career, I had done a whole bunch of stuff from investment banking in Japan to international development work in Southern Africa and a whole bunch of things. So when it came time to decide what I wanted to spend my professional career, I was kind of like, “Well, the startup scene is kind of cool.” But I felt frustration that a lot of the problems, at least, coming from Silicon Valley are narrow.

In a sense that they’re not really game changing for saving people around the world and building economies. So I understood that for me, that meant looking at big problems to work on. So I fell in love with Mexico through a number of sequiturs events, ended up there. So for me, emerging markets and working on big problems, either with infrastructure or payments or energy, health, that was where I wanted to spend my time.

So yeah, I got into the startup world and built today what would be the PayPal of Mexico, not as big as PayPal and we do payments, process a good chunk of e-commerce GDP in Mexico. So that was great. I had a good – I guess a way to cut my teeth in building businesses but that came at a price. So I sacrificed a lot of my health, the cost I paid for building a business was stressing my body both physically, emotionally.

So I had also ran marathons and done sports in a way that wasn’t very healthy, just constant stress with the business and so yeah. So when I got bit by a tick, my immune system and my whole body wasn’t really setup to deal with that. So that’s the backstory before Lyme, pre-Lyme and yeah, happy to dive into all of that. There wasn’t any particular event that inspired me.

I would say, the one turning point was getting Lyme because it shifted the direction of the next few years of my life and I ended up leaving the business, but fortunate to focus 100% on my health but yeah, that was it, I would say the turning point.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, definitely. There’s always, I feel like, with many offers that I get to have the opportunity and privilege to speak with, there always seems to be that moment in life where a trajectory shift happens. Whether it’s an event or a thing that happened to you, whether it’s health or a baby or my dad or whatever it was.

I mean, sometimes it’s unfortunate and sometimes it’s really positive and really good, but I feel like more so than not, I feel like there’s always something that, and I hate to say this but, punches you in the face and—

Cristina Randall: It was a big punch, yeah.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, makes you just like look at life yourself, just requestioning the whole thing, right? And sadly, sadly, unfortunately, it happens to be around health but it is the crown that we wear and it is invisible and I love, I absolutely love the powerful quote in which you used to open up your book which goes, “Everyone has a doctor in him or her, you just have to help it in its work.”

I love that so much because it is so true, I resonated with it deeply. “A natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well.” That’s one of those things I feel like at some point, we do discover and it’s up to us to take that initiative to help our bodies heal and this idea of, “I just need a doctor to give me X, Y and Z to tell me about my body, to heal my body.”

This responsibility is really ours, right? But it’s also very difficult and it takes a long time to get there. So I know there’s many events that inspired you to write this book, but can you tell me about the stories and times of like, when you started thinking, throughout your healing process of getting Lyme disease and then going through the madness that I feel ensued, right? When did you start thinking about writing this book and really, what moved you in that direction throughout your healing process?

Becoming A Lyme WarriorCristina Randall: Yeah. So by the time I had finished I would say with getting better, getting back to my baseline. So today, I’m, I would say, more vibrant and healthier than the Cristina pre-Lyme. So I consider myself very fortunate to have gone through and not only have gotten back to my baseline but feel better than that.

So when I came through that process on the other side of it, I just felt a huge responsibility. The whole experience of getting sick with Lyme is just so, so difficult, that’s why you typically hear people call them Lyme warriors because it’s like you need to have such tough skin and it’s just a terrible process.

So people that get Lyme are called Lyme warriors, I think maybe because of that but yeah, I just felt a huge responsibility to talk about the healing process and a lot of the things that helped me and what was interesting is that – so I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and saw more than 40 doctors and specialist from neurologist to cardiologist to energy workers.

A whole range of specialists both in allopathic medicine and more alternative, naturopathic medicine and what actually as pretty game changing for me was actually just the conversations with people who had gone through Lyme and hearing what they did. Those were these, you get these gold nuggets. So what I try to do in the book is just summarize a lot of these gold nuggets that I got and structured it in a way that was easy and yeah, that was my idea.

So the book is meant to be an ally for someone who is going through Lyme. It’s a very, very hard process, it’s very costly, it’s very frustrating. So the idea is to make it a little bit easier for someone that is going through it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s really powerful because I feel like from sharing from your personal experience, one can really identify where they struggle the most, and see you through transformation how they can be inspired to make their own transformation and really work through their healing process.

Could you share a specific moment or experience that stands out to you in your journey of regaining your health from Lyme disease? Is there a moment in time where you feel like, “Okay, I’m overcoming this?”

Cristina Randall: Yeah, so I think there is about three different phases. A first phase was like, I started to get these symptoms. For me, it was pretty night and day, so I went on a camping trip in California and then I was fine. I didn’t have any outward symptoms until about six months later when I got a dental procedure done. I had a dental infection and so shortly thereafter, I started to get symptoms, but it was very drastic.

So for me, I knew something was wrong even though I would go to different doctors and health professionals and they’re like, “You look fine, on paper, you look fine” and I was like, “No, this is not right. I know deep down inside, something is very wrong” and so for about five months, it’s kind of like a wild goose chase. Just going through the process of elimination and figuring out what I didn’t have and doing a whole bunch of test and finally after five months, I was working with, they’re called Lyme literate MDs.

So basically specialists trained to identify Lyme and then treat Lyme, and so I had a specialist test done and yeah, on the test results, I just lit up. This is a specialist test that you have to get from a lab called IGeneX and yeah from there, it was like, “Okay, yeah.” This, I knew immediately when I saw the test results, I was like, “Yeah, this adds up, this is what it’s at” and then, so that was the first phase.

It was just actually probably the scariest of all the different parts of my journey because you don’t know what you have. No one can help you and you gradually experience your body breaking down and your mind as well, because you start to lose cognitive abilities. Lyme and coinfection is really fatty tissue, right? So it affects your brain, it affects your nervous system, and so there’s those five months where just everything was falling apart, and I didn’t have answers.

So that was probably the scariest part, and then from there, it was like, “Oh, okay, okay.” Now, working with some kind of something so I know what I have to treat, and so at the six months mark, I went on this other part of the journey, which was like, “Okay, how do I get better?” which was probably equally as frustrating but not as scary because at least I would do these things and I would see an improvement.

And so a lot of it was self-experimentation, working with practitioners, but I would gradually see an improvement and I was gradually getting better. So yeah, that process took probably over a year, just the next phase, which was just getting better and throughout that whole process, I kind of documented everything that worked and the information.

I documented the science and also what I experienced firsthand, what I knew to be true, and so that is where the book came out because at the end of the year and a half, I had volumes of information that I didn’t know what to do with and so I was like, “You know, this should get out there in the world” and so yeah, at that point, It was just a question of organizing the information and making sense of it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that so much. In your opinion though, what is the most important thing? And I always think about this, what is the most important thing for people to understand about Lyme disease? How can we raise awareness? I know, obviously, this book is a component of that raising awareness but to improve diagnosis and treatment, what do you think the most important thing is for people to understand?

Cristina Randall: Yeah, I think there is all kinds of people. I think also for the general public, just to understand that this thing exists. It’s something that is real and it’s a big problem. So less than about half a million cases per year at 490,000, which is what the CDC is reporting now has grown a lot. We didn’t used to have that many cases several years ago and even that number is small.

A lot of practitioners and experts say that it’s actually the real number is more than 10 times that a year. So even with what the CDC is reporting as confirmed cases, which they only confirm a small portion of the cases is huge. It’s more than breast cancer, HIV, hepatitis C combined. So this is a problem and that’s just in the US. And even like commercial insurance claim data suggest it’s way more than that.

So there was a report looking at the cost of over about a billion in medical cost from Lyme-related insurance claims. So it’s a big problem and that’s why we’ve seen celebrities coming out about this because they’re using their platforms to talk about it because it’s the epidemic that no one’s talking about.

So for the general public, I would say that, just realizing that it exists and also like identifying how to recognize that someone could have Lyme disease. I think that’s another and we could get into that. And then the second part of my answer would be for medical practitioners. So if you get sick in New York or in Connecticut, the medical professions there are more trained to recognize Lyme disease.

So the CDC even recognizes that Lyme disease is a clinical diagnosis, meaning that doctors can diagnose it if it looks like a person has Lyme disease. So like if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, you know? But the problem for that is that if doctors and medical professionals aren’t trained in Lyme disease and there isn’t awareness on their part, that’s also part of the problem.

So to answer your question, I would say in two parts, for the general public and for healthcare professionals.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I really like that, this idea – I mean, I feel like you went out there and really took things into your own hands and that’s something, again, back to that initial quote of, “All right, there is a doctor within me.” My immune system can do remarkable things but what am I not doing or what am I doing that’s impacting that to do its job?

This idea of really taking control and I know you really – you go deep into this in your book, which is as a highlight like what advice would you have for others who may be struggling with this chronic disease and how can they take their health back into their own hands? What are the things that they could be proactive on and maybe you can share some of those with us?

What People Need to Know About LymeCristina Randall: I could talk for hours about it –

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s huge, right.

Cristina Randall: We’d have to be hanging out the whole day to get into those.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Which is why you wrote a book, right? Let’s be honest.

Cristina Randall: Yeah, which is why I wrote a book. Yeah, but from a very high level, my takeaway is that Lyme disease is systemic. It impacts your whole body, and it impairs your immune system. So you know, when someone is struggling with Lyme, they may not be able to deal with environmental toxins for example, and even a simple thing like my case, a dental infection, it just brought down my immune system.

Maybe looking back on my experience, if I had better lifestyle that didn’t have so much stress, if I didn’t have so many toxins in my body, if I didn’t have the dental infection, maybe my immune system would have been able to deal with the Lyme itself. So Lyme has been with us thousands and thousands of years, it’s not new per se. I think like a form in which it affects us is kind of new in the last few years.

But I would say it depends on the person because today we are impacted by a lot of things that bring down our immune system so that it isn’t able to deal with these infectious diseases. And one thing that really impacted me, some of my friends that actually got tested and relatives for Lyme disease, they actually did have antibodies to the bacteria barilla and then also co-infections.

When a tick bites you, it is not just one bacteria, right? It’s a package of bacteria, viruses, parasites, there’s the co-infections. Most people with Lyme actually have several other infections. Actually the general population if tested would have, the majority would have probably antibodies of some of these infections without ever noticing it, right? It’s a little bit disturbing to realize.

But because their immune system is able to deal with it, they never get burdened by these symptoms or it doesn’t become a whole pathology. So it’ a real thing and so I would say it depends on each person, how their immune systems are, what kind of infection they also get, because it depends on that bond that you get when a tick bites you, how many infections are in there.

How you’re set up for success or failure when a body deals with the disease, so from a high level, that’s what I would say before getting into what you can do about it is like, “Okay, how was your body set up to deal with it?” Are you balanced? Do you have other burdens that you’re dealing with? And then there’s lots of things you can do, like the mainstream treatment is antibiotics.

You know, rotating multiple antibiotics, pharmaceutical antibiotics for multiple months. Some practitioners will do this over several years, that’s probably more than half the people who treat the Lyme disease with antibiotics, and then depending on with the approach of your practitioner that you’re working with, some will include antibiotics, pharmaceuticals or herbal options but that’s just one piece.

So before even looking at different therapies, I would just back up and go back to my first point is, how is your stress, how are you moving your body, what are you putting in your body, what nutritionally, how does your nutritional status look like, how is your gut? We know how important all these positive microbes in our body are, so how is your gut? And I would look at that and then recognizing also that the biggest aha moment, I think, for me was how much these non-physical components of our health affect us and can manifest in actually physical ways.

So, mental health is a huge part, the trauma that you mentioned, trauma is a huge part, dealing with all these non-physical things as well. In my book, I have a chapter dedicated to those, which are the main pillars like how is your nutrition, how is your activity, how is your sleep, how is your stress? All these things even before because those are the big ones that you don’t need to really spend much money on.

It’s just there’s things that are in your control and then on top of that, there’s a whole bunch of stuff we can get into. So unfortunately in conventional medicine, there is not a good treatment regime, so the antibiotics are somewhat effective. Some people actually get well, some people don’t, but beyond antibiotics, there’s not really a good answer and the research is quite behind as well.

We have only three public on the trails on Lyme in the last 20 years, there’s a very, very small amount of funding dedicated to Lyme, so we really don’t have good treatment options. So it’s still, reflecting on the experience for me, it is like I was in this Hollywood movie because you do have to go into the wild, wild, west of alternative therapies, and I just did a whole bunch of stuff, and I just did self-experimentation.

Which is why I used the word hacking, like biohacking. It’s a lot of seeing what works for you. So yeah, I mean, I could get into a ton of stuff. I found ozone really helpful, I found there’s a magnetic therapy that was really helpful for me that I talk about in the book, there’s even Rife. There is actually an article that I saw, it was in the New York Times, I think it was about someone using Rife technology, which is kind of like using bioenergetics to address specific pathologies in the body and support the body.

Yeah, so there is lots of things that you can do, and I get into that in the book and one thing that’s also really important is detoxing. So detoxing is such a – it’s like there’s so much around the word now. It’s so charged because a lot of people use it hand wavy, but detox, making sure that your body is eliminating all these toxins. Because your body, when it kills off any infection, it is going to have these toxins that is producing inside your body.

So already with Lyme, your body is struggling to detox all your detox channels, so I dedicated a part of my book just to that, and there’s lots of things you can do to help support your body detox.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that so much and I think that the centerpiece of all of this is the idea of being proactive. At least thinking about, honestly it comes down to, “How can I help myself?” And that’s part of the equation. It is not all of the equation of course, there are many different types of opportunities out there that one can seek out. Of course, the things that I really appreciate about the approach that you took was these are things that you could do, just monitoring your eating, your bowel movements.

You know, keeping track of your health and really trying things that could benefit you. Because I feel like, and correct me if I am wrong, it sounds like Lyme also impacts people differently to a degree and you have to find your way of dealing, coping and managing it that is healthy and sustainable for you, and that requires you to be proactive. And so I just appreciate that perspective that you brought to the book.

Because again, it’s not tossing it up to, “Oh, try this one thing that works for everyone” right? Like it’s not that and that’s the reality of it and I feel like that’s probably true for most things, but in Lyme disease it is very true. And what’s really cool, and I’ll tell you this, I had an author maybe a month ago now who also wrote about Lyme disease, and he expressed similar things.

Where he essentially biohacked, tried different things and it sounds like it’s one of those things that because like you said, there isn’t that much research money in it, there’s not that many resources. It is one thing that we really got to take on our self and create a mission around it, and a healthy one and to really start. I feel like there’s an acceptance, and then there is that which is mental health.

Then there is the action, right? Which I really love, you kind of dip in both worlds. So I got to talk to you because I mean, writing a book is no easy feat. What was the most challenging part of writing this book and how did you overcome that challenge?

Cristina Randall: Yeah, you’re so right, Lyme affects people differently. With regard to challenges in the book, I mean like I said, I was already kind of done when I started. For me, Lyme tends to affect either—it is either like quite nervous system related or vascular. For me, or mobility at least, for me it affected my nervous system, my brain more. So I would take these notes too when I had appointments.

I would take these notes and be documenting what had worked, so I didn’t actually realize I was writing a book when I was writing it. It was just my manual that I used for myself and quite frankly, I still use a lot of things that I talk about in the book. While it’s specific to Lyme, it’s how do you empower yourself and focus on your health, not on your illness, on your health, but how can you become empowered so that you don’t need to depend on someone else, you don’t need to depend on a pill?

So it’s just like a brain download of stuff I had to learn and for better or for worse, I really treated it like a problem. I just threw stuff at the at the problem and saw what stuck, what worked. So throughout the year and a half, I was just doing that, I was just documenting it and I was also a little bit skeptical of – with Lyme, you’re forced to explore alternative therapies because western conventional medicine is not really set up to deal with a lot of these complex conditions, especially Lyme.

So you are forced to trail-blaze and figure it out. It’s really a survival thing because for me, I was like, “I want my life back. I know something is not right with my body, I want to get back to my health.” It was the biggest motivating factor when you aren’t able to use your body. So it’s like yeah, this is not okay, I want my life back. So I was very driven, I dropped pretty much everything else in my life to work on this and yeah, the book is a result of that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that and it’s a fantastic book. What’s one thing you hope your reader walks away from after finishing your book?

Cristina Randall: Oh geez, I hope they feel better. I hope they’re in a better place and yeah, if I can be that friend or ally to help them with these little golden nuggets that helped me, then if it’s one person, awesome. It will all be worth it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Definitely. Well, I love that so much Cristina. You really put something together that is powerful not just from a medical standpoint, right? Because it’s such – you’re not an MD or anything like that but it’s like you become an MD and you re-educate yourself to realize how much of a doctor you have inside. I really just resonated with that so deeply because I feel like that was a realization I had in my health journey.

It was like, “Oh man, these are responsibilities that I have to take on and I got to figure out one, two, and three.” I just appreciate that perspective, Cristina. You did such a good job putting all of it together. So I appreciate your experiences and your stories of course. The book is called, Hacking Lyme Disease: A Practical Guide for Reclaiming Your Health. Besides checking out the book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, all that good stuff, where can people find you and connect with you Cristina and perhaps reach out and ask more questions?

Cristina Randall: Yeah, thank you so much. They can find me at hackinglyme.org. So all the proceeds from the book are actually going to fund independent research and to testing, so that’s where I have more information about it. People can connect with me, reach out, I’ll have my information there but yeah, hackinglyme.org would be the right place. Also I’m on LinkedIn and all the other social networks but I would say that’s probably the best place to go.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful. Well Cristina, I’ve learned so much today. I appreciate your courage and your work, it’s an honor and a privilege having meeting you today. So thanks for coming on the show.

Cristina Randall: Yeah, thank you so much. It’s lovely speaking, speaking with you.

The post Hacking Lyme Disease: Cristina Randall appeared first on Author Hour.

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In time and as you become a parent, there are critical legal planning steps you need to take. Do you have a ‘sure to work’ plan to make sure your children would stay in the care of people you know and trust from the first critical hours through the rest of their childhood?

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and today, I’m joined by Ali Katz, who is here to talk about her new book called, Wear Clean Underwear: A Fast, Fun, Friendly—and Essential—Guide to Legal Planning for Busy Parents (Because Wearing Clean Underwear Isn’t Enough). This isher second edition. Let’s flip through it.

Hey friends, welcome back to the show. I’m here with my friend Ali Katz today, who just launched the second edition of her amazing book A Fast, Fun, Friendly—and Essential—Guide to Legal Planning. I’m really excited for this. Ali, thank you for coming on the show today.

Ali Katz: Thank you. It’s great to be here, I’m excited to share about the book.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. So before we get into the book, ins and outs of all the great stuff you share, I want to start to give our listeners a little bit about who you are, maybe your personal background, maybe where you grew up, and maybe a person or an event that sort of shaped the direction that you’re on today.

Ali Katz: Sure. Well, I will say that everything to do with where I am today and this book in general really came from this compelling desire that I had to have my children. I knew that I was going to have both of my children before I was 30, which in this day and age is kind of young. My daughter was born when I was just turning 26 years old.

So in some ways, we grew up together and they are the ones that are responsible for the first edition of this book and now, of course, the second edition as well because it was as a result of their birth that I realized there were major holes in the estate planning process that we use to make sure that kids raised by the people that their parents want in the way that their parents want if something happens to them.

I’m an estate planning lawyer and maybe I wouldn’t even have become an estate planning lawyer if it wasn’t for my children because I wouldn’t have even really realized the importance of estate planning but then once I became a mom myself, it became very clear to me, “Wow, I have a huge responsibility to my children and I really want to make sure that I am living up to this responsibility.”

When I went to law school — my daughter was actually born the year that I graduated from law school and my son was born the year that I started my own law practice a few years later after being in a big law firm for three years, one of the best law firms in the country and they really help me to realize, “Whoa, even though I have an estate plan in place” because I’m an estate planning lawyer after all, “If something happens to me and their dad, this estate plan has a number of holes that are going to leave them at risk of being cared for by people I don’t want. And I need to solve that problem and then once the problem is solved, you know, for my own family, I need to solve it for my clients and once I’ve solved it for my own clients, well, I need to make sure that I share that with the world.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful and I love how those moments in life sometimes, how they get us to think on a larger scale, right? You see a fuller picture, if you will, probably not the fullest but a fuller picture where you can see yourself being so valuable to others in helping them see this very important development and planning phase.

Things that I feel like most of us avoid. It’s like doing taxes, right? We just avoid it, we just don’t do it, we don’t want to deal with it because it’s hard and I don’t want to think about, you know, what happens when I pass and what happens to my kid. It’s such a – it’s a very emotional thing but if we can subside the emotions and get just a little logical, that’s where you are to help us kind of move forward.

I know you talk about estate planning, which for the most part, in your scenario and how you bring it out into the world, is kind of an older model and that there is a newer model that is emerging and one that you’re definitely in a lot of ways developing. Can you tell us a little bit about your planning methodology and what you like to call it? I think it’s really cool.

Ali Katz: Yeah, so it’s interesting because what you said is a lot of people don’t want to face the reality of death but what we found, and what I found throughout my life because it’s now been over 20 years since I‘ve been doing this work and as I get closer and closer to the reality of death, what I’ve found is actually facing death makes life better. If we didn’t have death, life would get kind of mundane and meaningless.

We wouldn’t appreciate it at the same degree and in the same way that we do when we tap in for a moment into the impermanence of it. It’s like your absence makes the heart grow fonder or you really love something after it’s gone or when you are just about to move away, you know, you’ve lived in like the same house or the same town for so long and you’ve really started to take it for granted and then just as you’re about to move away is when you meet all the best people or when you really start to love it.

Well, we can really approach death and life from that same lens and really look at facing death as this opportunity to love our lives a little bit more every day and what I have found that that has done for me is that that has really helped me to create the most incredibly amazing, living my best life every moment. “If I die today, I would die fulfilled” reality and I think is what we’re all striving for.

I think it’s really—when I look at the days of my life when I wasn’t happy, what was it that I wasn’t happy about or what was it that I really wanted? I was seeking fulfillment. I was seeking meaning in my life and I have sought meaning in all the wrong places, Hussein. Only to finally come to realize that the only place for me at least, to really find meaning is in asking the question, “If I knew I was going to die tomorrow or a month from now or six months from now or even a year from now, what would I be doing differently in this moment?” and then, to live that way.

To live that way and so in some ways, this book s that it is a book about legal planning, it’s got a funny title. It’s called Wear Clean Underwear and it’s called Wear Clean Underwear because your mom always told you to wear clean underwear in case you’re in an accident or, at least, my mom always told me that; “Wear clean underwear in case you’re in an accident,” but once you are a parent, wearing clean underwear alone is no longer enough.

There are important legal planning steps that you need to take as well and so this book is a series of three stories, choose your own adventure-style stories that really guide the reader step-by-step down the path of, “Well, what do I need to do? What are the legal planning steps that I need to take?” and it shares those steps in a way that it’s really easy to put yourself into the shoes of the people that the story is about.

So that you can really determine the next steps for yourself not from a place of not wanting to look at death but from the place of, “Okay, how do I use death to make legal and financial choices that create my best life or that leave my children and the people that I’m choosing to raise them or handle money for them in the best possible position that I can?” and just get this existential relief of knowing that I’m showing up fully for this life as I get to as an adult, which it turns out is pretty darn great.

It Happened to A FriendHussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful you know and bringing that closer to your mindset and saying, “You know, this is a gift.” It’s reminding yourself that you bring yourself back to the moment. You know, I think death is a very powerful way, like you said, to live in its opposite, which is life.

So get the most out of it and really – like the things – I’ve always tried to lean into the things that I feel are stressing me out or bugging me out or whatever it is, I’m really just trying to go for a quick jog or a walk and it just – I think that for me is like, what brings me to the moment and realize like, “Okay, what really matters here? How do I go through to my peace as supposed to go through this emotional process of whatever it may be in life?”

And yeah just remembering like, my own health and my presence, it’s so grounding but with that, you know, you do a lot of work in this environment, in this world for a lot of people. Can you share a story about a time when you witnessed the consequences of not having an estate plan in place?

Ali Katz: Yeah. So there are really two big problems that people face when there’s either no estate plan or an insufficient estate plan or a plan that fails. So starting with the no-estate plan. This one is a story of one of my best friends actually and she—it’s really unfortunate because she had always told me and everyone in our life together knew that if anything happened to her, she wanted me to be her decision maker for her healthcare decisions, for her financial matters.

We were best friends, I’m a lawyer. She actually worked in my company and yeah, we never did anything to get that handled, even though my company coaches lawyers and she was a coach for those lawyers, even though I’m an estate planning lawyer, I train other estate planning lawyers, I wrote the book on it, we never got around to doing it because, well, there was always so many more important things to do and we figured, “Well, she doesn’t have much.”

“It’s not that big of a deal, we just keep putting it off” and by the way, this is one of the biggest dangers. One of the biggest dangers is that you just won’t get around to doing it and it’s actually why we train the lawyers that we train in the way that we do because actually we have very clear systems in place to make sure that you get your planning done and in this case, we didn’t get the planning done because she didn’t use a lawyer.

Because we figured, “Well, she doesn’t have that much, she could just do it herself.” But of course, she never did. Then she was in a car accident and in a coma and I got called in because everybody knew that she wanted me to make decisions for her but then her mom flew in and when her mom flew in, her mom decided that she wanted to make the decisions and from a legal standpoint, she had priority.

And as a result of that, my friend did not get the medical treatment she wanted, did not get to be visited by the people she wanted and actually even got taken out of the state and out of our community and back home to be cared for by her parents, by her mom, which is not what she would have wanted. That cost my friend thousands of dollars because her mom used my friend’s money to have herself appointed as my friend’s guardian.

So while my friend didn’t have much, what she did had was then used by her mom to go to court and get appointed as her guardian. My good friend became a ward of her mother, meaning that her mother had complete control over her medical, financial, legal decisions and even her body, her physical location and it was pretty devastating.

Ultimately, my friend did recover, physically recovered, and took much longer than it needed to. She lost a lot of community in the process and a lot of her emotional and mental health as a result, that it took a long time for her to get back up and it didn’t need to go that way. It didn’t need to go that way, you know, if we had taken the steps that I lay out in the book and either my friend could have done it herself or if we had actually had her work with a lawyer not because it was super complicated.

But just to make sure that it all got done, there would have been a different outcome and what would have happened instead is that when my friend was in a coma, they would call me and then I would have just handled everything. No poor process would have been needed, no intervention of her mother, I would have made the decisions, my friend would have gotten the supplements she wanted and the community care that she wanted and she would have stayed in the town that we live in and it would have been a different reality.

The cost of not having a plan is significant, whether you have a little or you have a lot. It results in needing to go to court, it can result in assets that are lost and never found. We have $58 billion across the US in departments of unclaimed property and that happens because somebody becomes incapacitated or dies and nobody knows what there is or where to find it and so we’re really committed to making sure that that doesn’t happen.

Then the second piece is having an insufficient plan or a plan that fails and we are really more at risk of that now than ever before because there is a huge rise in DIY, do-it-yourself options for estate planning for wills and trusts and so people think, “Oh, I just want mine to do it myself” or there’s a big race to the bottom mentality among lawyers where it’s like, “I’ll just get as many clients as I can and charge as little as I can and maybe sell them some life insurance on the back end to make up for the money I’m not getting paid to do the right way.”

What happens is people end up with said documents, the will, the trust, healthcare directive, power of attorney, maybe guard denominations that they have created and they think when it’s done and they put that set of documents on a shelf or a drawer, maybe it’s staying in their computer and they put it away and they never look at it again. It doesn’t get updated, assets are not owned in the right way and then something happens.

Somebody becomes incapacitated and their family goes to pull up that set of documents and now that they’re meaningless, they don’t keep the family out of court. They don’t keep the family out of conflict and this is the exact thing that happened to the father-in-law when I was in law school. He had spent $3,000 on that estate line and this happened and I thought for sure that must have been malpractice but it wasn’t.

It’s really common practice and it’s only getting worse and where this book, Wear Clean Underwear, really lays out an alternative. It lays out an alternative to make sure that if you are going to do your planning because you want to make sure that things are as easy as possible for the people that you love, that your assets are not lost, that your family doesn’t get stuck in a court process unnecessarily that you know how to do it the right way.

Where To StartHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful and so important, and a few things. I am sorry about your friend, unfortunately, the events that unfolded but I’m sure you have tons of those types of cases where things just went astray. What advice would you give to someone who is just starting their estate and legacy and life planning process? What’s one thing just to think about at least?

Ali Katz: Well, of course, read the book, right? That would be number one but I think the important place to think about is to look around and just survey what you have and consider who would come forward, just practically speaking not even worrying about an illegal level at all like who will come forward to handle things in the event that you were in a hospital or at the event of your death and what would they need to understand.

What would they need to know about what you have, would they be able to find what you have? Would they know where it is, would they know how to find it? Would they know what to do with it once they did? Will they know how to transition it? Will they know how to transfer it? Will they know how to make sure your rent gets paid and your mortgage gets paid if you own a home? So survey that reality and determine, do I need help to gather everything together in one organized form?

So that when something does happen, somebody could come in, somebody of my choosing could come in and just know how to even find what I have. How to even find it, that’s the most important starting point, and then what do I want to happen to what I have and will the law carry out what I would want without me doing anything?

The answer is probably no, so then the next question to ask is, “Am I the type of person that is really organized, really diligent, really focused, I’m going assemble, I’m going to learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, handle everything and then do it myself or am the type of person that’s really better to have my hand held through the process? To really make sure that it gets done instead of trying to do it on my own.”

When I think about estate planning, I’m really thinking about first of all, what is the nature of your family dynamics and your assets, and then what is the nature of how you operate? Am I a procrastinator or am I a do-it-yourselfer? Am I super organized or do I really need organizational support? That is really going to help you get clearer on, “How much should I just try to do things on my own and how much should I try to work with somebody to get supported?”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s really powerful. I think for me, I’m always needing support. I always need somebody to help me through the different things that I am not thinking about because to go out and like educate myself individually and make the time for it, that’s a quest in and of itself. Like your book states, sometimes we’re just too busy for all of that especially raising the kids, running around, work, life, all the things and it just keeps getting put behind and it feels like the further you are away from it, the harder it is to get back to it.

For me, I think engaging with someone that could bring it into my radar every six months, every year, or whatever it is so that I stay at least close to it and keep it updated and whatever it is and that’s true to accounting. That is true to life goals and all of the things and I love that because you share that. You share, we take birthdays and we take these specific days out of the year, we do all this planning for them but we don’t plan for the really important things that could, sadly, leave a mess, and how to just mitigate that and what you ultimately want is the health and happiness of everyone.

But if you don’t set up the system to do that, it’s not going to be very pretty and obviously, this is where your line of work really goes into very deep but also not only are you speaking from experience, you’re sharing really practical things that people could do, which I love all throughout your book. So, when your readers pick up the book and get through it and finish up, how do you want them to feel? What do you want them to feel when they’re walking away from it?

Ali Katz: Clear. They’re clear on their next steps. So yeah, after reading even just one story in the book because there are three stories, three different situations that we walk the reader through on a, “choose your own adventure” story format, so that’s fun but even after just reading one of those, my hope is that you will feel clear on exactly what you can do next for yourself and the people you love and you’ll know how to take that next step. You’ll just have a level of clarity that you did not have.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s super powerful. Ali, thank you so much for sharing your stories and your experiences with me today. The book is called A Fast, Fun, Friendly—and Essential Guide—to Legal Planning for Busy Parents. My apologies, the title of the book is – go ahead, Ali, tell them what it is.

Ali Katz: The title of the book is, Wear Clean Underwear.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love when you say it, it’s just funnier.

Ali Katz: A Fast, Fun, Friendly and Essential Guide to Legal Planning for Busy Parents, and it is, as I said called, Wear a Clean Underwear because once you’re a parent, wearing clean underwear alone is no longer enough. There are important legal planning steps you need to take and this book will help you figure out, “Do I need a thong, do I need a false spanks coverage? What kind of a plan do I need? What sort of legal plan do I need to make sure that my assets are fully covered in the event that something happens to me?”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: See? I love that, I couldn’t have said all that better than you, that’s awesome, which is why you’re the guru behind this book and again –

Ali Katz: That’s right.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: This is the second edition. I’m grateful to have had you and had this conversation today, Ali. It got me thinking about some stuff too, so I’m going to be reaching out on LinkedIn. Besides checking out the book on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and all that good stuff, where can people find you?

Ali Katz: The best way to find me or by the way, one of the lawyers that we have trained in the systems and methodologies that we’ve created here is at personalfamilylawyer.com and they have nearly 500 lawyers across the United States and branching out internationally now, who have been trained in my heart center counseling based methodology for helping families to make great decisions about how to handle family dynamics and assets in the event of incapacity or death and really being a true trusted advisor to their clients throughout life and then to their families of beyond and so you can find those lawyers as well at personalfamilylawyer.com.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Ali, thanks again, appreciate you and your hard work on this book, congratulations.

Ali Katz: Thanks, Hussein. Okay, thank you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely.

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The world needs a ton of fixing and some serious reframing and how we can move humanity in a direction that is both healthy for our environment, for our communities and certainly for ourselves. My next guest offers a unique glass-half-full approach and offers many practical solutions to humanity’s biggest problems.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and my next guest is James Baker, who is here to talk about his newest book, Live Forever and Fix Everything: A Practical Plan for a Future That Works for Everyone. Let’s get into it.

Hello my friends and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m super excited today to have my, friend James Baker on the show. James, how are you feeling today? I’m super excited to have you on.

James Baker: Nice to talk with you Hussein, I’m thrilled to be on the show and I’m thrilled to have my book out. I can’t wait to talk about it with you and your listeners.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I’m super excited because you know, like I said, before we got on the recording, that I’ve had a little bit of time with your book and I’ve been kind of sifting through it and man, it is so powerful. It really, like I said earlier, it has this really, glass half-full perspective but it’s much deeper than that.

However, before we get into the book, I really want to give our listeners an idea of who you are and your personal background, perhaps where you grew up and maybe someone that inspired you the most while growing up or something that inspired you. Do we go there a little bit?

James Baker: Well, I’ll date myself here. I remember as a child, I watched my parents watching the television and I’m pretty sure when I pieced it together, it was President Eisenhower’s farewell address but the TV was funny and the top of the TV made everything enlarged, so it looked like he had this big pointy head, a very cone-shaped head on the TV and I could just tell how intent my parents were on what he was saying and I thought, “You know? I don’t think I’m ever going to be that guy on the TV but you know, I could fix the TV, I could make it. Someday, I will be able to make his head look like a normal human being.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s amazing. I love it. So that got you into what world? More technology, what did that lead you into?

James Baker: Well, it just led me to this kind of confidence with physical reality that things can be fixed or changed or you know, it’s making things and modifying things in physical reality is like a language and it’s a language that I spoke and a language that I understand. I used to love to build tree houses. I didn’t really care to play in the tree houses but I would. At one point, when I was seven years old, I had 60 tree houses in this woods behind my house and I got in big trouble because the owner of the woods found them and found my parents and found my house and said, “Don’t do that.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow, so it sounds like you grew up sort of curious but also seeking ways to fix the world’s problems and in your case, building things, making things, shapeshifting reality and really understanding your place in the world and how you could be, I guess, in a way of service. So that leads you into university thinking in this way and what kind of line of work did you get into?

James Baker: Well, I took a little detour there. My father then became a US Foreign Service officer. So I lived in India, Turkey, Pakistan for a number of years and then came to college in the United States and I had this fantasy that I would be among my own, you know, my own countrymen, countrywomen and that I would find a place and fit right in and feel at home in a way that never had.

Because I was used to being a foreigner, to the point where it was almost more my identity than my circumstances but I also had this fantasy that there were circumstances where that wouldn’t be true. So I show up in college in Portland, Oregon. I went to Reed College in Portland, Oregon and I felt just like a complete fish out of water, “What was I thinking? This is not…” I kept turning over every rock and not really finding this notion of home that I thought was there.

Although, you know, I couldn’t have said any of this in words but one day, it just clicked that, “Well, you know, if I don’t find a place, maybe I can make one.” So at that point, I kind of changed my focus from literature and philosophy to more of…well actually, I got a job working in a radio station. I fell back on my sort of tendency or my interest in electronics and technology and so I became a self-taught engineer.

Over the course of years, I then worked in that field and started businesses in that field. So that’s kind of my background in a nutshell.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Very powerful. Yeah, what a journey, man. You know, for me, this is the place where I feel like humanity connects to who you are and how your book came to be for me and our audience, of course. For me, you know, by just you sharing that, you know, I grew up in Portland, Oregon, I actually live very close to Reed College. So it’s just interesting, you know, the way the fabric moves us, right?

But I came from like a refugee family and sort of immigrated here and so it’s interesting to me that you also kind of grew up in the Middle East or at least had a taste of what that waws like for you and feeling like a foreigner in that kind of environment to where I felt, of course, a foreigner here. So you know, these kinds of stories and these kinds of things happen in this overlap when we get to share our stories, which is so powerful about you know, writing a book and who we are.

But you know, in your book, Live Forever and Fix Everything, which is just an amazing title, you cover a wide range of topics that are impacting humanity. Can you tell me a little bit about the process of you sort of going through and choosing the topics to include in the book because it’s such a complex range, right? How did you go about that process?

James Baker: I guess I started from the premise that the world’s problems are interrelated and it’s probably not wise to try to separately solve everything piece meal, given that there is such a synergy between either cascading problems or cascading or reinforcing solutions or improvements and I guess I want to be careful here to not act like there’s necessarily one solution to everything and I don’t think that my book is by any stretch the only way that the future can turn out in a positive regard but it’s one way.

So I decided I would just thread my imagination through every problem that seemed overwhelming by itself and find the synergy there. So I talk about our relationship to nature, for example, including climate change and the oceans and you know, there’s hundreds of ways in which the way that humanity has dealt with the natural world is not, you know, not the best thing we could have done.

But probably closer to home, I try to deal with ways that people treat each other. I talk about you know, everything from mass genocide to micro-aggressions, along a continuum there. Again, try to weave together how taken from a stance of just kind of backing up and starting over, how would we organize human relationships, how would we organza society and with my emphasis and my background in technology, I see of course, the way that social media has changed relationships and you know, before that, literacy.

And so I try to project that into the future in terms of what could we do with new technology that’s on the horizon or maybe over the horizon but just not in widespread use yet. So then I found, you know, kind of breaking down all the world’s problems there. I don’t try to be exhaustive but I try to kind of batch things into a list that covers all the bases and I pretty much sorted everything into kind of eight big columns, eight big categories.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s very powerful because again, you know, you talk about it in the beginning of this amazing book that you talk about, you know, you bring me right into the three sort of ultimatums that we have. Can you talk about those sorts of three things that we really have to understand about humanity moving forward? And then we’ll go in there a little bit deeper. Can you share with the audience what those three things are?

Three Directions of Humanity’s FutureJames Baker: Yeah, right at the introduction of the book, I say the future of humanity can go one of three ways. Number one, we annihilate ourselves and go extinct. Number two, we continue to muddle along. Number three, we learn to live forever and fix everything. So and of course, this is my book is about option number three.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, so talk to me about that, you know? How do you — you know, to conceptualize this idea, it was living forever and fixing everything, obviously not all at once. So I guess, in your scenario and in your case studies, where do we start with where we’re at right now as individual, as I guess, businesses and perhaps policy making? Where do we go from here?

James Baker: Well, I separate out the live forever from the fix everything. I mean, death is one of the things I want to fix but I’m making it a separate category in this regard because living forever and the immortality is never a state that we obtain, it’s always a work in progress. We could, you know, live on for thousands of years and then die the next day. That’s always a possibility.

So it’s always one day at a time but what changes is the nature and the flavor of those days. If we’re not anticipating a long and painful decline or possibly a short and you know, it could be short and painless decline but in any event, the difference is that we live I think with more inner peace, with more resolve. It’s clear that procrastination will not pay off anything that’s worth doing eventually is worth doing now.

Anybody that we don’t get along with, we can’t say, “Well, I’ll just ignore them” and eventually the problem will go away.” No, we have to deal with that. Anything that we are going to the earth that’s unsustainable we’ll go, “Well, I’m going to be one of the ones here to reap the effects of that.” So it leads to a deeper sense of living. Then the very same way that phrase, live each day as if it’s your last, it’s the same thing.

It’s like if you live each day as if you’re going to continue living, you’re going to live more profoundly in the moment and I think that more than anything else, it’s that attitude that we need and I talk about immortality thinking and death row thinking and you know, I use the example, it’s really hard to maintain a healthy weight and stop smoking and all that if you’re on death row. You know, you know you’re going to be executed.

It’s sort of like, “What’s the point?” and I think we all suffer from some of that psychology just given the way that our lives have been but medical science and non-medical science is changing in a way that makes immortality sounds like a really long time but think about in terms of escape velocity.

In other words, if we can extend human lifespan like what we have done, we’ve extended it, you know, 40 years or so over the last hundred years. Well, if we could extend it another 40 years over the next 40 years, you can see where this goes, we stay ahead of the game.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Interesting and very powerful. I like this idea of, it’s bringing your attention back to the moment, bringing your attention back to the reality of your awareness and the more aware we become as to how all of these interchangeable, interconnected things impact us, then it’s time to make improved decisions, right?

I think, if I’m not mistaken, this idea of, “If I’m living forever, then how do I sustain that, you know? What does that look like?” But then at the same time, I could potentially die tomorrow but if I don’t know that, then I have to sustain this existence and my relationships with everything I‘m around, my environment, the people around me, all these things.

That’s a very powerful way to approach it because in the face of death, I guess we’re all naked, right? You said a lot of our ego are traumatizing sort of events because I feel like in that moment, for me, I realize that when my father passed that “Oh wow, like this is certainly going to happen to me” there’s no question.

So, how am I really going to live my life moving forward? And when you come to terms with, I feel like that side of yourself and humanity, like this shift in thinking really starts to take shape and place. It’s not, I don’t think it’s overnight. I guess, perhaps for some people, it might be but yeah, like you know, you talk about this in chapter seven, the concept of immortality and its potential impact on society, which is again, very powerful.

You go deep into that and I…a lot of our audience to go pick this book up because it made me sort of really think about my immortality and what does it mean to live on and I love the distinction between living forever and fixing everything. There are two different worlds. So in Chapter 5, you addressed the importance of relationships and how they can be improved.

Can you share some of the key takeaways you hope readers will gain from this specific chapter around relationships?

James Baker: If you look at the nature of society, we’ve done a fantastic job and capitalism for example, has done a fantastic job at allocating scarce resources through the price system. I refer to Maslow’s five hierarchy of needs with the physical being at the bottom and then safety, belonging, esteem and self-actualization.

But our world economy really only deals with level one, the physical reality and so we don’t get rewarded in esteem for the good we do in the world. I mean, maybe a little bit indirectly but I think we could build in a world economy that addresses not only the physical reality of goods and services but the place where we actually live inside are in our experience.

And by this, I mean that there are things that we could do for each other that we don’t do because maybe we do them a little bit but it’s not organized in a structure the way that an economy is, so that we could have a very straightforward procedure that translates the good that we each do in the world into a kind of currency that is the stuff of esteem and safety.

And by this, I mean the real safety to be ourselves, both tender and bold at the same time, as well as just cordial in our relations with each other. So I first back up a little bit and talk about relationships as they are, I think frankly, devolving under what I call surveillance capitalism.

I mean, other people call it surveillance capitalism where there’s a sense that we’re kind of being tracked and monitored and it’s going into our permanent record and things like that as supposed to a world of safety and honest scheming to genuinely make each other’s and our own lives better. That’s not the focus of most people’s actions when they get up in the morning and it could be.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s very powerful because I feel like you know, this idea that you know, how we see ourselves in all of this really matters and I think throughout your book, you discuss very practical, you know, it seemed like very practical solutions to the problems that face humanity. Would you be willing to share one or two examples of those solutions that you believe have the most potential for creating a better life or a better future.

Solutions to Humanity’s ProblemsJames Baker: Sure. One of the things that I imagine, I’ll get, you know, why they criticized, I take the notion of urban density, which I’m in favor of urban density. I take it to its natural conclusion and go, “What if we built basically one giant city for all of humanity now and in the future at the peak human population?” which I’m estimating to be about 11 billion people and instead of having the buildings and trees and cars and bike lanes and train tracks and all of the things that we build in a city, if we just thought that through from the beginning again, what could we do, and it’s surprisingly practical.

I come up with a cylindrical city of basically one enclosure, one building, although it’s bigger and more robust than a building with train tracks and things inside, it is only about 60 miles around, a cylinder about 60 miles around, 150 stories tall and then surrounded by two concentric rings. The first one is vertical farms and the second one is solar power energy collector, solar cells and some of the other statistics are I think very cool.

Like you could meet face-to-face with anyone in under 12 minutes, so imagine the world with that level of convenience. The other part of course is that 99 plus percent of the land that we occupy could revert to the wild. You could still go camping but we would take a much more modest hit on nature this way and I think live in a way that could be spectacular. Honestly, of the few people I’ve talked to, it totally repulses some of them.

They go, “Wow, that’s interesting. I’d never live there” and I go, “Would you go there on vacation?” and you know, not so much. So I look forward to having a dialogue on this one because in my mind, it’s this fantastic place with, honestly, with gardens, with trails, with nature, with I’m imagining the walls are glass in many cases and filled with plants that are for ornamentation but also for dinner.

I’m imagining something that I wish we would do now that is create patterned laminar flow airflow in the buildings, so that we don’t inhale each other’s exhale and we pretty much eliminate respiratory virus transmission that way and I think that we can do with engineering what we have done with space but we can do it a whole lot better. Anyway, that’s just one of the ways I talk about addressing a particular problem, in this case, the problem of humans relationship with the natural world.

The other key element of that that I forgot to mention was that all of the rooms that we live in collapse accordion style when they’re not in use. So if you think about your house or whatever you sit, I mean, just think about where you’re sitting right this minute or standing or whatever you’re doing, how many rooms are in the building and how many of those rooms have people in them?

All of the rooms without people in them don’t really need to take up space while they’re unoccupied and with, I don’t know, I am reluctant to call it robots but with mechanization, those rooms could just crunch into almost nothing and then you could have as many rooms as you want just only one or two at a time.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, so probably this idea of like a room expanding. You know, I studied architecture in school, so this is right up my alley in this world of thinking in the future and what does living look like and feel like and I think the more time we can spend outdoors, right? And our space is sort of get rid of us in a way throughout the evenings or the day, whatever it is, so that we can explore nature in a beautiful new type of way, right?

Thinking about those kinds of things is so powerful. Have you seen the concept and I’m not sure if they started yet or not, it’s called The Line in Saudi Arabia.

James Baker: In Saudi Arabia, yeah, Neom.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, have you seen this? What are your takes on that?

James Baker: I have seen some of the plans, plans keep evolving and changing. It’s kind of all one line. Honestly, I think it’s a little grotesque. It doesn’t feel to me like it’s really focused on living in harmony either with nature or with each other. It feels a little bit like flaunting wealth. I don’t mean to be…

Hussein Al-Baiaty: No, no, no, I appreciate that perspective because it was interesting. I feel like some of your ideas sort of exists in this potential space, right? In this idea of a future, what does a future city look like, all those kinds of things because they’re so unnatural and how it’s positioned, all these things are so—they very much push the limit of how we think about ourselves and how we live.

So that kind of creates the friction, I think for me, and it sounds like it does for you too and you’re right in the sense that is this a flex of wealth or is this actual thinking about how do we create sustainable cities that can in capture so many people but make it in a way that is very healthy. Yeah, that’s a very interesting sway between those two things for sure.

James Baker: My thought is if I look where I am right now, I don’t really see anything natural. I see walls, I see a ceiling, I see a door. If we’re going to live in a place that is of our own construction anyway, let’s make it art, let’s make it creatively inviting and then the same with nature. I remember in Hawaii, I stayed in a resort or a hotel there one time where all of the transitions from inside to outside were graduated.

So there was kind of a continuum between the garden and the lobby for example and I imagine that. So I am imagining in the city that I imagine, I’m imagining at the top 15 floors have glass or transparent floors and so on the very top, you’re outside but the sunlight trickles down through the open spaces. You are not being spied upon by people down below. There’s a big circle that follows you around on a system like an LCD screen.

They kind of ebb and flow and move quietly and most of them are just decoys but some of them are to hide the movements of specific people. From below, it feels like the sun is wafting through the leaves. So 15 floors down, you’re under a deep canopy, it’s like being in the Black Forest but two floors down, it’s like a sunny day in the park with some trees overhead.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s so powerful. You know, you have this very unique vision and you eloquently lay it out throughout the book and you know, there’s tons of practical solutions, you know, building a giant city is one of them. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, this advents in of course, crypto currency and how does that play into, I know you talk about that a little bit but how does the financial world look in a future where we could potentially live in maybe multiple types of cities like the one that you described in the future?

What does that look like? What does financial, I guess, what does capitalism look like at that point?

Future of the Financial WorldJames Baker: I devote more pages in the book to basically reinventing or restructuring the money system. I spend more pages on that than anything else. I do it twice. In the first case, I come up with a money system that it kind of mirrors the system we have but it’s different in that each person mints their own currency. In other words, you have a currency that is based on the full faith and trust of you, Hussein, and so how much is that worth?

Well, it’s basically worth your word. It’s worth your history, it’s like your points on eBay or Airbnb or something like that but with a whole lot more nuance and specifically, it’s based on not just do you pay your bills on time. That’s a pretty low bar. It’s actually based on are you a positive influence in the lives of the people that you touch with your economic transactions.

So instead of just delivering good customer service of doing what you say you’re going to do or being a good customer by not flaking out on your bills, everyone is motivated to be thinking ahead to you know, “How can I actually do better than what’s expected?” So your rating in this regard, it doesn’t stop when you get to what we now think of is perfect. It really just starts there and gets better.

So if you read a book for example and then over the decades it changes your life and then you come back to how profound and influential it was, you can retroactively adjust its value to you, which then is feedback that is put into a system that will help other people who are interested in the same sort of thing be able to find and value that book and you mentioned crypto. I talk about cryptography and cryptology and I call it all crypto but I am not talking about cryptocurrency specifically.

I’m talking about the technology that, well, hopefully keeps your bank information safe and your web searches harder to snoop on but I take that technology and use it kind of as a building block. I think there are just so many places where that technology can alter the rules of the playing field of how we interact with each other in a positive way but only if enough people understand what’s possible and I liken it to electricity.

We pretty much all have electricity literacy. We know that electricity can make recordings of accurate visual and auditory recordings of what happened, you know, last week but we also know that it can’t show us recordings and audio-visual things of what’s going to happen next week. We innately have that sort of literacy about electricity and I used the thought, it doesn’t really matter if we know exactly how it works as long as we know who to call when it doesn’t work.

But we need that basic literacy of what it can do and what it can’t do. So I think when we each get that or you know, when enough people get that notion, the very powerful things that cryptography can do, alter relationships and human behavior in a positive way. I think that that will really reflect public policy, you know, law and trade and so on.

For example, there are ways of having a kind of a continuous surveillance state in which no one can actually see what’s being recorded unless something horrific happens and enough people who were there voluntarily offer to give up their privacy and this is not because we trust some system, it’s because we understand and trust the math and the logic of cryptography. So if you have a system like at the Boston Marathon bombing.

So if you were standing there, picking your nose or whatever and there’s a public outcry of like, “Anybody here please let us look on the video on this” you’re going to go, “Ah, you know, so they see me picking my nose. Okay, I will do that for the public good.” If it’s, I don’t know, somebody selling weed in a state where you’re not supposed to do that, you’re probably not going to get that public response.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s very powerful and wherever you are in that sort of spectrum, the idea is that there are potential solutions and how we look at those solutions can really impact how we see our self and see our communities, I think it’s all very powerful. James, writing a book is no easy feat. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of figuring out how much of the cup that you fill from the waterfall of wisdom, right? And really bring forth to the reader, what was your favorite part of putting this whole book together?

James Baker: Boy, that’s a good question.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I stumped you, didn’t I? No.

James Baker: You did. You did. I had a few moments where I just felt inspired as I was writing and those made it into the book almost verbatim and then I had days and days where I would just beat my head against the wall but I discipline myself to just keep writing and never look back and just spit stuff out and honestly, I would say that that totally didn’t work the first time and I ended up with a giant heap of unusable material in no particular order.

But what I was able to do is to sort and categorize all of that and kind of put it into piles of like topics and then sit back and I spend about three weeks organizing it all into an outline and then after I had that outline that covered what I wanted to say, I was able to go through that process again of just writing and not looking back and end up with something that was pretty good or that you know, could be edited into the book.

I think this is kind of what you were saying, Hussein, it’s I try to make it fast-paced so that you’re not left studying something. You are left thinking, “What happens next?” and I think that in most cases, I was able to do that with possibly two exceptions where I have to apologize all around because what I wrote was a compromise between what some very interested and technical people might want in terms of detail and what would be too boring for other readers.

So I expect that almost everybody will find that a little bit wanting in one direction or the other and I’ve tried to kind of split the difference and then I put all the numbers and calculations into an appendix at the back. If it was me, I would read every word of that but then I’m not my average reader, so I don’t expect the average reader—

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s there for whoever needs it, yes, definitely. Well, James my friend, I mean, it’s been an honor sitting with you and just learning a little bit about the way you see the world, you see yourself, you see the rest of us and how we can all come together through building relations and improving and really looking to the future optimistically and realizing there are plenty of solutions available to us.

It is how we choose to see ourselves and our future generations but you really put a spotlight on these practical solutions, which I really love and I’m glad we kind of got the opportunity to dive into them and again, an honor sitting with you and getting to know you a little bit further. I learned so much, so thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences of course with me and the audience.

The book is called, Live Forever and Fix Everything: A Practical Plan for a Future That Works for Everyone. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you James?

James Baker: My title, liveforeverandfixeverything.com, is the website. You can also do Live Forever Fix Everything, it works with or without the “and” dot com and I have my email on there as well if people want to reach out and comment on anything. I try to respond to each one or if they are very similar, I group them together and respond to two or three in the same response.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful. Well again James, thank you so much for compounding your entire, I feel like, field of wisdom and really helping us see a better, brighter, more beautiful future where we can really be sustainable and work in ways that serve all of our communities and for certainly for sure, back to serving ourselves in those positive ways. So thanks again, much appreciated, have a fantastic rest of your day, my friend.

James Baker: Thanks Hussein.

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Effective cybersecurity strategy requires creating a culture of security awareness. As remote work and new technologies transform our digital landscape, security risks have multiplied. A comprehensive security awareness program is required to ensure everyone understands how to avoid risks.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by Lise Lapointe, who is here to talk about her newest book called, The Human Fix to Human Risk. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the show. I’m super excited today to have my friend, Lise Lapointe here to talk about her new book. I’m super excited to have you. Thank you for your time today.

Lise Lapointe: Thank you for having me, really happy to be here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely. The book is called, The Human Fix to Human Risk, and honestly, it’s one of those books that at first I’m like, “Oh, here we go, cybersecurity. I know it’s important, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about or doing, and it’s going to be really techy,” but it’s not. It’s actually really easy. Now, I don’t want to say easy to read, but it kind of pulls you in and simplifies the context.

But before we get into the book, I want to get to know you a little bit more and our audience to get to know you a little bit more. So Lise, can you tell us a little bit about your personal background, where you grew up, perhaps, and maybe a person or an event that led you to the path that you’re on now?

Lise Lapointe: I’ve been born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and I lived all my life here. I’ve been raised by my grandmother because my mother died when I was really young, and my grandmother was an entrepreneur in the 20s and the 30s. So that was pretty exceptional, she didn’t make any difference for me or my brother to be women in business, and my father has been raised by a mother like that.

So they really encouraged me, of course, to go to school. My father was an entrepreneur also. He preferred us being professionals because he thought it was very difficult to be an entrepreneur, but we all finished, the three of us, being entrepreneurs even though we went to university and I studied to be a teacher.

The way it happened, it’s funny, but my brother used to work in IBM, and he was selling computers, and they had those new computers, display writers that were 80, 86 computers. So you could program them, and that was pretty new at the time because that was like in the 1980s, beginning of 1980s, and he saw an opportunity of developing and counting software on that platform that was dedicated to word processing, and he was selling computers to a school, and the college said, “Okay, but we don’t know really that new computer, we need a teacher. Nobody knows that computers could teach.”

“So I know a teacher.” So he came to my house with this computer. He said, “I think you can be the perfect person.” You know, being a salesperson. I said, “Oh yeah, okay, I’ll do that on one condition. If I get trained for it.” You know? So they trained me, I developed the course, and that’s the way I started in IT. I taught that course for a little while, and after we started our first business, which was developing accounting software, and I started a training company after that, included in the company, that was Micro Code that I sold like in the 2000s, beginning of the 2000s.

After that, I really wanted to go on to product, be international. So since I was in IT and I knew e-learning, I was like [this is] a natural path for me. So I started Terranova and security awareness, and after that, all the markets started to change, and the Internet and everything, so it began to be quite a journey.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/security-logo-60504/

How the Cyber Security Landscape has ChangedHussein Al-Baiaty: Wow, what a journey, and I think starting off young — and I always ask these questions specifically to kind of connect the dots between where you are now and sort of what influenced you, and it sounds like your grandmother having an entrepreneurial spirit, there were computers probably while she was growing up, but they were not nearly what they are today.

Lise Lapointe: No, no.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Of course, but this idea of leaping into something very new, very cutting-edge, and then going ahead and teaching it and training courses and then, of course, it folds into the Internet, and it just gets bigger from there, I found fascinating but you kind of started leaning into the landscape of cybersecurity and I think, today in our world, I can’t imagine the Internet without cybersecurity.

Like, I just, I can’t imagine putting anything into the world without [it]. The more I feel like I learn about cybersecurity, the more I’m like, “How does the Internet exist without this thing?” You know? And it’s so important, but I am sure you have seen the security landscape change over the past decade or so. How has that impacted the way organizations approach security and awareness and training?

Lise Lapointe: It’s been, yes, very different, of course. It started like 20 years ago, and the organizations that were doing security awareness at that time were very large organizations, banks, and insurance companies that really saw the importance of doing that. Year after year, there were more laws and regulations coming in that, of course, including that there was a need for security awareness, but it took years and years to convince people about the importance of security awareness.

They were doing more technical stuff to protect themselves and thinking it was enough, and security awareness was always last on the budget, so it was hard. Small businesses were not really into it for a long time, and I think what changed that in 2014 or ‘15, Gartner came out with a magic wand in security awareness and started to talk about it a lot, and we were lucky enough to be considered like a world leader in security awareness at that time.

That really changed everything. Everybody started to talk about it and see the importance and putting budget [towards it]. Today, more and more, there’s integration between technology and security awareness to identify who is at risk and who will put the business at risk, and how we should have a specific path for the diffident type of users depending on the type of information they have, and depending also on where they are in the company, and it changed quite a bit.

I would say that there’s still a lot to be done because it’s still a lot of times under budget, and there’s not a lot of resources for security awareness, and it’s the largest, most important threat. So there’s still a lot to be done.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Sure, definitely. It’s like, sort of like a continual journey, right? The more, I guess, the more advanced the cybersecurity teams become, of course, that is only opposed by the criminals on the other side, right? And how advanced they become, and I feel like this continual unfortunate battle. However, we love our good guys.

So can you describe a time when you saw a dramatic improvement? I know you talk about in your book, this security awareness program. Can you describe a time when you saw a dramatic improvement in organization security about the strategy result of implementing what you teach in your security awareness program, and factors that you think contributed to that success?

Lise Lapointe: Yeah, so I think there’s a different type of – sorry, experts in security at that time. There are technical people, and there are people that are more oriented toward the policies and regulations. So they deal with it in a different way, and there’s been a lot for a long time that we say, just ticking the box and saying, “Okay, we’re meeting the regulations and what is asked by us, but we don’t do more than that.”

And there are the companies that have invested a lot in security awareness and making sure that they know, you know, what’s going on, what type of breaches they have. They look at the audit reports, they do quizzes and surveys to understand. So we talk about that in the book in the analysis phase where it’s very important to analyze the situation, and the situation of one organization is not going to be the same as the next organization, right?

So you really have to do that to understand, “What do I have to change? What are my goals?” If you want to change that, it’s not like a project that you do once a year and it’s done. It’s an ongoing thing. Security is ongoing, and you have to evaluate your results, compare it to your objective, and you have to make it better every time. So the companies that have been successful are the ones that have been that.

So they analyze, really, what’s going on, they do a specific program for different type of employees, different departments, different parts of the world. They also have training in the languages that are easier for their employees in the different parts of the world. So it depends a lot on all of those criteria, the success at the end, but I would say objectives and measurement are always very, very important.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s really powerful, because that experience that you sort of compounded over the years, I’m sure, played a big role, especially as the COVID pandemic affected organizations. Talk about like, this approach to security and awareness, particularly with the rise of remote work, how has that impacted organizations? What do you think in the long-term implications that are beneficial to sort of remote work and the things that we, you know, as organizations can at least kind of map outand figure out how to approach that?

Lise Lapointe: Yeah, so it changed a lot because some of our clients from day one to day two went, for the pandemic they had 20,000; 50,000; to 100,000 people going home, and that they weren’t organized for that. People didn’t know what to do, they were used to a work environment completely secure, then they go home. So it took a while before the organizations could turn around.

So what we did at that time is we really develop like packages, I would say short trainings, very specific to what are you supposed to do at home to help the employees and the users really understand the risks at home and know what to do. In the timeframe at most companies, they organize them with security measures at home but at the beginning, you really had to train them on that.

There were a lot of scams on the internet and by email during the pandemic and all kinds of stuff, it was very important to train people right away to avoid those risks.

Tips for Building Cyber Security AwarenessHussein Al-Baiaty: In your experience, what are some of the most common misconceptions or challenges that organizations face when trying to implement a security awareness program?

Lise Lapointe: I would say lack of resources like a budget, a lot. It seems easy, you know. You could put a course online or a video online, and you think you’re doing security awareness, but if you really want to do it right and do all the steps you need to take time and overtime, and really look at the information and reports that you get from your security department or your audit department, or your policy department.

So the challenges at that time, the resources, where when you built the security awareness, you don’t build that in a vacuum, alone in your IT department or your security department. You have to work with your HR, you have to work with the change, if you want to change behavior or change management, you have to work with finance, you have to work with marketing because it is a marketing campaign, right?

It’s a communication campaign, you could put a course online or have a technical defense mechanism in place, but you need to tell your people. You need to communicate all the time so security is top of mind. If you want to change behaviors, you need to do that on a regular basis. So I would say to be successful, you have to do that, and it’s a lot of work at the beginning if you want to do it right.

So a lot of companies when they do it for the first time, they will ask for some help from professionals to think that to help them. So they will put their first campaigns, and what we say is that when you build your campaign the first time, you have to be careful not to overdo it, right? You don’t want to give too much information, you don’t want to customize too much. You know how it is, 10 people could be writing the same sentence in 10 different ways.

So just don’t change the sentence just to change it, just change it if the meaning to the user is not the right one, right? So it’s a lot of work, and you have to work in a group, and you have to build this common group, and ideally, you even have people in different departments, different countries that will be working on the project to make sure that the culture change in Japan, in Canada, in the US, in France is not the same.

So you need to make sure that the messaging is good also for the employees and where they’re working from. So once the analysis space is done and the planning phase is done, you need to plan it because in each organization, there are a lot of things going on, and if you launch your campaign when something else very important is going on it’s going to be a problem. So you really need to plan it correctly.

After when you launch, you have to make sure everything is working, your systems, your lists, people received the emails, it’s easy for them to get to the computer and do the course, but there are a lot of things to think about, and that’s what I list in the book. For me, it was like, “Okay, what do I share, and what do I keep to myself?” But I said, “Okay, no, I can’t do that. I have to share everything.” Because that’s giving some ways of doing things that are different than what we think.

So if you’re very technical and you’re used to doing projects, and you are used to implementing systems, security awareness is quite difficult for you to think about because it is not in your secure zone, you know? So you have to get people around you and your group that will help you do that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s very powerful. Can you share an example of a particularly like either creative or effective awareness-raising activity that you’ve seen an organization use in their security awareness program, but what made that so successful?

Lise Lapointe: I think it is having a variety of different content and different types that makes it successful, because people my age, people in the 30s and the 50s and the 20s, they don’t see it the same way. So if you give the same thing to everybody, it doesn’t really work. So you need to have really different types of content, and present them in different ways. It could be videos, it could be serious games, it could be interactive games.

It could be different, it could be something to read. Some people like to read still today, but some others don’t. So we need very short videos with messaging that is powerful. So I think a variety of tools is more important than one specific, and games are pretty successful these days. It’s not just the game, you have to integrate it into your campaign. What are you going to do next? You’re going to have to test people, you’re going to do phishing simulations. You could do other types of simulations also in the office.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/technology-computer-lines-board-50711/

Final ThoughtsHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s very powerful. I like your approach in that every environment is going to have its sort of culture, and how you approach that is actually what’s most important and how it aligns with like the basic structure, the foundation in which you can build the security awareness on, it won’t be as successful if you are not paying attention to the environment in hopes that you are actually kind of implement this in.

So I like this like idea of awareness and really just understanding where that lives. What was your favorite part of pulling this book together? What did you learn from that journey? Because I know it’s no easy feat. Of course, writing a book is extremely hard, and like you said, that tumultuous time of like, “Oh, what do I put in this book? What do I leave out? I have to put everything in.” You know what I mean? And then that refining, but what was your favorite part of putting this book together?

Lise Lapointe: I think it was sharing all this information, you know? I’ve been doing this for so long that I thought it was important to share that, and I’ve never written a book before the first one, you know, [this is] the second one. The second time around it was easier. Of course, the first time around was rewriting a lot of things, but I liked the teamwork we have done with that. You know, putting all of our ideas together at Terranova with the different people that were involved, making sure that we didn’t forget anything. So it was really teamwork, and that was fun.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. I think with projects like writing a book, it’s very powerful to know that it’s a very collaborative effort. It is extremely collaborative, and I think for me, it highlighted where my strengths are when it comes to collaborating with others, and I think in your case, you know, being a teacher in a lot of ways, and one I think from this environmental perspective, it’s really powerful to leave your book in that direction.

When your readers pick up your book — I know I did — I felt a little hint of like, “Okay, like I get the direction of this.” Obviously, it is not designed for me specifically, but there are a lot of things in the book that I found very interesting as far as how I think about just my online security and what that looks like, but what would you say like your readers pick up your book and begin to read through it and then they walk away from it?

Having learned a few things, what would you hope they really feel after putting it down?

Lise Lapointe: I think it’s not a book that you really read through and put down. I don’t see it that way. I see it in a way that you will go back to the book to answer questions depending on where you’re at, and you do that for the first time, you would do it again and forget. So you go back and you get old tips and have ideas on how to do it. I sit more like that than like reading through it, you know?

Reading through it, it’s like I would say more difficult. It’s not like a story, but it is more a book that gives you information on how to do things or how to make you think about how to do things. It’s more thinking, and so I think you have to go back to it regularly.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I like that. I would like that as a guidebook, right? Because at different stages of your progress, you will meet different obstacles, and with those obstacles comes a way to refer back to the book to say, “Okay, how is this approach?” I love that, I love when there are books that I can always refer to. There is always one or two on my desk that I am constantly referring to, so I appreciate that about your book.

I wanted to highlight that because I knew that was one of the points of writing this specific, in a way, guidebook but Lise, thank you so much for sharing your stories and experiences with me today and our audience as well. The book is called, The Human Fix to Human Risk: 5 Steps to Fostering a Culture of Cyber Security Awareness. Besides checking out the book on Amazon, where can people find you and connect with you?

Lise Lapointe: They could connect with me through LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. I have different places where they could connect, and if they want to know more about the book, they could also go on Terranova Security, by forward your website.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, thank you so much, Lise, for coming on the show today. I really appreciate you, it’s been fantastic. Thank you.

Lise Lapointe: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me, it’s really fun.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely.

Lise Lapointe: Thanks.

The post The Human Fix to Human Risk: Lise LaPointe appeared first on Author Hour.

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Are we ready for the next global health threat? COVID-19 opened the world’s eyes to the inefficiencies of our global healthcare system, and it’s on us to change what happens next.

Welcome back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein, Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by Dr. Joseph Saba, who is here today to talk about his new book titled, A World Undivided: A Quest for Better Healthcare Beyond Geopolitics. Let’s get into it.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. I am here with my friend, Dr. Joseph Saba. I’m super excited because his new book is absolutely remarkable, but even more so, the story in which the book came about, the story’s intense. Dr. Joseph, thank you so much for joining me.

I’m also joined here with Mariana, who is, I believe like we say ghostwriter at Scribe, but they’re really the… I would call them the spirit writers. The ones that really help our visions come to life and articulate our words in a way that engages the readers in a profound way that keeps them, you know, engaged in the reading and in the stories, and so again, Mariana, thank you for joining me today as well. I’m really excited. Thank you, guys, for your time.

Dr. Joseph Saba: Thank you.

Wartime Lessons Carried into The Medical CommunityHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. So Joseph, I’d like to give our listeners a little bit of a personal background just to set the stage if you will. I always like sharing past history of our authors when they come on the show, but I kind of want to tell the people, without getting too into the weeds, just a little bit about your background, sort of where you were born, where you grew up, and perhaps one or two people that inspired you on your path that you’re on today.

Dr. Joseph Saba: Sure. I am a medical doctor by training. I am originally from Lebanon, and that’s where I did my medical studies. Then I went to France to specialize, stayed in France, so I got also the French nationality. Then went to the World Health Organization, worked quite a bit on public health after being in infectious disease and practicing at the hospital, I started moving into the HIV world, and this is where NW2, I work quite a bit on research related to HIV.

And as this research started coming to fruition, I felt compelled to actually make sure that the people got this treatment of HIV that during the HIV from deadly disease to a chronic disease, but people had to access this treatment, and that is where my career and life related to access to medicine started.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. That’s really powerful. However, reading throughout your book, there’s an exponentially really powerful story that led you on this path. Can you tell us a little bit more about that personal story of growing up during the Lebanese civil war that shaped your perspective and healthcare in life?

I think that is a profound story that you open the book up with that I just immediately gravitated towards because I felt like when I opened my eyes in Iraq, I found myself in several different types of wars really, but having come out of that, I learned a lot. I want to know a little bit about that transition of your life, in your teenage years there’s this civil war happening, but it really shaped things out for you.

Dr. Joseph Saba: Of course. I mean, the war has completely changed the way, you see life and when you’re like fourteen, just a teenager playing like everybody else, and suddenly, you have to become an adult, you have to take care of many things that were not on your mind or on your radar before, and as I did medicine, I started also taking care of patients but also taking care of wounded soldiers and wounded people, and that also has shaped the way I look to life and figuring out how I can help these people.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful. So how would you say the war affected the healthcare system in Lebanon, and what challenges did you see in providing healthcare to the citizens during that war? Because I mean, let’s be honest, you’re again, a teenager, you’re very untrained; however, you were doing things that you do what you could, right?

Especially like in the case of getting basically electrician training where you were just trying to connect homes back to being… having electricity. The simple things we take for granted in life, you know? And seeing the other side of that. Can you talk a little bit about how you started seeing yourself really wanting to go into the healthcare system further from that experience?

Dr. Joseph Saba: Yes, I mean, you start as I said, these are things you don’t think about on the day-to-day. You don’t think about how you get electricity, how you get your water, what you do if you don’t have a fridge, how do you eat, actually when you don’t have a fridge and these — when you’re fifteen, you have then, I had to deal with these aspects like go get water in the well like in the old civilizations I would say.

You don’t have electricity, so you don’t have a fridge. So how do you eat, how do you cook, how do you preserve your stuff? And then you need to learn electricity so I could connect because we only had six hours of electricity, so I had to connect to another district with a long wire to make sure that we got maybe twelve hours because with six hours, you don’t have enough to run a fridge, with twelve you could approximately do it.

So all these, when you are a teenager, you don’t think about it, and that makes you grow. Now, as I got into the healthcare system, the healthcare system in Lebanon was functioning pretty well and we had very good physicians, we have good hospitals, but when you receive fifty people because there was a huge explosion, fifty people in the emergency room, you look around and we’re three physicians — and we had some senior physicians who came and went to the operating rooms — you feel completely overwhelmed and helpless as much, you could help some people but how can I help fifty people at a time, you know?

So these were all the experiences in life that makes you mature much earlier than your age actually.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, I can certainly relate to that. I mean, I showed up at a refugee camp about five years old, and by the time we left, I was about nine, and you know, it was a desert refugee camp, and again, you’re disconnected from everything. We had to walk miles for water, you know, so, for me, as I was reading and really indulging myself in your story, I found pieces of me.

I found pieces of my older brothers. I found pieces of my mother and father in your story, and I just got to commend you for continuing on that path to seeking ways to help people, and really looking at starting to pull back and looking at the healthcare system from a higher perspective, but I know like, sharing our stories, especially in this depth, right? Because I understand that the Lebanese civil war went on for years.

So that’s a huge impact, it’s very traumatizing. So how did you then — you mentioned in your book that you had a glimpse of hope but when the country [was] finally was able to elect a president democratically but then [who] was sadly assassinated before he could take even office, right? So can you tell us a little bit about your thoughts on the role of politics and healthcare and how that affects the healthcare system in general?

Dr. Joseph Saba: Well, I mean, it affected the whole system. From the beginning, and you know, with all my story with the war, the fact that you mature, I always looked for solutions, you know? I wasn’t… I don’t get stuck with the problem, I find solutions, and with the war, with that glimpse of hope that you talked about and then the assassination of the kid president-elect, you know, and all that happened after that, I felt that I can’t find solutions.

I mean, this problem is going to last, and I am here sitting helpless, and that’s what took me to France, you know? To finish my specialty, but I wanted to do more, I wanted to be able to find more solutions to the healthcare system. I mean, and that’s what really drove me to go to France, to stay in France, and then to continue my career to go to the World Health Organization to improve their healthcare system because I chose to be in healthcare.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow, and what a profound move, right? Because here you are, working very sort of, very community-oriented, and you’re trying to do as much as you can, but you realize that the problem is way bigger than even you can comprehend in that moment, and in order to really sort of level up your thinking on how to better solve these issues is to level up not just thinking but your surroundings, right?

So, you move, you study further, you joined the World Health Organization, which has I’m sure, an immense, probably an infinite amount of issues that they have to grapple with, but your expertise leads you to a place where you can start to figure out ways where you can sort of geopolitically figure out this healthcare system in a way.

But Mariana, I want to turn the conversation to you a little bit because here you are, you know, you’re meeting with Joseph, and you’re hearing this immense story that I’m sure is profoundly impacting you, but can you tell me a little bit about yourself and how you came to work with Joseph?

Mariana Rodrigues: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I met Joseph for the first time now many years ago, like close to fifteen years ago, I would say.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh wow.

Mariana Rodrigues: And he was interviewing me for a potential job. So he already had a lot of questions for me, he was not an easy interviewer. So I was happy to be able to turn it back on him once I began this process of…

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Payback.

Mariana Rodrigues: So yeah, so we started working together and access to healthcare consultancy called Axios International. I was working on their communication side, my background is largely in public health communications. So you know, after working together in that company, I got to know kind of how he thinks and his background pretty well, and so I was definitely honored when he asked me to be a part of this book.

But when we started really going into stories, like his experience in Lebanon and how he made personal decisions in his life — like obviously these are things that we weren’t talking about in my kind of previous just colleague-manager-boss relationship that I had with him before.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right.

Mariana Rodrigues: So it was incredibly interesting for me. It was challenging because it’s… you had to figure out kind of how to ask the questions that will get me to really understand how he felt in the moment, and I think because it’s something I certainly can’t relate to it. I’m Brazilian, I’ve been lucky to directly not be affected by war.

And so I think a big point that goes back to some of what you’re saying before, Joseph, is what I learned from this particular part of the book is like when you’re exposed to something like war, that really shows you that these general kind of systems that support your daily life can all of a sudden just fall apart. You mistrust the general system more than I would, for example, who haven’t had that experience.

So you start to figure out like, I have to step up and come up with my own solution and think differently and beyond what’s just being kind of given to me and provided to me by the government or whatever it might be, and I think, some of those early experiences that Joseph had really guided some of how he thinks or think much of what he thinks about when it comes to healthcare and thinking outside the box and coming up with your own solutions when what’s happening is not working, you know?

That was an interesting perspective that I didn’t have on my own but was a cool one to be able to capture on his behalf.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful. I love that, this idea of when we share our experiences, especially with stories around war and sadly, trauma and the things that we, the decisions we have to make in those times in moments, really like it’s one of those things where you think it only matters in that moment in time. However, those decisions really transcend time and impact who you become.

Like for me, I become, especially in the last like, I would say, ten years, even through college, I studied architecture, but my goal was to figure out ways how we can create not just refugee camps but states and countries where people who become refugees, there is a safe haven for them already predestined that then goes and puts them into countries and places that are welcoming.

Those — I was thinking not just of like housing or tents. I was thinking of ways to globally impact this effect that sadly, when you become a byproduct of war and so, but that obviously, that thinking is deeply embedded. I may not have known it then because don’t think I was that much more aware. You know, you don’t realize how much of your decisions as you get older are really embedded in those times.

Where you had to decide to put other people ahead of yourself, you had to put yourself in danger in order to save someone or help someone or bring them water or like you, Joseph, going up on a telephone pole at fifteen, sixteen, and connecting electricity and you barely know this stuff, which is just, again, these decisions that we make to serve our communities, which then lead to serving our global citizens in a very unique way.

I just genuinely appreciate that. I just want to send that to you as a message, but you suggested in your book that you have a more of a human approach, and that is what is needed to address this global health issues. Can you expand on this and give us examples of how this approach can be implemented in healthcare delivery today, Joseph?

Dr. Joseph Saba: Absolutely, and just to add to what you mentioned is that as you said, what happens, your experience and my experience in the world certainly shaped the way I think and who I am, but this was buried very deep inside and actually, talking to Mariana about all these aspects was like a psycho analysis.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes.

Dr. Joseph Saba: It’s like it brings it back to you, and you feel how powerful it is and how it has really shaped your point, and that human side related to healthcare is very focused on the patients. In the end, we are in healthcare there to find solutions for our patients. It’s not about the hospital organization of health or FDA or whatever.

It is about finding solutions to the patients, and that has been my way forward because I was, I would say, trained, and I lived in a situation where there was no infrastructure, where there was, no regulation, no government, and then had to figure out a way to help people, and that’s what I did actually, through my career in healthcare and focusing on the patients and some of these stories that also came back was very buried.

Starting with Pascal story, to whom I dedicated this book, who was my first patient with HIV who ended up unfortunately passing away after several years, but who taught me also many things related to how the patient feels, how that doctor-patient relationship, it could evolve, and it was also powerful message that led also my career ever since. I always think when I think about system, or think about program, or how do we get medicines to people, first like, where are the people?

How can I reach them? How can I get the treatment to them? I try to find the solution, I don’t hide behind like, the system or the regulation. I try to see what is the most effective way, and that actually leads to what we call innovation, but it’s basic consent, you know? It’s how you do, you get the treatment to the patient. It looks simple, but we are not doing that to the extent that we can in healthcare today.

Healthcare today is stuck in an antiquated system that doesn’t seem to be working. Medicine is very advanced, but the healthcare system to deliver the medicine to the patient is stuck behind, and it’s pretty antiquated, and we saw that in the COVID pandemic, and I am talking about it in the book as well.

The Healthcare System Must Evolve and Everyone Can HelpHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful. I think for me, I have this like mentality that creativity is not just pulling two or three or four things together and not only just having powerful minds sitting around the table together, but it is really thinking of ways that go against what we normally have established as a system, right? It’s like, “Well, if it’s been established this way, where can we actually not think like that anymore and think holistically, differently?”

We have so much new technology like, for example, I was just watching, I don’t know if it was a documentary or something that I just watched like maybe two weeks ago, and it was about this company in Africa that delivers much-needed medicine and blood, and maybe you’ve heard of this already and heck, you maybe have implemented it in some way with drones, and they have this beautiful system because of all these villages that were, you know, obviously hard to reach via cars and all those things.

Just thinking like that is so powerful, you know? I think about wildfires, and I’m like, “Why don’t we have drones take those things out, and why don’t we?” You know? But it’s that kind of thinking that I really believe starts to shape what we are actually able to do instead of saying, “No, we can’t do that because oh, there’s a policy around that or there’s a law around that,” and it’s like that’s fine.

I get that, but let’s develop this thing, introduce it in a way that can take that law or policy and shapeshift it that can, again, bring us into the new modern day because we can’t have all of this new technology and use it for warfare. We need to use this technology for healthcare, right? It just makes sense how you start to implement these things.

Dr. Joseph Saba: Absolutely, you can’t hide behind like the policy or of the law. You just have to adapt to the changing patient’s needs, and patient’s needs are changing, you know? We have growing population, we have patients with many new chronic diseases, and we have digital revolution on the other side, and we’re not using it. I mean, to be able to deliver that, and that has had a tremendous consequence in the COVID pandemic because we couldn’t reach these patients.

We didn’t know how to reach them. We reach our patients because we put the system in place in our programs, but that in the world, that wasn’t like a common feature, and inevitably we had to look down. So there are many changes that are needed based on common sense as you mentioned that I don’t know the healthcare seems to be resisting.

Mariana Rodrigues: I would add to this too, and for me, I think this is one of the most interesting aspects of the book in that, you know, Joseph’s point of view and his kind of solution overall to the issue that we all face in healthcare, in richer countries, poor countries, all of us, you know, I live in the US, I can tell multiple stories about how expensive and how hard it is to get my migraine medication.

Across the board, all of us have healthcare challenges in one way or another, and I think all of us can relate and say, “This probably should be working better,” because this is something, being healthy is super important to ourselves, to the economy, to everything, and I think many of us, whether it’s like your everyday person that doesn’t work in healthcare and then certainly people that do work in healthcare both in the public and private sector side, you tend to think about, you know there is – the only way to do it is kind of within this very small space.

Which is the space that is allowed to you based on current policies, et cetera, but this book presents a potential solution that’s very much different than what we’re used to hearing, and it’s a common-sense solution like Joseph was saying, but it’s one that we have to bring up there, so that people start to talk about it and they can become a part of the dialogue and the narrative and hopefully, part of the solution in the future.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, so powerful. Joseph, what inspired you to write this book specifically about this topic, and who are you trying to reach specifically with your message? Because it is a really powerful and much-needed message, to be honest with you, but who are you trying to reach specifically, would you say?

Dr. Joseph Saba: Well, this book is not a specialized book only for healthcare professionals. It is a book that is meant for everybody, and that people need to become conscious that everybody has to actually change the healthcare system. It’s not specialized matter as many pretend, and I had the idea to write the book, I would say it was in 2019 when we spoke the first time about it, but actually, it was in 2020 that we wrote it, and that was really in the heart of the pandemic.

When I saw how the world reacted to the pandemic and how antiquated the system was, which is what we knew, but how, the consequences of that on the population, whether it comes from lockdown, the inability to reach the people who are vulnerable to COVID, you know, we knew that people with chronic diseases, people who are diabetic, people who were obese were very vulnerable, and the elderly of course, had the highest likelihood of mortality related to COVID, yet we didn’t know where they are, you know?

I mean, these are patients that go to the hospital, that go to doctors, we can reach out to them and protect them, make sure that they get their medication. None of these happened, not even not in the US, not in France, and many of these people didn’t get their medication, and actually some people died from their chronic diseases rather than from COVID because of that situation.

So that prompted me to actually look at the book as we need to globalize healthcare. I mean, this is not narrow focus, so I need to come with this, show the solutions that we are proposing to make sure that this goes there. So it moves from just talking about access to medicine to transforming the healthcare system because our quest for access to medicine helps us see the gaps in the healthcare system and say, “Okay, well now, we need to fill it.”

But this will not come from the healthcare professionals. People were afraid to intervene, they say, “No, we need to give it to the professionals.” Of course, there are professionals related to medicine, to relate to healthcare, but in the end, asking a simple question, “Where are the patients, how can I reach them?” This could be everybody who can work on it, not only the healthcare professionals, and that is the purpose of this book is to make sure that everybody is conscious about the limitations, and that it’s not only the healthcare professional that can solve the problem, everybody can solve that problem.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that is so powerful. I can’t agree with you more. I remember my dad always telling me and my mother as well like, you know, the most important thing in this world is Saha, which is, you know, health.

Dr. Joseph Saba: Yes.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photo-of-a-stethoscope-40568/

Final ThoughtsHussein Al-Baiaty: My dad said, if you have health you have a taj—taj means the crown. It’s like when you put your health first, you are wearing your crown. I always try to remember that as often as I can especially, you know, keeping up with my own physical health and my own mental health, of course, which is a whole new world that we have finally really started tapping into with the information age in the last ten, fifteen years.

Which opened up so many doors and so many opportunities for people to start addressing mental health, because mental health, let’s be honest, if you’re a mentally healthy person, you would not wage war on another country, right? Or anyone of any race or religious orientation or anything like that but the way you describe health and the way, you know, you have – you are so inspired from such a young age to bring this idea of globalization, of how we should approach and really give advice on how we should approach this world and how to actually reach our people and our patients is so big.

I am so grateful that you took this journey of really again, right? Because the more we want to do, the more we got to work on ourselves, right? So you put yourself not only in danger but you also put yourself in positions to really grow that aspect of yourself. I just appreciate that. What was your favorite part of pulling your book together, and what did you learn from all of this? This is for both of you, Joseph and Mariana.

Dr. Joseph Saba: Yeah, I think we both may have good answers that are different, actually, but…

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah.

Dr. Joseph Saba: I learned a lot because there were many things that were buried that maybe conditioned some of my behavior, some of my thoughts, but they came to light, and actually I am even more passionate after writing this book than before, you know? It is about being convinced that improving or adapting the healthcare system and healthcare to the changing reality, and the new reality is not a matter of professions, it’s everybody’s matter because, as you said, it’s our health.

It is one of the most important things that we need, and it is our problem, but also we can change the solution that healthcare is not only about the hospital and about the physicians and about the professional. It is about how to reach the patients, how to make them feel good about their diseases, how to make them make sure that they get their treatment and be able to continue to connect with the patients.

You know, the banking system and the book led me to think and look at the banking system. Now, you do your banks on your mobile phone. You purchase on Amazon, trading is all interconnected, it’s globalized. Healthcare has not been globalized, it is way lagging behind and it is not working. We’re not connected to these patients, and we can. Google knows where you are, we don’t know where our patients are when they leave the hospital.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right.

Dr. Joseph Saba: I mean, come on, it is 2023, and we have to do that, and that was extremely detrimental in the COVID pandemic. If we are serious about responding and being ready for the next global threat, we have to globalize the response and globalize healthcare, you know? Global threat needs a global response, you can’t just go like close your boarders and say, “No, it’s a local matter.”

I mean, it’s not even close the boarders, you have as many COVID policies as you had countries and even more because in the given country people say, “No, it’s a district responsibility.” But it is a global threat. COVID killed people the same way everywhere in the world. Why don’t we have a common response the way we did it in HIV? I am illustrating through all these personal stories and personal experiences how we responded to HIV as a global community in one voice versus fragmented, inefficient response to COVID.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: You truly define unity in your approach, which I love so much.

Dr. Joseph Saba: So I am even more excited now than I was before writing the book, but I am sure Mariana has also other perspectives.

Mariana Rodrigues: Yeah, our answers aren’t that different, Joseph. So I expected them to be more different, but I think you know, for me, a major learning was the importance of questions. Every story that Joseph told me throughout the book, there was this element of “I was told to do it this way,” but when I gave it more thought, I was like, “Wait, why don’t we do it that way? Wouldn’t that be easier, cheaper, simpler?” Whatever it might be.

I think that’s certainly a learning for healthcare. I think it’s a learning for every aspect of our lives, so that’s an important one, and then a second important learning for me was this idea of healthcare being so interconnected to all these other forces. We talk a lot in the book about these different geopolitical factors that influence where healthcare is today and where it used to be and where it will be in the future.

You know, geopolitics is such a lofty hard to define word, but in general like Joseph was saying, the world during the HIV AIDS pandemic was at a completely different geopolitical stance. It was much more open to sharing and collaboration, and now as we all know the world is in a different spot, and we saw the repercussions of that in COVID-19, and so understanding that when we see these challenges that we all face in a micro and macro level in healthcare that those challenges are coming from these like other root causes.

Be it geopolitical causes, where this kind of hesitation to globalize, I think, is really important context and perspective to finding a better way forward. So that was definitely a significant learning for me, and something that I hope that everyone reading this book can walk away with as well.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, so powerful. I feel like you two were the perfect alignment of bringing this project forward because I just feel that the ideas behind, you know, when we talk about healthcare, you know, it is something people like, “Oh.” Like dread. You know, it’s like doing taxes, right? It’s like they just don’t want to deal with it, you just want someone else to deal with it, and it’s one of those things you’re absolutely right, Joseph.

You said this earlier like everything else has been more or less globalized like trading, the banking system, all these systems that we use on a regular basis, but the one thing I don’t have an app for is my general health, my general access to – which is changing obviously. It is changing in a way. I’ve talked to several different people in your position in the healthcare world, and they are driving that change, and it’s ever slow, of course, because there is so much restrictive policy in the healthcare world.

Because we all know that, you know, big pharma owns a lot of things, even own how we see them, right? The perspective and so once we break these barriers down, these walls and these boundaries down and start to realize that we’re all humans living on this beautiful planet and that we need to maintain our self and maintain the planet, and that all relates to health is such a big topic.

I am grateful that you came together to bring it forward. Joseph, Mariana, thank you for sharing your stories and experiences with our audience today. As far as I’m concerned, I’m always learning, and I am grateful that I got to speak with you today. The book is called, A World Undivided: A Quest for Better Healthcare beyond Geopolitics. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Joseph and Mariana, whether it be LinkedIn or your website, where can people find you?

Mariana Rodrigues: Yeah, sure. So I think the best place to find us is joseph-saba.com and on LinkedIn as well.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful. Well, thanks again so much for coming on the show today. This is Author Hour, I appreciate you two so, so much. Have a wonderful day.

Dr. Joseph Saba: Thank you.

Mariana Rodrigues: Thank you so much.

Dr. Joseph Saba: Thank you for having us.

The post A World Undivided: Dr. Joseph Saba appeared first on Author Hour.

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My next guest was the first black female orthopedic surgeon to become a partner at the largest orthopedic practice in Georgia. She understands that when you’re the only person who looks like you in your field, there’s pressure on you at all times.

Welcome back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by Dr. Lattisha Latoya Bilbrew. Who is here to talk about her new book called, Yes, I Am the Surgeon: Lessons on Perseverance in a World That Tells You No. Let’s flip through it.

Hello everyone and I am super excited today because I have my friend Lattisha with me today on the show. Lattisha, how’s it going?

Lattisha Bilbrew: Everything’s going great, thanks so much for having me on.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, congratulations on your book. I’m super excited to get into it. I was zooming through it the last, I would say, twenty-four hours or so just to kind of pick up notes and I found myself resonating with so much of what you were talking about especially around the areas of just kind of feeling like you’re the only – especially when you first kind of came to America and what that was like for you, a different language, and it definitely resonated with me.

But before we get into the book, I really want people to get to know you a little bit. So we’re going to go back in time and share a little bit about that personal background and maybe share a couple of stories and what really inspired you to be on the path that you’re on now?

Lattisha Bilbrew: Absolutely. So my name is Dr. Lattisha Bilbrew and I’m an orthopedic hand surgeon but I was born in England, and people often ask, “Was I a military kid?” And I say, “No, we’re just black people from England because my parents were born there too.” My background, my heritage, is that my family is Jamaican on both sides. So, my grandparents, Jamaica was owned for say, by the UK, by the United Kingdom.

In the 1950s, they migrated, both my maternal and paternal grandparents, to England and that’s how our family got established there. So I’m this weird mix of British, Jamaican, and African-American culture and I hang on to all three, and I use all three. I lived in England until I was about eight years old and then migrated here with my mom, my dad, and my sister, first to Florida and grew up in Florida for the most part and that’s how I became an American.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s beautiful, I love that. You share a very unique story about your grandma and having to visit the hospital and what that experience was like for you, and it kind of, in a way, outlined what the future was going to be like. I feel like it shaped your thinking. Can you share a little bit about that story and how important grandma was to you?

Lattisha Bilbrew: Yes, I think that I’m really blessed to have the story happen to me at such a young age. I was four or five years old, and I remember my grandmother who was this stereotypical Jamaican grandmother. She was always ill, you know? She was always in the hospital, high blood pressure, consequences of high blood pressure. I know that now as an adult.

As a child, you just know that your grandmother, who I called Nanny, was sick and so the memory that stuck with me that really kind of carved out who I would be was, there was a time when the entire family went to the hospital and for some reason, I was left with my nanny who was sick in the hospital bed and everybody else left and I remember just kind of sitting there, talking to her and in walked, I don’t know if it was a doctor, a nurse, a healthcare provider I should say.

And they had a little thing of white pills and there was no, “Hi Ms. Simpson, how are you doing? How are we feeling today, what’s your pain level?” It was just, “Here, take this medication,” and I remember it just being very curt. There was no empathy, there was not even recognition that there’s a little girl that’s in the room. Like, “Hi, little girl,” you know? Nothing like that and my grandmother took the pills and then waited for the woman to walk off and she said, “Watch this,” and there was a little drawer next to her bedside.

She opened it up, she spat out the pills because she kept them behind her tongue and when I looked inside the drawer, it was full of little white pills. So she was not taking her medication in the hospital and you know, it’s ingrained in my mind just seeing those white pills against the wood grain and my grandmother ended up dying shortly after from complications of hypertension, all very preventable. She was very young.

It was at that moment that I knew. When my mother came back and as we walked to the parking lot I said, “I’m going to be a doctor,” and my mom was like, “Okay baby,” you know, no big deal. But I knew that I wanted to be the type of person that would embody empathy and kindness and understanding and that was the reason I knew I was going to become a physician when I grew older.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful because those moments in time, in our childhood, and how they impact us and the decisions we make and all these things — because you, I feel like you just wanted to see your grandma live a little longer and be around and as you get older and you start connecting the dots and you see how almost preventable or the process could have been a lot smoother, more elegant, more human, right? I think that’s the most important part.

Which is amazing, it led you on a journey to offer that in what you would be able to do, which is beautiful. So you were the first black female orthopedic surgeon to become a partner at the largest orthopedic practice in Georgia. That is amazing. How did it feel to achieve such a significant milestone and what motivated you?

Lattisha Bilbrew: When I became that, I don’t think I realized it at the time. It was president of the company, Dr. Lundy, He was like, “You know, you’re going to be our first?” and I was like, “Oh, okay,” you know? I didn’t recognize it and when it dawns on you, number one, it’s an eye-opening of, wow, there is so much room for improvement here, there’s so much more work to be done to bring other people behind me so that we can even that playing ground.

It’s an honor that I hold but at the same time, as you know, I’m in year six going into year seven of my practice and it becomes less honorable and to me, just more that this is sad. What are we doing to change the narrative? Why are we growing exponentially but yet, there are fewer and fewer black men and women going into the field? And so for me, it’s just another mountain to climb to bring people behind me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much. You talk about this idea of how we stand on the shoulders of others and how you are now preparing your shoulders for others to stand on yours with the creation of this book and how you navigate your ways around not necessarily the success but adversity and perseverance and all the things that come around when you’re sort of always being told, “No.”

Let’s be honest, people of color in this country face certain things — and it’s not always the case, but it is the case — there’s a lot of challenging things that I know I grew up with for sure. I remember my sixth-grade ESL teacher literally telling me, “It’s too difficult to become an architect so you should do something else.” You know, I can’t blame her for that or anything. I grew from that, right?

But I went and got my architecture degree and it worked out, but at the end of the day, where we channel our energies as to how we teach is so incredibly important. However, my seventh-grade ESL teacher was remarkable. She helped me come out of ESL and those mentors, sometimes, if you have a bad day and it just kind of sits with you for years as a kid.

So those experiences do shape us, and we do remember them, but how we remember them is important. Your book offers readers a collection of psychological tools to help them persevere in the face of adversity. Can you share, maybe some personal success stories of how these tools shape or help you overcome a particular challenge or situation?

Photo by Negative Space from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/computer-desk-laptop-stethoscope-48604/

Tools for Overcoming AdversityLattisha Bilbrew: For me, the first tool I look at is just the tool to persevere, and for that, I pay attention to my grandparents. It’s interesting, just yesterday, I had a very humbling experience. I was leaving my private social club that’s a rooftop, which is also where my book launch party was going to be, and I was going to valet, and I see the same valet guy every time and he never remembers me. I’m at this place multiple times, and he’s always charging me extra, and I’m like, “I’m a member here.”

So eventually I was like, “Why don’t you remember me?” I was like, “Why can’t you remember me?” and I was with a friend who said, “Well, what’s his name, and what does he do?” He had a conversation with him, and he was an immigrant and he used to be a pilot in Afghanistan. He’s only been here for a few months, and he’s taking cars around, he’s valeting cars but he’s super educated and has a family.

And I said, “How humbling is that?” Because that was my grandparents that came from another country and though in Jamaica, yes, we speak English, but Patwa is a completely different dialect. Very hard to understand, especially if you’re from the country and to go to another country and all you have is a slip of paper that says “Mr. Smith” and you have one suitcase, and you’re there to start your life over and provide a life for your family.

Even me, while I was writing this book, it’s like I lost sight of that in that moment. So I’m grateful for that friend who reminded me of it, but I’m also remembering that’s the spirit of perseverance because there’s so many people that would have just given up. They would have gone back to Jamaica, gone back to the mountains. Their families may never have been educated, I wouldn’t be an orthopedic surgeon.

So that for me is one of the foundational lessons; you have to persevere, you have to find what drives you. For that valet guy, it was his family. He’s like, “I have to provide for my family.” For my grandparents, it was their family. It was the idea of a legacy. So the first lesson is find what is going to motivate you through those tough moments, and that is your lantern. That’s what’s going to guide you as you continue this rough journey, and the journey will be rough.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I relate to that heavily, you know? My family came here with nothing, from a refugee camp. So, this idea of perseverance and really putting it all on the line for the people that you love and working really hard, head down, just focused on what you have to do.

We forget that life isn’t just about us and how the world reacts to us. It’s also, who is this person? Speaking to them and getting to know them. The way they’re going to get to know you is by being able to get to know them, right? It’s that investment in one another that creates unity, that creates growth, and opportunities. I love that quote, I believe it’s Gandhi but I feel like it’s attributed to someone else now, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

I love that because it’s like sometimes we want people to see us. However, it’s like reversing that. It’s just like, just started seeing people. Seeing them for who they are and then watching what happens and that it’s just reversing the energy, which is very powerful. I love that you touched on all of that.

So you achieved so much in your career as a surgeon and an author now. What are some of the moments you are most proud of? What have been the most key factors that you feel contributed to what you sort of consider success, right? Because everyone sees it differently.

Lattisha Bilbrew: For me, I think a lot of people would expect me to say, when I graduated college or I got my medical degree or finished residency, finished fellowship. But for me, my greatest moments are when I have continued when it seemed like there was no way to continue, and one of those moments is, you know, when I share the story of my first “No.”

I looked back, and I’m so proud of the way that I continued to move forward when I was in college and I admired the head of the program. I just knew that she was going to mentor me and I loved everything about her and she was the first person that told me, “I don’t think you’re going to make it to medical school and minorities tend to do better in different health fields. Consider psychology.”

So it’s not like she was like, “Oh, you can’t do any educated field,” but a lot of people would lean on that and say, “Well, you know, she’s not telling me I can’t do well in life, she’s just saying I can’t do well in this particular field,” and instead, to look at that and say, “No, I said what I said,” which is, “I’m going to go to medical school.” I contoured my way out of that, and I kind of formed my own path and persevered, you know?

I use the word over and over but it really has become a mantra for me. Those are the moments I’m proudest of; when the door is slammed, not just cracked, it’s slammed shut in my face, and I find a window to climb through.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s really powerful, right? Because the ones we seek, I feel like, the most validation for them sometimes, they are the ones that challenge us the most in a very weird way. The ones that we want that support from, they do give it, you know? And not all the time but maybe it’s in their way or however we see it, however we translate it. But at the end of the day, it’s one of those things that goes, “Oh, okay, you don’t think I can do this either.”

In your mind, that[’s] kind of [a] pump. For me, it was not getting a job at Nike out of college, right? As a young architect and designer, I was super excited, right? And it just would not happen. I could not. So I went off and started my own printing and design company, and I was just like, “I’m going to prove to everybody that I can do this,” you know what I mean? “And I’m great at this.” And, of course, I was very cocky and arrogant, and business will humble you real quick, believe that. The streets of business will humble you real quick, you know?

But like that attitude and using that response as a way to fuel what you want to do. For me personally, I was able to kind of overcome those humps, if you will and then look back and be like, “Okay, that wasn’t the best approach.” But it got me over the fear. It got me over that wall, which you talk about. You talk about those fears. You talk about those things that come up, and you have a very beautiful story on, you know, how your parents taught you to view fear. Can you share that a little bit with our audience?

Conquering FearLattisha Bilbrew: One thing my parents have always done is they’ve never held back from showing me the truth of myself and my environment. They’ve always been very powerful in highlighting that. Even at a young age and age appropriately. They always told me that fear is false evidence appearing real and that you can’t allow fear to be that boulder that stands in your way.

You have to find that internal fuel, that internal fire, and allow that to be the lever, to be the fulcrum that shifts you and that pushes fear out the way so that you can keep going. So, you know, whether it was me thinking about my grandmother or me thinking about the impact I can have in my community or, even at times like, “I’m going to just do this because I said I can.”

Whatever your fuel is, because your source of your fuel is going to change as you mature, as you go through the process, as you learn from your mistakes but always go back to that fuel and never let it burn out. The moment it burns out, you’ve lost your purpose, right? Maybe that’s an indication that this isn’t the path for you, which is a hard part, you know? I’m like, “Am I doing the right thing?” I think the way you know is if the fuel’s gone out, if you haven’t got anything to keep you going.

My parents were navigating, like yourself, coming to a different country and before the time of Google and smartphones and saying, “Hey, we’re black, and we’re moving to the south of all places.” Like, what? Most people are like, “We’re going to go to New York or California.” You’re going to the south, are you crazy? I can imagine the fears that they experienced, but they never allowed it to encapsulate them.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s really powerful. I love that fear could be the thing that really drives you and how you reframe it, or it could be the thing that ultimately just stops you. You just can’t get around it. That pebble will turn into a boulder, like you said, if you don’t pay attention to it and really come to a resolve. I mean, I am so grateful that parents know and understand these things from their life.

They can really teach us, the younger generations, how they’ve overcome those things, right? It’s their actions, it’s their lives, and honestly, let’s be real, we don’t even understand or recognize how tough that must have been until we grow up, right? Until we actually realize the difficulties we are experiencing in modern – with tools and all of these things, right? So you recognize the hardships but also the simplicity that they, I’m sure, applied to thinking in that way and how it impacted you, that’s very beautiful.

So in addition to your medical career, you also are a motivational speaker, and an entrepreneur, can you tell us a little bit about other passions and pursuits and how they have enriched your life?

Lattisha Bilbrew: I just think that you should always evolve. You should never get stuck and one of my favorite lessons in the book is that glass ceilings are meant to be broken. They’re just there so that you can see what’s on the other side and then grab your hammer — one of my favorite tools as an orthopedic surgeon — and break through it.

So, I am a shareholder. I’m an extremely good surgeon, extremely good physician and diagnostician, and now I’m like, “Okay, well, I am good at that, and I will continue to refine it but I also love other things and that’s okay.” And my next pursuit, my next passion, is designing my own scrub line, which as I’m starting to kind of drop that, everyone is like, “What? You’re just releasing a book, you’re gonna do what now?”

I love fashion. I dress up to clinic every day. I take pleasure in colors and patterns, and scrubs are made like boxes. It’s like I can’t keep operating in this, so I have a — it is called The Windrush Company. Windrush was the name of the ship that transported Jamaican migrants to England over three or four decades, and it’s a homage to my grandparents and their generation and what they had to overcome.

Everyone that came on that ship came with very little, but they did come with pride. They did come with a sense of style and a courage that is insurmountable. With my scrubs, I think it’s important that we feel confident in what we wear and how we present ourselves, and I think it is important to our patients, too, that you don’t come in crushed scrubs. When I was an attending or a chief, I would send a medical student home.

You cannot come in a crushed white coat; that is disrespectful to the patient. Show that you care about yourself to show that you care about them. So I am very excited about my scrub line. It’s still in, I have my R&D, and so it’s now getting into manufacturing and I’m hoping it will be launched by the end of the year.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Incredible. I love it; that sounds amazing. I think this ever-evolving growth mentality of just like the question of like, “I’m just trying to reach my potential. What am I capable of?” Trying different things and doing different things isn’t necessary that we’re lost. I can’t tell you how much I parallel to this story because I went to architecture school, graphic design business.

Opened my own business, I did my t-shirt thing for a long time. I developed a thing called Refutees, which in a way was my creative expression in response to my heritage and what I went through and shedding a positive light on these beautiful people that come here and add so much value to our culture. I think there is something about this idea of once you start to understand that the barriers that we think are in place are kind of like a 60-40.

There is a systemic avenue to all of this that creates these invisible barriers, but then there’s the mental barriers that I feel like are just as, if not sometimes stronger than what’s actually there and when you break through a few and you start to realize, “Oh, I got this momentum. I’m going to keep carrying it through.” I feel like a lot of people around me sometimes have asked like, “Oh you were doing this thing last year, now you are doing this thing.” And it’s like, “No, no, no, I am not doing multiple things because I don’t know what I’m doing.”

I’m trying to figure out what parts of me I have not explored, right? And that is what drives me to go speak and do this and do that and just explore more creative processes, and I find that in your work and what you’re trying to do now with your scrub line. I think that’s so fun, and yes, some of those scrubs are boring, so thanks for bringing some color to it, you know what I mean?

Yeah, the hospital doesn’t need to be just white and drab, right? Bring that fashion in, you know? Making people smile and making people feel good, that’s part of the healing process, so I commend you for that. Your book is so inspiring and empowering, and it’s a powerful resource. For anyone facing challenges in their personal or professional life, what messages do you have or do you hope readers will take away from your book and how do you hope it will impact their life?

Lattisha Bilbrew: I think the main thing I want them to take away is that again, it’s the word perseverance. It’s grit. This is for the folks that have been told no and know that they’re going to be told no again, but yet they know inside of themselves that they’re capable. You know, I always said this isn’t a self-help book. This isn’t for the person who is trying to figure out, “Can I do this?” This is for the person that says, “I can do this,” but maybe they’re getting a little tired on the path.

Maybe they’ve had one too many doors shut in their face, and they were like, “Man, what’s next? I know I can accomplish this.” And I want them to take away that when you’re on this journey, when you’re on this path, you have to be confident in yourself. You can’t let that fuel die out but you also have to be prepared, and most importantly, you have to be qualified. So again, this is for the person that knows they can do it, they’re fully capable, they just need someone to kind of show them a little bit more of the blueprint, you know? I think everything in life is about a blueprint, and a blueprint has been created for most things already; it’s just not shared, right? That is why there is only one black female orthopedic surgeon at my company. That’s why I was the only one and still the only one from fellowship.

We are not sharing this blueprint, and I want people to take this book and as they learn those lessons, then turn back around and say, “Okay, now my shoulders are stronger. Who can stand with me?”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I am so moved by that. I really appreciate your perspective on so many levels, not just from an educational perspective but also a sharing and collaborative effort in saying, “We can create more seats for this table. There are so many doors we can open for one another as opposed to keep shutting them. Let me be that person on the other side of the boundary that you think is there, reaching a hand out to pull you through.”

I love that so much because this book is one amazing way to reach and impact others, and I hope you can continue this work. It’s amazing. What would you say was your favorite part of writing this book? The thing that you’re like, “Yes, it came together,” what was your favorite part?

Lattisha Bilbrew: My favorite part of writing the book is the parts where I just kind of make fun of myself. I think people forget, like they see me, and they’re like, “Orthopedic surgeon, oh my gosh, so serious.” And I’m just like, “I am a complete jokester.” My life is a sitcom. The things that have happened to me in my childhood, in college, are laughable. I mean, I would sit here and laugh as I remembered like, “God, that is embarrassing.”

I talk about some embarrassing stuff in my book that I still laugh at it as an adult, probably made me cry as a child. That has been my favorite part, to turn that mirror and look at myself and be like, “Girl, you crazy, what were you thinking?”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I love that. I love this idea of just taking it easy, not being so serious and I think again, this adds to the idea of where you are today actually aligns so well with your charisma and your personality to bring your full self. I think that’s the one thing I feel like when I was reading your book, even as a four or five-year-old girl, you sensed that lack of energy in the room when that person, that medical, whether it be a nurse or doctor, handing your grandmother those pills, that it didn’t come with the love, the compassion, the empathy, the color, the excitement, the joy and of course, the education to help someone like your grandma. I feel like you really – it sounds like to me, you grew up to be the person that you wished would have been there, and that is so beautiful to recognize in your journey, I got to tell you that.

Lattisha Bilbrew: Thank you so much. I wrapped up clinic just a couple of hours ago and I strive to be that and sometimes I see thirty people in a half-day, which is crazy, right? But I’ll tell you, 95 percent of my patients will say that I spend enough and more than enough time with them. You can get tired sometimes, you know, mentally, physically, walking back and forth and I always remind myself, I think about my grandmother, and every patient deserves to feel heard and seen and appreciated.

Even if it’s patients who are repetitive where I’m like, “Man, you’ve said that five times.” I’m like, “Shut up, Lattisha,” you know? “You shut up and they paid you to be here and you listen,” and I pride myself on that. Before I leave my patient’s room, I always say, “What questions do you have for me?” Instead of “Any questions?” Because that’s so abrupt, you know?

“What questions do you have for me?” And I pause and I probably ask that two or three times before I leave the room because I don’t want any patients to leave the room not knowing their diagnosis, not knowing the prognosis, not knowing their treatments. There are rare times I’ll have a patient that says, “Dr. Bill didn’t explain anything.” I’m like, “You get a phone call, something happened, where was the breakdown? Let me apologize because I am supposed to be your healer and let’s go back and let’s start again.” So for me, empathy, kindness, and compassion is everything as a physician.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: When we lead from there, I think as a physician or a business owner or a mother or whatever, I feel like when you have those components of you embedded in your personality and you really grow to manifest those even more within yourself, then it’s like whatever you do, whatever you touch, whoever you come in contact with, that’s what comes out. You know what I’m saying?

You being a specialist and an amazing surgeon, all those things just so happen to be the bonus of you, right? I feel like sometimes today in our society we think it’s the reverse. It’s like, “Let me get these skills and just become the best at this.” But then they tack on these other beautiful attributes.

Because it’s like if you can emphasize the time to grow these things just as much as you emphasize the time on becoming you know, great with the, I don’t even know the instruments you all use. I am just so ignorant to being a doctor, see what I’m saying? The scalpel, probably the only tool I know because I feel like we use it in art too. So today, I feel like I’ve just been honored to have just spent some time with you and really get to know you a little bit.

Your book, it is one of those things for me when I try to go through books and learn, not learn about the person but really learn from what you are trying to say through story, I immediately didn’t want to put it down and it made me want to read the rest of it. I ran out of time and so I am excited to get into the rest of the book but Lattisha, it’s been such an honor. Thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences with me and the audience.

The book is called, Yes, I Am a Surgeon: Lessons on Perseverance in a World that Tells You No. Besides checking out the book on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, all that good stuff, where can people find you and connect with you?

Lattisha Bilbrew: Yes, so you can find me on Instagram, @lattishabilbrew_md, you can find me on Facebook at Dr. Lattisha Bilbrew, same thing with Twitter, Dr. Lattisha Bilbrew. I have a website, www.drlattishabilbrew.com, that’s www.drlattishabilbrew.com and yeah, reach out. Shoot me a DM, I actually have my website where you can schedule a time to chat with me if you’re a student or a professional and you just need some motivation.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much. I am actually going to send this episode to my nephew who is in medical school right now in the Bahamas.

Lattisha Bilbrew: Oh, yes.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Isn’t that amazing?

Lattisha Bilbrew: Love it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, so I’m for sure going to be sending him your info as well, just to look you up and see if he can gain some insights, which I am sure he will and of course, get his hands on this book. Lattisha, again, it’s been such an honor. Thank you for coming on today, an absolute pleasure.

Lattisha Bilbrew: Thank you for having me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, congratulations on your book.

Lattisha Bilbrew: Thank you.

The post Yes, I Am the Surgeon: Lattisha Bilbrew, MD. appeared first on Author Hour.

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As chief innovator and problem-solver, the CTO value far exceeds technology skills. The CTO must lead as a highly visible, first-class citizen of the C-suite. Still, many technology experts operate in a reactive support-oriented style, struggling to command respect or assert influence, let alone executive presence.

Welcomed back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and my next guest is Etienne De Bruin, who is here to talk about his new book, CTO Excellence in 100 Days. Let’s get into it.

Hello friends and welcome back to the Author Hour show. I’m here with my friend, Etienne, who is here to talk about his new book and I’m super excited because Etienne and I have met just a few months ago. I see, just last month at the guided author workshop and he’s already starting his second book but man, before we get into all these books, Etienne, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for just showing up today, I really appreciate your time. I’m excited to get into this book.

Etienne De Bruin: You’re welcome Hussein, it’s fun to be with you. I’m super jazzed that we met each other in person, so I can visualize you as we chat.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: As we go through this, right? Yeah, all right my friend, well, you’ve written an amazing book man. I mean, like I said, before we got on here, I was able to sort of peruse through it and like I said, I found myself really engaged and sort of easy to pick up and read, even though I’m not like a super savvy tech person.

And again, this book isn’t specifically made for me, I yet found myself not being like overwhelmed by the level of language that you use so congrats on that man. What a powerful way to engage the reader and I just appreciate that about books. You did your job man, you did it very well, congrats. Yeah man.

Before we get into the book, I really like giving the audience and really, myself just an idea of sort of who you are, your personal background. I know that I read that you know, you grew up in South Africa, which I think is very interesting but I want to know a little bit about that and maybe, who or what inspired you the most growing up?

Etienne De Bruin: Yeah, I live in San Diego, California. My wife and I moved here in 2000 and from… well, that’s the longer story but we were meant to be in the US maybe for two to three years but we just loved San Diego and America so much that we, you know, we kept prolonging our stays. We kept tag teaming our visas and we kept working on some way to stay in the country.

In 2008, we started having children and they became, you know, they were Americans and then we decided to become Americans. So the progression was like a frog in hot water I suppose, you know? When it slowly boils and then when you look back, you’re like, “Wow, that’s…” we’ve been in the US now probably somewhat longer than we’ve been alive. So I was born in South Africa in the 70s.

I was just talking to a friend of mine the other day about how lucky we both felt that we were children of the 70s because there was such a boom in the early 80s of personal computing and you know, the imminent discovery of the Internet and connected computers and you know, he was raised in around Georgia and I was raised in Johannesburg, South Africa and we both… it was kind of shocking how similar our stories were and just our discovery of computing and creating.

Expressing our creativeness through writing code and I mentioned in the book that I was raised sort of in the last 20 years of apartheid rule. So most of my formative years were in this sort of falling regime or this sort of crack in the oppressor’s government and construct and I also account myself lucky in a way that I was there to witness Nelson Mandela becoming president, moving to democracy and really experiencing the incredible hope that comes with the changing regime.

I know it can come with firearms and war as well and South Africa is one of the most peaceful handovers I think in history. We certainly have our issues today and our issues are profound but back then, I was a benefactor of witnessing sort of a historic change into the leadership of someone who I guess arguably is one of the greatest figures in the world and was in Nelson Mandela.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I got to tell you, I love that story because you have such a unique perspective on you know, of course, you growing up there and being born there and that kind of transformation that takes place usually is met with a lot of sadly, violence around the world, right?

And the change for progress and moving forward and in this case, democracy around a black man who was in prison for what, 30 years or so, when I learned about Nelson Mandela, I was like, “He’s a prophet, there’s no way he’s human” right? Like there’s no way. I mean, he, somebody came and spoke to him from another dimension. Like it’s just, it’s such a profound story seriously because it just feels that way at least, right? And he’s so inspiring.

How would you say that changed sort of in the world that you grew up in and impacted how you saw the future and how you saw, you know, potential for technology and you know, this sort of shift in thinking about the future and what it could possibly hold for economics and all those good things?

Etienne De Bruin: Yes, this is a great question because I am absolutely a transformed human because of that experience. So from South Africa, I graduated at Stellenbosch University. I got my computer science degrees and then I went off to Germany and then spent three years in Germany and then I went to the States.

And that impacted me because when I arrived in the States, I had sort of a Google Earth moment where you sort of zoom out and I thought to myself, “You know, what is it that brought me to this place of palm trees and hot tubs and people swimming with dirty martinis?” I was immediately drawn to the opportunities I’ve had, you know, being a, you know, white male in South Africa, obviously the whole system was geared towards my success.

With that bias removed or at least, the ideology removed, how do we help more people enjoy prosperity that comes with technology and innovation? That was a much longer night of a lot of musing, so I won’t go into that because it will take 10 hours but I decided to ask myself whether we can have more people participate in the economy without the burden of broken infrastructure or the barriers of socioeconomic standing, broken institutions or you know, corrupt institutions.

How can one take this one life that you’ve been given presumably and just be given the best opportunities to succeed? And that’s been my obsession I think since I arrived in the US and I think that was somehow birthed from observing Nelson Mandela coming out of prison and inspiring not only, you know, the oppressed but many, many white people to be different and to have a higher standard for how we think about other humans and sort of our shared humanity and the timelessness of community and commitment.

So I have to say that that was in there because you know, as I mentioned, when I saw South Africa switch from the National Ruling Party to the ANC, I was in my student years and you know, as a student at a university, way more… you’re out of your parent’s house, you’re thinking your own thoughts, you’re formulating your own views of the world and so I was a very, very ripe stage of my life to just ingest all the changes that were happening around me as fuel for hope and change and I’m going to say that that fuel is still inside of me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, so powerful man, I love that. I like that you really made the connection in the sense that I genuinely love how Nelson Mandela was as much as he was for the oppressed, right? Giving voice to the voiceless, all these beautiful things, he was also sort of turning your attention back to you in the sense that, “What do you do with this privilege, what do you do with this honor?” this whatever.

You know, this progression, are you still going to continue on the path of your ancestors have gone or are you going to change, evolve and include all of us as a part of you know, a thriving community? What does that look like in your mind? And I love that it inspired you to look at things differently, to see the world differently. Of course, travel, learn, experience, and of course, finding yourself in the US, where you sort of planted yourself to further grow but I love how that inspirational moment, how that time in the last couple of decades really impacted you.

The Power of MusicEtienne De Bruin: Let me just say, the first, just to give people an idea of how secluded I was, I grew up in the suburb South of Johannesburg, which is also – Soweto is Southwest of Johannesburg. You know, I fell in love with music early on and I was really into Joy Division and U2, and sort of in the late 70s, early 80s and the cultural boycotts hit us pretty hard and I think for a teenager, you know, I always look at my American friends who talk about their adolescence and how they went to all these shows and that was not an option for us.

And not only that but a lot of bands refused to release their music in South Africa and I will never forget you know, U2. In the mid-80s, U2 decided to stop releasing music in South Africa as part of the cultural boycott and there was a kid in our neighborhood who put up a little pirate radio station with his, I guess, his dad’s car antenna or something and he was broadcasting all these sorts of amazing albums.

I guess he just put his record player on and just… he managed to get his hands on an album called Rattle and Hum by U2 and it was the first time I heard the album. It was on this private radio station and there was a song on there called “Silver and Gold” that Bono, during an instrumental part of the song, just regaled the South African government and you know, the oppression that was happening and brother, that was the first time that I heard that what was going on and I always find it you know, my parents were amazing in terms of my parents were not political.

They didn’t sort of subscribe us to all these cultural things, they were neutral in my opinion and it was quite incredible to get my first dose of the reality of what was happening in South Africa through a pirate radio station, playing a record up to a song where Irish artist would tell a little South African kid what the story was. It’s pretty crazy.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: And it’s interesting because you were tuned in with music, right? Like that was your place of you know, just release and creativity and just jamming out to some tunes and there is up and coming artist. But you know, though you felt the neglect and why these specific individual artists did not want to release and then like how political you had shaped, not only then but also their music.

But it’s interesting how that message came through to you and through what mechanism and how powerful music is in highlighting constructs, right? For me, it was like hip-hop on the 90s, right? Like in a lot of ways, still to this day a little bit, although I think it’s predominantly mainstream unfortunately but, you know, the early 90s and 80s, of course, hip-hop really spoke to the insanity that was happening around in the ghettos of the United States, right?

And the oppressed, it’s the language of the oppressed but if no one’s going to talk about it, someone’s going to talk about it and in a way, that is very much amplified and the reason why I feel like that kind of music of course, grew to the heights that it did and does is because there’s truth in it. There’s a story in it that a lot of people can relate to and for me as a Middle Eastern kid, who had just gone through war and refugee camp and then now growing up in the US, that music spoke to my… I don’t want to say suffering.

But I want to say to poetically to my struggles, of trying to fit in, trying to be understood, trying to, in a way engage with people, identity, right? Figuring out who I am and so you know, Arabic poetry is very rhythmic and I found that in hip-hop. So I love that because I connect with you on that in the sense that music taught me a little bit about myself and the culture that I’m in and I used to listen to a lot of Jay-Z and I really wanted and I’m still in this sort of path of becoming more of my artistic self, right?

Through whether it be graphics or writing or whatever, it was people like that that really like, sort of made me believe in myself in a way, right? And kind of giving me behind the curtain scenes. So I love that, I love how music is transcultural. It really opens up our eyes to the world around us, so that’s very cool man.

Etienne De Bruin: Just a question, which refugee camp were you in?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So I was in a refugee camp called Rafha, which was from 1991 to 1994. 1990 to 1994, after the first Gulf War, my family and I ended up being in this camp and you know, that time was… that was crazy and everything but I was very young, you know? I had older siblings and mom and dad that I was very grateful for that really helped, of course, protect me, took care of me, you know?

So in a lot of ways, I feel that today and what that did to the entire family dynamic but again, it’s the processing over time that helps with the healing and the art and you know, all those kinds of things, which led me to what I’m doing now.

Etienne De Bruin: What do you feel you carry today that you’ve learned in the refugee camp? Like how do you see the world differently especially your surroundings at Scribe or like what do you see?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, I love that we turned this conversation on me, thanks a lot. This is why I love you man. You know, I’ll answer this but we’re getting back to your book because your book is very powerful. So for me, I think ultimately what it’s taught me, you know, I write this in my book as well, it’s really the importance of practicing art and to me, that is resilience. That is how I sort of face the world if you will.

I know it sounds cliché or probably corny, like the sword in which my warrior carries is like the paintbrush or the pen, you know what I mean? It’s like how you know, I want to talk about the refugee story, you know, the dilemma that we’re in. You know, all of these things but through art. It also taught me to you know, really live in the moment.

It’s hard to live in the moment and that you know, it also taught me to just embrace the good, the not-so-good, the bad, the ugly, it is all happening for us not against us and so, you know, what am I learning, right? So that’s what it taught me but I feel like a lot of people have come into my life to help me recognize that, right?

It’s not something I just had an overnight epiphany and just had it. I think you know, my father, my mother, everyone plays a role, my wife, the dog, right? The dogs, we were just talking about before the show, they all kind of teach us something in our show. So and I think people like Nelson Mandela, of course, Malcolm X, Martin Luther, you know, Prophet Muhammad, Jesus, whatever, you know, I have always been… Buddha, fascinated by incredible beings like that that carry just beautiful light within them.

How we are still talking about them, inspired by them, you know what I mean? In our own ways and shapes and forms and so I know you bring a lot of that energy, you know, this is why I talk about meeting you, you know, sitting around with you just you know, you have this very calm and really laid back demeanor but also this sort of light, lighter sense on the reality of things, right? Like you’re in technology, you are helping these CTOs grow and be assertive in their companies.

All these things but I feel like that in it of itself, that drive is connected to a deeper sense of our self and I think for you, whoever you’re inspired by, which is why I ask that question, you know, is profound because it plays a role but I am going to ask you a question because I know everyone asks you this, right? Usually, when we’re on a diet plan or onboarding people, you know, we got 60 to 90 days, right? But you decided to say it’s 100 days, CTO excellence in 100 days.

Can you tell me a little bit of – I know why but I want you to tell us why did you go with 100 days and not 90?

Excellence in 100 DaysEtienne De Bruin: Yes, when I was floating the idea with my friends, they were like, “I don’t get it.” It’s usually like a 90-day plan, it’s a quarterly plan, that’s 30 days, that’s three months. I think it’s probably indicative of the approach I took in the whole book, which is I am not in the business tech leadership track as much as I want to move people into the influence and relational track and I decided to go with 100 days because I was inspired.

You know, I mentioned as well when I came to the US in 2000, George Bush was running against Al Gore. I think it was the infamous hanging chad election but I was overwhelmed in a way by this 100-day plan. Everyone was talking about the 100-day plan and as an immigrant, I didn’t know the history behind that and now of course I know that it was FDRs New Deal that he made with the country during the Great Depression.

Where he basically asked the country to give him 100 days to turn things around and that really just inspires me. It’s a limited time boxed 100 days, it’s a long time. I mean, 100 days is long. You know, in a new job where weeks are just you know, in five-day chunks, you have a substantial amount of time in which you can set yourself up for months and hopefully the years that come after that.

So I wanted to write something for the chief technology officer of whom, you know, I am very passionate about the role of CTO. I care very much for people who sort of fall into that role and are woefully unprepared for the role and so this book is a somewhat lighthearted approach but very, you know, I hope there’ll be some sort of frowny face weird moments like, “Oh, why does he think this is important?” and I hope that all these days will sort of build up to this approach that will set you up to succeed at your company.

Whether you’re joining a company or whether you are wanting to revitalize your role and you’re stuck a little bit and you know, you want a 100-day plan to just turn the ship around so to speak, on your role and that’s why I wrote this book.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s really powerful but can you really quickly, can you tell us what a CTO is and what are the common challenges that they face in those first hundred days and why it’s so important to really sort of create a plan for yourself and get an idea of what the next hundred days are going to look like?

Etienne De Bruin: I love that question. The chief technology officer is the colloquially referred to as the leader of the technology in a company and the very next conclusion that is made is that the CTO is a tech-buff who knows the tech, can build the tech, can do the tech, can write the code, can lead the team, can help the C-suite and I think people create all these constructs on top of a black box of which they have no understanding.

A lot of CTOs or people who are in that role sort of walk into this different constructs and myriads of opinions that the people around them have as to what the role actually is. I have found this to be so true in the many, many, many engagements and conversations and coaching opportunities I’ve had is that people just do not understand what the CTO is supposed to do.

In a tech company, it’s like, “Hey, the tech is still running, so I guess we’re good. We’re releasing features, the CTO is doing their work.” In a tech-enabled company, it’s like, “Hey, you know, I hope the CTO keeps our point-of-sale devices running or our medical devices running.” In all sorts of companies, the CTO is just the tech person and the leader of the tech person and so you know, from my vantage point, the CTO is a business role first and foremost.

It’s not a tech role in my opinion, it is a business role that gets assigned a budget to bring on a team and that team is supposed to develop and enhance and build technology. I don’t actually mention that in this book so explicitly as I just did but it is definitely the topic of my next book. So I think when people look at CTOs, they should look at, “What is this person doing to help our business succeed?” and not “How do we make our business succeed in spite of all the trials and tribulations that the CTO is putting us through?”

I want people to see the role of CTO as a business role just like any other business leadership role that has an X amount of dollars from which to hire the right people to adequately and hopefully profoundly apply it to the resources or the teams that are then going to build the amazing technologies that propel the company forward.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Very powerful but in doing so, there’s got to be a difference in your opinion in the sense of like what a successful CTO and how they’re set apart from those who struggle especially around the ideas, which I love that you talked about this, and the idea of like asserting their influence and asserting their presence in the C-suite because if you are sort of in the back corner not saying much, not really adding value and just kind of being told how to drive something, it’s different than being at the table bringing forth your creativity.

Bringing forth what you and your team are capable of and being a part of the conversation and navigating the ship altogether is an important component. So how do you see in those first 100 days when a CTO can really lean into those sort of assertive sort of characteristics?

Etienne De Bruin: Yes, I love that because I think it’s such a missed opportunity when a person in the tech leadership role is relegated to just delivering technology. I think they have so much more to bring to the collaborative leadership inside of the C-suite and so that’s… my book focuses on, the first month is mostly focused on how to build trust with that leadership team so that they can, you know, take the broccoli with the chocolate, you know?

It’s a lot of CTOs complain especially to me or in our peer groups that there aren’t given the necessary respect or the trust when it comes to making very important technology decisions for the company and when I hear that I always wonder, “Okay, well, what is the run-up to the situation?” I agree, it sucks when you’re not respected in the C-suite or when you know, a critically important decision you want to make around hiring or betting on a certain technology or refactoring or getting rid of technical data in your existing technology is met with skepticism or doubt and it is hard not to internalize that.

But I do question, “Well, what is the environment that you’ve created?” You know, how many times have you overpromised and underdelivered? How many times did you deliver some magic in a weekend and then four months after that, there’s crickets? It’s all about the pacing of the leadership not necessarily to deliver technology. I mean again, the CTO needs to deliver technology. That’s a fact.

But it is about how do we view our relationships inside of the C-suites and how do we galvanize our decision making, so that when people do hear the hard things or even worse, the things they don’t understand they do give you the benefit of the doubt and so for me, this 100 days is focused on, “Well, how can I create the vacuum that people will sort of just rush into and follow my leadership, my strategy when it comes to technology leadership.”

My approach is, okay, if you want to create the vacuum so that people will be sucked in and follow you and trust you and love you as a person, well, you need to take in my opinion at least 100 days of investing in what is it that makes the C-suite tech. You know, what can you learn from the person you like the least? You know, where are the opportunities for a quick win so that you can, you know, show some good faith that people have made the right decision in betting on you? And so that is really the whole approach for the 100 days.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s really powerful, man. I love that. I love how again, you were inspired by so many remarkable people and stretching that 100-day period but of course, it goes beyond that and you know, the idea that whatever your mentorship is and your guidance, you know, it’s the turning of a role of those first 100 days, the setting of the tone, the sort of creating a rhythm and what’s expected and being present and being assertive.

All of those sort of components play together to create that first 100-day run in a beautiful way and I love that and going through your book again, I’m no CTO but it really lays out a pretty clear strategy and plan moving forward. Super easy to navigate and read through. What would you say your favorite part of writing this book was for you?

Etienne De Bruin: Well, this is going to sound like a plug but man, when I joined Scribe it changed everything for me. I actually started this book three years ago as an idea to capture some of my thoughts on paper. I came to Scribe with a fully sort of in my view was a complete manuscript and definitely for my personality type, it just felt amazing to feel like I had a team, you know, there to read the book or the manuscript before they decided to work with me.

You know, when I got the green light, it was incredible to meet the team to see them support me and so every step of the way, I always felt strange when there was like a, “Hey, you know, your feelings are going to get hurt when you read through this. Don’t give up.” I will always found that strange because I really craved the unfiltered feedback on the direction I was taking or on the actual flow of the book. So I am going to say the editing of the manuscript was by far my favorite part.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. I think you’re right, I would have to agree, the editing part is really when things really come to light although the writing part is just as I think is really fun for me too just to like give myself permission and just let it out, right? Put everything on paper and then sort of later on decide what’s important and what’s not because I feel like in the moment of writing, it is hard to decide what’s important or not, you know what I mean?

What story or what fact or what thing but it’s like just dump what you got and we’ll figure the rest out later and that rest out later, I mean, that stuff takes a long time. I feel like the editing, processing of the information, and really how it changes the person. I feel like that’s probably one of the most profound things that I found not just in myself but even in others, right? Like writing a book really and editing a book really gets you to question a lot of you know, how you have approached something that comes so naturally to you.

Now you’re poking at it in every direction and it has to kind of stand that weight. So I know you did that throughout the whole book Etienne and I think it’s an amazing journey that you’ve made all the way from South Africa to who you are today and of course, raising your beautiful children that I know you love and so many important things that you are laying out the foundation of. I know you’re currently working on your second book too, which is I am super excited about.

But today, we’re going to be excited because I’m just wanting to celebrate you man because again, congratulations. The book is called, CTO Excellence in 100 Days: Becoming the Leader Your Company Deserves. So besides checking out this book, where can people find you buddy?

Etienne De Bruin: Well, I did create a website for the book, ctoexcellence.com, so I’ll be posting updates. I am looking at creating a CTO Excellence community, people who read the book want to be able to discuss. I have a concept of a journal, a CTO journal in there. So the community will be focused on taking the ten sections that really should be journaled and do that in community. So I would recommend people go to ctoexcellence.com.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right on, brother. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show man, just sharing your stories and your experiences, always inspired just hanging and chatting with you today. Of course, you know, bringing all the greats in and how they inspired both of us really, I just appreciate that, man. I can’t wait to make it to San Diego and hang out. On that note congratulations on your book, my friend.

Etienne De Bruin: Thank you. Thank you brother, I appreciate that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I am so proud of it, for real. I am excited for you. Anything else you want to add?

Etienne De Bruin: Just that you’re amazing and I think you’re doing an incredible job building the community at Scribe. I genuinely, during the author workshop, I just had sort of a moment where I was thinking, “Man, it’s incredible to be in a workshop with people who genuinely have their stories to share and have the courage to share them” and are overcoming the fears with imposter syndrome or not another book, “Who needs to hear my book or my story?”

Just to see the community that you’ve brought together, clearly it’s curated and it’s great people and yeah, I really feel the connection with you. So thank you, Hussein.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Definitely brother, thank you for saying those beautiful words. I’m sure not only myself but the whole team appreciates it on every level because I certainly wouldn’t be here without them but again man, thank you for your time today, it’s been an absolute pleasure. I can’t wait to continue watching your journey grow and flourish into the author that you are becoming and of course, hopefully one day sipping something really good on a private island, right?

Etienne De Bruin: Thanks, brother.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Have a good day, my friend.

Etienne De Bruin: Thank you.

The post CTO Excellence in 100 Days: Etienne De Bruin appeared first on Author Hour.

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My next guest has sold everything from gym memberships to retirement plans, and enjoyed every aspect, except prospecting. In real estate, they saw the outdated tactics such as cold calling and paid advertising, and how ineffective and time-consuming they were. However, my new guest and his partner turned to YouTube to do something different. It gave them everything they needed — exposure, opportunity, and clients who would benefit most from their service.

Welcome to the Author Hour podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by author, Levi Lascsak, who’s here to talk about his newest book called Passive Prospecting. Let’s flip through it.

Hey, friends, welcome back to the show. I’m here with my friend Levi, who just dropped an amazing book called Passive Prospecting. It’s really interesting because it’s not what you think in the real estate world. It talks about dominating your market without chasing clients and spending money on ads. He and his partner, Travis, have created this amazing book because it’s like a guideline, a strategy, and I’m really excited that he’s here because I’m interested in talking to him about all these little points that I have. So, Levi, thank you for coming on the show, my friend.

Levi Lascsak: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yeah, man. It’s really exciting. I got to say, reading throughout your book, was really easy, and straightforward. It wasn’t anything crazy, super real estate talk, or anything like that. You guys really did a great job with the language of the book. I found myself really flowing through it, man. So great job on that.

Levi Lascsak: Well, thank you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yeah, absolutely. So, let’s start by giving our listeners an idea of just who you are, man. A personal background, perhaps? Where you grew up? What led you down this path of real estate? Or maybe someone that just inspired you growing up? And you’re like, “I’m going to listen to that person,” or this situation that happened to you that maybe helped you grow on the path that you’re on? Yeah, let’s go back in time a little bit and share. What do you think?

Levi Lascsak: All right, well, back in time. Yeah. My name is Levi Lascsak, and I grew up in a small town called Stephenville, Texas. It’s about two hours south of Dallas. And if you’re not riding bulls, milking cows, or drinking beer, there’s not really much else to do there. So, my parents didn’t go to college. My two older brothers didn’t go to college. And I pretty much grew up my whole life also believing I would never go to college. Something my parents always said was, “We can’t afford that. We can’t afford that.” And no matter what it was, we couldn’t afford that, and college was definitely one of those things where my parents said, “We can’t afford that.” So, we just assume that that’s not going to happen.

I worked about a year after high school mopping floors and stocking shelves until I realized, “Okay, this is not what I want to do with the rest of my life, and I’ve got to get out of here.” And most country boys, you know what they do, they join the military to get out of a small country town. So, that was my thought process. Now, that was 1999, so the world was at peace. The last Gulf War had ended nine years earlier, and it ended in nine days. So, I thought, “Man, the world is a safe place, nobody’s going to mess with us. I could go into the military, get some money for college, get out, and move on with my life.” I really thought it would be that simple, and I thought I could handle the military, no big deal.

Two years later, September 11 happened, and shortly after that, I found myself deployed in Iraq. When I got out of military training initially, I moved to Dallas because I didn’t want to go back to Stephenville, and I started selling gym memberships at a health club called Bally Total Fitness. So, that’s where I kind of got my start in sales, and I was still in the reserves. So, I didn’t get deployed until 2004, and I was activated for 18 months and was literally given four days’ notice. At that time, if you were in the reserves, you got deployed. For those that can remember back in the early 2000s, pretty much every soldier that was in the military got sent to Iraq or Afghanistan.

I ended up spending 18 months on deployment. Twelve months of that was in Iraq, and whenever I came home, I just had to get my mind off of everything and move on. I sold cell phones. I actually sold cell phones at Costco. If you’ve ever been inside of a Costco, that little cell phone booth, I sold phones there back in 2006. That led me to get recruited to a pharmaceutical company, and so I was able to upgrade my life and sell pharmaceuticals with this company for about eight years until I got extremely sick because I came home from Iraq with a digestive disease. And it took about eight years to catch up with me. But finally, in 2013, I ended up losing fifty pounds in a single month. And I became completely bedridden and disabled, and that nearly killed me.

I ended up losing my pharmaceutical job because I had to go on medical leave, and after ninety days, they wanted me to come back to work, and I wasn’t physically able to do that. And that’s where I started my first business because I thought I was never going to have a job again. So, I moved into financial services. I got licensed and started a business where I ended up working with teachers at schools and helping them with their retirement planning. And that went really well. I ended up getting better. Finally, I found a natural doctor that was able to completely heal me of my digestive disease. So, it’s been ten years now, and I’ve had zero issues with that. But I started a financial services company and started working with teachers. I got contracts with all of Dallas’s independent school districts, so I was helping them everyday work on their retirement planning.

The cool thing was, I had the teacher’s schedule, but five times the teacher’s income. So, it allowed me to start traveling the world. I went to twenty-four countries inside of three years. And then 2020 came around, and the whole world shut down, including the schools. So, my business shut down overnight, and I was sitting there over the summer of 2020, asking myself, “How do I start over without starting over?” Because I was forty-one years old. And I thought, what is this world coming to, first of all? In the beginning of 2020, none of us knew what was going to happen. It was very uncertain at that time. We just weren’t sure of what was going on. But I knew one thing is that if schools weren’t open, I didn’t have a business, and I didn’t know when schools would ever open. So, I thought, well, if I’m going to transition, this is the time to do that, and I started to watch real estate really kind of grow during 2020, and it was really one of the only industries that started to grow.

I’ve always had an interest in real estate. And I just thought, well, if I’m going to move into real estate, I want to attract business. I don’t want to have to chase it down. I knew that there were ways to do that without having to do it, the traditional methods of cold calling and door knocking and spending money on advertising. And what we’re discussing today really applies to all small business owners, and that’s the way we formatted the book as well. Even though I use real estate as an example, in our business, this applies to plumbers, electricians, financial advisors, stockbrokers, and doctors. I mean, for whoever wants to really build a business and increase their reach through video on YouTube, this book will apply to them.

I didn’t know at the time, but I just was looking for ways to attract business. But I didn’t want to do it by reaching out to all my friends and family or tagging them in a Facebook post or trying to dance on TikTok or something like that. I knew it would be through a social platform, but YouTube was my last choice. But I figured out that YouTube was a search engine, not a social media platform. So, then I started to create videos around the Dallas market, educating people on areas to live and things to do, and that ended up starting to attract people, and that’s what helped me transition into real estate.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, man. That’s so powerful. What a journey. First of all, thank you for your service. I was part of the original Gulf War. I’m from Iraq, and so we ended up being refugees in 1990. So, we came to the States in ‘94. But that’s where sort of my life changed and how those things impacted my growth. So, there’s some overlap there in the sense of how we think things are going to go when we sign up for something or do something or whatever, and then how life and trajectory completely, sometimes opposes that, in order to open us up to some different opportunities, some different ways of looking at the world and realizing our own truth.

So, it seems like you’re going through the military, and it really kind of getting not necessarily what you were expecting, but obviously, you learned a lot, and that sort of navigated you through all kinds of different terrain. You get to now, where you have this extremely powerful media platform, Google, YouTube, all that stuff. I’ve been fairly interested in all that stuff. I remember when my friend first showed me YouTube in like 2000 – man, it was like very early, ’05, ’06, maybe. And I was just like, this is amazing. I don’t even know how to use this. You know what I mean? At the time, it was like MySpace.

We were so just kind of amateur to the whole thing. But now, the power of it and the idea It is a search engine, where did you find the concept of, “You know what, I’m just going to go on here and share X, Y, and Z, some knowledge, some wisdom.” You actually have a very unique story. I’d love for you to share that, how you started your YouTube adventure, if you don’t mind. And then we’ll kind of jump into some other things that you guys started doing.

The Power of YouTubeLevi Lascsak: Yeah, of course. I’m a little old school. I always start with books. So, if I want to learn something, I know, it’s funny. I thought, “Oh, if I’m going to learn to YouTube, instead of going on YouTube, let me buy some books.” But if somebody has written books on YouTube marketing, that they’re usually a pretty good expert in the field, and that’s a great place to start. Then, I’ll get down the rabbit hole of YouTube videos.

But I bought about eight different YouTube marketing books. And really, seven of them were not that great. They were just kind of very basic, and not very detailed. YouTube Secrets by Sean Cannell and Benji Travis was really the book that kind of hit home for me. And that’s what helped me understand that YouTube is a search engine, not a social platform. So, Benji had one little paragraph in there, that he started a real estate channel, when he first got on YouTube in 2009. And he went from a struggling agent of barely selling ten homes a year, to landing the HUD contract because of his YouTube channel in 2009. And ended up selling over one hundred homes the next year.

So, that kind of opened up my eyes. And I thought, “Okay, well, I’m not a great real estate agent, because I haven’t been a real estate agent for any amount of time, just a couple of months.” It just didn’t feel authentic to me to start trying to educate people about the real estate process when I hadn’t really gone through it with a client before. But what I found on YouTube was that people are not searching that — they’re not necessarily searching, “How do I buy a home?” Or “What’s the best loan?” I mean, people do search that, but what I really found was, the search volume was really high on suburbs, neighborhoods, and those types of things. So, that gave me the idea that people are searching these areas and wanting to see what they look like, because then I compared it with searches on Google, and YouTube had ten times the amount of search volume for suburbs and neighborhoods than there was on Google.

That immediately told me that people are looking on YouTube because they want to see these places. And I thought, “Well, I’ve been in Dallas for twenty-plus years now. I mean, I could talk about Dallas all day long.” I didn’t know how to talk about being a good real estate agent. But I thought I can talk about Dallas. So, I just started to educate people on the neighborhoods, and really not even real estate related or stat related. It was more like, “Hey, here’s a great area; there are lots of cool things to do over here, do over here. This neighborhood has these priced homes. This neighborhood has that priced homes.” So, I just started walking people around town and breaking it down on the specific neighborhoods and suburbs, and it just started to kind of take hold from there.

Now, it took about ninety days to get the first deal under contract. But we ended up closing the first two deals in April of 2021. Over the last nine months of 2021, we ended up closing sixty-four home deals, sixty-four transactions. And we did right at thirty-three and a half million in volume from home sales, which got us about a million in commissions that last nine months in our first year. So, that was pretty cool. And then 2022, it completely compounded from there. In 2022 alone, we closed 156 homes from the channel and did right at 86.2 million in volume. So, we’re looking forward to 2023. We think we could go even higher even though a lot of people are uncertain about this current market. People are still buying and selling homes every day, and that’s the great thing about YouTube, is those people that are searching are still finding our channel, still finding our videos, and we’re still getting the phone calls.

So, this is the case with any small business owner. If you want consistency in your business, you have to have consistency in marketing. But pretty much every other marketing either takes your time or your money, which is hard for a lot of small business owners to give up. It’s hard for them to give up their time because they’re busy. It’s hard for them to give up their money because they’re stingy, and they don’t want to spend it. But that’s okay. It’s understandable, and they’re worried about wasting money, which is true. But YouTube, you can start for free. Now, it does take you time to make videos, but YouTube does not really take your time. YouTube makes you time. And not only does it make you time, it compounds your time. And if you look at this, and this is what I explained in the book. I showed direct snapshots from the back-end analytics of our channel, and one channel or one video, for example, it took me thirty minutes to make.

Think about this. One video took me thirty minutes to make. It’s been watched for over 11,700 hours. Now, just that alone, that’s like making a profit of 11,695 hours on my thirty-minute investment. So, if I offered you, “Hey, I will give you 11,695 hours for just a half-hour investment,” I think most people would take that investment. Take that option, right? But that’s the thing is that it prospected for us that amount, and when you divide that twenty-four hours into that 11,700, that’s equal to about a year and a half. So, that thirty-minute investment that I made gave me one-and-a-half years’ worth of prospecting. That’s how powerful that is.

So, that’s what you have to look at because you’re turning days into months, months into years, and years into decades worth of this. And since we started our channel, actually, just last year alone, I looked at the stats. We had, I think, right around 105,000 watch hours, which is equivalent to almost twelve years. So, last year, in 2022, our channel was watched equivalent to twelves years’ worth of time, which means our channel prospected for us twelve years’ worth the time in a one-year timeframe. And that’s why we’ve been able to grow and scale so quickly because we’re not tied to actively prospecting every single day. We just spend literally about two hours a week making videos. And once you publish that video, it starts working for you and not just hour for hour, it’s in a compound effect. Because one hour can return you ten hours, and ten hours can return you one hundred hours. So, it’s a true compound effect. And I think this plays directly into everyone’s fascination with passive income or compound interest, right?

Everybody loves the idea of passive income because you put in the work upfront, and then it continually pays you over and over and over again and over time, and with a lot less work down the road. Well, that’s the same concept here, we’re just doing that through prospecting. We’re making one video, we’re putting in the work upfront, and then publishing it and letting that video go to work for us and compounding over time. That compound of time is like getting compound interest if you were to invest your money into some sort of investment. So, same concept, just in a different format, and that’s why it’s so powerful.

Start Your Passive ProspectingHussein Al-Baiaty:Yeah, it’s incredible, man. I mean, you’re taking this valuable stuff that can really generate those prospects, can generate those leads, but you’re applying it to something that is incredibly powerful. I mean, again, it’s not just a search engine, right? It’s this idea that it’s evergreen. This idea that it compounds on itself, and keeps giving you those opportunities long after you’re done with it. I would say it’s like word of mouth, social proof, and value and entertainment, all combined, coming together to deliver back to you exactly what you need. I think positioning oneself to really create an opportunity in that space is huge. So, what advice would you give to someone who’s just starting out with this idea of going on YouTube, or perhaps another social media platform where they can utilize video, and those kinds of things to kind of get an edge in their market, and perhaps create more ways where they can connect with those potential clients?

Levi Lascsak: Well, if I were starting out, I would copy everything that we’re doing. I would get a copy of the book, Passive Prospecting. I would read it, and I would start putting that into action. I believe YouTube is the best conversion platform out there. I know people that do business from other social platforms, but long-form content really converts the best, and it allows people to develop a relationship with you, that’s a lot more intact. And that’s the thing is that, if they start going down the rabbit hole of long-form content, they’re going to develop a relationship with you a lot faster and trust you a lot more.

The people that call us want to work with us. They’ve already made a decision that they want to work with us. So, if you’re starting out, I believe you should have your base on YouTube, because guess what, you can chop up a YouTube video and distribute that to every other short-form platform. But you can’t make a short-form video and piece it all together. You can’t make ten of them and piece them all together and then add it to YouTube. It doesn’t work like that. So, I think if you really want to maximize your time and your conversion, starting on YouTube is the best place, then you can chop that up, and then distribute it to all the other platforms. But you’re probably going to end up finding that you generate more of your business from YouTube than the other platform.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yeah, man, very powerful. Especially, YouTube’s got it on lock. It’s been around for so long. It does give so much back to the creators because it is a creator based, I guess, economy, where there’s the ad revenue share. There’s so much opportunity for sponsorships. There’s so much opportunity for, of course, meeting and working with your potential clients. As you grow, everything is compounding. All those opportunities. Couldn’t have said it better. Honestly, that book is really powerful, man. Sean Cannell and Benji, they did such a great job. That’s the book that actually put me on as well. And I’ve always loved online content. I couldn’t get over it – I disliked how Instagram was set up, and Facebook. There was just so disengaging, meaning you put something up, and it’s gone within a day, two days. The whole flare of it is around ten minutes that you actually put that thing up.

But YouTube is kind of the opposite, honestly. I feel like some of the videos I’ve created in the past have gone up over time, especially around – we do this run, play, walk for refugees, and we do it every year, and I’ve done the videos and stuff for it. What’s crazy is like around World Refugee Day, around June, that video starts to populate even more, right? Because people are searching for how to do something in their community, or what they could do to contribute to the refugee community in a positive way. I thought that was so powerful. But I’m glad you kind of bringing those elements together. But also, man, writing a book while doing all this work is a journey in and of itself. So, what have you learned from putting this book together?

Levi Lascsak: I’ve learned that you can do anything, even whenever you think you’re too busy. I wrote the majority of this book last year, actually, all of it last year, when we traveled to twenty-five conferences and ended up speaking at half of them. It was very, very strenuous to do that. It was a lot. So, I just worked on this for a couple of hours in the morning — I get up early anyways. But the thing is, is that everything we do is one bite at a time, right? That’s how you eat the elephant. One bite at a time. But a lot of people are just even concerned or scared to take that first bite. But the next thing you know is — time is going to move forward. Time is going to continue. And when they say time flies, it does. There will be people that will listen to this podcast, and not take action. And there will be people that listen to this podcast and take action.

In six months, the next thing you know, it will fly by, and you’ll say one of two things. Either I’m glad I did, or I wish I had. You have to take action on something, and whatever it is, figure out what path do you want to go down. Now, video may not be for you. So, you have to, I think first, ask yourself, are you a people person? Are you a phone call a person? Are you a reader and writer? Or are you a video person? If you’re not a video person, you can be successful on video, it’s going to be a more difficult path to go down which, hey, I think you can do anything you set your mind to, but also, if you’re going to procrastinate and be concerned about it and not want to do it and put it off, maybe video is not for you. And if you’re a people person, look at your industry or your business, whatever it is that you’re working on, and think, “How do I maximize?” I want to meet people. I don’t want to be on video. I want to network or go to events, or in our case, in real estate, maybe it’s open houses or PTA events or community events, where you go to, and you want to shake hands and kiss babies.

Well, if that’s the case, then become the most successful you can be by maximizing your people and person skills. If there are people, there are agents, there are financial advisors, there are plumbers that would rather just make phone calls all day. They would rather cold call people and get rejected over the phone versus in person or stare at a camera and make videos. So, if that’s the case, figure out how to maximize your phone call capabilities, how to scale yourself, how to improve, how to convert those types of things, whatever it is you want to do. I believe you can hyper-learn any subject in sixty days.

So, with the amount of information that’s out there, figure out your path, understand what type of person you are, and how you want to generate your business, and then look for it, and study it. If you google anything, I mean, not Google, but go on Amazon and search generating business one way or another, whether it’s through people, phone calls, readers and writers, or video, there will probably be ten to twenty books on it on Amazon that you could buy it today. So, it’s just something that if you want to be the best postcard marketer on the planet, study postcards. And guess what 99.9 percent of business owners will not study postcard marketing. They will probably just copy somebody else’s campaign, and just think that that will automatically work for them. Instead of really understanding how postcard marketing works, and what days of the week should you send it out? How frequently, how many times per week or per month? What type of copy goes on the front? What should you put on the back? Where to place your content?

Trust me, there are books on postcard marketing. If you’re a plumber, and you want to generate your business through postcards, study it for thirty, or sixty days, become the best at it, and you’ll probably beat out all the other plumbers on postcard marketing, just because you took that extra step to do it. So, that’s what we teach in Passive Prospecting, the book, is that if you want to be the best version of your business on video through YouTube, then study the book. You can even pick up YouTube Secrets. But we give you the full blueprint. YouTube Secrets is more of the fundamentals and principles. Ours gives you the principles and the how-to. It gives you the whole process. So, the principles and the process. That’s very powerful. And if you apply that, then you can be successful on YouTube. Or, again, if you want to do it through postcard marketing, study it, become the best at it, and you’ll probably still beat out everybody in your industry.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Man, I love that. So powerful. It really is in our hands, it’s in our thoughts, right? Like how we approach what we want to do. It’s about going deep into that niche. It’s about going deep into how you operate, understanding yourself, and where that friction is, maybe reducing the friction or changing it altogether. Where you’re flowing down the river instead of going up the mountain. I think I love that, when you started this, you were thinking about what’s the thing that I don’t really like doing? I don’t like cold calling. I don’t want to spend a bunch of money on ads. I want to get in front of people, and that’s where I can make the most impact. But how do I do that?

Well, there’s this video element, and then there’s the search bar, that if I can do the right things, maybe I can populate up to where I’m speaking directly to my potential client in a unique way. For you, that obviously completely took off and now has changed how you see not only your own work, but just the industry in and of itself, and then taking that and applying it to potential other industries. It’s so powerful. Did you want to add something to that?

Levi Lascsak: Yeah, I mean, well, I’ve been in sales for twenty years, and I love sales, but I hated prospecting. Because I spent 90 percent of my time prospecting. Now, I did it as a necessary evil. But I also became better than everybody else at prospecting, which is why I was typically the best salesperson, whether it was gym memberships, cell phones, pharmaceuticals, or financial services. I learned how to be the best prospector, but that took 90 percent of my time, and every single one of those businesses, is what I spent most of my time doing. And 10 percent of my time, actually speaking to clients about the services that I wanted to help them improve their business or their life.

Here, that’s why I called it Passive Prospecting was that whole concept, is because I made – I spend very, very little time. Actually, creating videos is the least amount of time I spend in my business now. So, I just spend literally less than two hours a week and make some videos, and it brings us so much business because it’s duplicating myself. If you’ve ever said, I wish I just had more of me, well, make a video of yourself, and you’ll have more of you. We’ve got 330 videos, I think on the channel now. And guess what, that’s like 330 me out there selling every single day. Yeah, educating.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. And also, of course, this elevates you to become an expert in that field, right? You become, in a way, not only a person that a lot of people go to, for reference and help and whatever. The amount of prosperity that happens around that energy is enormous. I mean, I just, I just feel like it’s one of those things that when you really apply that pressure in that specific niche, I mean, the results show for themselves. And I can’t imagine in a few years where the ad revenue is going to be, where the growth of the channel is going to be, and what you’re going to be able to do with all of that.

So, congratulations again, man. I am very much going to read through this book, because I know I’m going to apply a lot of these tactics to what I’m doing. But Levi, thank you so much for sharing your stories and experiences with me today. The book is called Passive Prospecting: Dominate Your Market without Cold-Calling, Chasing Clients, or Spending Money on Ads. What a great title. Besides checking out the book on Amazon, where can people find you and connect with you?

Levi Lascsak: Yeah, of course, passiveprospecting.com is our main website. You can also search Passive Prospecting on YouTube if you want to find our YouTube channel. And you can search for Levi Lascsak on Instagram if you want to find me there.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, thanks again, Levi. I appreciate you. Have a fantastic rest of your day. It was great having you on the show today, brother.

Levi Lascsak: You too. Thank you.

The post Passive Prospecting: Levi Lascsak appeared first on Author Hour.

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My next guest is a personal coach and a widely recognized sales expert. She’s helped hundreds of mission-driven coaches discover sales methods that feel fantastic, transforming their businesses and their lives.

Welcomed back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by author Michelle Rockwood, who is here to talk about her newest book called Joyful Selling. Let’s flip through it.

Hello friends and welcome back to the show. I’m super excited to have my friend, Michelle Rockwood with me today. She just launched the book called Joyful Selling and you guys, I got to tell you, I’m really excited for this conversation. Michelle, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Michelle Rockwood: Hey, thank you for having me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely. So I got to tell you, your book was not only sort of easy to swim through to pick up all these notes for our conversation but I really wanted to just sit down and read. Like it was so… it pulled me in, like I really wanted to… I’m like, “Oh man, I need more time here before meetup” but I’m really excited because again, it was sort of easy to navigate, easy to get through.

So kudos to you and the team for putting this together. How are you feeling about the book launch?

Michelle Rockwood: I’m feeling amazing. I can’t tell you the response I’ve gotten, so far it has been overwhelming. I hadn’t imagined it would be this amazing.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, so let’s go back in time a little bit, I’d love to share with our audience, a little bit about you, who you are, where you grew up, and perhaps a person or an event that took place and really shaped the path that you’re on now.

The Work of Coaches is Life ChangingMichelle Rockwood: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I grew up in Southern California, Orange County and if you know me, you’ll kind of giggle because I am not an Orange County girl and I wasn’t quite a fit in the Orange County scene, not that I didn’t love it. I loved growing up there, I loved going to the beach doing junior lifeguards, it was an incredible place to be.

But as soon as I went off to college, I went to college in Chicago, I knew that I probably wouldn’t go back even though again, love Orange County, love Southern California so much and I think it was actually you know, you asked what’s a pivotal time. It was when I hired a life coach and that’s really what brought me in this life coaching journey.

Like, I think so many people is when they hire a coach and having grown up with brothers, I have three brothers and now, three boys, I hadn’t had that kind of support. I hadn’t even, really had much therapy, you know? Coaching isn’t therapy, it’s much different but when I hired my first coach, that’s really when woosh, the floodgates opened up and I was like, “Woah, this is incredible.” The work of coaches is life changing.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. Can you point to something really specific? The day after or the week after, you’re just like, “Oh my God, I just applied this to my world and it’s really changed my perspective” or would you say it’s over time, sort of compound effect of those coaching sessions?

Michelle Rockwood: I was working. I lived in Cleveland at that time, I had to fast-forward through my life, I had joined the Peace Corps. I had lived in Southern California, I joined the Peace Corps in West Africa, in a country called Mali and I had come back to live in Cleveland, Ohio and I was working for an incredible law school and I just had a boss that was not a good fit for me, we should say and I was in a really bad place mentally.

And my mom at the time, actually worked at Kaiser Permanente and she had an executive coach and she gifted me her coach for three hours and said, “You have to speak to this lady” and this incredible coach took the calls in her car, which I found very exciting, how is this woman getting paid, right? To take calls in her car. And she didn’t give me advice or tell me what to do or have some magic tools for me to latch on to.

Instead, she helped remind me of that brilliant Peace Corps-loving girl that I was and help remind me of all that I’m capable of and I quit that job promptly, got a raise, moved down the street to the Cleveland Clinic and I ended up raising a million dollars over lunch just a few months later. So to say this coach like changed my life, I knew then, I didn’t know exactly how I would find my way back to coaching.

But I knew then that she had instilled this in me and that there was something in there for me to explore and sure enough, I found my way back.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s really powerful. The coaching world has profoundly impacted me. I know when I hired a coach for my business, really, for me as well but it was more like a business coaching, I had no idea either. I had no idea the profound impact. You know, like, because when you hear… you know, growing up, you hear a coach like, okay, you know, coach from basketball.

You know, your basketball, whatever you’re cheerleading and then but like in the professional world, I always thought like, “Well, what can this person do actually? What can they tell me that I don’t know?” And I don’t know a lot because that’s a very ego statement. I don’t know a lot, I don’t know anything in the reality of things but a coach is there to help remind us of the things that we do actually know.

The things that we do need to lean into in those conversations around those fears and the things… I don’t know, I think for me personally, that person helped me get out of my way.

Michelle Rockwood: Yes, well said.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Or you see around me a little bit but then the work began, right? But that moment was profound for me. It sounds like it was for you as well. In the first section of your book, you talk about turning coaching into like a high-ticket offer but you know as beginner coaches, that’s kind of like a leap but can you share a story about a time when you successfully started doing this and how it impacted your coaching business.

Michelle Rockwood: Yeah, I was so blessed from the very beginning of my coaching journey. I was taught by Laura Wick from Body Mind Coaching, to never sell single sessions and to never sell packages. Instead, we were introduced to this concept of working with people for a set period of time and this is one of those things where you just slap yourself on the forehead and go, “This is so obvious.”

Instead of a transaction, it becomes about transformation. It becomes about, “What are we going to work on in this three, six, or 12-month period and when we’re done, you’re not going to need me anymore” and so I was taught that that’s how you do it. I didn’t know any different, which is why I love to work with coaches while they’re still in training when you don’t know any different.

It’s so easy to say, “Of course this is how you work.” The work and the brilliance of coaching actually takes place in between the sessions. So I was introduced this from the beginning and this is what I did with my clients from the beginning and right away, instead of ever selling the $150 an hour program, I right away sold a $1,500 three-month client coaching partnership where we worked together, meeting and serving and that was easier than selling a $150, which I saw my peers do in other programs, an hour experience.

And so right away, I saw the transformation of that big investment, right? And that’s actually for coaching as I’m sure you know on the lower side of what coaches charge. That big investment right away when I was able to help somebody come to ca hoice in that call, amazing things would happen even before our first conversation. They would hire a nanny, they would talk to their spouse, talk about the support they needed and they would put things into place.

So I saw the impact right away for myself as I enrolled people in my coaching programs and then later on, as I would teach others in the program as well.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That is so powerful and in reframing that thinking and how we see our time and the time of who we’re trying to help and the idea of you know, transformation over transaction is huge. That’s fundamental and I think that flip is definitely one I will remember but it’s a crucial one.

You keep going though, you talk about how you focus on this idea of the feminine way of sales, which I found really interesting. Can you tell us a little bit more about what that means and how it differs from like traditional sales methods?

The Feminine Way of SalesMichelle Rockwood: Yes, can I tell you a story?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Please, yeah, I’m always down for a good story. Why do you think I’m doing this?

Michelle Rockwood: I had an incredible coach. You talk about your coach, this was life changing in the beginning of my career and after a few coaching sessions, she took a deep breath and she said, “Michelle, you have a very masculine sales energy” And, what? How do you respond to that? I didn’t even know what that meant, my body instantly became hot from head to toe. What did she mean?

But I took a deep breath and I asked her, “Tell me more, you know? What?” and she said, “You’re chasing people, right? You’re really chasing people, you’re hosting long calls, you’re following up, you’re doing anything to get a yes.” And I was. This is what I’ve been taught, right? I literally thought that was the playbook. I was taught you make seven calls to get a yes. I was taught it’s all about the follow-up.

I was taught do or say whatever needs to be done to get a “yes.” We’ve got to get it done and it never felt good to me but I thought, that’s how you made a sale and she introduced me to this feminine way of selling that’s, you know spoiler alert, good for all genders and no matter how you identify and that’s really tapping in and taking back your power.

As a salesperson so often you feel diminished, less than, groveling. But instead, when you sit up tall, you meet in the middle, you put boundaries up, you only work with people that light you up, you start to shift and go, “Is it necessary to work that way? Why am I following up? Why am I chasing?” And then you actually start looking at the data and you realize that it doesn’t even work anyway. So that was really my first introduction, a slap across the face, right? Into feminine sales and I really started to reevaluate how I was operating.

How I was showing up to calls. Now, it was a meeting in the middle, it was me interviewing the client on the other end, “Are we a good fit?” versus them interviewing me and that just started to shift how I show up and today before we talk, I had an incredible life-changing call with somebody enrolled in the program and we’ll both remember it for the rest of our lives. It was fantastic and that’s sales and that is possible.

And so yes, this is feminine sales, I could go on and on about all, but it’s not about gender. It’s about stepping into heart-centered boundaries, operating in integrity, all the things that we think are of stereotypical feminine energy.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s really powerful. I think of it as like, you know, the mechanisms that create attraction, right? And I think you’re right and that I feel like masculine energy is like, you know, in a way there is like this warrior kind of going after the thing, right? Hunting the thing if you will, I don’t know if I’m describing it well.

Michelle Rockwood: Absolutely, yes, yes.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: To where I feel the masculine energy is more like, you know, this queen’s energy where things are attracted. The busy bees are always, you know, they’re getting their… they’re collecting and bringing over, right? There’s a place where you can frame yourself from and how you show up, how you interact, and how you communicate and integrate all these things, all start to play a role with how you actually present yourself and your energy. I think that’s really powerful in how it attracts. I like that, the feminine way.

Michelle Rockwood: Well, I wanted to say the masculine energy is amazing as well. It’s finding that balance because masculine energy is bold, it’s brave, it doesn’t take things personally, it’s not about me and so when you can pull from both the masculine and feminine, right? You end up in that perfect balance and really creating your way of selling and that’s what’s going to feel best.

Setting Yourself Up for SuccessHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful. I love the balancing effect too and as you learn, as you know you are of one, then you can learn to kind of bring in the other, right? Because if you’re swaying one way or the other too far, then that’s when you’re at a balance, I feel like and that’s really a great way of putting it.

In your third section of the book, you discuss setting yourself up for success. What is the most important things that you’ve done to set yourself up for success in your own coaching business?

Michelle Rockwood: This chapter is one of my favorites because when you implement what you learn in this chapter, I call it the five golden rules of sales call setup. I actually have a free training for folks on that chapter. Whether you know it or not, from the moment somebody reaches out to you to book that sales call, that’s when the sales journey begins, not when you say hello.

And so if your calendar is wide open, if there’s no email sequence setting the stage for what it’s like to work with you, if they don’t understand, right? That you only take calls at certain times, all of those things, there’s five golden rules to follow, then already, when you’re on that call with the person, you aren’t setting them up for success and you’re not demonstrating what it’s like to work with you.

For example, a simple thing is it’s very important that clients show up on time to meetings that they don’t miss calls, they don’t reschedule and that they’re ready for a face-to-face interaction and when you don’t have that as a requirement as a salesperson selling coaching, you may find your client walking down—and this has happened to every coach, I am not unique here—down the vitamin aisle of Target and there’s no way that you can help them, you know, really think about what it is that they’re struggling with and how to tap into their true desire if they’re in the vitamin aisle of Target, it is just not going to work. So setting up those boundaries, using that feminine energy on that sales call starts from the moment they click and see the availability on your calendar.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. You know, the setting up and organizing yourself in a way that welcomes, that offers value, that really listens but like you said, from your perspective, from your schedule, from your, you know, those boundaries that you built up. It’s really designing all of those things and thinking about the lifestyle and the way that you want to lead and showing up in that way as opposed to just kind of like, “Here’s my email.”

You know, it’s like just constantly trying to chase and I just see that working through, right? At least I saw that working throughout your book, how you set yourself up to receive, right? I think that’s a different approach. Go ahead.

Michelle Rockwood: A great example of this is the feminine energy is woven all throughout all of my teachings of course and that stems here but I am at my best every single day at nine and 11 AM. My kids are off to school, I’ve worked out, I’m sitting down, I am ready to focus and so that’s when I take sales calls but if a client is only available at 5 PM and that’s the time I book, that’s actually never going to work for me to coach them.

So already, I haven’t set us up for success by taking the sales call at a time that works for me and we’re most likely not going to be a good fit. I’m never going to be my best at five, I have three young boys, right? So just these little tiny shifts make our sales process feel easy and our business feel lighter when we’re always at our best. Zig Ziglar says, sales is essentially a transfer of feelings and it’s so true.

Mentally, feeling your best, working out, eating right, doing your meditation before a sales call, jumping jacks, really being able to connect to and listen to the client in front of you is where you’re going to see the most success.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I feel like you’re coaching me right now. I feel like we’re doing a session right now. This is how big this is, this is what I am trying to tell people in this episode like you got to read this book because it is incredible and your approach is actually very unique and I find some of the things that—have you ever used baby wipes by any chance?

Michelle Rockwood: Yes, I have. For my children?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, okay. So I got super lucky and got introduced to the lady who invented that, that product and she was my coach for about a year and a half. Her name is Mindy, she’s an incredible human being and she honestly, I could totally say that she led me on the path to think in the feminine way. I mean again, differently of course, you know, how you bring it to the table, how she saw it, right?

But I feel like it’s similar in the sense that you’re saying think about attracting as opposed to chasing and that completely shifted my business and how I really see myself and you know I love that because it’s not one or the other, right? Of course, it’s both in balancing but I used to despise cold calling and I used to own an apparel printing company but when I made this shift, we literally started, were doing things for Nike, which was down the street up in Portland, Oregon, you know?

Like our focus completely shifted and that moment of like transformation for me definitely owed to in like as a human being, right? She totally worked with me until she was like, “That’s it, that’s all I really need to teach you, like you run it from there.” You know? That was so – she’s like, “You know, come back if you need any more advice or whatever but I think you’re ready to just kind of practice what you’re practicing.” And I love that because it was so honest and true.

It wasn’t like, “Oh, now you go to my next package and my next.” You know what I mean? You’re with me forever and I guess you know that does work for some coaches and it does work for people who are in that, you know, design and path but I love this idea that “Look, you know, I am going to lead you in this part of the journey. If I can lead you further, that’s great. If not, that’s okay too.” And you talk about this in one of your chapter titles, how to stop the sales yuck.

Can you talk about this a little bit more and what you personally struggled with when it came to the sales yuck and how did you overcome it?

Michelle Rockwood: It’s that chasing, that ickiness, that manipulation, that always feels so gross and how did I overcome it is really tapping into that feminine energy that you’re talking about, doing things my way, setting everything up in a way that felt really good to me and then tapping into that masculine energy that allows you to be brave. You know, remember that movie, Liar Liar, with Jim Carey back in the day. You might be too young.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, of course. Jim Carey is one of my favorites. Oh no, no, no. I am not too young.

Michelle Rockwood: Okay, you remember this movie, where suddenly he had to tell the truth and he had to speak the truth. It sounds like with your coaches as well, you become a mirror into yourself and on these sales calls, I started really speaking my truth and I had the coaching skills to say it in a way where it could land with the client and really resonate and so I would tap into that boldness and I found a way, right?

I found the words, I practiced, and was able to speak the truth and tell the client what I was thinking and what I was actually seeing and that often felt amazing to them. I had a client and I know she’d be okay sharing the story. We got to the end of the sales call and it was a lovely fine sales call but it was pretty surface-level.

And at the end of the call, I took a deep breath and I said, “I have to tell you, people don’t usually pay me thousands of dollars when everything is okay and just going just right. I suspect and tell me where I’m wrong that things aren’t all perfect in your life in the way that you’ve presented yourself here to me today is how you present yourself to the community.”

And immediately you could see, because we’re hosting the call face-to-face that her demeanor shifted. Her shoulders relaxed and she said, “Michelle, you’re right. I’m on the brink of a divorce.” And so it’s my –

Yeah, it’s that draining that feminine energy mixed with that bold brave and the having training, right? That beautiful coach training that allows me to lean in and be gentle and ask for permission and trust my intuition but to say the thing, she said, “Yes, you see me. Now I have to work with you.” Right? It was a lovely relationship still to this day but that kind of skill where you can be feminine yet be bold, speak your truth, especially in coaching, especially for heart-centered people who are not salesy, they have often the most to give.

When we can bridge this gap for them and teach them how to tune in and tap into that brave, that boldness and speak that truth, boom, so, so powerful.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s really the reason why I’ve considered becoming a coach. Now, I haven’t taken all the necessary steps, you know, in some ways I have coached a few people here and there, more like accountability type of coaching, more like inspiring, motivating, nothing too out of the box. I help people apply some of the methods I used to grow my businesses but like again, nothing too intensive and I haven’t really you know, in a way packaged it or designed it in a way.

I have thought about it a lot and this has given me such, sort of you know, you are opening up the gates because I am that type of person that really enjoys the process of seeing someone light up like I – this is exactly why I do this show and why I got into podcasting, why I got into just wanting to meet other people. It’s genuinely like I love when I see someone light up in a way that inspires them and motivates them.

Where like, “Oh, I’m going to go do that thing right now” and when they go do it and they apply it in their life and it’s just like, you know, you get that text in the middle of the night like, “Oh my god, thank you. I was able to talk to my daughter today,” or whatever it was. It had nothing to do with business, you know what I mean? But this is so powerful, it’s so rewarding, it’s so enriching. I feel like coaching is one of those selfless things that we could really indulge in as far as like helping other people.

But you’re right, there is this part of it that’s you know, self-selling is a very hard thing, right? It’s like being camera-shy, right? It’s like you know you’re good at this thing but being in front of a camera is weird, you know? It’s like you have to overcome this weirdness and really show up. So you know with that, I want to talk about the last part of your book, which you provide like, you know, the five ways to find clients.

Can you share a time when you used one of these methods to find a client who turned out to be, you know, of course, a great fit for your coaching practice? Like for us newbies if you will and people going into this world, what are some ways we can think about this?

Michelle Rockwood: I highlight five ways to find coaching clients in the book and it’s probably different than most people listening think because so often coaches graduate a program, they join a marketing course and they follow somebody else’s path and so my journey to finding clients, to finding aligned clients has really been figuring out what feels good to me and so really, what’s been great is when someone else invites me in to speak to their group.

It’s that shift in energy where I am not chasing and in fact, somebody has invited me and said, “Please come” and then when folks are there, they receive me far more easily and that has been really, really nice for me and even in small groups. So typically what I do is I just network on LinkedIn, I love LinkedIn, find me there and I will hang out with another coach who has a coaching cohort and get invited to come speak in a coaching situation, where I will do a small training.

From there, people typically come and do a $37 training and then join my larger courses but as far as one person that stands out, I’m not sure. I think it is just really the way I meet people that really establishes that relationship long-term. Just like in that sales call, how they come to you matters and it’s just that really, “How can it be this easy, how can we make it feel light?” not that chasing energy that always feels really good.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: What would you say the favorite part of putting this book together was for you? I know that’s a journey and writing a book is no easy feat, for sure, but what was your favorite part of putting the book together?

Michelle Rockwood: My favorite part was my incredible editor, Geneva Ross. She was my favorite part. I would love getting on calls with her. We laughed, we cried, she has nothing to do with sales, right? She’s an editor and for her to love this as much as I did was incredible and we would just imagine people reading it or we would high-five each other over the Zoom call when we got something just right and that was a blast.

I looked forward to calls with her and maybe I’d think of a fun story to share or a different angle and I couldn’t wait to share it with her. She was a gift from God and I just think that she did such a service to coaches everywhere helping me with this book and the process was joyful. She helped the title of the book, Joyful Selling. I was actually on the call like going through the different iterations of the title and I really loved this, A Better Way to Yes because there is many ways to get to yes.

You can get there many, many ways but this is a better way and she messaged me and she said, “Joyful, you had mentioned joyful so many times during our work together. I think joyful needs to be on the cover.” And it just clicked and I loved the title.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s perfect, it’s so good.

Michelle Rockwood: I loved it and the promises were so joyful. It’s been – Scribe is amazing and this process was just an incredible experience and the parameters I think even of once you get the outline of the chapter down, that’s really when my creativity went into place because I had those bumpers and so I could just really plant the seeds and flesh those stories out.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: What an incredible journey. I am blown away Michelle, thank you so much for sharing your stories and your experiences with me and the audience of course. The book is titled, Joyful Selling: A Better Way to Yes for Heart-Centered Coaches. I know I’ll be finishing it this week, it’s amazing already. So besides checking out the book on Amazon, where can people find you and connect with you and perhaps reach out and seek out a new coach?

Michelle Rockwood: Absolutely. Well, like I said, I’m always hanging out on LinkedIn. That’s really the only social media that I am hanging out on these days. You can also get the book and get the first chapter downloaded free on my website, michellerockwood.com, and of course, you can find the book on Amazon.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love it. Michelle, thank you so much for coming on the show today, I really appreciate you. I’ve learned so much, I feel like I found a new friend. I’m definitely going to be reaching out on LinkedIn but again, thank you for coming on.

Michelle Rockwood: Thank you so much.

The post Joyful Selling: Michelle Rockwood appeared first on Author Hour.

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My next guest started like many, working for others and was doing well as a director of a fast-paced company. But also like many, he wanted more; more freedom, more joy, more autonomy. After many sleepless nights and a leap of faith, he established himself as a small business owner and never looked back.

Welcome back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and today, I’m joined by author Chris Dale, who is here to talk about his new book called Even You Can Start a Business. Let’s flip through it.

Hello friends, welcome back to Author Hour. I’m super excited to have my friend Chris Dale with me today. He’s the author of a new and amazing book and I got the opportunity to sort of flip through it in the last 24 hours or so and I got to say, Chris, it’s amazing. Thank you for coming on the show, I’m really excited to get to know you today and talk about this amazing book that you penned out.

Chris Dale: Thanks, Hussein. Yeah, unbelievable to be on here and a real pleasure too, and be given this opportunity to talk through it and hope people learn a thing or two.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely. Chris, before we jump into the book, I always like to ask my guest to give us a little bit of a background, perhaps where you grew up and what was it like, you know, were you in a family of entrepreneurs per se? Was there somebody that perhaps inspired you to be on the path that you’re on now? What was it like for you growing up? I love hearing those stories because I feel like they sort of formulate what we end up doing anyways but I’m just interested in kind of give you a little bit of a spotlight about that.

Chris Dale: Sure, that’s great. To be honest, there’s nothing special about me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I doubt that but that’s okay.

Chris Dale: No, but it’s important. It’s important because the book represents normal people and I was one of those. I’d class myself as slap bang in the middle average, come from divorced parents, both of which didn’t go to higher education outside of secondary school. I was the first to go to university.

I did a university degree I hated, and I’ve got a law degree and I don’t use it at all, I couldn’t wait to drop it and then I fell into my first job and committed to it. I lasted sort of, 11 years in that job and then got the craving to kind of start something of my own.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. Where do you think that craving started?

Chris Dale: I’ve always been super competitive. I think anyone that knows me would say that but I think, you just look at the world and my generation and there’s also we’ve had COVID as well since I set up the business, you start to appreciate your time more and being in control of your own destiny rather than reporting into necessarily a boss, a hierarchy, a multi-national company, where you’re judged on the number of hours and you become a number in a spreadsheet rather than the individual that you are.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s very powerful. I think a lot of that has a lot to do with why people choose to try to do something especially even like side hustles, that’s where it kind of starts. I mean, I know it did for me when I was in college and starting, I didn’t even know that I was starting a business, you know what I mean?

Like, I had this gift to do art and I just started painting T-shirts and then I put it on eBay. Next thing you know, I was selling about a couple of T-shirts a week and it was paying for gas and it was paying for my meals and stuff while I was going to college and then it just tumbles into creating a business.

However, there’s always that beginning, right? This urge, this itch, to say, you know, people who enjoy their jobs or enjoy their roles, there’s this always innate feeling that comes with this idea of starting a business. You talk a little bit about it in your book but what was it for you that really enticed you to want to make that leap?

Why Make the Change?Chris Dale: So there’s two areas, going back to what you said about yours and the two areas to start is either finding someone you absolutely love and you just want to go out into the world would do it or finding something you’re really good at. It doesn’t have to be something you love but you get satisfaction from being one of the best at it.

I mean, fill that, you could expand that even further under your own roof so to speak, you know, under your…with your name above the door and just want that little bit more. I think for me, that’s what it was. I found something I was good at. I was in a very fortunate position at my old company where I was exposed to a lot of different areas of an industry and then I outgrew it and felt that itch to just do something better, that’s what it came down to.

I felt I could do it better on my own or in a smaller offering and offer a better service or product to the marketplace and when you’ve got that kind of splinter in your mind, you just can’t get rid of it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right. Yeah, I agree man. I got that splinter in my mind and it wasn’t until I started taking action that I was feeling so much more fulfilled doing those types of tasks as opposed to the… I was working at a bowling alley, right? And it was great. You know, paid a little bit of money here and there but there was a week where I made like, a thousand bucks from like a little T-shirt job that I did.

Chris Dale: Wow.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: And I was like, “Wow, I just made more than I did in the last two weeks working at this bowling alley” you know what I mean? And so that got my engines going and started going down that path for sure but you really bring up some interesting points throughout your book, you know? And the idea that when we’re…especially when we’re young and we’re starting our… You don’t even have to be young but I’m saying like, young in starting a business, right? And trying to figure out how those things work.

There are so…there’s so much content and so many books about you know, you mentioned that you’ve read them all and most young entrepreneurs have to, in a way, to kind of stay ahead. In the sense of you know, there’s so many books about big business and how the big guys, whether it be formulate their businesses or you know, whether it’s Palo Alto and their tech companies and you know, a lot of what they say sort of resonates and it’s good and it’s good advice. However, you know, it’s different when you’re just trying to carve out a little niche, something a little bit more.

Where does someone start? If they’re trying to make this bridge and get out of that day-to-day sort of grind, I mean, starting a business is a grid but where do we start? How do we navigate? You mentioned that there aren’t really many books around these topics and if there are, there’s very limited in the small business arena. So I love that you tapped into that but where can we start? If I’m here, I’m stuck in my, you know, nine to five and I’m trying to figure out a way out of it, what’s the first step I should think about?

Chris Dale: So it’s really tough for people. If you think most small businesses, they do run-of-the-mill things and then they…some get lucky and they diversify or they find a niche that grows and the business can grow exponentially but most small businesses in most countries that underwrite the country, don’t do anything that is reinventing. They’re not inventing Facebook or Search or you know, electric cars.

They’re doing something that they’ve been good at and found a niche in an area or through the Internet. So I’ve always had an interest in those sort of books and what makes people tick. Even in my job now, I love finding the reason why people are doing things. So I read a lot of those books. My wife laughed at me when we go on holiday, again, they’re called self-help books, et cetera.

You know, biographies and books about founding of big companies such as the recent one with all the Vigrant, Disney, et cetera but deep down, I’d come from a big company. I didn’t want 200 employees, 400 employees. You know, you just have levels of bureaucracy and you lose the creativity. So I did start looking around because I was… I wanted to set up a company and my startup wasn’t orthodox.

It was an absolute mess, which we can talk about later. So I started doing some research and then you look on the Internet as well and everyone has got great tips but none of them are really that worthwhile trying to find a cohesive plan and what I found is, a lot of people especially after COVID, you know, they all…some people made baked, you know, banana bread, some people did yoga, some people took up cycling.

Some people you know, were doing alt work on the Internet and they thought, “Oh, I’d love to probably take that a bit further” but either the intimidation, the unknown or just where to start, probably is put off 99% of those people. I used to fly a lot with work and spent hours upon hours of night flights to and from Asia. I wrote a lot because I couldn’t sleep because my body clock was all over the shop.

So I kept notes and so when I setup this company, someone actually challenged me because of the reason how I came to setting up and the speed that I did it said, “You should just keep a log of what you did.” It’s kind of along the way in the background of just kind of noted things down and when I had a bad day or something good happened, like why it happened and then before I knew it, I’m five, six years down the line with close to like a hundred chapters worth of quirky stories or you know, information worthwhile having.

So with all my traveling, when I came to setting up the company, because it was such an unorthodox startup for me in the time I did it, someone said to me, “You should keep a log of all the information you had, how you did it and just for your record because you set your business to be quite sentimental” and then as I went along, I collected tidbits and stories and you know, every time I had a good day or bad day, I’d note something down to look back on in case I’ve made the same mistake again and before I knew it, I had sort of like a hundred chapter titles and tidbits and things to work from and that’s kind of where the book came from over lockdown.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that. So, as you started your startup, what were the things that you would say really helped advise that direction? What did you lean on in sort of the learning of that, you know, as you were working this job, how did you change your mindset and say, “You know what? There are so many things here that I can learn from.” Did you start a business still kind of around that industry or something completely different?

Chris Dale: So I come from the background that I love people but I’m good in my industry, so hopefully try and combine them. I wanted to stay in that industry because I thought I could offer a better product and service that was available in the marketplace. That gave me obviously, the initial direction but then the argument is, if you’re going to setup a company, you’re going to need to be…do something better or slightly different than what’s out there, otherwise, what’s the point?

You’re earning less money, so I then probably, 85% less than I earned at my previous company in the first two years. My bill, my salary in the first year didn’t even cover my mortgage, let alone all the other bills, et cetera. Setting up the company, I was…I had just under 26,000 pounds worth of debt on credit cards, which I used to kind of cover my bills while I was starting up from the ground.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Sure.

Chris Dale: But if you have some direction, a lot of belief, consistency and like to lean on the right people, it’s amazing how quickly you can pull it together when you got bills to pay.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: This is great man. I really appreciate this perspective because you know, in your book, you mentioned the importance of trusting one’s gut instinct and having a mentor in the business journey. Can you expand on why you believe these are crucial factors for success in business?

Crucial Factors for SuccessChris Dale: So hopefully over time, you have kind of honed your craft and honed your understanding of what’s right, what’s wrong, good decisions, bad decisions but when it’s your money and your employees and you know, your clients, there’s going to be times where it doesn’t really make sense. Most startups are built, successful startups, are built on that bit of craziness, that it doesn’t makes sense but I’m going to do it anyway because I think I believe in what I’m doing.

So you can always make the easy decision, if you trust your head and it goes right, great. If you trust your head and it goes wrong, you can say, “I’ll still…I trusted my head, the sensible head.” There’s nothing worse than going against your gut instinct and it going wrong. It eats you up because deep, deep down, you knew you should have done it and it’s much better to regret going for it than not going for it and that’s the same with the startup in itself.

They always say, you know, at the end of your life, most people regret the things they didn’t do rather than the things they did.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes.

Chris Dale: And I believe, since COVID, more and more people believe that they would just like something for their own, even if it was just for a couple of years to give it a go, just say, “You know what? I gave it a shot. It didn’t work out, I’m in a worse financial position, you know, potentially but I gave it a shot and I put myself out there” and that applies to a lot of elements of in life now especially in younger generations.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man, I mean, that’s how I felt starting my business in college. I felt like, “What do I really have to lose? Like, it’s…here is something I know I can do but I’m going to learn how to do this.” It’s earning me enough money to like, live on. I wasn’t trying to earn, you know, crazy money but I was like, “I just need to get through college” and so after that I was like, “Okay, cool. Well, not only can I get through college, I could probably get through the next few years doing this” and then it just kept expanding from there and building from there and I love that because at first, we tend to think like, “Okay, how am I going to build this ginormous company?” When in reality, it is not about building a huge company or—and that those are great ambitions, there is nothing wrong with that of course.

Chris Dale: Sure.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: But the idea is like what little slice can I take that I can manage and then slowly add more slices to that and I think, you know, you articulate that so well in your book and so many entrepreneurs, so I mean I know I did, they struggled with finding a balance between work and personal life particularly in those early years. I mean, you talk about stress, right? Not being able to pay off everything on time or your bills, all those kinds of things.

So how do you address this not only in your book, what advice would you give for new business owners in this regard and perhaps, how did you deal with that, you know, the finding of the balance if you will?

Chris Dale: I think the brutally honest answer is there isn’t balance for the first year or two. You have to accept that in order to get it off the ground and make it a success like with anything, in sports, your studies, writing, you have to commit to it and be consistent with it and accept that you’re going to have to go the extra mile to take it to the next level.

It’s always helpful to be honest if you have a partner or family and explain before you’re going to take the leap and communicate those things because there is a lot of sacrifice on both parts and sometimes that can have a detrimental effect in a relationship but if you have an understanding partner and they believe in it as well, you know, you can start to find balance.

Years ago, I worked all the time, so I am always being…worked really hard. I worked in planes whenever I travelled, I went to Asia 87 times in seven years in economy with my work because strictly, that’s where the business was in my previous company. I learned more and met more people there than I ever would in probably 35 years in London.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right.

Chris Dale: It was beneficial but sacrifice. I was flying every Wednesday coming back every Sunday, going into the office on a Monday back on a plane Wednesday night. It was seasonal, so to give you an example, I did 10 economies to Hong Kong or Singapore and back in a row, normally between September and December. So you know what I thought, I’m going to make it up to my wife, we’ll go on a holiday.

What a great idea after ten flight journeys, getting on another one, another plane but anyway, so I landed on a Monday morning, swapped suitcases, we went to the airport and we flew to the Maldives. My wife is saying, “You know what? Thank you for your hard work, sticking by” you know, we have family, animals, you know, this is our break just for a week. So we’re in Maldives, the ideal paradise.

Beautiful beach huts and I’m on my iPad because I’ve been on ten flights and doing work, I’ve got Internet and my wife said to me, “You’re meant to be relaxing, you’ve done ten weeks, is it necessary?” and she’s really understanding and I was like, “You know what? First day off to all these trips, understand this fall out from the weekends” et cetera, “Go deal with it.” By about day three, she just went, “What are you doing? Where is enough?” and it is completely the most annoying thing she’s completely right.

I hate it when she’s right and we had a bit of a heated debate to say the least about it because I was, you know, I couldn’t ever put it down. I might lose a deal or lose business and not be on the ball and then it was like, “Well, if you can’t let go of it, it’s not healthy. It’s probably not for the right reasons and always used to use the reasons, “You know, it is going to be good for us in five years the money I’m earning and the progress” but it is never enough.

You just keep going in a vicious cycle. So after that, we had came to an agreement, which we still abide by now. So when we go on holiday, we go away one week a year just us two, Caribbean or somewhere really hot where we can just all-inclusive drink, relax and the rule is I get sort of half, because of the time difference, half an hour in the morning to check my emails, half an hour—15 minutes at lunch time just to quickly check in, see if anything is happened.

Then I get an hour of my own time while we’re getting ready for dinner, et cetera, pairing down from the day to just, you know, make sure, manage my stress and things, what’s going on and that’s our agreement. Other than that, phones are away, laptops are away because you’ve got to find balance. The amazing thing I found doing it with my own company was when you have a really well-run business, you don’t actually need to check it that much.

If people, great staff are looking after it, great team, my colleagues, they’re brilliant. I don’t need to be checking. I only come back to ten emails, all positive things not, “Oh, we’ve got a problem here” or a problem there but yeah, balance truthfully is hard to find in the first two years.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that you know? And it’s the idea is being intentional about it, right? It may not be achieved at every single time, every single turn, however, it’s the intention behind it. It is making an agreement, it’s being communicative, it’s being honest and raw about what you are trying to do. However, your limit is obviously different than perhaps your spouse or your partner or whatever. Everybody has a different dynamic and a different limit.

Chris Dale: Sure.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: But if no one is communicating that, of course, you’re going to bump heads, of course, there is going to be heated arguments and I feel like even when there is agreements, you know, there are times where we as humans beings, just being humans test those limits anyways, you know what I mean?

Chris Dale: Yeah, of course.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Which can throw the balance out of whack but I think it’s, you know, many amazing people and I know you agree with this too, it’s a balancing act, right? It’s a continuous effort to trust yourself, trust in the abilities that you, you know, have coached the team and built a team that can carry out the task and do all of these things without you interfering too much but I get that connection, that urge especially as a young business or a business that’s growing.

When you have, you know, a handful of employees and those kinds of things, managing things, so very powerful because I definitely went through that stage of, “Wow, this is consuming my entire life. I need to figure something out” and I work very hard, you know, day and night, most entrepreneurs especially young ones do that, right? For me, I think the most important thing was to realize how important my physical health was.

Chris Dale: Absolutely.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Which of course, led to mental health. Once I started really taking a little bit more initiative and being a little bit more intentional, those things got much better overtime of course. So I love these topics because they are very true, they are very raw and they’re real and honestly, I feel like not a whole lot of business owners’ talk about that aspect of running a business, right?

We all want to hit the goals, hit the milestones, hire more people, grow, scale, all of these amazing things, however, addressing the core causes of what actually helps growth is health and your personal health, right? And creating those balancing efforts. What would you say your favorite part of pulling this book together has been? What did you learn from that journey of really sitting down and writing this book out?

Experience Writing the BookChris Dale: So one that how far I’ve come along in this, so we’re just about to hit year seven in my business and it’s growing it year-on-year, 20% or more, which has been fantastic but more importantly, I look back at the team who worked with me, not for me, completely with me there exceptional, the culture we’ve built. You know, I always believe culture is the most important thing.

It is so hard to find and create, you can’t fake it and it goes in an instant if you don’t want to see or believe in what you are offering and my colleagues are, you know, they believe in the mission. We’re not necessarily changing the world or running a business but they absolutely believe in what we’re offering to the marketplace and to our clients and seven years in, absolute pride in what we do.

We still have the small business mentality, we are still small. You know, I’ve got 30 employees, which is ten more than I ever thought I’d have but each of them absolutely cares, absolutely cares and you know, they will go the extra mile no matter what because they believe and that’s so hard to find. That’s the bit I am most proud of.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s amazing man, I love that so much. We all have hopes and dreams for when our books actually land in the hands of our readers, you know, especially the ones that we are trying to get this message across too. What do you hope that feeling that your book provokes when your reader puts it down after having gone through it?

Chris Dale: I would hope it humanizes the startup system procedure because you only ever hear the good stories, the success stories like you said, the people, the, you know, were amazing from day one and made loads of money and it was just natural to them. It wasn’t natural to me at all and I talk about a lot of the pitfalls and funny stories, about the, you know, the big deal where you do one deal and you make all these money and run off into the sunset, it just doesn’t exist

I’d love to say it does, I’d love to paint your story of, you know, me sitting in, for example, France with a Ferrari parked outside while my business runs itself. It doesn’t happen, you have to grind every day.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It just doesn’t.

Chris Dale: Yeah but I think my—I’m really honest in the book. Like I said, there is nothing special about me. I’ve made so many mistakes, mistakes that you know, I try not to make again from staffing to finances to you know, how you win clients to just trying to grow the business.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah.

Chris Dale: But if you go in it trying to make money, you’ll fail. Money is a byproduct of successful happy business that you’re good at what you do. Once you work, so when you love the money isn’t a bigger driving factor, as long as you cover your bills and have a healthy lifestyle, there isn’t a lot of difference between, as I talk in the book, you know, from sort of 75,000 pounds and 150,000 pounds.

It sounds ridiculous and people laugh because you know, the average salary in UK is 28,000 pounds but once taxes, you know, the bits and bobs deducted, you know, you’re shopping in better places, going on better holidays and have a better car but if you’re still in a job you hate, you can’t replace that, you can’t cover for that fact and also, you can work a nine to five job for a salary and you’re working 40 hours a week.

In a startup, you are working 80, 90, a hundred in the first couple of years. You don’t get paid for those hours. Pro rata, you’re earning much less than you would have, even if your salary seems a lot higher and it’s just things that I think are really helpful because I didn’t have it. I kind of learned on the job, learned from very successful people in different marketplaces I told about but could never find someone just having a brutally honest run-of-the-mill business, talk about their successes and failures.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so beautiful and you did such a great job of really laying out these stories, the pain points and everything that you’ve learned thus far and really teaching the person who will pick up this book. You know for me, it reminded me a lot of when I was running my business and honestly, what led me to sell it eventually in 2020 was I really got very intentional about my own health, my own mental health and I realized, you know, at the end of the day, what am I trying to do? I want freedom but now I’m seriously…I feel like I lock myself into this business, right?

Chris Dale: Sure.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So if things, you know, and that’s just like an experience that I think has taught me so much. It’s not a good or bad thing, it’s just, it was a learning experience, all of it and so you know, to a degree, you know, as I still sort of startup this new side work that I’m doing, I’m very cautious about how to take that on in my workday, right?

Chris Dale: Absolutely.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Because again, I don’t want to get pulled in. You know, after 4:00, I’m like, you know, that was my non-negotiable is try to be done with what I call work, 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. at the absolute latest and so it’s like doing those things. It’s going through that process that actually teaches you who you actually want to be as a business owners because it’s not just a one-way street or a one type of personality trait, right? That gets you there.

It’s really, how you want to live and you know, creating the freedoms and what actually brings you the joy. I love I that you talk about it so beautifully in your new book. It’s raw, it’s authentic. It’s actually extremely real, which is why I felt so connected to it. So Chris, thank you so much for sharing your stories and your experiences with our audience today and of course, myself. The book is called Even You Can Start a Business From Startup to Success: A Step-By-Step Guide. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Chris?

Chris Dale: Usual spots, Amazon is the safest bet.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah.

Chris Dale: And that will be on the normal channels.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Lovely. Thank you so much, Chris, I appreciate your time today. It’s been wonderful getting to know you, buddy.

Chris Dale: Hussein, thanks so much, it’s been a pleasure. Have a great one.

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After picking up a second-hand book in a used bookstore, my next guest learned she had to find the life that she wanted. She adopted new habits, she focused her mind, harnessed her new discovered power, and tapped into a vital ability, reinvention.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined today by author Sandra Forrester, who is here to talk about her new book called, Change Your life: The Power of a Focused Mind, let’s flip through it.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. I’m here with my friend, Sandra Forrester, who just launched an incredible book, Change Your Life: The Power of a Focused Mind. Thank you Sandra for coming on the show today, I really appreciate you.

Sandra Forrester: Welcome, you’re very, very welcome.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I’m really excited to get into this because there was a lot of insightful stuff throughout your book. However, before we get into the book, I want to get to know the remarkable woman behind it, of course, and that starts with you maybe going back in time a little bit and telling us a little bit about your personal background, perhaps what your story was growing up, and maybe a person or a place or a thing that inspired you in the path that you’re on today. Let’s start with that.

Sandra Forrester: Okay, well I have grown up in Auckland. I’m what we call here in New Zealand a born and bred Aucklander, which is quite rare. That’s like being a born and bred New Yorker, I guess. I just grew up in a normal family and everything’s been pretty normal about my life. I haven’t really had anything significant happen to me. I got married when I was in my late 20s, I’ve got three beautiful children.

And it was really a passion of real estate and entering into real estate. And once all my kids went to school, and starting down this career path way that sent me on this journey that I had been on over the last 10 years really, of being pretty average performer in real estate to then being absolutely terrible for an entire year where I sold nothing, and then having to completely reinvent and reset my life.

During that journey, there were certainly some people who really inspired me but what you will hear today is that I found a book that I read in my darkest, darkest times, and that book completely changed my life and that inspired me to write this book that I’ve written.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, I’m really interested to know what that book was and why it had an impact on you, especially in those dark times because I know for me, I read a specific book as well during some of my darkest times but I’m eager to know what your book was.

Sandra Forrester: Okay, well, do you mind if I just tell you a little bit of a story about how I came across this book?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Absolutely.

Sandra Forrester: Okay, so I started in real estate in about 2002, I think, once all my kids, as I said, had gone to school. And real estate was really the perfect career for me because it fit in around school and commitments and gave me some okay income to help supplement our lifestyle, pay the mortgage, maybe go on a holiday somewhere. Then in late 2007, everything changed.

The GFC hit and the market changed substantially and during the entire year of 2008, I sold absolutely zero property, not one sale. And in New Zealand, New Zealand has full commission-based selling. So when I say I had sold nothing, I had also earned nothing. So I went from bringing in about $60,000 a year to bringing in zero. So I went from being what we would call probably an average performer in the company to being one of the worst performers.

In fact, I was so bad, I was listed at the back of the ranking report in what we call the alphabeticals, which is all the people who have earned nothing and then they ranked alphabetically by surname. I’m telling you, it was embarrassing and very humbling. To make matters worse, not only did I sell nothing, I got hoodwinked by a fraudster buyer who would sign up expensive properties to impress his girlfriend with absolutely no ability or intention to go ahead with the purchase.

So it was not like I wasn’t trying. I was working every day and I was pitching for listings and I was showing buyer’s properties but absolutely nothing stuck, every deal fell apart. So by the end of 2008, I’ve lost all my confidence in real estate and I was in deep end of professional and personal crisis and then one day, my boss, Ian, called me into his office and I thought, “Oh my God, here we go, I’m going to get fired.” And he asked me, “Sandra, what is going on?” And I was like, “Ian, I just don’t know what’s happening.

“I’m trying so hard and nothing is working and you know what? I am desperate.” And he told me that he could see how hard I was working and to keep trying, that if I hadn’t sold anything by the end of March, that we were going to have to have a conversation about my future. So that was December 2008, so I didn’t have much time and because we had no money, there was no holiday booked for us.

But luckily, one of my oldest friends invited us to the beach house in Whangamatā, which is on the Coromandel Peninsula. One day, I was wondering around the Whangamatā village feeling sorry for myself, and I went into a junk shop and I started looking around. It was this typical junk shop brand with second-hand furniture and stacks and stacks of books and network of graphs everywhere. And right on top of one of the stacks of books was a book that I had heard of but I had never read.

It was 50 cents, which is about all I could afford at the time. So I thought, “You know what? What the heck.” I bought it and the book was called, Mind Power by John Kehoe. That afternoon, I took the book down to the beach and started reading it and it went into subjects that I’d never really heard of, like the power of affirmations, visualizations, setting goals, and how to completely reset your life and you know what? If anyone needed a reset, it was me.

So I read that book in one day — and don’t be impressed because it’s a really short book — and right at the end of the book, it said, “Now, read the book again.” So I did, and the next day I read it again, and so by day three, I decided, “What the heck? I’ve got nothing to lose. I am going to apply the principles of this book to my real estate career for three months and see what happens. And if it doesn’t work, I’m going to have to leave this industry that I love and go and find a real job.” But little did I know what was about to hit at the time.

Implementing Affirmations and Vision to Your LifeHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that is very powerful. I love that you shared that story. That’s a very powerful book. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of it. I don’t think I’ve read it but I want to know a little bit about these tactics or affirmations or things that you started to apply. Having read the book once, twice, three times, what started to stick?

How did you start channeling the energy in moving forward? What was the first thing that you really started to implement, to move yourself in a positive direction?

Sandra Forrester: Yeah, it’s a really good question. The very first thing that I learned that I must have a vision of the life that I want and the person I want to be, and then I must set goals. Because, here’s what I have learned that until this time, I had never set a goal in my life. I’ve heard about other people setting goals and I’ve read about in my own business, “Oh you know, set goals and look at them every day.”

But I had never done anything like that and having a vision and setting goals was the very first thing that I knew, and the book told me that I had to apply to myself and to my business. Here’s the thing that I have learned, that what I’m talking to you about today, I never learned at school. I never learned at university and I never really learned this while I was working on the job.

And it wasn’t until I was nearly 50 years old and about to fail at everything, I started to learn about things like setting goals, creating a vision for your life, affirmations, and visualization, and I had never done or heard about any of this stuff. I really had become — it is something that I realize now that we should be teaching this stuff at school or university. It’s massively important for people to understand the power of the mind.

So, having a vision and creating a purpose is the very first thing you must do, and then set goals. As an example, the vision I created for myself was there was a couple of people who were really, really good in the industry who I wanted to emulate, because you see other people performing to high levels and you just want to be like them, right? But what you have to do is you got to figure out, “What is it that they are doing?”

Specifically, how are they running their business, what are they saying, how are they dressing? What are all the components that have come together to create this person who you see over there with this immensely successful career? And one of the second things I learned was, find somebody who is already doing it extremely well and copy them.

So that vision thing that I talked about of having somebody who I wanted to be in the future, I found people in the industry who I wanted to be like and started to look at what they were doing in their business and literally, copy them. Those were two really, really important parts of this skill and technique that I started to apply to my business.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s really powerful. And the idea that success leaves clues and the clues are all around us, and especially around the people that we look up to, and by asking ourselves, “Okay, well, how are they doing X, Y or Z, why are they doing XYZ? How can I apply it to my vision, my wants, my needs, my desires?” That’s really powerful.

You also talk about another powerful aspect in the book and that’s the power of affirmations. Can you share with us an example, an affirmation that you developed that has helped you personally, go after and achieve those goals?

Sandra Forrester: Affirmations are and have been the biggest change, reset, opportunity technique that I have used in this journey. I say affirmations every day when I’m out walking and the most important one that I said at the beginning of this journey was, “I am.” The two most important words in the world, “I am a strong confident woman.” Because at the time, I was not strong or confident.

So “I am a strong confident woman, all good things come to me,” because at the time, nothing good was happening, right? So I had to change the whole language. “I am a strong confident woman, all good things come to me, and I have success.” Now, you got to remember, I had zero success. So I was taking all these things that weren’t currently and transforming them into an affirmation of what I saw myself as being, and put that affirmation was the very first one that I said every single morning.

“I am a strong confident woman, all good things come to me, and I have success” set the framework for being and feeling like I was somebody that I knew I was going to be able to become.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah and it’s just reframing the negative thoughts, right? Rechanneling the energy that I feel like, for a long time, I did similar things where I would just pour energy into the negative thoughts and spiral downwards. But then obviously, for me my book was, The Power of Intention and it’s by Wayne Dyer, and he talks very much about a lot of similar things. He was huge in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Sandra Forrester: I love Wayne Dyer.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah.

Sandra Forrester: I was so sad when he died.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh, I was heartbroken. What an incredible human being that left such a huge impact on, obviously, people across the planet. But he talks about these beautiful concepts of feeling and thinking from a positive place, and you already have success, you are successful, and then moving from that direction. It’s such a powerful energy to be working from that as opposed to a negative environment or a negative mindset. Your book emphasizes the importance of defining the life we want.

Sandra Forrester: Oh, one hundred percent. It really does. And I just want to say, because what you just said is so true because I really believe that the information we consume these days, especially now with social media, sets the internal context of our subconscious, which then sets the external context for how we think and behave. And it’s like, you know what? Garbage in, garbage out.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I can’t agree with you more on that. Your book also includes a lot of practical advice for achieving success in the real estate industry. Of course, it’s the industry that you started growing in. So tell me a little bit about, as you started to reframe, restructure, what did the next tier look like and perhaps, the year or two after that look like for you as you start to slowly apply these things to your day-to-day life?

Sandra Forrester: Okay, so things happen when I started doing this work, it was basically the first of January 2009 and I went from having no income, and I’m just going to read you something straight out of the book because I sometimes forget how quickly things changed. I went from having no income and selling nothing to selling my first house in 12 months within 30 days of starting to use these techniques.

I then went on to bringing in $100,000 in gross commission in three months from January to March 2009. I then went on to bringing in $300,000 in gross commission the following year. I don’t earn all that by the way. The company takes half of that and then you pay tax and that’s not mine. I’ve got the gross commission is what we always work on.

So bringing in $300,000 in gross commission the following year to bringing in $500,000 in gross commission the year after that and being one of the top performers, not only in the branch that I was working in, which was the number one branch in the whole company by the way. So being the number one in my branch, one of the top performers in the whole company I was then asked to go and start developing and building a branch on the north shore of Auckland and Milford.

I turned that branch around from number 27 to number 12 within two years and then they asked me to go do one of the biggest branches in the whole company, and I turned that around from number 33 to number one in just four years, which was – four years sounds like a lot but trust me, there is a huge amount of work that was done in a very short period of time to be the number one branch in the biggest real estate company in Auckland, which is the biggest city in New Zealand.

So the momentum and the huge change and shift in what I was doing and how this work was impacting my life and the life of others too, because I was bringing all the people along for the journey and it was unbelievable what happened.

Re-Set Self BeliefsHussein Al-Baiaty: What a transformation, that is so powerful. And by just practicing the day-to-day affirmations, really writing down your goals, setting a foundation for yourself that you can really work from and getting focused, getting clear. Can you tell us a little bit about that clarity? I know for me cutting the distractions in the last, I feel like the last four years, what I’ve done personally to regain that, that strength and focus, is definitely get rid of all the social media off my phone.

Put my phone away at a specific time, because I know my big thing was I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t do drugs. I just grew up Muslim so that stuff was just off the table to begin with, but my big distraction and of course, addiction, is my phone, like many others. So what I did, I stayed on all those things, Facebook, whatever, but I completely removed them from my phone.

So this habitual aspect to constantly, frequently check something for whatever it was, validation, whatever. Honestly, what I did is I’ve been through a lot of traumatizing things growing up. I was in a refugee camp so I knew I needed to clear those things up in my mind, organize them in a way but I couldn’t do that with these distractions, this constant dinging and pinging of all the things around us.

Like you said earlier, garbage in, garbage out, and I’m an artist, I’m a creative, I’ve owned a business and I knew that the times that I really flourished is when I was utterly focused. I don’t mean that like focus just like business. No, I mean really focused on myself. I’m reading, I’m exercising, I’m applying the things that I am learning. I’m having a good time, right?

But I am avoiding the distractions that take away that momentum, and I find myself back in that of course, like 2017, ’18 and I revisited that mindset of the Wayne Dyer stuff, where I was like, “Okay, let’s clear the deck, let’s start over and let’s get focused.” And I got to tell you, I mean, that reenergized me, that reignited me.

What are some practical things that you give advice on especially to real estate professionals on how to really strengthen that focus, to hone in and get clear? Because I think that’s a huge aspect of not just goal setting but clarity. I think goal setting can come from the immense amount of clarity that we want for our life. What are some tools and maybe actionable steps that you would give to real estate agents out there in the world that can really help them perform?

Sandra Forrester: Yeah. So before I answer that, I just want to say one thing and here it is, motivation is bullshit. If you’re waiting to be motivated, you will wait forever. If you’re waiting to feel like it, you’ll be waiting forever. Consistency and discipline of the daily work is the only thing that works, full stop. And I got to say it again because this is what I learned that I was all over the place, right?

As a real estate agent, totally reacting to everything that was going on around, if someone’s – and this is typical in real estate, right? You are distracted by stuff and noise all day and so the key thing that I learned in this journey was, I had to get very clear with the times of the day that I had to do things and I was the first one in the office every day. I had three kids going to three different schools.

I had to drop them or get them to the bus or manage them between quarter to eight and 8:30, and then I would get to work because one of the kids was very close to work. At 8:30, I was the first one there, not a soul that’s in the office but me and the frontline reception person. So I was compartmentalizing parts of my day into the activities of the discipline of the daily work that I needed to do for the business, to show up and not be distracted by all the noise of real estate.

Because here’s one of the most important things that I’ve learned, that you are responsible for your own life and if you are sitting around waiting for someone to save you, fix you, or help you, you are wasting your time because only you have the power to move your life forward. And the sooner you get that, the sooner you can get your life into gear. And it sounds hard and it sounds tough but that is the reality of almost every single real estate agent whose come to me and says, “Sandra, can you help me? I want to be as successful as you are.”

What they’re not prepared to do is they’re not prepared to not behaving like the victim that many people feel like that they are in real estate, because they’re, “Oh, the markets terrible. Oh, interest rates have gone up. Oh, I can’t get a listing. Oh, real estate, terrible industry. The income is up and down and up and down. Oh, real estate is really hard.”

All those things, all those self-beliefs about a certain thing, you have to completely reset your mind and focus on the daily discipline of the work that you have to do in order for it to show up. The other thing I just want to mention, because this is something that I did not realize until about two years ago, I’ll be doing this work for a long time. So I believe that when you talk about the mind, you’re also talking about the universe.

Here’s one of the things that I’ve learned, your mind is just like Google. And you know how you’re going to be having a conversation with someone about something and then all of a sudden, their topic within a short period of time starts showing up in Google ads on your phone or on your iPad? I’ve had that happen to me and I was thinking about buying an e-bike, right? I was talking to someone in a café about buying an e-bike.

I had not Googled “buy an e-bike” I swear, and within four to six hours, ads started popping up on my iPhone for e-bikes. So I know that Google is listening and feeding to me what I am talking about. Well, you know what? The same is true for your mind because what you are speaking about and acting on, your mind is listening in and it is giving you, exactly the same as what the Google ads are doing.

It is feeding back to you what you say, “Oh, real estate is really hard. Oh, I’m never able going to be as successful as you.” Oh, you know, all these things, so the mind is going, “Oh okay, is that what you want? Oh okay, yeah, real estate is hard. Make sure that happens.” “Oh you know, I’m never going to be as successful.” “Oh, you don’t want to be successful? No problem, we can make that happen.”

This popped into my mind about two years ago and I thought about it a lot. If a coroner is doing an autopsy on a person who has died, they’ll find and identify the brain and they’ll find and identify the heart and all your organs, but they will never find the mind because the mind is not in physical form. It’s the energy in every cell of your body that is listening in, just like Google, and delivering your life one thought at a time.

That is one of the most important messages that I want to try and get out to people about this book and what this book delivers, is that your mind is everything. And now my mission is to share my knowledge and my experience that what you think, what you say, and what you do is everything in your life because, like Google, it’s listening.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow, very powerful. And emphasize the amount of curiosity that people go on and excuses that we make, right? The world, it’s like whatever is happening to us, we feel or at least this is how I used to feel and a lot of people feel, the market is this, you know what we were saying earlier, but taking responsibility, owning the situation, right?

Owning where you are, owning your story and saying, “You know what? It’s up to me.” No one is going to reach down from the heavens and save or rescue me. However, I can reach up to the heavens in a way, through my actions, and that’s where the connection can happen, that’s where I can commune with my mind is by feeding it positivity and then acting and curating my actions forward.

I think that’s so powerful, I love that. What was your favorite part of pulling this book together? What did you learn from the book writing journey?

Sandra Forrester: Well, I’m not going to lie, writing a book is not easy. It isn’t. I’m not going to lie, I am a busy person. I am, you ask anyone who knows me, I’m working full-on in the business that I have in real estate and I’ve got a lot of family. Effort, the time and effort that I put into family and friends. So writing a book I had to get up early in the morning to write. I used to write at night and it was a real journey.

But the thing that I got the most out of writing the book was going back and trying to determine what were the key fundamental points, techniques, skills, and lessons that I learned that I wanted to put into this book that could maybe help somebody else. Because, you know what? If I come into real estate and read this book, straight away, I would have known exactly what to do in order to start ramping up a career in real estate. But there is nothing like this.

I mean, I live in New Zealand, so a much smaller country than the United States. I wanted to create a book and I hope that I have that will help people go, “You know what?” And it’s not really just for real estate because it applies to absolutely any business that you are in. Find somebody who is already doing it really successfully, figure out what it is that they’re doing, make sure that you put the discipline of the daily work into your structured day.

Do affirmations, visualization, take action every day toward what it is that you are trying to create, your vision. One of the most important things as well is that I believe that repetition is the foundation block of learning and that daily repetition builds muscle memory. Just like when you go into the gym, after three or four months you start to see the effects in your body of going to the gym and doing weight work.

And you know what? Social media companies, they know this, and that’s why they are encouraging you to constantly be repeating the same activity when you’re checking your phones all the time. What you were talking about before, exactly right. Repetition is the foundation block of learning. So the repetition of behavior is hugely effective in creating new life-long habits, whether that is good or bad, because it can be both.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I can’t agree with you more. I love this and I love your book so much. I feel like I’m super energized and motivated and I’m sure that’s how many people feel when speaking with you because you have that spirit. Your mind is definitely speaking through you in a lot of ways and that energy is transferred to me all the way from New Zealand, I promise you that. Sandra, thank you so much for sharing your stories and your experiences with me, and the audience of course.

Your book is called, Change Your Life: The Power of a Focused Mind. Besides checking out the book on Amazon, where can people find you and connect with you and perhaps, get the snippets on a daily or a weekly basis to get that inspiration that you exude? I love that so much.

Sandra Forrester: I am trying to build my social media profile and I am doing it slowly but surely, Once again, I’m a very busy person. I’m not making excuses, I’m getting much better at it, but anyone can email me or find me on the Barfoot & Thompson website. So it’s super simple, it’s just barfoot.co.nz/sforrester or you can just Google Sandra Forrester, real estate, New Zealand, you will find me.

You can buy the book on Amazon, it’s on both paperback and Kindle and I have an Instagram account called @sandra.forrester.real.estate and there’s quite a bit of content on there. It’s pretty localized too in the New Zealand market but I’m putting more about me and the book, it’s coming soon because this was launch week. So yeah, you can just Google me and you’ll find me super fast as long as you put Sandra Forrester Real Estate and maybe NZ and you’ll find me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well Sandra, today has been a pleasure. I loved all the gems that you’ve laid down today, I really appreciate your time and energy today. Your wisdom is greatly appreciated, thank you, Sandra.

Sandra Forrester: Thank you.

The post Change Your Life: Sandra Forrester appeared first on Author Hour.

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We all want to hold public officials accountable for paying their fair share of taxes, but just as importantly, we want to see how legally they save hundreds of thousands of dollars. You don’t have to be a politician to pull a page from their playbook and save your hard-earned money, too. After all, it’s not how much you make, but what you keep after taxes. Welcome to the Author Hour podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty. I’m joined by author Charles Renwick, who’s here to talk about his new book called All the Presidents’ Taxes. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to the show. I’m here with author Charles Renwick, who just launched a very important book, I think. It’s a very amazing, easy-to-read book about All the Presidents’ Taxes. I think I have some interesting questions. I know our audience will, too. I think this is something really interesting that our social fabric has always wondered about. Charles, thanks for coming on the show today. I really appreciate you.

Charles Renwick: Thanks, Hussein, a pleasure to be here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. This is exciting for me because these are questions that I feel like, I’ve always like, your eyebrow raises when you hear like, “The president pays $3 for taxes.” You’re like, “What?” You know what I mean? We’re going to get into all that good stuff because you have an amazing book filled with just historical references, and just ways of looking at this tax code, and how our past presidents and current president all do this thing, but also how we can benefit from all of it, which I’m really excited about. Before we get into all that, I’d love to know a little bit about you. Your personal background, perhaps where you grew up, and maybe a person or a place that inspired you to go down the path that you’re on today.

Charles Renwick: Well, great. I’m really excited to talk about the book. I agree with everything you said. It is something that’s really intriguing. For sure, that was part of the impetus. From my background perspective, I have a fairly unique background. My dad was actually born in Malaysia. My mom’s from Georgia. My dad was in Malaysia because at the time it was a British Commonwealth. He ends up moving to Scotland when he was young. They met in college when my mom was studying abroad in Scotland. She brought him back to the United States, so to speak. He’s a Presbyterian Minister.

I grew up a son of a preacher in a couple of different places, primarily in Lexington, Kentucky. Then I went to the University of Georgia, which is where my mom’s family had gone to school. My mom’s father was a politician in Georgia. I naturally followed in that direction, thinking I was going to go to law school. Then when I was in college, I started helping with a political campaign. The guy was running for Congress and he was an accomplished attorney. I started asking him for advice in terms of what area of the law he thought I might be good at in terms of practice. He suggested that I start taking accounting courses. He had a partner that he said, kept the lights on at his firm, and he was a tax attorney, his partner was a tax attorney.

I thought that was great because I was really good at math, but I also really liked reading and writing and tax is a bit of both. So it was a good combination of those skills. I start taking the classes, and all of a sudden I realized, “Hey, I really liked accounting.” I don’t even really want to go to law school. I started practicing accounting. I started my career at Ernst and Young in Atlanta. This is just a very large accounting firm. It’s one of the big four accounting firms. Then I moved into what’s called Industry. I then left the Big Four accounting firm and went to work for a large multinational company, I was still in Atlanta. Then we moved to Louisiana. I hung my shingle so to speak and started cutting my teeth learning how to do individual tax returns, and individual business tax returns.

It was really a bit of a career change even though I was an accountant and Atlanta corporate Accounting, an individual in small business accounting is really a completely different thing. Some of the principles are the same. You obviously need to understand income statements and balance sheets, and know where to find answers and problem-solving, and understand how laws are made and where the rules come from. If you haven’t done it before, you haven’t done it before. So I hadn’t done it. I was thrown into the deep end, primarily because I didn’t want to commute anymore. I wanted to work close to home. I wanted to have my own practice. I didn’t want to have to drive into the city every day. So I said, “Hey, you know what? I can do this.” I took the opportunity. We moved. We moved to Louisiana, really as a family decision. We were having kids and so forth. Probably the best decision I ever made was to go out on my own. I started doing taxes for people and that’s really where I’ve been for the last eight years.

Tackling TaxesHussein Al-Baiaty: Wow. Yeah, man. I mean, I feel like one journey always leads to the next. I feel like the people that we come across, whether it be our parents, our uncles, or whatever, or just people that we start working with. I think it’s really powerful that you were given the opportunity to think about doing accounting. Then how it aligned with just what you enjoy, what you’re really good at, and what you lean into. Of course, like going into the corporate world to understand how that stuff all just works and plays out. I’m glad that you took the leap because it sounds like that’s really where you found your nook, your space of really—finding what you’re really good at great and serving the community.

How does this book really come about? I mean, I feel like we certainly ask a lot about how politicians on a daily basis, go about doing these kinds of things, whether it be their businesses, or whether they don’t pay taxes, or we can’t see their taxes, and all these kinds of questions, especially in the last, I would say, eight years, people have been really interested. I’m sure they’d been interested longer than that I feel with the advent of social media, and in the last few presidents have shaken things up a little bit, which made a lot of people, especially younger people really curious and trying to figure out where the transparency is. How did this book come to be? Like, did you decide, I want to clarify some of these questions or answers, or was it your own search of trying to put things together?

Charles Renwick: Well, that’s a great question. For sure, over the recent years, it’s coming to intense focus at the national level. One hundred percent follow national politics. I was aware that the issue, but really what it came down to, as most small business owners know. I became a small business owner. At the end of the day, no matter what your profession, whether or not your accountant, an attorney, a small business owner, a tradesman, or you’re contractor, you have to not only manage a business, but you have to learn how to sell your services. I’ve been working and I started working and reading about how to sell. When it came down to it, one of the main things I was selling is a tax plan.

The actual preparation of the tax return is one thing that is a bit of a commodity, though, what’s not a commodity is the plan itself. For almost all small business owners, once you even taste a little bit of success, it really is not. You don’t even need that much success. Tax, income tax, and payroll tax become your largest expense by a factor of three or four, right? Tax is incredibly important to small business people. I took what I was learning about selling and how that would make me a successful owner of an accounting firm. Also looked at the people to whom I was selling, and developed these plans. So oftentimes, I would have a plan. For example, they would come to me with their facts and circumstances. I would say, “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to do this, this, and this.” I’m projecting and I can’t make promises. It’s unethical for a CPA to make promises as it relates to tax outcomes.

I could say things like in general, when people do things like this, they save X percentage or X amount of dollars. A lot of times that amount of savings is significantly greater than the cost of the actual planning and tax preparation. That is actually a very easy thing to sell when I can sell something that’s value-added on both sides. That’s what we call right, a win-win. What ends up happening is that individuals small business owners are skeptical. They say, “Wait a second. Really? Is it true that what you’re telling me can save me this amount of money?” They want some reassurances that what they’re doing isn’t illegal, because they’re naturally concerned about not wanting to break the law, not wanting to run afoul of the IRS, right? These are things that people should be concerned about.

What I found myself saying, especially with one of the more popular small business tax strategies was, “This is what Joe Biden does. Look it up.” Right? He saved half a million dollars doing this. You can do it too. Then some other real estate strategies, for example, I would say, “This is what Donald Trump does. You don’t believe me? Google it.” Right? It turns out that that was a very effective way to close a deal where if there was skepticism, the main objective, the main objection to implementing a tax plan was the skepticism. That turning the tables so to speak, saying, “Hey, here’s this, like them or not, there’s a very high likelihood that they have very skilled tax professionals helping them.” If they’re using this strategy, you can feel confident that it’s a reliable strategy that you can use, too.

It really was this—then a combination of these things are in the national press, right? They’re naturally going to come up when I tell people to google it. A lot of people, I would just say, hey, that I would give that pitch. That would close the deal. There were definitely some people that said, “Okay, I’m going to think about it.” They would go home. Do the research, and then come back and sign up as well. It was just a very effective closing argument, so to speak. What better thing to write about, than something that can help people, but it’s also nationally interesting? It was just, it just seemed like a, I was surprised that no one else had done it yet. I leaped at the opportunity because again, I’ve always liked writing and politics. Here I can write about politics and taxes. It helps people. I mean, that’s great.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s a win-win, win situation. I love—

Charles Renwick: Right.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, because it bridges together, not only what you’re passionate about, but what you’re really good at as well, which is – I think, for me when I was a small business owner, and like, still am in a lot of ways. My own personal brand, and all that good stuff. When I talk with my accountant or tax people, I’m always trying to figure out like, what can I do now to ensure X, Y, or Z at the end of the year, or whatever? Right? When I was younger, as a small business owner, it was always way too late at the end of the year. “Oh, I should have done X, Y, and Z throughout the year to do this.” It was just learning. It was such a huge learning curve. I feel like as small business owners like you said, you just want to sell your product or sell your service or do the craft, the thing that you’re good at, and this stuff is really hard. When you tie in this idea that looks—our president is applying this tax strategy. It’s X, Y, and Z. It’s like, “Oh, it’s not illegal?” Well, yeah, because the President is doing.

Charles Renwick: Exactly.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Here’s the problem, though, right? Because you talk about this in your book, you talk about—you bring in a story of Richard Nixon, right? Where there are some ways that people either avoid taxes or you go into depth which is very cool. What are the most challenging, or maybe common misconceptions that people have about taxes? Certainly misconceptions about how the presidents do taxes. What are the common misconceptions there?

Common Misconceptions about TaxesCharles Renwick: Oh, that’s a great question. As it relates to Nixon and just as it relates to this question, in particular. What I like to say is that there’s black, there’s white, and there’s gray. Okay. It is the case 100% that some people commit tax fraud. We talked about this in the book. We distinguish between what is tax fraud? What is tax avoidance? That is the crux of tax planning. You do not ever want to commit tax fraud, right? But there is nothing illegal about tax avoidance. Taxes are an inherent part of taxes. There are two main parts of taxes. Raising revenue for the government, but also incentivizing behavior or de-incentivizing behavior, so I drill into these two things, right, because that is a critical distinction.

If the government is trying to incentivize behavior, and the way they’re doing that is by giving credits or charging more tax on certain activities. Listen, there’s a big tax on cigarettes and pretty much every state. There are national taxes on things like gasoline, right? You can avoid, legally avoid paying taxes on cigarettes by not buying cigarettes, right? Like that’s obviously not illegal, right? If you can avoid that tax, why can’t you avoid other types of taxes? The answer is you can. You can avoid certain taxes if you structure things properly. If you avoid certain activities and here’s the other thing. You can actually get tax benefits if you do certain things. There are certain industries that in there certain business structures that have tax advantages.

If you learn, if you take a minute to understand what is tax-advantaged, and what’s not tax-advantaged, you may still decide. You know what? I want to have a business that engages in making and selling tobacco. Great, that’s a business decision. You just now need to understand that there are tax consequences to that decision, right? You might equally decide. You know what? I want to have a business that invests in real estate. Okay, that’s a great decision, because that business has lots of tax advantages, right? You can decide, and it changes your decision-making as an individual, as a business owner, and as an investor, what the tax consequences are because the tax consequences are material. This is real money. Does that make sense?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. That’s really powerful, too. Just like in thinking about that, right, it’s like, I feel like, I had maybe 10 to 15 sessions with all my tax people to finally understand some of the stuff you’re talking about right now. For young like small business owners, solopreneurs, of course, or people just that are basically just navigating those landscapes, it’s difficult. It’s difficult to get this stuff right. What are your, I guess, strategies in thinking about who you want to hire to help you with these kinds of things? Because I love this idea of, look, here’s what you do, here is what you’re into, here are all the benefits of being in this world, and here’s the things that you should avoid, or the traps that you should avoid, or whatever laying out the plan is so crucial.

What are some, I guess, tactical pieces of advice would you give to someone who, let’s say, I own a business, or a small business owner, five to 10 employees? What things, let’s say, they’re in the tech industry, right, where everything is online. What are some tax—I guess, advantages or ways to think about your taxes and expenses, of course, that could really help lay out a plan and a foundation for yourself?

Charles Renwick: That’s crucial, right? The plan, the foundation, and really, that’s to some extent, the purpose of the book. The book has a bit of—I would say, like a call to action, which is, we need the presidents to publish their tax returns. We need a national law that requires Presidents to publish tax returns, for a lot of reasons. There are obviously, civic duties that we want to make sure are being upheld. Another thing that’s really important and which I think the national media misses a little bit is that the tax returns are a great way to educate the public on the tax laws, right?

The conversation, obviously, nationally is toxic, right? It’s accusations on all sides. What this book tries to do is say, “Timeout, let’s actually learn from this information. This is really good information.” It’s very valuable to see returns that are prepared by the highest, most professional accountants in the country, right? The people that did President Trump’s tax returns are the best of the best. The people doing Ted Cruz’s, and Joe Biden’s are not the starter, level one accountants working on these returns. These are high quality returns, right? Using this opportunity to then learn about the opportunities within the tax code, learn about how our tax code is structured, and learn about the differences between tax fraud and tax avoidance, right? Just learning about that is step one, right?

Once you feel comfortable with this underlying structure of what is this really important thing. It’s super important for our nation as a whole, right? The tax code is probably the most important section of our national laws. It’s a very important section of all of our state laws, right? Understanding these competing incentives in terms of our competing priorities in terms of incentivizing behavior and raising revenue and where do I fit into this with what I want to do and how I want to make money, just learning that. It’s really not that complex in terms of the high level, right?

This is a great opportunity for everybody across the spectrum whether or not you’re a small business owner, you’re a W2 employee, you’re just somebody—a gig worker, like you were talking about, right? Learning where you fit into this is step number one, right? Then once you understand the pros and cons and the do’s and don’ts at a high level. Then executing, right? So this book isn’t really about the execution of a plan. It’s really about, hey, here are the high-level things that are going on in our tax system.

Here are the high-level things that these presidents have done. Here’s how you can apply these same things and actually recognize meaningful results just with these high-level concepts. You don’t have to even go out and pay a professional to start doing some of these things. Although I do highly recommend it as it relates to any business when you look at any line item on a business’s income statement. If it’s 10%, if it’s 15%, if it’s 20% of the bottom line, obviously, you should be engaging someone that’s a professional that can focus on that full time.

I certainly think it’s very valuable to engage a CPA to help with your taxes. I think step number one is at least learning, because a lot of people are scared to engage a CPA, because they don’t want to look stupid, right? They don’t want to go into an accountant’s office, whether or not it’s their friend, whether or not it’s a professional, they were referred to. They don’t want to go in there and not know anything. So they’re scared. A book like this really, helps people get that high level, know what questions to ask, and have a basic understanding of the structure. You definitely aren’t going to be stupid going into that tax meeting after you’ve read this book.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, man. I love that. That’s so powerful because we all know that knowledge is very powerful. It helps, it answers those things, so that the fears can at least calm down for you to take some action.

Charles Renwick: Right.

Approaching Taxes With ConfidenceHussein Al-Baiaty: I think for me, man. I mean, hiring my first accountant, I was terrified, because you’re 100% right, I felt so, just overwhelmed with—man, I feel like I am failing, even though I was like, I had a pretty decently successful printing business. I felt like I didn’t know what the hell I was doing when it came to taxes or anything like that. So when I finally started bringing help, luckily, she was amazing, and just super kind and really helpful in helping me just understand things. The questions that we have, especially as young entrepreneurs or people as you said, even if you have a job, just go in there and ask the questions, because that’s what a CPA does—part of their job is to help answer those questions, and help you really determine a plan that can best fit your needs.

That took me a while, it took me a couple of years for me to really lean in and trust that, right? Because I feel like as a small business owner like every dollar counts, of course, but you don’t know that 30, 40 cents of that is going to taxes. You got to figure that out soon, sooner than later.

Where did you find the most like giving this chunk of advice is probably the thing that moves the lever, right? For entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, or people who just have a job, right? Their doctors or engineers or lawyers or whatever, what was the piece of advice that you always like to give for people to make that shift or move the lever a little bit in a way that gives them confidence?

Charles Renwick: Yeah. That’s exactly, you hit the nail on the head really, is that getting past that fear, what’s the confidence? Really, when you put numbers on paper is really where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, especially a lot of small business owners, it’s really that first year that they’re successful. If they haven’t implemented a tax plan already, right? If they didn’t plan ahead, they see that first tax bill, and they don’t have the money. It’s a sad situation, because they’re sitting there and they’re doing their best to be an entrepreneur, grow the economy, potentially hire new employees, and get a $30,000 tax bill, right?

They don’t know what to do, and they get scared. Then worst-case scenario, they stop even filing their taxes, and they completely drop out of compliance. That really strangles their growth, because if you’re not in compliance with your taxes, and if you’re not doing your taxes properly, you’re going to have very limited ability to access capital, right? You’re certainly going to have a very difficult time borrowing money from the bank. It’s really, to me, you have to be comfortable with taxes. If you’re going to be a small business owner, you have to understand and you have to be prepared for it, whether or not you’re a real estate agent. A lot of people don’t realize real estate agents or 1099, which means they’re a small business owner too, right?

Real estate agents doing it for the first time get a 1099 for $50,000. If they haven’t planned they’re getting a big tax bill, right? Knowing when to plan, not being afraid to plan, not letting that first tax bill where you missed the boat, you missed it that first year, you better get on board, right? Because if you’re not implementing a tax plan for the next year, and if you don’t set up the payment plan, or if you don’t get that first one settled with the IRS, then your business is not going to succeed. You got to bite the bullet, either have planned ahead and the best obvious scenario is you planned ahead and you were in front of it. But if you weren’t in front of it that first year, you just got to bite the bullet and you got to get ahead of it for the next year because if you don’t, it’s going to pile up. That’s not good for your business long term.

I think for a lot of people, it really is that first year. Even if they’re using an accountant, they think maybe, “Hmm, this seems like a lot of money.” Yeah, definitely get a second opinion, right? Don’t, this is an important thing in your life. Don’t just trust the first person you talk to. Talk to a couple of people, make the right decision, and get some recommendations from your friends, or some other small business owners that are already successful. Talk to them about what they did. Read some books, right? Read this book, read – do some Google searches. There’s so much you can find just on the internet about all of this tax planning and listen to podcasts, right?

There’s a lot that people can do. I think just making an interesting, right, just with all things is part of the challenge. A lot of people just throw up their hands and say, “I don’t know how to do it.” Right? Well, just teaching anything, if we can make it interesting for him. I’m excited because I do think there’s a subset of the population that’s very interested in politics. In that group of people, they’re small business owners that hopefully I can reach and get to them either before they start their next business, or they’ve already had this situation where they’re in a bit of a pickle and owe the IRS money. They don’t really know what the next steps are. Then just generally, educating the public as a civic duty, I’m just excited about the whole breadth that this book hits.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. Dude, I’ll tell you right now, man. I, from a professional perspective, definitely have owed my fair share of taxes, because I throw so much, I didn’t know. I always used to toss it up to, “Shit, I don’t know.” You know what I mean? Like I don’t want to deal with that and I just avoided it, put it on the back burner. Those were huge mistakes. I’ll be honest. I feel like, I’m still navigating those mistakes today. This was years ago, but I still trying to figure out and fix my stuff. I’m on the back end. It’s one of those things, man, where taxes, I feel like obviously, I don’t care to pay them. I feel like it’s my privilege to be an American, to be a part of this society, this culture. It’s being distributed and all those kinds of things. I have my fair share of like, I shouldn’t go there, but those are things that are out of my control.

However, you’re 100%, right. The more I learned, the more I read, and the more I listened to a podcast here or there. The more I just my fears just went down a little bit. I’m like, okay, I know what question I can ask. I know what I can bring back to the table. I know what I need to email my CPA now. Just like, overcoming that fear of like, saying like, this can work against me the rest of my life, or this could work with me and for me, the rest of my life. It’s that shift that I think for me, happened like two, three years ago, that I was like, “Okay, there’s obviously a lot of people that are doing this in real estate, or a small business owner, whatever.” But they never talk about any of this stuff.

It sounds like they have it all figured out, right? It’s because whether they have a whole team behind it, or they’re just not talking about it, because it’s very uncomfortable. I love having this conversation, because it eases the pressure, right? It’s like if you can get in front of the right person that can help you set up a structure and get your things back in order. That’s the plan you want to go with. I love that. Your book really opened my eyes to that.

Charles Renwick: Well, I just think what you’re saying really makes sense. It really drills into this really underlying concept that’s similar to the competing objectives that I talked about in terms of revenue versus incentivizing behavior, but when you’re talking about, “Hey, it is what it is. I owe what I owe.” That’s really where tax planning shifts away from that idea. It isn’t, it is what it is. I owe what I owe. There’s no obligation to pay more than you owe, right? There’s not this overlying thing like, “Hey, you need to pay your fair share. It’s not the individual, small business owner. It’s not the individual small business owner’s responsibility to determine what their fair share is. That’s already been determined by the government when the government passed the laws, right?

There was a separate political process that establishes what everybody’s fair share is. Once that process is done, once those laws are passed, we are free to take advantage of those laws, right? If those laws result in me or you or even the most powerful person in the United States, the President not paying any taxes, that’s what it is. There’s no ethics beyond that. It’s saying, “Oh, he didn’t pay any money. That’s not ethical.” Well, if he engaged in a lot of activity that was incentivized by the government. If you engage in a lot of activity that’s incentivized by the government, you’re not going to owe any taxes either. That wasn’t your ethical decision. That was the population’s decision when we elected representatives.

The book talks about that a little bit in terms of, we have a representational democracy. We have a legislative process. The legislative process is inherently ethical decision-making. People might argue whether or not our process is corrupt. The fact of the matter is, our process is better than all the other processes. We have a democratic process that has withstood the test of time and is very fair, there is no popular uprising, saying, “Hey, let’s get rid of the tax code.” It’s just not the case. The tax code is widely supported. It’s just the fact of the matter is, our tax code is ethical because it was passed ethically. If it results in somebody not paying taxes, that’s an okay result. We can’t get angry when a president doesn’t owe any money. If we don’t like that it’s not his fault. It’s you have a problem with the laws.

You can say, “Hey, we need to change laws. We think real estate shouldn’t be an advantage—to get tax advantages.” The problem is, there are a lot of people that do think real estate should receive tax advantages, right? It’s just there’s a wide consensus that real estate should enjoy some tax advantages because the government believes that growing the real estate industry and building buildings and developing properties is a productive thing for our economy. That’s where the ethical decision was made. It wasn’t made when the person fills out their tax return and it shows that they don’t owe any money. You don’t owe any more than you owe. That’s the facts.

Giving Benefit of the DoubtHussein Al-Baiaty: Right. Yeah. It’s really powerful to put that in context and to realize that again, this whole for me, I guess, when I made the mind shift is that, there are things in place, but they’re not there to be against me. They’re there to work for me and with me. If I can understand them, and realize how I can use them in an appropriate way, I can basically take advantage of what’s available to me. I think, when we think about politicians, when we think about extremely wealthy people, well, yeah, they have a team of people or teams of people that are sitting there working really hard diligently, every single day, figuring out ways to maximize their potential of where taxes should be paid.

I’ll be honest, from my perspective, there are a few things, of course, I don’t agree with, right? How people take advantage of things, but it’s because of my lack of knowledge, right? It’s because of and when these people know how to apply these things to their respective income and all those kinds of things. Then there’s an opportunity for them to grow. But because I don’t know that, I think for me, the anger or the frustration, or the emotional aspect of things, those are the things that we tap into and it’s like, “I can’t control that, but what can I control? How can I help myself go forward?” Well, there are a lot of tax advantages in real estate. Well, okay. Let’s dig into that. Let’s pick up a few books as you said. Like knowledge in a sense, it creates that freedom especially lessens the burden of fear. Then you can go into that space, knowing how to navigate it.

Man, that book is so powerful. I can’t wait to swim through it throughout the week and the weekend. I’m really excited to have had you today, Charles. Besides all that good stuff around the book. What was your favorite part of pulling this book together? Because I know as you said earlier, you like to read, you like to write, and of course, do taxes. You bridge them all together, but what was your favorite part of this journey?

Charles Renwick: I think really, the thing that I enjoy the most is that I think this is just a really timely topic. It’s getting lots of attention. I really am discouraged, probably like most people just at the tone, the National tone when it comes to politics, the accusations of corruption, and the intent things getting at. It’s just really tearing our country apart in many respects. It’s tearing families apart. I’m really excited to maybe tone it down a little bit, shift the focus and say, “Hey, let’s take the approach that—let’s give everybody the benefit of the doubt, right? That’d be a great place to start. If we’re giving them the benefit of the doubt, why don’t we learn from them, too? Let’s not pull everybody down. Let’s build people up. Let’s learn from the things that are going on around us. Let’s have a civil discussion about it. We can see these consequences. If you don’t the consequences, there’s a civil way to change them.

Let’s not attack people and on this topic in particular, there’s a lot of let’s jump to conclusions, right? Let’s give people the benefit of the doubt, so I really want to shift that I’m excited. It’s exciting to be part of that. As I’m writing the book, obviously there are developments happening in the world. Obviously, Trump’s world is evolving. Biden’s world is evolving. There are new candidates coming out. So this is not going to be a topic that goes away. So this is book number one. I’m really excited. I hope it’s a success. I hope people go out and they buy it, and they read it, and they enjoy it. I’m also excited, because I already, pretty much have enough content for Book number two, just in the things that have happened, really, since this book was pretty much finalized in the fall.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. Well, Charles, I’ve learned so much. I can’t wait, not only to get through it myself, but I can’t wait to get this book out in the world and see what it can do. I’m sure like you said, helps evolve the conversation to more of a positive one, when we can all learn and sit down, and learn from and really educate ourselves and our friends or colleagues. I think it’s really powerful. Thank you for taking the time to put your wisdom down. It’s such a cool way to weave in the questions that I feel are inherent in our culture today. Again, man. Thanks for your time, Charles. I learned so much. The book is called All the Presidents’ Taxes: What We Can Learn (and Borrow) From the High-Stakes World of Presidential Tax-Paying. So besides checking out the book on Amazon, where can people find you? LinkedIn? Any special websites, all that good stuff?

Charles Renwick: Sure. Yeah. Obviously LinkedIn, Google, Charles Renwick, but also, I have the URL potus.tax, so P-O-T- U-S, which obviously stands for President of the United States common acronym potus.tax. You can go to potus.tax, you can—Right now the book is available for preorder on Amazon, for Kindle. The official go-live date is February 28. I really hope this reaches a lot of people and helps a lot of people and hopefully, it elevates the conversation nationally. That would be my stretch goal. Let’s just call it that. I really want to thank you for having me, Hussein. This was a very productive conversation.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, man. I love that. I have so many more questions for you.

Charles Renwick: Well, you can maybe invite me back. Book number two is coming.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I feel like again, these conversations are usually done behind closed doors. They’re very intimate between CPAs and people and all these things. I love that we get to open it up here. It really gets people thinking about these things that of course, impact all of our lives. On that note, man. I know your book is going to be very important to our culture and our conversation today. I’m very proud of that. Charles, it’s been an honor today. Thank you, my friend.

Charles Renwick: Well, thank you.

The post All the Presidents’ Taxes: Charles Renwick appeared first on Author Hour.

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There are many different management methodologies that exist today, but even the most popular ones have limitations, especially when applied at the enterprise level. My next guest has developed what he calls “Stream Theory,” which is an innovative framework to achieving breakthrough results.

Welcomed back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by author Dmitriy Neganov, who is here to talk about his new book called Stream Theory. Let’s flip through it.

Welcome back to the Author Hour episode, my friends. I am here with Dmitriy, and Dmitriy, I’m super excited because your book man, it is fascinating, it is deep, and I can’t wait to share with our audience everything that you shared through your book. Dmitriy, thank you for coming on the show today.

Dmitriy Neganov: Thank you, Hussein. I’m excited to be on this podcast. I look forward to discussing this book, and hopefully, we can dive into it, and I’ll share the story about it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that man. So Dmitriy, talk to me a little bit about, you know, I like to give our audience a little bit of a background about who you are and where you grew up, maybe perhaps a person that influenced you in your life or young childhood. So, giving the foundation to what we will build on next, can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Dmitriy Neganov: Happy to do so. Well, as you can probably tell from my name, I’ve got a Russian background. So I was born and raised in Moscow, Russia, and I came over to the US in 1996. So most of my life now, I’ve lived here in the States, and it really gave me a truly unique perspective on life, having experienced two different cultures, having lived in two different worlds, sometimes it seems that way, but yeah, I live in the Midwest.

I absolutely love it here, I love the people that I get to meet that surround me — and you mentioned people that influenced me in my life, tough question, really. Actually, it’s tougher than one can imagine because the influence doesn’t stop. It’s a continuous process in my experience, but in my childhood really, gosh, I would probably have to say even within the family, I would have to call out my brother, my older brother, who has taught me so much.

Who actually was also a great influence on some of the core ideas and principles that went into this book, and then later in my life, of course my wife, who has been my partner and editor of this book and very much a part of this journey and yeah, these people are really the core of my essence as a person, as an individual.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful, man. I love that because the reason I mentioned that and to set the foundation for what we get into is, you know, it’s almost like paying homage, right? To our older version of our self and younger version of our self and there are those remarkable people that come in and out of our lives, sometimes I feel like they don’t get the recognition ‘till the end, and for me sometimes, putting the recognition for them upfront really makes the work so much purposeful, right?

It’s so filled with your ‘why’ and your purpose and your intention because those people, they stand out in our lives. For me, it was my father, my experience is a little bit similar to yours in that I came to America from a refugee camp, and so I got to experience the world differently as well. This is why I love these stories, right? This is why I love these books and the work that I do.

It’s because there’s a human connection in all of us, and if we can tap into who we once were and what our trials and tribulations were like, you’ll see that we’re not that different, you know what I mean? It’s just a different person in a different place, so that’s beautiful. Thank you for sharing that.

Dmitriy Neganov: Of course.

Make Positive Change From the Inside Using Stream TheoryHussein Al-Baiaty: But let’s get into this book. I mean, it’s a remarkable sort of feat because, let’s be honest, writing a book is not easy, but you’re talking about something that is huge and that leads to sadly, why companies fail and we look to our managers, we look to our leaders, we look to the people right or left of us as we work throughout in these companies, but you bring some great examples by talking about things like BestBuy and Circuit City.

I remember Circuit City very well, but can you talk to us a little bit about how managers and the decisions and the priorities that these managers sort of create start then to affect a company’s success or failing.

Dmitriy Neganov: Well, you’re absolutely right that management and managers play a crucial role in, well, in my opinion, in our society in general. Most of our lives I think we spend working and what happens at work, what happens in the workplace, really impacts our everything, our health, our overall quality of life. Gosh, we’re dealing with environmental issues today with pollution, we’re dealing with social inequalities, health problems in the society.

It all stems from how organizations are managed, and this is not a field that I chose when I was younger. When I was in college, I actually have a kind of a mixed bag in terms of my education, in terms of my background. Some of it is engineering, some of it is computer information systems but also business management as well. I got into this field, really, started with managing projects, and once I got into that role, I pretty quickly realized, well, first of all, people are truly stressed out and stretched to the maximum.

At the same time, people are extremely capable and talented, and I kept feeling the talent often goes to waste or under appreciated, and it really rubbed me the wrong way, and in my role that I was in, I was trying to figure out a way, “How can I support these people in all these incredible things that they do?” and with time, it led me to developing this framework that I formulated in this book.

This framework, this methodology, is really a combination of all the things that I have learned from some of the great, wonderful people that I’ve met in my life who were my mentors, who truly dedicated their lives to really, the same purpose, changing the business environment, changing how companies function and that’s what I try to do to this day.

I try to influence organizations from within. As a consultant, I’m trying to fight this uphill battle, try and change how companies get managed, how — and really, when we talk about management, how priorities are set. That is truly the essence of management, and until we change priorities, these problems that I mentioned, unfortunately, I do not see how they will go away.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much because you really get to the core of it right away, but you use, you know, you talk about different methodologies that different types of companies use, and some work really well, some don’t work very well and sometimes there’s a hybrid of different methodologies to use in managing people and all these things.

But you have a unique perspective, and you call it “Stream Theory,” if I’m not wrong, which is sort of an innovative framework for achieving these breakthrough results in management. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Dmitriy Neganov: Absolutely. So these methodologies that comprise a stream theory, a lot of them are, well, pretty much, all of them are very well-known and some of them have been around, oh my goodness, for nearly a century. Others have been around for decades, but I see organizations time and time again trying different approaches to manage. They keep trying to implement one framework.

A few years later, they go for another framework. They try to come up with some hybrid approach, and what I realized having studied and having practiced these methodologies is that they’re very similar, very similar. Many of them talk about the same things, just in a little bit of a different way.

So what I started doing, and I started doing for myself at first, but then I started teaching others, but I started putting this puzzle together, picking different pieces that made sense, that worked, that complemented each other from different frameworks, and ended up having this framework that I called stream theory and the reason for this name, well, there is that whole theoretical knowledge that I mentioned, but also the word stream is really a homage to the work of the great Dr. Edwards Deming.

Truly a great mind of the 20th century, and there were mainly other individuals in his time and after him that shared the same message, but I spent quite a bit of time studying his work but the whole concept of seeing an organization as a single organism, as a system, where it’s not just a hierarchy, you know, top to bottom but more of a continuous flow of activities that are interdependent with one another.

When we start viewing organizations that way, we start viewing ourselves differently as well. What roles we play within the system, within this structure, it changes that perspective. It changes the dynamic between the overall interaction between gears or management and the employers. So that is really kind of something that I was trying to capture in that name as well, that flow mindset that I wanted to build into the title, hence, “Stream Theory.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, very beautiful, so well-articulated. I love that so much, man. Can you share a little bit about how you, you know, what’s one thing that you implement? When you go in to help an organization, what’s the first thing you try to, I guess, help optimize in a company to get them in alignment with purpose and direction and engagement? What is that thing that you really lean into?

Dmitriy Neganov: It’s actually a pretty difficult question because well, first of all, different situations, different engagements. Well, they’re just that, they’re different, right? How I started that engagement, but ultimately, ultimately, the starting point is an understanding of the purpose, why does an organization exist in the first place?

It may seem like a very basic question. Yet, I think it is not asked enough, and when you ask the question and truly try to understand what problem does an organization exist to solve in the community at large, it is not an easy question. I often apply the very same question to myself and to my role.

So as a consultant, when I go to a company, what value do I add? And it really, I started asking that question, really basing my views on the fundamental respect for the people that I would go in and work with because if somebody’s calling me on to a project, let’s say, that means they have a need. Well, if that need is to do some basic administrative work, well, the value, it’s there but it’s rather limited, and I try to figure out, what is the greater purpose.

The greater value that I can add to an organization when I go in and really, the question naturally evolves into, “Well, what negative would exist? What problem would exist if I wasn’t there? If they didn’t call me to help, what can an organization not do if I’m not there?” and that really led me to developing a certain perspective on a role that I play and truly, the role that I think project managers, in general, should play in an organization, it’s somewhat of an architectural role.

It’s a role that helps connect the different pieces, connect the different dots because organizations are very complex, there are so many moving pieces. Connecting them across different functions across different teams is not an easy task, and being able to organize the work in such a way that it’s easy, convenient, transparent, engaging, that is a challenge that somebody needs to do, and very often, within companies that capability is lacking.

Hence, that is what I at least found for myself in my career, trying to play that role to address that need to solve that problem. So I started with myself asking that question of the purpose, but when I go in to help an organization transform itself, that is the very question that I ask the leadership of both of that company. What is the fundamental purpose for being that needs to be, really, that should be understood by everybody, by employees, by customers because that drives everything else downstream. That drives all of the priority decisions downstream.

Put People FirstHussein Al-Baiaty: Right. Yeah, having a clear understanding of the purpose and the problems that you seek to solve is crucial. It’s beyond crucial, I think it’s the most important thing, and you’re 100% right. I’m glad you took us there, but it does affect everyone, right? That you know, again, it comes back to decisions and what are those decisions, but if those decisions are not made around a center idea, a core that’s really intact and clear, then those decisions are going to become unclear, and they would obviously impact everyone in such different ways.

So how does the focus on employee centricity lead to long-term organizational sustainability and sort of like meeting the needs of the stakeholders as well? How are all of those connected?

Dmitriy Neganov: I think that is the key question, and when I look at all the different frameworks that exist and really, the call for a common purpose, common goal is not new. You can hear it all around, there’s nothing new in that statement. However, despite a continuous call for that common purpose, something is yet not working, right? These fundamental problems that we deal with as a society, they are very much in front of us and they have not gone away.

In my opinion, they got only worse, so what is that missing element? What is the piece that prevents all of these different great management frameworks from truly delivering that value and making a difference? In my opinion, it is that fundamental priority that businesses choose for themselves. So a good example or a good reference I would say is a statement made by the business roundtable in 2019.

A business roundtable is an organization that brings together over 200 top CEOs from the United States, so all of the top companies in the US are represented there. All the great names that we admire and hear about, they are all a part of that entity, of that organization, and in 2019 for the first time since 1978, the recommendation from that organization, from that group of people was that, and I won’t try to quote it but in essence, it was that the purpose of a corporation should not be the shareholder value.

It should be the value for the stakeholders. So really, if you think about it, just a single-word change, but it’s a fundamental change going from shareholders to stakeholders, and I think it is very much a step in the right direction, but if I may be bold enough to say this, but I think this statement still needs to be refined a little bit further because just from experience on the ground when it comes to executing the work when you have multiple things that matter, so multiple things that are important, that are priorities, when everything is a priority in essence, well, nothing is and when we talk about stakeholders being the priority, well, when times get tough, when difficult decisions have to be made, who is the priority? My fear is that despite this noble call to shift the priority for corporations from shareholders to stakeholders when we get into a difficult situation, when a company faces some difficult decisions, it will be shareholders.

It will be that bottom line that needs to be preserved, and really, when that’s the case, unfortunately, employees are just an expense line item that needs to be optimized. It’s sad, but it is the reality. A lot of my projects that I do are in the area of mergers and acquisitions, and a lot of these M&A deals are about achieving the economies of scale. Well, in simple terms it’s really laying off a certain number of people.

It has very significant, very real implications on our society in general. So as I was looking at trying to understand who is truly or who should be the priority, well, another option could be customers, and a lot of organizations do say that. Customers are our top priority. It is a decent statement, however, again, once again, when we come to executing the work when the customer is a priority, an employee is expected to go beyond maybe what’s comfortable for them.

They become secondary just to meet the customer objectives, and why do we want to meet customer objectives? Well, ultimately to generate revenue, which impacts the shareholder value. So having looked at the different scenarios and different elements of the stakeholders, right? Different groups of stakeholders, I personally came to a conclusion that the priority, the priority for an organization should be employees, hence, the employee-centric framework that I’ve put together.

If we make this fundamental shift as organizations, when we make decisions by putting employees first, everything else still matters. The customers, well, that’s the purpose of existence for an organization is to address customer problems, to address their needs, and of course, shareholder value needs to be addressed as well because if you are not making money, you are not going to be lasting very long.

So sustainability is very much in line and part of the core interest of employees, right? If we put employees first, that financial stability is one of those needs that needs to be addressed.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right. That’s so powerful. I mean, you articulate that so well, and I got to be honest with you, even at Scribe, you know, JeVon does such a great job by ensuring that we, all the employees, how we collaborate, how we work are always put first, but you know, then the byproduct is, of course, feeling good. When you feel good, you come to work. You feel good, you do good work, and also that transcends then onto the customer, the clients.

The people that we get to work and it is having that privilege to work from within all the way out to the community, and you’re 100% right. I mean, I can’t even articulate it as well as you do. It is so beautifully put and the fact that your work is really revolving around our employees, they are the ones that move the machine no matter what direction we want to move it, all these good things.

However, what do they need? What kind of energy do they need from, you know, from the machine so that they can feel like they are showing up not just for themselves but truly as a collective, as a community that is doing something, you know, tying it back to that problem, we solve that purpose, makes it so, I don’t know, it feels like it’s warm.

Dmitriy Neganov: Yeah.

Final Lessons from the JourneyHussein Al-Baiaty: You know, we put it all in perspective, it feels warm, and it is a place you want to be, right? It is a safe haven, but I got to ask you, what was your favorite part of pulling the book together and what did you learn from that journey?

Dmitriy Neganov: Let me think about it for just a second.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I know. You know, I like the trick questions.

Dmitriy Neganov: It is a bit of a trick question because it definitely was a journey, and a long one I have to say, and a very difficult one, and when I look at the end product, the book is not very large. So I sometimes I catch myself thinking, so after all these years, after all of these endless attempts to put it together, that’s it really.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, right, but it’s the potency, right? It’s the taking the cup from the waterfall, right? It’s the potency of that book man, yeah, that’s what I love.

Dmitriy Neganov: That’s what I hope to get to is truly focus on what matters, cutting out any fluff that wouldn’t add value to the readers, and I am truly trying to formulate all these thoughts that we’re discussing, these ideas, these concepts into a simple framework that is easy to read and easy to apply because ultimately, that’s the goal, to give people a toolbox that they can pick and choose what works, what doesn’t and apply various tools from this toolbox for their situation.

So being able to concisely organize all of these into a book, I think the whole process was interesting, definitely challenging. I had an enjoyable time working with the Scribe team, it’s been quite an experience, very much a positive one. I could not have done this without the help of all the wonderful people that I’ve met, and I just enjoyed this process. Now, I don’t know if I have another one in me.

Maybe a few years later, but for now, it took all the energy out of me to put this together, but it has been a fun, exciting journey, and really, I would also add that I also learned a lot as I was putting this book together. So I have come out with the framework about ten years, and I have applied different components of it, different clients, different companies, but when it comes to organizing it into a book, there were a lot of things that I found myself needing to educate myself on further.

That education, that additional learning was worthwhile, and I truly enjoyed it. I enjoyed learning new things, it’s a never ending process. So I got my share of that during this experience for sure.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much. It is one of my favorite journeys, of course, like writing my book, definitely man, I feel you. It is so challenging, and at the end of it, you’re like, “This is it? Two hundred pages?” Like this is my entire life, you know? But at the same time, like you said, you articulated it so well, it’s rarely bringing out all the unique experiences and orchestrating them in a way that makes sense to the reader, and of course, helps them.

Gives them value, and in your case, you’re trying to change, you know, whether it’s a small team, a community, or even our world, you know, it does start with rethinking and reshaping how we see employees in general, you know? I think for a long time just the word employee felt like you just do what I tell you to do, right? Obviously, that’s completely changing in the modern world, and as it needs to, of course.

But today, embracing these new things, embracing the modern aspects of it all is really putting that employee first and figuring out everything else from there and building things around that aspect. So man, kudos to you. It is an amazing journey, it is an amazing book. Shout out to you for taking the time, energy, and resources to put it together.

Dmitriy Neganov: I appreciate it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So thank you for sharing your stories, yeah, and your experiences with our audience as well. The book is called Stream Theory: An Employee-Centered Hybrid Management System for Achieving a Cultural Shift through Prioritizing Problems, Illustrating Solutions, and Enabling Engagement. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Dmitriy?

Dmitriy Neganov: I have a website, it’s called streamtheory.org, and anyone who’s interested in learning more about this framework, I invite you to visit the website and to explore the additional information that’s there. I am trying to put as much of knowledge-based together as I can for the benefit, well, of everybody who is interested, and hopefully, we’ll be able to build a community that is just as passionate as I am about making this fundamental change and hopefully, we’ll end up leaving a better world for our kids and grandkids.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that. Well, thank you so much, Dmitriy, for joining me today. It’s been an honor, my friend. Thanks.

Dmitriy Neganov: Thank you, Hussein. I appreciate it.

The post Stream Theory: Dmitriy Neganov appeared first on Author Hour.

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My next guest’s new book is about how reviving civilization requires change-makers to step forward and lead with their own unique genius. Creating a regenerative future means committing to self-cultivation. Once you learn to navigate the four primary landscapes and awaken to your life’s core purpose, you become a catalyst for true cultural transformation. Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty. I’m joined today by author Ian Williams, who’s here to talk about his new book called Soil & Spirit. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the show. This is Author Hour, and I’m here with my friend Ian Williams. Ian, thank you for joining me today.

Ian Williams: Thank you for the opportunity, Hussein. Appreciate it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. Absolutely, man. Before we got on here, I really fell in love with the book man, Soil & Spirit. It’s really powerful. Like I said, the poetry started pulling me in, the purpose started pulling me in, but I’m really excited to get into the book. However, before we do that, I really want to give people a little bit of a background about you, where you grew up, perhaps, maybe one or two people that encouraged you or inspired you to be on the path that you eventually got on and unraveling this book in wisdom. But yeah, I want to give our audience a little bit about you and who you are.

Ian Williams: Yeah, okay. I think growing up it’s a, well, I guess it’s traditional to me. It’s a vanilla story to me, because I lived it. But I had a pretty stable childhood, four people, a family dog. I always joked I had everything except the white picket fence. I grew up in the Midwest, Twin Cities in Minnesota, United States. I had, like I said, a really stable childhood. I had a father who was a college professor, and a mother who was a kindergarten teacher. So education was big in our household. Mother’s a naturalist, loves the outdoors. So we spent a lot of time outside traveling and camping. I think that’s probably where some of my initial values took root out in the natural world.

Again, very stable, lived in the same house growing up. It was probably sophomore year of college, really, which is when I had my own big transformational change. It’s a bit of a story. I call it a mystical experience, because I don’t have any other words for it, but right around 2013, the end of 2013, I had inherited a dog. I had her for a couple years. She wasn’t the healthiest of animals. So we ended up needing to put her down a little early. This is after about a decade worth of substance use and abuse. We took her to the vet one final time. For anyone who’s had a pet in their lives, they know that there’s this period of time where a couple days a week, a month where it still feels abnormal for that pet to not be in the home.

I was laying in bed one night, just staring at the ceiling, thinking about some of the dreams I’d been having. She poked the door open with her nose and she hopped up on the bed next to me, and she curled up, and she let out a sigh. I rolled over and I fell asleep. I was using journaling at the time to process a lot of this. I’m just my emotions. This is probably five days after we let her go. It was a pretty profound morning to start in on that journaling session. I started writing as if it were a dream. It was probably fifteen, twenty minutes into my writing session where I realized I was awake when it happened. I still say it’s a good thing. I was home alone, because I had an ugly cry. Really cathartic, really healing, but it was a profound experience. It really changed the trajectory of my life. So I would say if there’s one person or one event that really put me on this path that would definitely be it. That was the beginning of an entirely new chapter in my life.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so special, man. I mean, I feel like many people out there have definitely lost a pet to one thing or another, especially age, of course. I know I have and you’re right. It is intense. It is a journey, but we all process it differently. It sounds like for you it was transformative in so many ways. Lead me to what happened next, how did that transformation take hold in life and what changes did it start to create?

Ian Williams: It happened on two different planes. There’s the conscious part of you, the human part of you, the intellectual part that knows it’s coming. So I was already bracing for it in that sense. I knew she occupied so much space and time and energy for me that I knew that if I didn’t fill that void after she was gone, that I was just going to fill it with more drugs and alcohol basically. So it was a cliché January 1, is how the timing worked out. I started training for a marathon, and I got back into therapy. I started doing a lot of writing. I started attending yoga classes on a weekly basis. I just tried to replace, I tried to fill that void.

I think that was all the stuff that I started doing consciously, but the other plane that I would say the change happened on was, I mean, it was a very spiritual plane. I woke up the next morning, and as it all, as the dust settled from that experience, I realized there’s a whole world out there beyond the veil that I don’t know anything about. I just had this experience that I can’t explain in words. I don’t know anybody who can explain it to me. At the time where my mindset was, I need to go figure this out, as if it were something that could be figured out, right? I no longer feel that way, but that’s when I really started diving deep.

Going to that first yoga class, which was three or four days after I was there with a different state of existence. I wasn’t going there just to move. I was there feeling like I was embarking on a spiritual practice. Yoga was the gateway practice for me, I guess you could say. It wasn’t too long after that. I started studying Qi Gong, Tai Chi, martial arts, and meditation. I just went all in on that self-cultivation piece and really shaped the next decade of my life. It was certainly a challenging loss, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. I still give thanks every day for her, because that dog gave me a gift that it was the right timing, it was the right context. It was something that I can’t help but cherish at a really deep inmate core level. Yeah, so that change really happened like I said, on those two different planes. One was the planful one. Then the other one, I just felt swept up in the way of whatever life was thrown my way.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, I love that so much. I know, throughout your books was at the beginning, you talk about today’s modern world, of course, especially in the West, right? Tech-obsessed, maybe by choice, maybe not by our choice, really depends on how you look at it from different perspectives, but technology, materialism just the way the culture is, it’s bound around this idea that what we buy, what we consume is what makes us, is what makes us “happy, loving, kind,” right? Like to show our love, we got to buy our love a bunch of gifts, right? To show our this, anything you want to express, it’s through some material object, if you will, which is interesting, because I feel like the further we’ve gotten into that rabbit hole if you will, of life and culture, it seems like we’ve gotten further and further away from our natural instincts, our quality of life, what really drives us.

Those things seem to be abundant. However, we’re seeing how impactful our buying decisions are, of course, to the world and all these things. You briefly touch on that, but then you offer this other perspective of whether it be spirituality, self-actualization. I want to talk about that a little bit. What inspired you to focus on this interconnection between self-actualization and this idea of regenerative futures? Because I think that’s really profound.

Ian Williams: Yeah. I guess, just to draw an analogy, it was really all born out of my own self-revival, right? So talking about the context of the first ten minutes of this conversation, one of the things that I realized in that period was, okay, I really want to address my substance use and abuse. I know that I’m using substances in order to mask my depression and anxiety. I’m fed up with this hamster wheel of consumption. I know that it’s not really bringing me the satisfaction that I seek. I guess just an aside here, I tried to be cognizant in the book to not paint all of the gifts that Western development has provided in a negative light. I’m not suggesting that we need to go back to a tribalism and do away with our technology.

I think, there’s many benefits to it, but for me at that time, there’s something deeper here and I just need to start digging. I don’t know what it is. I’m not even necessarily sure if I’m going to find it or how I’m going to find it, but I just need to start digging. It turned into this chapter in life which was entirely about self-study. Who am I? What are the emotions that I’m feeling? How do I allow myself to actually feel them and not escape them? Etc. etc. etc. To come back around to your question, what I learned from all that, what I took away from all of that was, really, that’s the greatest gift that I as an individual could give the world.

Perhaps many of us are familiar with that common saying out there, “You can’t help others until you help yourself.” Right? You got to make sure your own cup is full before you can give to others type of thing. I always really struggled with that growing up. I think that was a chapter in life where I learned that lesson. I was so hell-bent. I was so solely focused on figuring myself out. Just through sheer dedication and willpower in some instances, I started to recognize things changing around me, right? People were responding differently. Physical environments were responding differently. Social environments were responding differently. Professionally, things had shifted. That was a major takeaway.

I think that’s one of the central messages in the book is saving yourself is the greatest gift you can give the world. I think it’s also the simplest thing. It’s easy to comprehend, right? I think that that’s really the most integral part of the entire message and my entire theory of change. I think we’re in an era right now, where we’re seeking outside ourselves for answers. We’re wanting organizations to solve the problems. We’re wanting government to solve the problems. We want other people to help us solve our problems. Taking responsibility for ourselves is really the best thing that we can do, not only for ourselves, but also the world around us.

That realization, right through that process of self-revival, I realized is the Yin, to the Yang of regenerative environments in the natural world. We are natural beings. We are of the natural world. We do not exist outside the bounds of natural law, as much as we might like to think. So we need to get back to honoring those roots and learning how these last really 100, 150 years of human development can now be harnessed in such a way that they operate within the confines of Mother Earth, nature, natural law, because I think we all know. Well, I shouldn’t say we all. Many of us are aware that the path that we’re on environmentally is not sustainable. It’s one thing to just try and tackle that challenge in and of itself. I feel like trying to tackle the climate crisis without doing this personal and spiritual development work along the way is it’s going to be hollow and not as effective as it could be.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. I love that. It’s so powerful, because the reason I resonate with that, specifically, is because I used to own an apparel printing company, right? We used to do, we print a lot of T-shirts and all kinds of stuff. As much as I loved that I was a graphic designer, graphic artists and all these things. I still am in a lot of ways. I just couldn’t get over the fact that I was just creating more consumption, right? I came to turn, I read a few books that really one being the power of intention, just—I was like, “What is my intention here? What am I trying—yes, I’m going to make some money, I’m going to have employees, I’m going to have a company, I’m going to have the production facility, all these things, but what are we doing at the end of the day?” It’s like, okay, putting more out in the world, more and more. I couldn’t sit with myself anymore.

It got to the point where I loved what I was doing. I knew I was serving people. I knew I brought good service. All this good stuff and that’s great. You talk about this, too. Like this idea of okay, great. We’re making all this profit, but like at what cost? What is being harmed that I’m not aware of? That’s really where things turned around for me. I started to make up. Started making small decisions that led to bigger decisions of just the ultimate change and getting out of that space entirely, because I just couldn’t vibe with it anymore like, I just felt like no matter what I did, no matter how sustainable the fabrics are. Again, there’s nothing wrong or bad with organizations and companies that do those kinds of things. However, for me, I was just like, I don’t want to add any more. That was a personal decision that I feel really good about today, because it was one that was, I thought for me, was based in my purpose.

I think for me personally, my purpose is not to create more material things to put out in the world. Although again, that’s not a bad thing, but it is a part of my consciousness, I feel like developing and evolving in a way that says, “I can do what I want to do without harming people, things, planet.” That’s really powerful that you really brought all those things together in your book. How you surfaced out of it. You really talk about these four primary landscapes, which I want to get into a little bit, if you don’t mind. You obviously bring this in the book. How do these concepts, the four primary landscapes that you talk about contribute to the personal and this planetary transformation? You talk about this idea of purpose, all these things, but I’ll let you elaborate on that, if you will.

The Four Primary LandscapesIan Williams: I guess, let’s just start with what the four primary landscapes are. I think about these things, concentric circles, or rings around one another. At the center is the internal landscape, right, what’s going on inside of ourselves. Next circle, next rung out, social landscape, environmental or physical landscape and then spiritual landscape. My theory of change is really one that’s in to out, right? Starting from within and letting those ripples of change move outward. What I’m passionate about is generating solutions to global challenges at scale, from how I look at where civilization is at right now. It’s one reason why I’m not fond of the term sustainability, because if we sustain the path we are on, science tells us we’re still heading for the cliff, right? We need to find a way to turn the wheel and change directions.

In order to do that we need to—I don’t mean a literal revolution, but we need a revolution of self, right, a revival of self. So starting with that internal change to reference your story, right? You’re aware of these things in what you’re contributing to the world, but yet, something’s still not aligned internally. So you start to pluck those chords in order to try and find resonance or alignment. Then that naturally begins to change your actions and interactions, right? So that internal work you’re doing manifests in the social landscape, your communication patterns, your relationships, the community that you’re a part of, the businesses that you run, which naturally impact the physical environment, right, the natural world, the physical landscape. Then moving on from there the spiritual landscape, right? The parts of life that are beyond third-dimension perception, right? The five senses, the more subtle aspects of life, which are always operating, it’s just a matter of to what extent are we conscious of them.

I think that theory of change again, is always an inside-to-out manner. In order to really generate regenerative solutions, holistic solutions, I think we need to involve every single landscape that we’re a part of. I see them as intimately connected, right? They’re threaded together. It’s at minimum, a two-way exchange in to out and out to in. I happen to be introverted. So a lot of my processing around the world is internal, right? I’m sitting with my journal alone in silence. I’m reading books. I’m contemplating. I’m staring off into the woods, but many other people don’t process that way, right?

Back to your point, everyone has their own passion. Everyone has their own place. We need companies out there developing sustainable products, truly sustainable products, environmentally aware, friendly, products. We need people out there working on regenerating the physical environment, right? We need companies that are innovating to address the big three, energy, transportation, agriculture. We need innovation. We need spiritual leaders who are serving as a lighthouse for people who are seeking and really trying to do their internal work, but as individuals, we all need to take responsibility for ourselves in this process as well.

My fundamental belief is if we all do that internal work, we’re willing to roll up our sleeves and get our hands in the dirt, right? The soils of self will naturally find the places in the world that we’re meant to be operating in and the ways that we’re meant to be operating from. That’s going to naturally create alignment and resonance, which is naturally going to create more regenerative, holistic solutions. The book and the way that it has structured internal landscape, social, physical, spiritual landscape, again, these concentric rings is really just a macro representation of my own personal theory of change, right? Again, going back to that saving yourself is the greatest gift you can give the world, because it’s what’s going to be the ripple in the pond that impacts others to make changes in their lives. Then that creates the exponential growth curve that we really need in order to address these grand challenges at scale.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. So beautifully put, man. Again back to this idea of how you talk about all of these things, I found just ease moving through your book, because there’s a poetic sense. I mentioned this earlier. I genuinely mean it. I think the four components that you really talk about, for me relate to this idea of The Four Agreements, like the book was so powerful that it really helped me see how my reactions and my responses to the world are connected to what, right? and I think what you’re doing here, is really exciting, because I feel like these four components, the primary landscapes that you call, I feel like, it’s me trying to figure out how externally and internally, how are things connected to the world, right. That’s really powerful, because it helps you step out of yourself for a minute and just become aware of everything around you to a degree.

I think, that’s just so powerful, because like I said, the thing about your book, specifically that I found exciting was that it was easy to navigate. Sometimes, I’ll be honest, whether it be spiritual books or scientific books, or even business books. They take me to the weeds so fast that it’s hard to transition. However, you took me to these lands, just eloquently. Again, you are explaining it that way. Can you tell me a little bit about in your opinion, maybe a couple of practical steps that individuals can take to awaken that soul’s purpose and bring about that cultural transformation that we all hope to seek.

Practical StepsIan Williams: I’ll try and choose my words wisely, because I’m not a huge fan of a “ten steps to a new you.” I think it often oversimplifies, but you said a word in there—awareness. For me, I really feel like that is one of the two foundational tools. It’s a cornerstone piece, self-awareness and behavior modification. There are some other things in there, but I think I’ll step back real quick. I think it starts with acknowledging, right? I have a section in the book, ‘The Five A’s.’ Acknowledge is the first A. We just have to acknowledge the dissonance, right, and to people that have blinders on caught up in consumption, growth, right? I mean a lot of these Western values, cultural values of status and wealth.

Often what I asked people in my work presentations, etc. is think of something a year ago, three years ago, five years ago, that you were just on the moon about, you were so excited about it, right? Whether it was a new job, a new car, a new house, the raise whatever, your relationship, from that thing, that time ago, has that joy and that bliss, have you been able to sustain it every moment of every day, henceforth? Inevitably, the answer is no, right? If there’s a person out there who has the answer, yes. Then I’d to talk to them, because I still have something to learn from that person. But for me in my own self-revival, self-awareness and behavior modification were these core fundamental drivers of change.

I like to think about it like it’s a scientific method approach to personal development. You have to be able to have your fingers on the buttons and on the knobs and on the levers in order to know when I change this input, it creates that output. In order to have that I don’t want to oversimplify it, but in order to have that level of awareness around your personal development, self-cultivation, is I think, truly important, because without that, we’re just shooting from the hip in the dark. Maybe it’ll be this today. Maybe it’ll be that today. Maybe it’s this flavor or that flavor. The reality is that, that consumptive paradigm is really just us trying to express and satisfy our neuroses, right, our compulsive behaviors and inhibitions. Those are good in the sense that they serve a role, right, they’re survival, pleasure-seeking, they have their place. It’s not that we need to disown them, but rather, we need to understand that it’s not the only operating system we have.

Again, acknowledging I think is the first step. The second step, and this goes back to the five, is accepting. To your point about leaving the business that you were in. At some point you accepted, this isn’t really meeting my needs. It’s not serving me. That leads to the next stepping stone, right? Which is, what actions am I going to take? What change am I going to make? Your question was what are some tangible, concrete things that that people can think about? I would start off with self-acceptance. Again, I’d go back to self-acceptance and behavior modification. Learn how to learn about yourself. Then learn how to take responsibility and develop accountability for your actions, your behaviors, your emotions.

The more you learn about yourself, the more insight you have on how to regulate yourself. If you can begin to really regulate those kinds of base instincts and desires, you can elevate your awareness, right? I’m hesitant to use the word consciousness, because a lot of people have a new age-y feel these days, but elevating that awareness about yourself is going to provide more insight in terms of the next steps you need to take for your personal and spiritual cultivation, as well as the next steps you can take in your environment, whether it be social, physical or spiritual, to move into the next chapter of life and the next chapter of change. I would start there, but I certainly wouldn’t end there.

I think the last maybe practical thing that I would toss in here is, I had a teacher tell me one time. It’s an energy arts teacher, right? So one of my instructors that was teaching me in the energy arts, they said, “Don’t practice for the sake of practice. Practice for the sake of discovery.” Right? I’ve turned my energy art practices at times into a to-do, right? It’s a task on the list that I have to check off, and when you do that, you’re practicing for the sake of practicing. You’re not practicing for the sake of discovery.

I think the last tangible thing that I would toss in, maybe it’s not so tangible, is curiosity. Get curious. Accept where you are, don’t judge it. You don’t need to label it right or wrong, good or bad. Just accept where you are and then get curious about where you’re going. For me, those three things have been—they’ve been really integral pillars in my own personal spiritual development work, self-awareness, behavior modification, and just staying curious, being interested in the process.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. That’s so powerful, man. I mean, those are about as actionable as it gets, right there. Starting with really the acceptance piece, I think that’s probably the biggest component of all. It is to accept where you’re at and decide how you want to move forward from there and one step at a time, one movement at a time you start to really find more of yourself, for sure. I definitely resonate with that deeply. Ian, I mean, I feel like you’ve taken us through this amazing journey. I want to ask you one more question. It has to do with the book, but in a sense of, what was your favorite part of pulling it together? What did you learn from that journey and of itself?

Ian Williams: From the day of inception to launch date. I think it’ll be a two-and-a-half-year saga.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Saga. I love that.

Ian Williams: My wife and I moved in there, I was going to grad school full time, I was working full time. Amidst that two and a half years, I left full time work and started full time entrepreneur, I had been part time entrepreneur in there as well. It was certainly a lot of hard work, but that’s not nearly—it’s not a very elegant or enticing response. To be honest, I’m glad we’re doing this interview today, as opposed to last week, because what I’m learning through all of this is my favorite part wasn’t necessarily about crafting the words, although I seriously enjoy writing, right? But anyone who’s written a book, dissertation, or anything, I’m sure they all can resonate with. You just get to a point where you’re so fed up with it. You just want to hand it off to somebody else. I feel really fortunate to have some great support from Scribe on that end.

The lesson that I’m learning now, I think my favorite part about this now is my last decade of life has been largely about internal cultivation, right? The internal landscape and understanding what is my message? Similar to your story earlier. What’s my message? What’s my role? What’s my work to do here? Now that we’re just a couple of weeks shy of book launch on February 21 of this year. What I’m learning is, I’m starting to see the next chapter. The next chapter is taking all of that internal work and really being a lot more intentional about sharing it outwardly, right? So one of my themes for this year is exposure, share the message, talk more with people about it.

I have a love-hate relationship with social media, because it touches back to so much information and so much stimuli all the time, but this is my truth. Now my next part of personal and spiritual development is sharing it with others. That has really come more clearly into my vision, just in the last week or two here. I think that’s my favorite part. I am obviously hopeful that it serves the book and the message. It serves not only as a message, but also a methodology to help people along their own path of personal and spiritual development. The book is fundamentally an act of service. I really enjoyed writing it. I really enjoyed working hard on it. I really enjoyed the design elements of it. I love the cover arts made by a good friend who I think just does a fantastic job, communicating nature, right, through his artwork.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes. You hit me hard with the illustrations and the graphics. That’s one thing I didn’t talk about, but yes. Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off.

Ian Williams: No, that’s okay.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love it, dude. I loved all the poetry of it all. It’s beautiful.

Ian Williams: I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I mean, crafting it was certainly a joy, but my relationship with it now has changed that we’re so close to launch. I’m not in the weeds anymore. I’m not doing the wordsmithing and the design anymore. I’m moving into this phase of sharing it. That leads me to my own next phase or steppingstone to personal and spiritual development. I’m really enjoying that process right now. I’m really reveling in this, because ten years ago to bring this conversation full circle. When I let go of my dog and decided to address some of these core challenges. That work was, it was internal.

It was the biggest risk I could take was that emotional vulnerability, right? To be vulnerable enough with myself to address my emotions, and I’m a risk-taker. Now the biggest risk I can take is putting this message out in the world and having people say, yay and having other say, nay and holding space for that and continuing to learn and continuing to grow and develop. I’m really excited with where we’re at in the process right now. I have changed my relationship to how I think about it, which has been definitely one of my favorite parts of this process.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, it’s so powerful. If you’re out there and you’re listening, go get Ian’s book. Ian, thank you so much for sharing your stories and your experiences. I’m simply changed because of your book. I’ve just read about three chapters and swam through the rest. I’ll be definitely swifting through it throughout the rest of the week. I’m excited to do that. The book is called Soil & Spirit: Seeds of Purpose, Nature’s Insight & the Deep Work of Transformational Change. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Ian?

Ian Williams: They can find me on all the social media channels, the major ones. My handle is @reviveuandi. That’s revive U-A-N-D-I, and that is also a one-stop shop for my own personal URL and brand. www.reviveuandi.com, send me a note, reach out to me on social. Promise, I’m working harder to be a little bit more active there the last couple years have been pretty busy. That’s the place to start. Aside from that, I do my best to get out. I do my best to get on podcasts like these and find other speaking opportunities that are in person. If there’s other people out there who feel like they resonated with this message, reach out. This is really my life’s work is the speaking and the teaching. Please do reach out. I genuinely mean it. We’d love to interact with people out there.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much. Congratulations on your book. I think it’s going to profoundly impact others. Thanks again for sharing your time with me today. Your experiences of course, your story, and your vulnerability, so thanks again, man. Time well spent this morning. Thank you.

Ian Williams: Thank you so much, Hussein. I appreciate the opportunity.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. You can find Soil & Spirit: Seeds of Purpose, Nature’s Insight & the Deep Work of Transformational Change, right now on Amazon. For more Author Hour episodes, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite subscription service. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next time, same place, different author.

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For sales professionals and business leaders, communicating effectively and authentically is a never-ending struggle, especially in building new businesses and improving team performance. That’s a struggle with a long-lasting impact rippling into both profit and reputation.

Welcome back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and my next guest is Chris Jennings, who is here to talk about his newest book called, Conversations Made Easy: Building Your Playbook for Growing Sales and Connecting with Customers. Let’s flip through it.

Hello my friends and welcome back to the show. I am with my good friend, Chris Jennings today who just launched a new book called, Conversations Made Easy. Chris, thanks for coming on the show.

Chris Jennings: Absolutely Hussein, glad to be here my friend.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yeah man, this is really exciting. I found your book very easy to navigate, I was digesting these stuff. I didn’t read the whole thing, I got to be honest with you but I did find myself really sucked in. You use great stories, easy language for one not being a sales guru or anything like that, you’re really helping me set the tone. So kudos to you man, I know a book like that is tough, it’s tough businesses.

Welcome to the show man. Before we get into the book, so I’m super excited to get into, I want our listeners, just an idea of who you are, your personal background perhaps, where you grew up, what that was like for you? Maybe a person or two that inspired you while growing up.

Chris Jennings: You got it. I was born in New York, raised mostly in Connecticut and I mentioned in the book early on like, my first experience with sales was knocking on doors after a snowstorm in Connecticut, seeing if I could get 10 bucks to shovel somebody’s driveway or in the spring, you know, handing out flyers and knocking on doors to try to get somebody to let me cut their lawn or rake their leaves, you know?

So I was working from an early age. I’ve always felt like I’ve had a good work ethic, and I suit up, I show up, I try to get stuff done and I would say in terms of inspiration in the east coast, there’s a lot of formality. My dad was one inspiration. He was a bit of a madman kind of guy, he’s an advertising guy out on New York. He got on a train every day, worked for different ad agencies.

But he had a work ethic, it was seven to seven for a long time for him. And I don’t think that you got to work seven to seven to get stuff done but definitely my dad is somebody that I looked up to and admired and then, when I go more broadly, in all honesty, I was influenced by a lot of athletes. Back then, it was Joe Namath and the JETS actually won a Superbowl, if you can believe that.

Willis Reed and the New York Knicks and all these people from back in the day when even the Knicks were good and so there’s a lot of athletes and then as I hit my professional career and got through college, went to school at UCLA, starting my first job as like an avid learner, I’d be driving, I had this long commute and I would be listening to at the time books on tape. You know, I started getting into Stephen Covey and The Seven Habits and Phil Knight and work he did with Shoe Dog.

There’s a lot of people who were inspirations to me and what they’ve accomplished. You know, that’s a little bit of me and today, I’m married to a beautiful, lovely wife. Her name is Lana, we’ve been married for seven 17 years, we have the most awesome marriage on the planet. I have three kids that are adults and I just had a grandbaby on February 1, her name is Ruby Willow. So…

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Oh wow, congratulations man. I love that, you’re starting the year off real strong, I love that. Wow, congratulations man. Well, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you in person recently while you started your second book and I got to say man, being around you is great, you have such a great energy. I love that and appreciate it. You have a very broad umbrella perception on things, which I really admire and this is why I’m really grateful to be sitting with you today.

I do want to know, I mean, you talk about this in your book really early on and I thought it was really powerful because it’s so simple. What is being useful mean to you?

Chris Jennings: Yeah, that’s a great question. That’s at the heart of the whole thing. I look at it, our job in life is to just go out and help the people that were good at helping. Find people that need the kind of help that we offer and figure out a way to connect with them and if we can help them or not.

Hey, not everybody’s helpable but I want us to like use our energies to good purpose and whether you need help writing a book like you guys have helped me or you need to help figure installing some kind of software or you need help with sales or leadership or whatever it is, our job each day and we should be thinking when we go out into the world is like, “Okay, how am I going to put myself to maximum use to people that I encounter?”

“What am I going to bring to the table for my clients?” I try to have a lot of passion around that. I do a lot of coaching and training as you’d imagine and I always, before I walk into a program, I give myself a little pep talk like just making sure, you know, I bring everything I’ve got to help that group and really be useful and I want people to just carry that messaging, never about selling anybody anything.

It’s about like, can we be useful to them? And so when I got the inspiration to use that as a framework, it hit home with me and that’s what I try to convey all the time in the book and anytime somebody sees me live.

Doing vs. ThinkingHussein Al-Baiaty:That’s so powerful, man. You operate from such a human element, and I just appreciate that. Can you share a little bit more about maybe your first experience as a salesperson and how that influenced your journey from that point forward?

Chris Jennings: Yeah, sure. So like I said, knocking on doors as a kid, that was really my first experience but then at UCLA, I got hired by a pretty big company, real big company and one of the things they had us do along the way was they gave us this territory to go knock on doors and I was in San Francisco knocking on – it wasn’t glamorous my friend. It was transmission shops in various parts of San Francisco and I was trying to see if I could get them to carry our products or not.

I got to tell you, there’s times and I reference this in the book where you’re in your head thinking about, “Is this going anywhere and is this going to produce some kind of outcomes?” and I also believe, you got to have some faith in whatever you’re doing, right? That I’m going to go, I got a plan, I’m going to follow the plan, I got faith that this is going to work out that I bet you, there’s a lot of people out there that need my help and it’s my job to go find them and I told myself that often.

I tell everybody that I coach to tell themselves that. There’s a lot of people out there that need your help and it’s your job to go find them, and so I started knocking on some doors and I got some results much faster than I expected and that was inspiring and then I just started building, right? One step at a time.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s amazing, man. Yeah, I feel like at some point, every person finds themselves in a sales position, right? Like I think for me, where I started, was like, flipping gyros at a Saturday market and the sale was do you basically want to get them regular sized pita or the bigger sized pita, you know what I mean?

But we all start somewhere and we all are in a way, selling something of ourselves and it’s actually not selling, it’s really knowing what that person needs and if you can match that, you know what I mean? And you may not be able to because you may not have the skills or whatever and that flip in thinking is really on point in thinking about sales.

What led you to believe that doing is more important than thinking when it comes to sales and coaching?

Chris Jennings: The only thing we have control over is our actions. What we do, what we say. We have control over one person on this planet, it’s us. It’s the person we see in the mirror every day and it really stood out to me that if that’s the only thing I got control over, I better take care of that first and then, it’s really easy.

It’s such a busy life, we’re just inundated with messaging, email text, the whole thing, social media, there’s so many incoming messages that you got to be able to set aside enough time to get stuff done. Otherwise, you’re never going to get to what you want to get to and that can mean your work. That can mean your personal life, like, what’s really important and are you focused on that or did we lose focus on that along the way in the myriad of things that just keep coming at us.

So if you got control over it, we should probably take care of it, let’s go do that. If I can check that box, then the variables in the conversation, we can work on getting better over a period of time.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: To think about—like listen, really the bottom line is you have control of over how you take action. However, what you input into the thoughts that provoke those actions, you know, matters just as much, if not more. I feel like, right?

And your surroundings, how you actually…you know, if you’re moving from one house to another, selling a product or one business to another which I did, you know, I was offering my printing services for almost 15 years, right? I evolved so much from just one business to another to calling to online market, you know, all of these different ways of getting in front of customers.

But the bottom line is and what I love about your book is those conversations that lead the relationships that can lead to meaningful ways of ensuring that not only you’re serving this thing but you’re actually ensuring that that person still needs what you offer. That’s really powerful.

How do you approach having healthy conversations with customers without gimmicks or pressure, what’s your way of sort of approaching that?

Chris Jennings: Yeah, so I think it helps that your confidence in yourself, if you have a plan that you’re following and if you’ve got your top five activities and you’re actually executing on those, and you’re doing that day in day out, number one, at least you can feel really good about what you’re doing.

Secondly, once you get in front of somebody, I think one of the biggest things to have a great conversation, don’t get overly attached to the outcome. When you put too much pressure on yourself or the person you’re talking to, that this conversation has to go a certain way, you’re going to create some natural resistance.

I just love you to walk in super open, looking forward to the conversation, knowing that you bring a lot, interested in that other person to get to know what they’re about, whether this turns into a piece of business for you or not is kind of irrelevant and if you can approach every conversation like that, I think that puts you at your best.

You’re super relaxed, you’re more authentic, you’re not trying too hard and people know when you’re trying too hard. It just doesn’t come across as authentic, it doesn’t come across as real and I just think, what human beings crave, they want authenticity. They want to know you are who you say you are.

They want to know you’re for real and the way you get there is you detach from the outcome and you get focus on the other individual. You get to learn about them and come to an assessment whether you’re not, you think you can help them and if you can, you can share that with them and give them your opinion of what you think you can do.

But again you know, that might lead to something happening and it might not and as long as you have that mentality, I think you’re going to do great.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it definitely takes the pressure off, right? I feel like any time I went somewhere thinking like, “Okay, I’m going to do some business from this and whatever” I was in the wrong state of mind. It was just, I didn’t feel good in my skin, you know? But then any time I went and kind of shut off and I was just, “You know, I’m just going to meet a couple of people, just be interested in them and what they do and how they do it” and literally, what led me to doing this podcast show, right?

Like is that innate ability to shift my like the selling of who I am as a person that can offer value was dependent on being interested and I knew that was a strength of mine personally and by being interested, I am like truly in awe in how people do things, like I love that. So by asking those kinds of questions, you get people to talk about of course not only like, who they are but what they do, which is their thing that they’re passionate about and they just create a fluid sort of conversation.

And again, it may lead to potential or it may not but the thing is, is creating a memorable experience when you meet that person and I think the most memorable thing we can do and create is like listening and being interested. I think that’s one of the most powerful things and you really go into those kinds of things but how do you address? I mean, this is something really, I mean, man, procrastination is a deep one, right?

But how do you address procrastination in excuse-making in sales and coaching methodologies because procrastination is no joke. It’s a heavy one, it’s there, it exists, how do you overcome it?

Coaching Past ProcrastinationChris Jennings: So everybody’s got some element of that of things they like to do, of things they don’t like to do. That’s not really the point. It’s, do you have clarity on what your plan is and are you committed to executing on your plan and just following through and doing what you said you would do and I feel like in life, if you do what you say you’re going to do, you feel better about yourself.

Your confidence grows, you feel comfortable in your own skin and people naturally gravitate towards you. So part of the way I get there, I advise making your goals public. Tell other people, don’t keep it to yourself. Get an accountability group around you, surround yourself with other people who have an active interest in your success that want to hold you accountable for what you’re doing.

Like we do on any of our writing workshops with the other authors that you’ve got in the Scribe community, right? That group accountability I think is super powerful and so if you got a plan, you got a way to track it, you’ve asked people to hold you accountable, the odds of you getting the stuff done go way up. If you don’t have any or all of those things, the odds, I’m not saying you won’t hit your numbers.

But I am just saying, the odds of things going as well as you want start to go down. You got to fight the distractions. It’s going to keep coming at you, you’re going to be really tempted to log in websites that you don’t need to log into. You’re going to be tempted to do things that are not a part of your top five activities and if you can stay focused on those, the rest of like takes care of itself.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It definitely requires the sort of awareness. I think for me is like, what is taking me away from being successful at X? And it’s usually yeah, the distractions. The things that cause friction, the things that may get hard for me to get to where I need to get to, how do you simplify those paths has become a huge thing in my life and I’m glad you addressed that and talk about that.

It is a component, right? Because sales, it’s a mental strengthening game, right? So if you are constantly distracted, it actually takes away from that strength and of course, it leads you astray, right? And the potential success from it. Can you share a story where you coached someone or talked someone over time, the ability to overcome procrastination and how that’s helped them move in a valuable way?

Chris Jennings: I remember a guy named Dennis and he was working for a company that I have been coaching for a while and one year he said, “Okay, I got to take this seriously” and I worked with them for a while and he’s like, “I got to focus. I got to double down” and so he took one of our activities scorecards, which by the way, if you want one, you can download them off of our website and he made a commitment.

He said, “I made 50 copies of these things and put this on my desk at the beginning of the year” and he said, “No matter what, I’m filling this darn thing out every week. Week in, week out, I’m going to track my activities. I’m going to track how many calls, I’m going to track what I’m doing and how many referrals, all the things that I’m doing” and you know, he went from a million in revenue in one year to four million in revenue in one year just from the discipline.

That’s what it can do for us. Human beings are amazing creatures, we have all kinds of capacity inside of us. Getting us to produce anywhere close to our potential takes discipline, takes focus, accountability, all of the things that people love to learn from, I should say, right? Discipline doesn’t always sound fun. Accountability does not sound fun but it works and if you stay focused, it’s going to happen. Stay focused on the prize.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:That’s very powerful man, I’m so glad you shared that because yeah, not only discipline but just like the sort of accountability, right? I think they kind of go hand in hand, right? It’s like the motivation definitely we all know like follows those things. It follows the commitment, it follows you showing up and it will certainly show up to push you but I feel like, you know, there’s room definitely also for inspiration.

I think that’s why you know, I try to talk about the people who inspire us, move us, right? Our deeper sense of why can help eradicate some of those distractions as well. So embedding some of those in there could be a really compound-full like sort of way to move forward by just simply thinking of like, “Okay, I’m going to do this process every single day and see what the results may be” like instead of saying, “I want these results. I’m going to get there no matter what.”

It’s like really simplifying the whole thing and simplifying the journey so that you can be doing it in a healthy way. I mean, let’s just be real, in today’s world, you got to do things as healthy as you can. So can you share some of these tools and strategies that you use to help individuals develop more confidence and of course, overcome fear, anxiety in business and business situations?

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Developing ConfidenceChris Jennings: Yeah, I feel like I was blessed to have a good role model in my father and the chance of him blowing off a day’s work was zero, right? The chance of him not doing the things that he had asked to do was zero. He was going to get down with every promise to get it done. I think if Phil Knight and his book, Shoe Dog, you know for years, 17 years they were on the cusp of you know, the whole thing collapsing.

His mantra to himself was, “I just have to keep going” right? No matter what, I just keep going and there’s a lot to be said for that. So maybe if you were also blessed with great role models in your life and maybe you weren’t and maybe some of your role models quite frankly, you know, aren’t exactly the kinds of people that you want to be, you got to create your own model. You got to create your own mantras, right?

You got to create your own inspiration and you can do that by looking at the people around you that count on you, you can look at the people around you that you would actually aspire to be and I have always been a fan of like find somebody that you like the way they operate, try to act like that person. You know, get your goal board together, get your vision board together, write down your affirmations.

Really take responsibility for what’s rattling around your head, get it on paper and if you can get that stuff on paper and come back to that and train your mind and condition your mind to root for you and to support you because there’s a lot of people in the world. Listen, their role models have not been great and they have to overcome a lot. So we got to take responsibility for reconditioning our thinking and building some inspiration that gets us fired up to get stuff done each day.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Like many things, it leaves it up to us, right? We are the ultimate deciders of how these things can go. However, it is just taking one little step at a time to strengthening your ability. So when readers pick up your book and they begin to go through it and then when they finish it up, they put it down and they walk away, what do you hope that they walk away with?

Chris Jennings: I’m actually hoping they’d come back through it again and again and reread it and study it and dog ear some pages and jot down some of their own thoughts, their own interpretations of our ideas and really make it sort of a working living tool that you come back to again and again, sort of a guidepost or a guiding light to reference whenever you get confused or lost, that’s really what I’m hoping you get.

Then depending on who you are, if you’re in a production role, you’re a professional, you’re in a business development role, I’m wanting you to have all the mystery of what is sales really about gone. All the confusion in your head, what should I be doing, what shouldn’t I be doing goes away, getting absolute clarity in the kinds of conversations to have with customers so you know what to say.

You know where to lean in and you got tools to make it easier to lean in and if you’re leading a team, I want you to have a system and a process to develop everybody around you, to help everybody grow and to be that inspirational leader that everybody remembers that, “Hey, I once worked for so and so and this is the impact that they had on my career.” So if you’re in a leadership role, this is a chance to really have your impact be felt widely, broadly across your organization.

If you’re in a personal production role, all of a sudden, the confusion or the self-doubt that you may have had about what to say to somebody starts to go away and you start to have productive conversations or frankly, you just want to have a better conversation with anybody. You could follow that model and that’s how it was built.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, see, that’s what it all comes back down to is that conversation and really that transparency and communication. The best way to show up is as yourself, I think that is the sort of the root of it all within your book and it stems into so many different facets that you go into and it’s really profound, man. You do invite the reader, I totally sense that to kind of make this a handy book for them.

Take it on the road with you, put it in your pocket, throw it on your car, whatever it is always refer to it, put it by your bedside and really think through these things and really start to live from them. I mean, that’s the goal, right? It’s that I don’t want to be a salesperson or to live like one and how does a person that has these products, these things, these services and show up as themselves to where, when that thing is necessary you are thought of first and that’s the crucial key here.

Chris Jennings: I would love it if whatever you get out of reading it, you teach it to somebody else. Teach it to somebody in your team, teach it to somebody you used to work with, strike up a conversation with them about what’s in there and a lot of what I have gotten here too, it’s you know, I don’t want to say hide completely behind the emails. I really want us to get out there and talk to people.

I want us to feel like after having read that, I don’t need the email people to talk to stuff because I wasn’t sure what to say to them. I can get on a phone call, on a Zoom call, show up in person and I can have a great conversation with anybody and I got total confidence in my ability to do that regardless of the outcomes and good conversations are going to come out of it. A lot of great relationships are going to get built overtime, that’s going to pay huge dividends.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Very powerful. Chris, my friend, very well said. Thank you for sort of coming on the show today and really blessing us with this amazing sets of gems and golden nuggets of wisdom. I really appreciated it, I know it’s very helpful for me and it’s just been great getting to know you throughout this show today. So, thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences.

The book is called, Conversations Made Easy: Building Your Playbook for Growing Sales and Connecting with Customers. Besides checking out the book on Amazon, where could people find you?

Chris Jennings: Yeah, absolutely. I’m on LinkedIn, they can look me up, Chris Jennings or Chris Jennings Group and our website, chrisjenningsgroup.com. We got a lot of tools and resources there. We invite you to take advantage of whatever is on the website, it is probably referenced in the book, some stuff that’s not referenced in the book. There is a lot of tools there. Again, we just want to be helpful.

We want to be useful and this has been a blast, Hussein. I really hope this has the kind of reaching impact on the thousands, if not millions of people that are out there wondering if they should pick up the phone and call somebody and what to say right now. I hope this makes it easier for them.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Definitely, my man. Congratulations on the book, and congratulations on just putting this thing out there man, because it is useful and I know it will create a huge impact. So thanks again for putting it together and putting your resources, your time and energy into it. I had a blast just hanging out with you today, I’m very fortunate.

Chris Jennings: Yeah, likewise. It’s been an honor. Thank you sir.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Thank you, Chris, I appreciate you, buddy.

Chris Jennings: All right Hussein, we’ll be talking.

The post Conversations Made Easy: Chris Jennings appeared first on Author Hour.

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Driving while impaired lights a match that threatens to set your life on fire. The legal, financial, and physical consequences of a DWI leave many people struggling to put out that fire. Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty. My next guest is LaDonna Claude, who’s here to talk about her newest book called Consequences and Compassion. Let’s get into it.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to Author Hour. I’m Hussein, and I’m here with my good friend LaDonna Claude who just launched an amazing book called Consequences and Compassion. LaDonna, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your time.

LaDonna Claude: Thank you for having me, Hussein. I’m so excited.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, I’m so excited too, because, before our recording here, we got into a fun conversation. I can already tell this episode is going to be amazing. I think your book is much needed right now in our culture, and in our world. The book talks about the lessons from your work definitely on the frontlines of drunk, drugged, and distracted driving. I think that these conversations need to be had. I’m excited to go deep into them. However, before we get into that, and before we get into the book, I really want to get to know you a little bit, get our audience to know you a little bit. Why don’t you give us a little bit of your personal background, perhaps where you grew up and maybe someone that inspired you the most growing up?

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OriginsLaDonna Claude: Okay, so I was born in Chicago, Illinois. I’m a Chi-town girl. I have developed this Texan probably accent. I have been in Texas since 1977; Austin, Texas. So I went to all my elementary, middle school, and high schools there, and college. I will say the person who inspired me is, I’m going to say, my father and the gentleman when I first started my classes, when I realized I have a passion of knowing why people drink and drive behind the wheel. Since I mainly am a defensive driving instructor, and since I talk about safety behind the wheel, this gentleman came in my class. Sad to say, I can’t remember his name, because that was eleven years ago, but when he opened up and says he had a DWI, I have to say he told me the things that he had to go through. That’s what started, and I realized I have something here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s really powerful. What would you say inspired you to be an instructor for defensive driving? Can you tell us a little bit about DWI? Because I know that’s different than DUI. I want you to, before we get into that world, where did that urge come from to go into that world to start helping those types of like, those types of situations and people in those situations?

LaDonna Claude: Great question. I would say, because being a defensive driving instructor, we basically have to, we’re not trying to teach anyone how to drive, but we basically want to bring out the rules and regulations about the safeness and bring awareness about being behind the wheel. Of course everybody knows the stop signs, the lights, and things of that nature, but that’s all in the first part of how I teach the class. The second part, how I teach the class is that’s where I bring out about the three D’s. The drinking, the drugs, and the distraction, which right now the distraction is the biggest thing that’s going on in society right now.

I would say when I had someone acknowledge that they had a DWI. Over time, I realized everybody who has come to my class, it will be at least one that have it, and they kept informing me of things they had to go through. Then I realized, “This is interesting. This list is long.” I’ve started, as over time, I kid you not. I kept adding something on. I started out with three and you go to jail, lose your license. That’s basic, but then it started getting really interesting that what other people had to tell me that they were dealing with.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: The list goes on, because it is intense, and not only how it impacts you, but really how it impacts other people, especially if you are in a bad or devastating accident and so on and so forth. But DWI, you value it as driving while impaired. That’s like you said, the fact that distractions today and I’m assuming we’re going to get into this a little bit further is around our cell phones, maybe not our cell phones. I don’t know your world. In your experience. What do you believe the most common misconceptions about driving while impaired are?

Common MisconceptionsLaDonna Claude: It would be right now, the cell phones. Our main focus behind the wheel is always to, as I even say this in the class is to look ahead, look side to side and look in the back through your mirrors, but we have a tendency to do other things such as eating, looking off at the sunset, our cellphone’s notifications. That ding, just that urge that I got to see who this is, who’s trying to contact me, instead of let me get to my destination, and then I’ll respond. It’s people who work, like realtors, and the whole society. Everybody has some situations why they use the phone, and ever since they’ve taken and that has to do with distraction part of it. That’s just one part of it. There’s a whole field of it. I would say, that’s probably a big part of it right now.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s the tip of the spear right now. Yeah, as it goes deeper and how it impacts you. The whole thing is, how worth it? How valuable is this message? Is it more valuable than your life or is it more valuable than the lives of others? I think for me that was a really powerful thing that helped me put the distraction away as often as I can, although I do admit 100 percent transparency here. I know this conversation is going to heavily influence me, which I’m—this is why I’m excited is that I am on occasion, I do find myself catching myself like, “Oh, what am I doing? Put this thing away.” Even though I’m at a light or whatever, it doesn’t matter. There’s no excuse for it, in my perspective.

However, I’m guilty of it too. It’s not like I’m going to go around telling people what to do or what not to do and what to advise them on. However, but this is a great conversation, because I feel like it’s one we’re not having. How it impacts your insurance. How it impacts me—I mean, you go through the whole list, and I was reading through it. I was like, “Oh, my God. This is so powerful.” That’s just being pulled over and actually going to jail for that XYZ thing. Not to mention, God forbid. If you are drunk driving or driving under the influence of another drug or whatever, it’s devastating, right? Because it could really lead to some horrendous outcomes. How do you approach educating your students about the consequences of a DWI and getting them to understand the gravity of their situation?

LaDonna Claude: I would like to open up like how I start off with them. First off, and I even with everyone that’s listening out in the podcast world is, first of all, I do say, forgive me. Forgive me for anything I say from this point on, because this can get very sentimental. It can probably bring someone to tears. It could make you laugh in some situations. That’s why I put it all in the book. I will say this, there’s a lot of passion that I put into this book. We don’t realize how small things can make us impaired. I even tell the class I said, “Think of things. What do you really see at DWIs?” A lot of them just tell me? Oh, they’ll name off maybe five, maybe max ten. That’s as far as they can get them.

Now, granted. I do tell them they only have one minute to tell me, give me some things that can relate to DWI, too. What do you—some of the ones who have a DWI they’ll throw some things off, but when I open up and show them, I just want everyone to have an open mind. Think about, because there’s two sides. There’s the one who’s impaired / the one who might have hurt someone else, or if they hurt themselves. A lot of times we all have a tendency to say, “It’ll never happen to me. That does not apply to me.” That’s why I want to break down to three D’s, because the drinking perhaps that doesn’t apply to you. Being impaired with drugs, perhaps that doesn’t apply to you, but having an example of a cell phone, that could apply to you. Majority of us, we all have cell phones now.

I have been guilty before I’ve been an instructor. It’s easy as a cell phone sitting in a seat, and you hear that notification that makes you wonder just like pick it up and look at it. Then next thing, you look at it, and that’s all it takes, is your eyes off for four seconds. I took my class. I let them know that if I would blindfold you, and put you in the end zone of a football field, and you need to walk to the other end zone. You wouldn’t be able to do it in a straight way. You would drift. That’s exactly the example of how we are on the road. We drift. Our minds are like computers. You are first of all already thinking, when you left home, which is safe zone, you already set in your mind, I need to go here. I need to go there. I need to do this. I need to do that. I’ll be back at this time. Then you come back home to safety. That’s our mentality of thinking, because we go do our endeavors and things that we need to do all day. Then we come back to safe zone.

I think of it like a computer. You got so many things going on in the mindset, red car, blue car over here. She or he or her son, daughter, you got all this going on, or I was upset, light’s green. How can you add examples of a phone into the mix of everything that’s already in your computer mind, and the example is sixty miles an hour. You have that in your mind, too. I need to be safe. I’m a great driver.

My goal here is, I want us all to have a different perspective of ourselves. We have to take ownership. If we all try to take the next baby step of you know what, and I actually talked to miss Candace Lightner, who was the founder of MADD. Her and I actually had a conversation. I asked her as me being a defensive driving instructor, what would you like me to implement into my classroom setting? She said, “If everyone would take the initiative and ownership of not utilizing a phone in their car.” Because she has a business now, we save lives. She has a great point. So, I’ll catch myself. Even though cars, they put it in the car now where you can hit ‘Do Not Disturb.’ Let’s be real. How many of us utilize that?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s a very interesting subject, because here’s something that’s a phenomenon, it’s very new to our human nature, right? To constantly be sucked into that vortex, right? That little black box, right, and then how it takes our attention away from not just a moment really, but then then it stirs up anxiety, stirs up all kinds of things in and of itself. Then you introduce that to the world of driving, which in and of itself already is inundated with fear, right? Because you’re traveling at high speeds, you’re at the mercy of other drivers. You have to be really cognizant and aware and just apply that to working, emailing, right? When you have three, or four, or five, ten tabs open, you’re just that much more distracted, right? You can apply it now to driving. It makes perfect sense.

Obviously, our problem with the cell phone is it has moved itself from just being in our pocket to being in front of work, and being in front of driving, and being in front of our relationships. Our problem with the cell phone is I feel like very deep and psychological. Sadly, it is I feel like a dominant factor in how things are going for driving and especially now with, I feel like there is some excitement around autonomous cars and those kinds of things. Also, that’s a whole other layer of driving that I feel like we’re not even ready for, because sadly, you still have very distracted drivers.

What is your opinion on perhaps, maybe—I know you talk about this in your book very beautifully. I can’t wait for people to get out there and actually pick this thing up because I feel like everyone needs a refresh button every few years like about driving. Maybe it’s a thirty-minute course that you do on computer or whatever, but it’s a mandate. That’s just me thinking out loud, right? Because I just feel like we get all these tags and all these things for our car and maintenance or whatever, but let’s be honest, I haven’t sat in front of anything that taught me anything about driving since I got my permit. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I’ve moved states where things are different—like driving, we don’t think about it too much, because it’s like once you’ve learned to steer and push the gas pedal, you think that’s all there is to it, but there is so much to know. I’m eager to know like the steps that people can take to further prevent these incidents of driving. I mean, of course, the warnings are always there. What can we start doing to reduce the harm caused by such incidents?

LaDonna Claude: Well, this is where, I guess, I’m going to have to say, I’m a speaker for all the defensive driver instructors out there. I actually would love to see this happen. I have mentioned this to my class, that if it was on the ballot, would you vote for it? I would like to implement that every driver doesn’t matter of age, because there’s no age limit, take an update, defensive driving course. Now, I call it an update on the law. Now, this is my perspective. I will see someone come in a class setting such as mine, if you receive a citation.

I’ll see you come in my class for dismissal of a ticket, but after that, if you don’t ever get a ticket, and you never get—and I’m a different kind of defensive driving instructor based on my book, I’m just going to be real. I’ll see you in for a ticket. I’ll see you for insurance purposes. The tickets, it can be every year, once a year, unless it’s different and that’s approved by the judge. I’ll see you there for insurance purposes. That’s every three years. I came up with this idea. Whoever hears me, and I really hope legislature, lobbyists. I would love to see this pass. I would like to see to everyone that has to renew their driver’s license would take an update on law for a safety course. That’s what I—that’s about every nine years.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s actually a good time, right? Just to get updates, because technology’s changing literally everything minute of the day—

LaDonna Claude: Changes all the time. Yes.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: People may not know this, I worked in policy quite a bit, up in Portland, Oregon, like technology doesn’t keep up with policy sometimes, or policy doesn’t keep up with technology most of the time, right? But it is our responsibility to understand what the hell’s going on, and how these things are actually impacting us. Perhaps if you knew how this can impact you and your life, on a level, especially between nine years, a lot can happen, right? People have kids, get married like a lot can happen—

LaDonna Claude: Write a book.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I totally, agree. Exactly, write a book. I totally agree with that. We need to have some—I don’t know, reframe, update, refresh. Again, yes. It is annoying. It is something additional that we have to do. I feel like, this is your payment to society, man to make sure that we are all agreeing on the same things when we get on the road that we have our safety in mind, and of course, other people’s safety in mind. I think that’s obviously, for me at least, that’s probably the most dominant thing on top of which we have a healthy culture around. This has obviously been your work for the last decade or so. Like in your opinion, when you approach the educating of students that come into your classroom to learn about these things. What would you say like the amount of people that actually ended up coming back? What would you say like the thing that they learned the most? We’re like, you know what, this is the thing that’s actually going to change my trajectory. Has anyone voiced that part of your work or class? Yeah. Tell me more about that.

LaDonna Claude: If anyone would go to Funny Bone Defensive Driving on the website, funnyboneschools.com. When they go to Google and look at the reviews. I have a lot of reviews. I have read some of them, maybe most of them. I see that more impact of my class is the DWI list. Just before I end the class, I just want to hear their feedback. Most of the feedback I receive is, I was so unaware that this can impact me. I am so unaware that I can go to jail for that, in my early fifties now, but if I’ve never received a ticket, never got in trouble. I would be one like, I’ve had this lady she came to class just the other day. She’d never received a ticket before. It was her first ticket.

She’s seventy years old. She informed me. She said “LaDonna, I have to admit. You have just opened my eyes. I carry medication in my purse. I had no idea that I can be affected and get pulled over and go to jail.” After I break it down and the book just beautifully breaks things down that people don’t realize, that I can get a DWI for that, driving while impaired. That’s why I don’t call it driving while intoxicated, because that word goes away with me. It’s impairments. Liquid, that intoxicates you, drugs that makes you sleepy and the phone’s example, they distract you. All those examples of impairments, because you are now not fully comprehensive of what’s in front of you, because you have example again—oh, I need to address this call, or I am actually talking on the phone. Oh, my goodness. I’ve seen people put on makeup, too.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Even your response time, right? Just the fact that it could slow you, like I know, like drinking NyQuil can impact people so differently.

LaDonna Claude: Yes.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Going out to go just get a burger in the middle of the night, while having just drank a bunch of NyQuil or something, can obviously—I mean, I just think about like your response time and reaction time in the moment of fear is really where things come together. I heard somewhere—I can’t remember if it was a podcast, or I read it some—I can’t really remember. The point of that story was this person is driving through sixty, seventy miles an hour on the freeway. Automatically, your fear senses are heightened. We may not know that, because we’re comfortable with that level of heightened where our fear is, however, your reactions when you’re sharp and actually really focused are really good. However, if it is impaired, if you are distracted, it is like cut into pieces. It’s actually that fear is spiked even higher.

Anything that happens, you either overreact, which is when people like overturn their wheels, or stomp their brakes, or those kinds of things that actually cause more damage. That spectrum of where you are in the fear-based stuff. Then how slowed down you are and your reactions. Of course, those are all ways to impair not only your vision, but your cognizant like awareness level. I think that’s huge. Where do you see this going in the future? Like we start to implement things in a positive way, perhaps you start implementing policies that improve the way we see ourselves in driving and the privilege of driving these vehicles? Where do you see this going in the future? How do we further educate people to and maybe car manufacturers or policies to bus navigate this new world, especially with distractions?

Future EducationLaDonna Claude: I believe that Consequences and Compassion, it shows two sides. I’m showing what can happen, what to expect to happen. I’m bringing awareness of the things that we don’t have any idea that we did not know in the book. I just don’t want to give out too much of the book. I’m so excited.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh no, that’s totally fine.

LaDonna Claude: Even though they’re probably like, “What she’s talking about?” I know some people like, they fear, “Oh, the cop stopped me.” “Oh, it’s just a DWI.” Some of them think that way, but it’s after the fact. That’s where the lifestyle changes. I see that this is going to be an informative book where possibly, I pray and hope that and I’m speaking of Texas right now, not so much. I mean, I hope the other states come aboard, I hope to see Texas do this, that once this gets in the hands of the correct person that it does actually be given out to every new driver, so that they can see in this book, it’s a list and it shows now it’s going to show and make you think like, “Wow, I didn’t know that I would have to go through something like this. I would have to deal with something like this.”

I pray and hope that it makes a change. Right now we’re doing, “Don’t drink and drive, don’t drink and drive.” The billboards. “Don’t drink and drive.” Okay. I’m starting to see, we’re starting to get comfortable with that, but it’s not making a change. I’ve felt like now, something needs to come out differently. How can I get attention to perhaps the ones that don’t have it, not get it and the ones who do have a DWI? How can I prevent you now from getting another one down the line? So some of us have the money to think of it, oh, no biggie, but you look at a list this. I mean, the first guy that came in here to said he had five DWIs. He mentioned to me, he had five DWIs, Hussein, and he mentioned that, “I didn’t even kill anybody.” He says, but looking at your list, I never looked at it like that. He also mentioned, he said, “By the time I finished paying for parole. I’m going to be paying out about $47,000.” That’s just parole. I’m like, “Wow.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s two down payments on two houses.

LaDonna Claude: Oh, you’re telling [me]. That’s more than some average people making a salary. That’s what I hope it does make a change. I’m using my voice, because the dead can no longer talk, because if they could, they would. I’m using lines and the voice, because I know someone probably say, “Could you have not done it that night? Could you not done at that moment? Could you have thought to put that down or could you not just some simple situations like that?” Then the ones who are living, I want to bring awareness to you. I want to bring awareness where I don’t want to go down that pathway. If you’re one to ever say, “Well, that’ll never happen to me.” But we all have been guilty at some point in one of those three.

Like I tell my class, if I don’t get you on about the drinking, if I don’t get you on about the drugs and if I don’t, then what will I possibly get you on? One of those three, will cover somebody or cover you in situations that you just like, wow. I would like this prevented, ain’t going to be the whole world, but maybe it’d be one. I would like to see that the impact of this book is another asset to the billboard signs that are all over. “Don’t drink and drive.” Just like a bottle, it protects itself. It’ll tell you behind an example of a beer or anything. It’ll tell you, “Don’t operate machinery.” They tried to cover it all, but we’re still doing it. We’re still picking up the phone. We’re still being impaired on alcohol and getting behind the wheels on karaoke night or something. I mean something like that, or a party, a wedding or anything to that nature. We’re still doing it.

Now I want to bring to the world, a different perspective, a different way to say, “You know what? I’m going to be responsible. I’m going to make a change.” That’s the…the compassion part of it. Besides showing the consequence, the compassion of the book is the ones who do have a DWI. They are still somebody in this society. Sad to say, they have done wrong, and they have to acknowledge, but I believe a lot of them have shown compassion. I think you can’t save everybody. Some of them know, they’re not going to change. I hope that they will when they see this book, because I don’t think they are aware of what the law enforcement can do.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. It’s a choice that we clearly need to make and stick with. I think the way I look at it, too. Future technologies actually can be really powerful. In that, just saying, for example, Lyft and Uber, right? I mean, again, not the greatest companies in the world, this and that, right? However, if you’re out having to drink, take an Uber, take a Lyft, like at least in my mind right now, today in this world, right? This is something I know I can do. I know that—bro, just take an Uber. It’s not necessary to not do that. I feel like, one, it supports your community, supports people. Two, it puts you out of harm’s way in just a text, you just don’t have to deal with any of that. It’s like the $15, $20 ride is so worth it at the end of the day, right? However, do not vomit in any of those, because I know those fees are crazy.

Lastly, but yeah, I feel like the future technology of things and how we can really for example, earn those kinds of points, where if you’re not drinking—like for example, if I don’t have a ticket for five years, I should get points on Lyft and Uber and things like that, right? Because it’s helping me recognize, I’m going to save up all these points, or whatever it may be, so that I can use them later in whatever circumstance I want to use them. Driving is one of those things that we need to incorporate and think about when it comes to technology. I feel like with people just knowledge, it’s just the knowing of like, “Dude, I can go to jail for this.” It’s just having a couple of pills, right? I can go to jail for that. People don’t even know that, right? We don’t know the law until we have to call a lawyer like we don’t know.

That’s very powerful, because here you are, with all this knowledge and really honing it all in together for all of us to really digest in a very simple way through story, through experiences. I’m beyond grateful, having met with you and talked with you today. I know it’s really brought my attention back to just thinking about my safety. For me, it’s like, I want to come back home to my wife. I want to be able to call my mama and all those things at the end of the day. These things are important and getting in a car is dangerous. It’s a dangerous thing that we do, but doing it with love and respect and appreciation and thinking about other people is a huge thing. I’m just grateful I got to meet with you and really share those experiences. Thank you for bringing that wisdom to the world. The book is called Consequences and Compassion: Lessons from the Front Lines of Drunk, Drugged, and Distracted Driving. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you, LaDonna?

LaDonna Claude: Oh, I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on TikTok. Okay, young adults. I’m on TikTok. I’m on Instagram as well, and the email that I don’t mind giving out is lmclaude7@gmail.com. I would love to hear your stories. I will answer emails even if there’s a flood of emails coming. I know this book is going to bring conversation. I have an ear to hear and a big heart of love to give.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. Thank you so much, LaDonna, for all the work that you do in our communities and the way that you support everyone. Again, very honored to have had you on the show. Have a fantastic rest of your day and congratulations on your book.

LaDonna Claude: Thank you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Thank you all so much for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. You can find Consequences and Compassion: Lessons from the Front Lines of Drunk, Drugged, and Distracted Driving right now on Amazon. For more Author Hour episodes, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite subscription service. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next time. Same place, different author.

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In post-military life, there are no uniforms signifying who you can go to for advice. There are no ribbon decks on chess to signify experience. You are responsible for making your own way. If you wait for the military to tell you what to steps to take in your civilian life, you’ll find yourself waiting forever.

Welcome back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and my next guest is Julie Calza, who is here to talk about her new book, In the Arena: Battle-Tested Strategies to Secure Your Future. Let’s get into it.

Hello friends, and welcome back to the show. I’m here with my good friend, Julie Calza, who is here to talk about her new book, In the Arena: Battle-Tested Strategies to Secure Your Future. Look, I’m telling you, I was flipping through this book last night, and I was just fully immersed. It was so easy to navigate. Julie, welcome to the show, and congratulations on your book.

Julie Calza: Thank you, Hussein, I really appreciate it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely. I’m really excited to get into the book. However, we do have an awesome audience, and I want to get them to know you a little bit. Maybe give us a little bit of your personal background, where you grew up, and maybe one person or a situation that inspired you the most growing up.

Julie Calza: So I know this is counterintuitive to this environment, but I actually always get uncomfortable talking about myself, but I think I can do that. Let’s see.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Share whatever you’re comfortable with, by the way.

Julie Calza: So I grew up in Houston, Texas, for a part of my life and then moved to East Texas a little bit later in life. I ended up joining the Marine Corps when I was 17 years old and went to serve my country and then, I later married an active duty member in the Air Force, he’s a crew chief, my husband, Cedric, and so I have a lot of exposure to the military life.

People always ask me, “Were your parents in the military?” The answer is no, but my grandfather served in the Army for almost 30 years. However, they were not in huge favor, anyone in my family, of me joining the military, contrary to what some may think. At any rate, I went to college and studied finance and economics after I got out of the Marine Corps, and it wasn’t until a couple of years that I really started to realize all the opportunities available.

The military members in the financial world and also just in general, and leveraging their benefits and a real huge gap and lack of education in that space. And I ended up becoming really passionate about real estate through my investments. But when we moved out here to Luke Air Force Base area, my husband was stationed here, and I struggled to find someone I could trust to help us buy our house out here.

And even after completing the purchase, I found some very unsavory things that happened to my transaction, and the person I used, you know, marketed himself to military members, and I was really frustrated, and I decided to look for a solution and to go work for a company that was the solution for military families, and at that time in the market here, that didn’t exist and so even though I didn’t particularly want to become it, I decided that was really the only way to serve my community in that space.

So I started my business CalzaCo, and we’ve now served over a thousand military members, helping them buy, build, and sell homes and also educating them specifically on their VA loan benefit.

Preparing Soldiers for Post-Military LifeHussein Al-Baiaty: That is so powerful, and I’m glad you brought that up. Because sometimes, when we think about the men and women that go into the service, that’s a different kind of training, of course. No one can obviously take away the bootcamp training, just the intensity of military, no matter which way you look at it, it is a beautiful thing that we benefit from the freedoms and everything that we have.

By the way, thank you for your service, thank you for your grandfather’s service, and how you still continue to serve the community in that way. So that’s amazing and very commendable, so I appreciate that. But I love that you continue to weave it throughout your life to be someone of value and service to the community of the military. And so talking about that, you start to go down this path of you’re not only creating your company, and you’re building it up.

But really focusing on what happens after military, what happens on this career path, and you start to train people in specific ways. Can you specifically tell me about the people you’re trying to reach with this book, the audience that you’re trying to reach with this book, who are you trying to target mostly?

Julie Calza: Well, in all honesty, even though the book focuses on securing that post-military future, who I want this book to impact most are the people still in service, the spouses of people still in service, and those that don’t know everything available to them now. And what small, I mean, relatively speaking, small steps they can take while they’re still active duty to make their lives way easier once they do get out.

In my community, once you’re in the military, there is a point where you’re counting down the days until you get out, but because there’s this gap where there’s so much dependability built into the military lifestyle, it’s really challenging to really mentally separate yourself from that. Yes, when you get out, but while you’re in, it’s nearly impossible. So I want more people that are still in the military to be taking these steps, so that way they’re better prepared for post-military life.

Now, that’s not to say that this book isn’t hugely impactful for veterans, reservists, and military members that may have been out for 20 years even, but it’s if you can get ahead of that date when you’re no longer wearing that uniform five, six, maybe seven days a week, then you will be able to make insurmountable progress towards those goals. So I really, really hope that more members that are still in service, spouses of those members can find this book and start getting ahead.

And those that may have feel like they missed the boat for those opportunities realize that no, it’s not too late, you can still do these things, but tell your friends about this so that way, they can potentially get ahead as well.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s super powerful. I know that when military men and women leave the service, it could get very daunting. It could get very difficult, complicated, as far as really following a purpose, following a passion, things, I’m sure there are many who have a vision of what they want to do after, of course, but there’s many I’m sure that are like, “Well, what do I do now?”

And you propose many different ideas, but really, how to think about it, and this is what I found really powerful about your book. But I want to know, just from my personal curiosity, what would you say is the most desirable type of, I guess, career or work or arbiter of the world that you see people go into after serving in the military? What would you say is the thing that most people gravitate towards, and if that’s a good or a bad thing, and how you help people navigate those waters?

Julie Calza: So most of what I see is — and this is a super interesting question I wasn’t expecting — but I actually happen to be writing an article just this morning about the problems with military employment that I intend on publishing, and so it’s just funny that you bring this up.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I was reading your mind.

Julie Calza: So what I find most of the time is it’s usually going into some form of government contracting. So, for example, my husband is a crew chief, and it is really, really common for crew chiefs to get out and go to work for a Lockheed Martin or some of these bigger companies that do contracting, and they still work on the base but as civilians. So that’s really, really common.

But what I also see a lot of is military members gravitating towards more portable and I mean, I don’t want to say non-traditional, but still arguably non-traditional fields like real estate, mortgage, anything that will allow them flexibility that they haven’t enjoyed for however long that they’ve been in service. So it’s funny because I feel like it’s both ends of the spectrum. I think that it’s maybe a 60/40 split.

Sixty percent staying in that comfort zone of being on base, whether that be staying in the service, active duty or service or working as a government contractor on a base, or going almost opposite direction and something that they perceived to be flexible. But a lot of problems can come from both of those, which I find really interesting, because a lot of military members I see, it’s not that they don’t have discipline. Honestly, we’re the most disciplined people in the planet, but because they had so much time and structure going towards what they view as a flexible field can be super challenging.

So, for example, when I got out of the Marine Corps, for like two or three months after I got out, I still jumped out of bed at 03:30 and ran to the end of my bed and stood at attention for a second before I really came into the real world and was like, “Oh wait, no one’s going to tell me what to do. Oh crap, I got to actually figure this out myself.”

So when you go into a field that you perceive to be flexible, but because you have that freedom, it actually requires even more discipline, it can be a huge shock. And then on the other side of the coin, staying in the same mold can breed this culture where you’re not thinking outside of the box, and so you are in the same cycle you were in before, just slightly different.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s really powerful, what a great way to look at it and bring it into perspective for people who are seeking that flexibility and a really – discipline is amazing. How can you use it outside of the military? And actually, discipline is great to bring into entrepreneurship. Doing any kind of sales, I feel like the sales world is enormous, right?

But I feel like it requires discipline, and I feel like the military teaches such remarkable attention to detail, really focus on cutting the distractions. I know two of my brothers actually served in the military during the Iraq war, and it’s funny because we became refugees after the first Gulf War back in 1990.

So, how I felt about what my brothers’ direction was going to be after, they really wanted to start businesses. They really wanted to do their own thing, and I realized how much of those things that they learned in the military played a role. I ended up going to college, and they helped me a ton, progressing through that.

So again, shout out to all the military people, man. I feel like a lot of our communities and things, we don’t recognize how important those learned skills are until we really start to apply them to our purpose and passion. So this is what I want to talk about next.

How do you then get in front of these remarkable men and women and really help them? What’s the one thing, the first thing you do when you meet with someone or a group of people, and you start to talk about these things in the direction? What’s one thing you try to bring their awareness to?

Julie Calza: I think that this actually will go in the answering your question, but I do want to back up to something you said, which is how these learned skills, right? These learned skills you learned in service, and yes, we can argue that they’re unmatchable, but the other side of those learned skills is so many military members sign the dotted line when they’re still children, really, if you think about it.

They haven’t experienced the real world. Some of them haven’t even had jobs before, and then they go into this environment where they’re given so much structure, and they’re given a lot of roadmaps to show them exactly what they need to do to be considered successful. “This is how you can work to make the next rank. This is something you can do to try to get ahead, this is X, this is Y, and this is Z.”

Well, what a lot of military members, and this is that awareness question you ask me, what a lot of military members don’t realize because they’re so into this and I, by the way, I didn’t either. I didn’t either until I got out and had some separation from it, but that’s what caused me to miss a lot of opportunity is, it’s almost like there’s not an adulting 101 class. I meet 23-year-olds in the military that don’t know how to register their car.

So you can go and serve your country, but you don’t know how to exist in a world that isn’t super-super structured, but you don’t realize that, you don’t, and a lot of people don’t want to admit what they don’t know, or come to terms with that. So I meet so many military members that are eager and excited and can’t wait for the day that they get out and they start their own businesses because yes, entrepreneurship, that’s what I was trying to get to as the other side of that coin, from contractor all the way to entrepreneurship.

But you know, you ask them what business do you want to start, and they don’t know. They just know that they want to work for themselves, which is fantastic, I applaud that. But it’s so important to get groundwork, to get more skills, and not only depend on the military to teach you the skills you need to know because the military itself, hey, it’s the military. If you served 30 years in the military, you have a whole life to live after that.

You haven’t lived any of your adult life outside of having an exact framework of what you need to do, and so it’s super important to understand that yes, you might have these invaluable skills, and so many people around you are telling you how invaluable they are because you’re military, “Oh my gosh, it’s going to be easy for you to get a job, everyone wants to hire vets. It’s going to be great because you’ll be ahead of everyone that only has a bachelor’s degree.”

But then you get out there, and it’s really hard because you don’t know how to speak civilian. You don’t know. I remember I had a whole issue when I started my business, where a mentor of mine had to teach me how to properly email because apparently, I wasn’t fluffing my emails enough, and they were coming across the wrong way.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Super rigid emails, like what is happening?

Julie Calza: Yeah, exactly. I guess the awareness, the bottom line of what I’m trying to say is that don’t only count on those skills, there’s more. You have to learn more to get yourself ahead.

Helping Civilians Understand the Veteran StruggleHussein Al-Baiaty: I think one of the most important lessons I learned just in life is that you are constantly learning, and it’s like no matter what, you can always add to it, and that’s the value that you will always bring to the table is that you’re open to learn and really re-evaluate what you know, and see how you can better apply it, and I totally see how you get that idea.

Because you’re basically talking about it, and I feel like how you’re applying it and helping service men and women understand that concept that, “Look, you got to keep learning. You got to take those skills and compound them into other things and how you could be effective as by having an open mind and keep learning and really apply those things.” Which is really powerful.

How do you think your book, and really your work, contributes to the larger conversation about post-military career paths? What would you say, if there’s one thing about your book that adds to that larger conversation, what would that be for you?

Julie Calza: Well, you know what? I’m really glad you asked me this question because this book, yes, it aims to serve military members, but it does greatly contribute to a larger conversation and can help civilians understand the challenges that this population faces. There are so many businesses that claim to be military friendly, and so many companies that claim they want to hire vets, but they have no idea what it’s actually like to be in that space.

No idea what it’s like to go from this structure of knowing exactly what you need and having a formula every single day to coming out into the world and losing. Yeah, you might not have anyone yelling at you or forcing you to get up really early in the morning, but you also lose some brotherhood, some belonging along the way. So, the larger conversation that I hope that this contributes to is awareness.

Also for the civilian population, especially in the professional world. Understanding that yes, there are “benefits”, military benefits, and there’s a lot of benefit to serving the country, but it’s a lot of challenges, and they’re not the ones you think, at least not only the ones you think. So the deployments, the separation, that’s the first thing people think about.

They’re like, “Oh man, it would be so hard. I couldn’t imagine being away from my spouse and my kids for a year.” Which by the way, my husband did that twice, that’s really hard, right? But that’s what people think about. But what about the fact that today, right now, it is nearly impossible for military members near major cities to find affordable housing while they’re still in the military.

Understanding that their shortcomings in the healthcare system, and there’s a lot of lack of awareness in the basic principles of finances. It’s not the military’s job to teach you how to balance a checkbook. I know that seems like an archaic term these days, but it’s the best analogy I can come up with. So I hope that this book contributes to a wider conversation about, “Hey, just because somebody served in the military doesn’t know that they know how to set them up for a strong financial future.”

You wonder why veteran homelessness is such a huge issue. Well, if you never had to find your own housing before, then how are you going to come out and be able to do that? If you have severe PTSD to the point where you couldn’t work anywhere with unexpected noises, how are you supposed to be able to get a job and then find that housing? So I do hope that this book can in some small way contribute to that greater conversation of just awareness about the intricacies of the challenges that we face and not just the, “Oh, that sucks to be deployed,” you know?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow, very powerful. I love that because, certainly for me, that’s the thing I started thinking. I’m like, “Wow, this really adds so much flavor into this conversation” because I know, post-military, there’s so many – if you just think about the trauma in which many armed forces people face, it’s very difficult, and then how they navigate that afterwards and how that plays out in work-life.

Purchasing a home, financials, it gets very intense, and so I’m grateful that you really are adding something to the conversation here and thinking about things a little bit differently and deeply. Again, from your perspective having gone in the military so young, you’re able to see this transition. So what would you say, maybe a particular moment or remember a scene from writing a book or story or an experience that you really enjoyed writing, what was that for you?

Julie Calza: So I in no way, shape, or form want to compare myself to the great J.R.R. Tolkien, that’s not my intent in saying this, but I can’t help but be reminded of his quote when he was writing The Hobbit. It started with a little corner of paper where he drew a little door, and he said the famous first line of what ended up being the book, and it was years before he wrote the book.

The reason why I bring that up is because the story that I start with this book is super powerful to me because it’s something that I remember so vividly, this has been nearly 15 years ago. I actually just realized it right this moment when I was trying to do math, and we came out of the jungle. We were brought into this makeshift theater, for a lack of a better term, and these people in pristine uniforms, and yes, they happen to be officers.

I’m not trying to say anything officers versus enlisted, so military people don’t come at me, it’s not about that. It’s just that in the military, when you look at someone’s formal uniform, what they’ve done, because you know what the ribbons mean, you know what the insignia means, you know what the rank means. And so here we are covered in mud, disgusting, having been out in the jungle for I mean, I think at that point, it had been a couple of weeks and hadn’t bathed properly, just used baby wipes.

They funnel us into the seating, and we had so much gear on we couldn’t even sit directly next to each other. There had to be at least a seat in between us, and these people in this shiny uniforms that had their one little ribbon and their one little introductory rank were telling us, were trying to educate us about IEDs, improvised explosive devices, and at this point, we’d already had friends that had died from these.

They were becoming super, super common in Afghanistan. And we’re sitting there and of all things, it’s just so ridiculous to me as a grown adult right now, but in the moment, it was just like it really, I don’t know, something clicked in me that – so, they showed us a PowerPoint presentation. Can you just imagine learning about an explosive device that’s killed people you know and will eventually kill people in this room with you, by the way, on a PowerPoint presentation from people that have never ever experienced anything like it?

It’s just such a stark contrast, really. And that moment in my life has sat with me since it happened, just vividly. So I tell you that to tell you this, I wrote the first couple lines of this book years ago. I didn’t know what I was going to use this for, but I just didn’t want to forget that contrast because not everyone realizes it in the moment. I remembered that moment, I didn’t know why I remembered it.

I didn’t know why it hit me so hard or why it felt somewhat traumatic to think about. It wasn’t like the visions of the torn-apart bodies on the screen, it wasn’t that. We’re so desensitized to that. It was just who was trying to tell us how to not die, right? Like, who are you to tell me this, what’s your experience? So, two years ago, when I really decided, “Hey, I need to figure out a way to help more people.”

Because my business is very focused on buying, building, selling real estate and educating on the VA loan, but I just kept seeing these gaps as I met more and more people in the military, and I wanted to figure out a way to teach what I’ve learned. Not that I know everything, but I’ve learned a lot, and I want to help people with that and my community with that. And so I went back to those lines, and I wrote out the story, and it just kind of clicked.

Where I was just like, “You know what? The thing is in the civilian world and now, ironically enough in the influencer culture, you don’t know.” Nobody is wearing a uniform, you don’t have the ribbon on the chest, you don’t have the rank on the sleeve or the collarbone or depending on what branch you’re in, you don’t have that. So how do you know who you’re taking advice from, has experience, or been successful at what they’re trying to tell you to do?

I again, in my life, I didn’t want to necessarily become the solution to that, but I felt like somebody who could tell these stories and could help people really understand that you have to be responsible for educating yourself on what opportunities are available to you. Oh, and by the way, let me just list them for you and tell you how to use them. So all you have to do is read this book, and you’re going to have a really good platform for it.

You Are the Arbiter of Your Life NowHussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful. I love that because you do lay it out pretty pristinely, and again, this idea of learning from those who have been through things, the experience, there is knowledge, of course, that we know when you can dissect the knowledge and the data and all these things but having experienced something, that’s when we can get emotional. That’s where I feel like the heart is connected to it, the purpose.

Just throughout our conversation today here in the last like 20 minutes or so, I see your heart into it. I see because you’ve lived it, you know what happens. You put on that uniform before, you’ve experienced things that honestly, let’s be real here, a PowerPoint could not express. However, if you were to then teach that class or teach those moments or whatever, you speak from experience, you speak emotion.

I think that’s a powerful place to really bring information forth, bound to the experience so that that experience then impacts that person you’re trying to really have an impact on, which I found so powerful. Which leads me to my last question for you. When your readers pick up your book and begin to go through it and dissect it and finally put it down and feel like they can walk away from it, what do you hope they take away from it?

Julie Calza: So there’s two things I want the reader to take away from this book, and the first is, you’re going to have a lot of people that are trying to tell you what to do, but the thing is, they’re resume doesn’t match what you’re trying to do. So, if you are going to go out and take risks and do things differently or strive to set yourself up for a brighter future, there’s so much out there that’s going to criticize you for that because you’re trying to do something different.

The book is titled in reference to a quote that was really impactful for me the first time I heard it, it’s a Teddy Roosevelt quote. It’s a long one, but it essentially says, “It’s not the critic who counts or the man who points out how somebody else struggles. The credit belongs to the man who’s actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust, sweat, and blood.”

Here’s the thing, when you’re taking advice from every single person around you, you’re not going to make any progress because you’re in the stands with them. You’re there sitting down telling other people what to do, and you’re not actually down there operating and learning different ways to think, and also learning different ways to set yourself up. The military is very good at training the best fighting forces in the world.

They’re very good at defending this country, but they’re not there to teach you how to live your life. So the first thing I want people to take from this is, if you’re sitting around waiting for them to tell you, like how to get ahead, how to be successful in the civilian world, how to have financial security, you’re going to be waiting forever and the second thing I want people to get from this is you are not by yourself.

The majority of people don’t know these things in this book, and I know there’s plenty of people, some of my friends included, that will pick it up, and they’ll be like, “Oh yeah, duh.” But it’s not duh, this is not common knowledge the stuff that’s in here, and I know that by being a part of this community.

So you’re not alone, it’s okay to ask questions, but more than anything, get down there and get your boots muddy and try to set yourself up for a beautiful life that you can live while you’re still in service, but also after you get out of it and after you’re done with it. You’ve served your country, you deserve to have a life that you’re proud of both while you’re there and afterwards.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Very powerful words. Julie, thank you so much for just sitting with me today and really giving me the rundown of what you’re very passionately about, obviously. It comes through in so many ways, but I am grateful for that, because you’re the type of person that we need in the world that can really help our military service men and women that may not have a feel of what happens next and thinking about that.

But also outside of that, of course, their family members, the people around them, people that surround them, we all want to see them successful. However, there are ways to go about doing that, and you’re right, asking questions, coming to the table, rolling your sleeves up, that continues and showing up for yourself, that certainly continues, and you have a way of not only teaching that but showing that from your own experience.

So today, I’ve learned so much. I’m honored and grateful for your service. Thank you for sharing your stories, your experiences with me and the audience. The book is called, In the Arena: Battle-Tested Strategies to Secure Your Future. Besides checking out the book on Amazon, where can people find you?

Julie Calza: So if anyone wants to learn more about me, my story, or the book itself, they can go to postmilitaryfuture.com or follow me on social media, Calza, Julie.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Very cool, thanks again, Julie. I appreciate you. Congratulations on your book.

Julie Calza: All right, thank you so much Hussein. I appreciate you too.

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When you market towards diverse, underserved communities, you help them gain access to products they need or want but haven’t been able to easily obtain. My next guest shows you how to achieve potential growth for your business, but by doing well for your business, you will also be doing good for underserved consumers. Welcome to the Author Hour podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty. Today I’m joined by author Vince Vitiello, who’s here to talk about his new book called, Diversity Means Dollars. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, my friends. I’m here with my friend Vince, today. I’m super excited to have you, Vince. The book is called Diversity Means Dollars. Man, I can’t tell you how easy this was to go into it and just fall into the chapters, fall into the story. Vince, congratulations on your book, man. What a great read.

Vince Vitiello: Thanks, Hussein. I’m really excited about it. Thank you so much.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely, man. I mean, you bring up diversity in such a unique way. We go into these steps about how to really incorporate diversity in your marketing, in your workplace, all this good stuff. Before we get into the book and the depth of everything, of course, that’s all your wisdom. I really want to get to know you a little bit and tell our audience a little bit about your personal background, perhaps a story of when you were growing up, and maybe a person that inspired you to be on the path that you’re on now.

Vince Vitiello: Hey, very good. Well, I grew up in New York City. I grew up in an Italian-Jewish immigrant area of Brooklyn, New York. The interesting part, people asked me, I’m a Caucasian, white guy. I’m very passionate about the diverse markets. A lot of folks asked me, “How did you get into it? Why is that of interest to you?” In the book, I talk a little bit about my dad. My dad was an insurance agent for a company called MetLife, which I became the Chief Marketing Officer for many years after. In the old days, insurance agents would literally go house to house to pick up premiums for life insurance. My dad was from an immigrant family. My dad’s English, and he was fluent in Italian. The area that was designated for him to do business in, to pick up the premiums, and to make sales was the Italian-immigrant area of Brooklyn.

The reason why my dad was successful was because he wasn’t educated. He knew a little bit more than the recent immigrant. He knew about college funding. He knew about mortgages. He knew about immigration issues. He knew about investing. He certainly knew about life insurance. So I saw my dad become successful, and actually, his clients actually became family of ours. We became very close with a lot of his clients. As time went on, the area where I grew up, which was Italian and Jewish immigrants, began to change. The Italians and the Jews moved out to the suburbs and came back into those communities where Chinese, Hispanic, and other immigrant groups were.

As I began my career in the financial services, I said, most marketing companies look at the market as if they’re old white guys. I began to say, “There’s something to marketing to people, as segments.” They all want to be assimilated, but the immigrant population and diverse population like to know that you’ve created a little bit more special stickiness in your approach to them. That’s been my start to the diverse markets. As a young kid, I just saw success. Then I’ve been able to take that on a little bit more professional level, and now leading up to a much more step-by-step approach to the marketplace.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, man. I love that. Thank you for laying out that foundation. The reason I ask people these questions is because, for me, I relate to that in some way, because my father was an artist, and the way he went about contributing and being around his community and being a value was beautiful to watch. Also, as I grew up in the States, right, different world different culture. We came here as refugees, so for me, it was learning a lot of what he was trying to teach me, but applying it in a different setting, right? In your scenario, right? It’s like, “Okay, well, how can I take what I’ve been seeing as far as what success is, and what this looks like, but now apply it to everyone, people who aren’t Italians. Who aren’t basically of my faith, of my identity, or what I connect to?”

That’s where we create connection. I feel like a deeper connection because I feel, as immigrants or refugees, anyone knows a little bit more than you do about the community and how it operates. Now, you’re friends like, can you teach me something that I’m using? I want to be able to return that favor, and by working with people in that way is really powerful. It sounds like, not only did you approach your work and just thinking about diversity, but really thinking about community, and what the colors of that community mean. It sounds like you’re very much inspired by those early days, of course, to create this book that you brought all his wisdom to. Why do you believe this topic is important for businesses to consider?

The Importance of DiversityVince Vitiello: Well, I think a key reason. We talk about community. We talk about the needs of these communities. We’ll get to that in a moment. I think it helps grow a top and bottom line. When you go to business leaders, and talk about how they could dramatically increase market share, they can literally own some of these market segments, it really gets people interested. I guess the major reason is, “Hey, I’m running a business, and how do I grow my business?” I think in the book, I talk about our GDP when we have a 2 or 3% increase. The country says, “Wow, it’s just an incredible year.” How about growing your business by 40 or 50%?

I think I’ve seen a lot of companies and a lot of divisions, look at these markets, really take ownership of it, and able to really explode their business. Hussein, I had a call today with a potential client, who is in the property and casualty insurance business. Their major growth engine, this past year has been the Chinese market. Another client of ours down south in the life insurance business, their best division last year, their number one division of maybe 40 divisions, was their Hispanic initiative. It’s not just a nice thing to do. It’s really great for business.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely. To position yourself there, right, because, look, we’re in a country where we are diversified. Especially now, the newer generations, right? For me, my generation, who are also having kids, right? It’s that unfolding of these newer generations that are very American, as American as it gets, born here, raised here, all that good stuff. Of course, they grew up in a household that speaks a different language, or sees the most high in a different way, right, whatever it is, right? But that doesn’t mean that they’re not in need of these types of services. How you bring them to the table. How you speak and communicate with them. That’s really beautiful, man.

I know you talk about the seven steps, of course. We’re not going to go through all of them, because I really want people to go pick up your book. Let’s talk about maybe one or two of those steps and how you use them to leverage this idea of diversity, and how businesses can apply these steps to their own marketing strategies. Maybe what’s one or two that you started applying, or perhaps a client of yours started applying.

Vince Vitiello: Right, got it. So going back to the story of my dad, or going back to some of the businesses that have had success with this. Sometimes it just was a subconscious competency. So what I tried to do in the book is to create a conscious competency. Of the seven steps, I think there might be two or three to me that are really critical. The first one is actually selecting a market, Hussein. So many people, when they see the diversity of the US, there’s over 100 million ethnic population in the US. They want to target all 100 million and all ethnicities. One of the key parts of the book is a stress to select one specific market and go very deep into that market. Probably the second step is to immerse yourself in the market.

I think that a lot of business leaders who are not diverse, they have a fear of getting into the marketplace, because they’re afraid of making a mistake. They don’t know much about the market. They may not know the Hispanic market, the Chinese market, or the Orthodox Jewish market, but one of the things I just suggest is just to meet someone from that community and ask them a series of 10 or 20 questions that are in the book. That really would help that person understand how these people think, where they pray, where they play, how they communicate with each other. I would think the first step is, select the market and go very, very deep.

The other one, I think is critical is developing a value proposition for that specific market. What I mean by that is, when I ask business leaders to tell me about their value proposition of their business, typically I get the same stock answers. We have great products. We have good customer service. Our culture is great. Our technology is great, all that. Then when I asked them, what’s the value proposition to attract a diverse customer, a Hispanic customer, an African American customer, typically, there isn’t anything in addition to those five things they just mentioned. The thing is, building a value proposition, in addition to your great culture, tell me why, if I’m an African American family, or I’m an Asian business owner, why I would want to buy your product or your service that differentiates you from every other company out there. That’s what we stress in the book.

The last part, which is more of a softer approach is doing well, by doing good. A lot of companies have specific products, training, or approaches that, in addition to growing their business, they’re really doing something for the community. I’ve talked about the life insurance business, but most of the multicultural markets did not know about the benefits of life insurance and planning and financial planning. So while you’re growing your business, you’re actually helping a community assimilate quicker into the financial fabric of the country. The last part of the book is probably what I love best. It’s doing well, by doing good.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh, man. This is so good, because it really brings me to the next phase of the conversation, which is, I love that your book really adds value to the current conversation around, let’s be honest, around race, around the issues that face America in a way, right? I guess I’ve always been there in some way, shape, or form. Today how do we talk about these – How do we bring these things up in a meaningful way, in a positive way. Actually, working towards blending those lines a lot further, right?

I think as I was reading your book, it really brought my attention to those things, because to some people, different immigrants, different family structures, different types of communities, different values are aligned, right? Whether it be religious, whether it be communal, whatever it is, but at the end of the day financials, and how we see ourselves in the future, and what we want for our kids. Those are all things that are very true, and they’re all relatable across the board.

How can we bring something like you said, a value to those people, specifically, that can serve them? But also, like you said, almost speak their language, not necessarily speak their tongue, but speak their language in the sense of what is valuable to them and work backward and in bringing this information that’s very healthy, because obviously, right? If we bring this financial idea of what health insurance, in general, to those communities, they’re obviously going to get stronger, they’re going to get better, they’re going to be included in our conversations and included in our fabric, which is so powerful. Where do you see the common mistakes that businesses make when trying to get into those diverse markets and audiences? What do you think are the common mistakes that come up during this transition, if you will?

Mistakes in the MarketVince Vitiello: Well, I guess mistake number one would be no effort into the market and thinking that I can capture that market. I’ll give you an example. Let’s assume Macy’s or a department store says, “Hey, I already know I have diverse customers.” Again, part of that is because it’s a subconscious competency. People have just come into my store. So the first mistake is, “Hey, I’m already getting a piece of it.” Then the next step would be that they automatically go to, “Well, what is my sales brochure look like?” Immediately, you just mentioned language. Well, Hispanics speak a different language. Let me put my sales brochures or my website in Spanish so that people think that I have a sensitivity towards it.

I think the mistake is that most companies don’t have a broad strategic plan. The plan I call the surround sound. What does your staffing look like? What does your training look like? What does your internal diversity teams look like? Your website? What does your social media look like? What has your product development looked like, specifically for that market? I think people say, “Hey, yeah. I’m going to get into market. I’ll do a sales brochure just because it’s in language and I’ll draw the market.” That typically doesn’t do it. I’ll develop my website in a different language. That typically doesn’t do because you need to drive traffic into the store or into the business or towards the website. I think that’s a pretty big mistake, just doing it, so very superficially.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. I agree with that. In today’s world like you can see right through it, right? It doesn’t come off as really authentic. It doesn’t come off as you’re just seeking to get in my pocket as opposed to really help me figure out life, right? There’s two different lines. I feel like in today’s world, with everything being extremely transparent, people can sense that and see right through it. But I got to ask you, man. I mean, writing a book is a huge feat, of course. I want to congratulate you on that. What was your favorite part of pulling your book together? Like it must have been hard pulling together all the pieces to the wisdom, right? We usually like to say, what’s the cup from the waterfall that you’re going to collect to actually bring forth to your reader? I want to know, what was your favorite part about pulling this book together? What have you learned from this journey?

Vince Vitiello: Hussein, I think the favorite part was actually creating the step-by-step process. I know the various steps that I’ve gone through, but putting them into a book and actually putting it in writing, to me really formalizes the process. I think what it creates for the reader or the business leader is, there literally is a roadmap for them to uncover these markets. It’s not that complicated, but it just took all my 30 years of experience of doing it. The best part was, hey, this is exactly how I did it. Maybe I did it step-by-step one year and step by step the next year, but this really summarizing, it says, “Wow, this is pretty scientific at this part.” Yeah. So that’s what I really enjoyed about putting it together.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that, man. Was there anything in the journey in the writing process that made you realize, wow, like I haven’t thought about this, or haven’t reapplied this? Like, was there anything in the journey, in the writing process, that made you stop and think about and reflect on your own journey?

Vince Vitiello: I think Hussein, the part that I mentioned earlier about doing well, and by doing good. Some of my closest relationships in my career have come from the communities that I’ve helped. I’m still friends and mentors with, and from my penetration into these markets, I’ve seen a lot of the folks that I’ve dealt with in these ethnic markets, become quite wealthy, because they’ve exploded their businesses in these specific markets. Actually seeing them grow and then, them having their children and a gentleman that I help in these markets who was Chinese, and really exploded his business with MetLife.

Many years ago, he and his wife had their first child. They named the child Vincent after me. Somehow, someway I connected with Vincent on Facebook. I took him to lunch. Now to see this 25-year-old guy named after me, because his father became successful. But really a true story. That journey was the journey of actually seeing people do well and exploding their business. There are so many stories of businesses who are getting their dramatic growth from these markets. That’s the other part just seeing businesses grow dramatically.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, I got to tell you, that’s so powerful. I love – this probably one of my favorite things about, I guess, not only self-reflection, but what a book can do in writing. There’s something I feel like beautiful that happens. It’s that you go into your memories with a very open heart, right? Very compassionate about your journey, and how you got to where you’re at. Not only that, you’re also of course, sharing your wisdom with the reader. It’s those moments of like, “Wow, man. This person that I met and helped in some way shape or form.” But look at this expanded identity of how this actually transformed this person’s life to go as far as being, their son being named after you. That’s such a beautiful thing. Then to further connect with their son and take him out to dinner, whatever it is like that is such a life full circle moment that I feel has to feel good. I think, in life, whatever we’re pursuing, if you can create those moments where they overlap, right? They cross generations, that is really beautiful and very commendable, my friend. So congrats on that, man. What a beautiful journey.

Vince Vitiello: If I could just mention one of the stories. We keep talking about business leaders, and for the most part, a lot of business leaders today in larger companies are not multicultural, though it’s getting better. So the book approaches, “Hey, you’re not a diverse person. Here’s how to get into the markets.” Just this week, I was in Houston. I addressed a group of 50 business owners that are Hispanic Americans. So I was a little cautious about, “Well, I’m going to teach these guys, how to get into the market, meanwhile, they’re in the market.” I presented the seven steps. So a lot of these folks are at first base with their business, or maybe second base.

Going through the seven steps with them, and showing them how to get really explode their business, utilizing social media, immersing themselves in the market, and developing a business plan. It also resonates with groups that are multicultural. They really look to American business owners on how to grow their businesses. That’s what they really love. That’s why they came to our country is because of the education and the leadership. I think there’s a place also for not just the large business that is run by a non-diverse person. There’s also a place for the small businesses that are popping up all across the US.

By the way, in Houston, 44% of the market, 44% of the 2.8 million people are of Hispanic origin. 48% of them, nearly half of them, Spanish is their primary language. Just imagine you’re a business, and you’re approaching that market as if they’re a mainstream market. They’re really not. They are the new mainstream market in the Hispanic world, but that’s not the mainstream typical market that American companies would market to.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, that is so powerful, because in thinking that way, right? It’s the reshaping of our thinking that can help us really connect and make bridges and build bridges and in that way and how you teach these seven steps, it’s actually really powerful. Again, why I highly recommend this read because you’re right, man. This is the future of how we see ourselves and where we see America moving toward, right? We live in a very diverse environment. We have to think about that, not only, how we present ourselves in our marketing material, of course, but how does our culture reflect that? How does the inner workings of our company reflect that?

Our actual employees are people leading other people and having those conversations and approaching things with sensitivity with a lens of culture, with a lens of appreciation. It’s a different approach. It’s a very thoughtful approach. I’m grateful that I got to peruse your book, and hopefully get through it this weekend, because I didn’t want to put it down, because it’s so powerful.

Vince Vitiello: Hussein, you had mentioned that this is where the country is moving towards, but what are the things that I mentioned in the book, in the ten largest US cities today, multicultural is already the majority. If your business does business in Los Angeles and San Francisco, in Phoenix, or Philadelphia, or New York or Miami, don’t think of this as an emerging market. This is already the market. This is the market.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right. Right. Yeah. I love that. It’s whether you know it or not, this is what’s happening around you. How you choose to navigate. I guess that’s what I mean, by moving forward in that direction. Is that, yeah, the water’s already there, choose what boat you want to get on. You know what I mean? Like just that, it’s the moving forward of how you think. I appreciate that man, because it all starts with how we see ourselves in the marketplace and what our value is in that marketplace. That’s really powerful. When the reader picks up your book and begins to read through it. I know there’s going to be many people who are going to be impacted by this. What do you hope they feel after putting it down?

Vince Vitiello: I guess, I hope they feel two things. First, the opportunity. I think most people already know that there’s an opportunity. So for some people, if they’re already there, I think the second step would be, “Hey, this ain’t that difficult.” It’s not as easy as creating a brochure, but I hope that they feel that this is a great opportunity. Now I have a step-by-step approach to how to do it. I helped to feel excited about it. Most people, when I talk about these markets, and what I do, they’re always intrigued by it, because there aren’t many marketing companies that actually do this. I hope you feel excited about it and get ready to start it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Very powerful. Vince, thank you for sharing your stories, and your experiences with me, and our audience today, as well. The book is called Diversity Means Dollars: 7 Simple Steps to Capitalize on the Changing Marketplace. Besides checking out the book, my friend. Where can people find you?

Vince Vitiello: They could find me at vince@newamericamarketing.com.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I’m sure you’re on LinkedIn, as well. I know you’re a social media person.

Vince Vitiello: I am on LinkedIn.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful. So we can reach out there and connect. You guys. Thank you so much for listening. My friend Vince, thank you for coming on the show. Appreciate your expertise. Your time, of course honored today to have met yet another immigrant in the world doing beautiful and amazing things. Thanks again and perhaps to your father, man. I know I said, when I was reading your story, it really reminded me of my father and the hard work they put forth. Hats off to them.

Vince Vitiello: Thank you, Hussein. I do appreciate it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Thank you, brother. Appreciate you.

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Work conflict can be frightening as employers have more power than employees. When problems arise with no apparent solutions, it can feel like you, the employee, have no leverage to resolve them.

Welcome back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and my next guest is Alan Crone, who is here to talk about his newest book, The Law at Work: A Legal Playbook for Executives and Professionals. Let’s get into it.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. I’m here with my friend, Alan Crone who just launched a book that’s kind of amazing. It’s very niche but I love it because it’s for people that really need to know, The Law at Work. My friend Alan, thank you for joining me today, I really appreciate you.

Alan G. Crone, Esq: Oh, it’s my pleasure Hussein, it’s great to be here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man, this is great. So you’ve put, I would say, like a lifetime’s worth of energy, resources, and of course, wisdom into this book in trying to help executives and professionals with the legality of things around work of course but before we get into all that in the book and all those great things that you’ve been up to, I kind of want to go back in time and share with our audience a little bit about, sort of who you are, where you grew up and perhaps, maybe a person that you looked up to the most or someone that inspired you to get on this path that you’re on.

Alan G. Crone, Esq: Okay, love to talk about that. My favorite subject is myself.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love it. So yeah, please share. Anything you want to tell us about growing up and what that was like for you?

Alan G. Crone, Esq: Well, I live in Memphis, Tennessee. My family has lived in and around Memphis for about four or five generations, which for Memphis is a long time. I love my hometown, as I said, you ask about whom I looked up to and you know, there are a lot of people. I’ll tell you one person that I really look up to is my mother, Dotty Crone.

She was an art teacher as I was growing up and one thing that she really did for my sister and me was to introduce us to the arts, introduce us to history. She loved to tell us stories, historical stories, and growing up, I think that’s what gave me my fascination and appreciation for the arts, whether it’s going to an art gallery or going to the theater.

I was a theater major for a brief period of time in college and I stopped being a theater major when I was on a date. My date said, “Theater major? How are you going to make any money at that?” and I had to admit, she had a little bit of a point.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, they all have a point.

Alan G. Crone, Esq: Yeah but that’s what kind of propelled me towards Law because I’m a trial lawyer by training and at heart. I love the courtroom, I love the drama of a courtroom. I also learned a long time ago that if there’s a trial going on, it’s probably because somebody didn’t do their job. So that has also inspired me to look for ways to avoid the courtroom, ironically.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s really powerful actually to think about, and the fact that you said that the drama of the courtroom, all those kinds of things but that kind of led you to a higher understanding of it all in the sense that yeah, somebody may or may not be doing their job correctly. So you go through college, and after this date, did you end up staying with this lady? I got to know, like what happened?

Alan G. Crone, Esq: That particular lady, no. I did not. I soon, I’ll say, re-met my current wife. We met while we were both in college. We actually met while we were in high school doing musical theater at the time, she was dating someone else and I was studying to be a catholic priest. So, romance was not foremost in my mind at that point. My wife and I started dating in college after we did another show together and we went to law school together and got married, in our second and third years of law school and the rest is history.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s amazing. How beautiful. Well, I got to tell you, my wife is a theater major and she’s a stage manager.

Alan G. Crone, Esq: Oh great, I did some of that.

Making the Language of Law ApproachableHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man, so it’s really cool to be around all the theater people. I myself, I’m an artist as well, the graphics and all that kind of stuff. I love that your mother inspired you in that direction to at least, in a way appreciate it, in a way value it as a part of our culture and society. I think that’s just beautiful.

It doesn’t really matter what you end up doing, I think any profession is an art form in how we embrace it, study it, learn about it, and get better at it. I think that’s a craft in of itself and in your case, it seemed to have shifted into law and the ideas behind it and of course, going further and where Law is taking place which is especially in work environments, which led you to this sort of work.

So let’s talk about that a little bit, what inspired you to not only write this book but what do you hope readers take away from it? That’s I think the biggest goal when we’re talking about books at Scribe is what we want people to take away from our books. But, law at work is very complex.

It’s very… I feel like, it’s very deep from my understanding and I’m looking at it from a very surface level, I have nothing to do with that world. It seems very complicated but can you share a little bit about that, what inspired you to write this book specifically? Who do you want to help?

Alan G. Crone, Esq: I’ll tell you, to answer that question, I first got to tell you why I love employment law, why it’s my passion. It’s because it’s about people. Now, at the heart of any legal issue is people. I don’t care if you’re talking about tax law or anything you think is the driest form of law, at the end of the day, it’s all about people.

But employment law really is all about people and when you think about it, your relationship with your employer is the most important relationship you have outside of your significant other, your married partner or your life partner, or whatever situation you’re in. Not only is it an important relationship but it’s, without putting too fine a point on it, it’s a life-sustaining relationship and the law surrounding employment law as you say are very complex.

So what I wanted to do with this book and what I hope people take away from this book is an understanding of how the law works in a way that’s very approachable. I tried to write it in a very approachable way. You don’t have to be a lawyer to understand this. In fact, lawyers may read it and be a little frustrated with it because it’s not exactly the way lawyers are used to talking about things.

But I wanted to write it so that an executive or a professional person who has a legal issue with their employer and doesn’t feel comfortable going to HR or going to their own company lawyer will have a starting place to understand some really important issues about discrimination or restrictive agreements they may have signed or other issues that we often don’t know who to turn to.

So this isn’t an end-all and be-all book, it gets everybody started and thinking about things that maybe they haven’t thought about before.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that so much. Navigating your book, as you said is very digestible, it’s very easy to read. It’s like, I don’t want to say, common language but it is common language in the sense that yeah, it may not make sense to a lot of lawyers because their level of knowledge, of course, and their expertise is way beyond mine.

But as you said, if I’m looking at something that I really need help in and I’m maybe timid or fearful or whatever, I need something to look towards and look into, this is actually very helpful. So can you discuss a little bit of the key insights of this theme in exploring your book and how it relates to the workplace today?

I mean, in the sense that law is of course the most powerful component that moves our world forward but here it is, at the very thing that keeps my livelihood going, right? And how it plays is something I don’t even really think about that often. To a degree, I do of course, but, can you talk to us a little bit about those key insights?

Alan G. Crone, Esq: Well, I think one insight that I hope people have in reading this book is that as I said before, your work relationships are human relationships. In the United States, the American worker, whether they’re a janitor or the CEO of a company, has very, very few rights. Legal rights but so much of your survival and advancement in the workplace is about how well you can deal with other people and manage relationships.

And we talk about that a lot in the book and try to separate legal protections from simple protections of those relationships that, that a person can execute on their own, and if you’re talking to a lawyer about your working relationship, you’re probably not going to be able to salvage that on your own and so what I hope people can do is read this book and have some tools on how to interact with their bosses or coworkers in such a way that they don’t need to go hire a lawyer.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so beautiful because it kind of leads me to my next sort of area, which is this idea of almost preventing the whole thing to begin with. What tools, what kind of actions, and what kind of behaviors are beneficial to me to do or not do at work?

I feel like from the basis of just morale, from the basis of those kinds of things, and understanding other people in relationships is of course the vital key. Around those topics, what would you say is the most misunderstood thing when it comes to employment law in that general vicinity?

Alan G. Crone, Esq: Well, I think the most misunderstood aspect of the law is that there’s very little protection. Most States in the union have the employment-at-will doctrine, which means that you can be fired at any time for any reason or no reason. There’s no law against being a bad boss, a bad business person, or making arbitrary decisions.

Now, from a legal standpoint, what a company can’t do is fire or discipline someone for illegal reasons. Their membership in a protected category such as age or race or color or sex, those sorts of things, or for engaging in certain protected activities such as blowing the whistle on illegal activity.

That’s a pretty narrow playing field and so just about every other interaction that you have, kind of comes down to, we have a whole chapter in the book on office politics. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat down with people in a consultation and heard their story and essentially, had to say to them, “Well, what you got is, you got some office politics here. We’re going to have to figure out a way for you to navigate those and there may not be any way to avoid a separation. What we can do is try to make that separation on your terms.”

I think, changes in circumstances and in workplaces that maybe are subtle or even sudden often are sources of conflict and people look to a legal remedy when they really don’t have one. And sometimes, the best move is to start looking for another job before the situation goes sideways and we help people through that because oftentimes people feel reluctant to go to the company’s HR department or legal team.

They’re concerned about the company’s reaction to their situation. So it’s not unusual for people to come to us looking for advice for non-legal situations and the book has some chapters on that for people to be able to devise their own strategies based on the situation in front of them.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Can you talk us through a little bit about, maybe a story that you may have that can share a little bit of what comes up often for you? As I understand, office politics is one thing. What’s something that you have come across quite a bit and there is a behavior shift or a change that one needs to think about in pursuing X, Y, or Z, whatever that thing may be?

Can you share maybe a story or something like that where someone came to you and you advised them on sort of changing something, their shift, maybe that internal shift that they need to do, perhaps see a therapist? I don’t know what it may be, right? What does that story look like? Because I’m sure, there are countless incidents where people feel like they need a lawyer to help them out through things but what’s the thing that comes up the most for you?

Alan G. Crone, Esq: There’s a… as you say, there are lots of variations. A common theme these days is either a company has changed the way it approaches its business for whatever reason or there is a leadership change in the organization that affects a particular employee and all of a sudden, the way we’ve always done things is no longer acceptable, you know?

Sometimes, there is a racial or sexist or ageist intention behind it but more often, it’s just a difference of opinion, the company has decided to go a different direction or your supervisor of 19 years leaves and is replaced by a new person who has new ideas and maybe innovative ideas, and I see that kind of result in retaliation claims because the employee decides to push back because they think the way things had been done is fine or preferable or maybe more ethical than the new strategies.

And that’s when it’s not a bad idea to talk to somebody about it and get a feel for whether or not you’re overreacting or you really do have something because often, the difference between one person’s unethical behavior and another person’s innovation can be very, very thin and if you’re not, in most states, if you’re not complaining about illegal activity and certain ethical issues may not be legal issues, that difference of philosophy can be a problem.

What I always counsel people to do there is — you got to ask yourself, “Okay, is this something I can adjust to and accept and adopt? It may not be the way I think it ought to be done but can I adopt the way my supervisor wants me to do it?” and if the answer is yes, then she’s the boss or he’s the boss — you got to do what they want to do as long as it’s not illegal. If the answer is no to that question, I just can’t adapt to that, then you need to start looking for another job because that situation isn’t going to change just because you want it to change.

We can work together. I can work with the client to determine if it’s an illegal action or just a difference of opinion and it’s not the worst thing in the world to go out and get another job, go out and find another situation. Often times my clients, I can think of one client in particular, who about six months later, called me up and said, “You know, I left ABC company and I’m now at Acme and I like the people better, I like the process better, it’s a better fit for me, I wish I had done this five years ago.”

And sometimes, just that reluctance we all have to change, to hold us back and hold us in a bad situation whereas if we just kind of let go and embrace that change, whether it’s the internal change or “I’m just going to go and do something different or go do what I’m doing now but someplace else,” it’s scary but it can be very beneficial in the long haul.

Finding The SolutionHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I love that because, ultimately, a lot of these choices are bound to sometimes, fears, and the biggest fear we have obviously as human beings — is the fear of change especially when we got our ducks in a row, right? We don’t want to rearrange those things.

So I love that you brought that to the table because as you said earlier if people are doing their job correctly, they probably wouldn’t be in the courtroom, you know? And I love that approach because sadly, the general consensus on what it means to have a lawyer, what it means all those kinds of things is that you not only avoid the courtroom of course but avoid taxes and avoid this and avoid that, right?

There are so many different components but when you simplify it from your perspective, which I feel like is a very human perspective of saying, “Hey look, let’s avoid that whole thing altogether” maybe think about some things that maybe it is time for you to move on, maybe it is time for you to find a place that for me — I’ll be honest with you, this is such a beautiful conversation because for me, for the longest time, I graduated architecture.

I tried to get a job in that world, didn’t happen. I started a business, and so on and so forth, all great things but what I love the most is I’m a Muslim. I’m not the most practicing Muslim in the world but there are times where I lean into my prayer, I lean into my fasting, I lean into just my cultural heritage things.

However, there are many places in the world, especially in the United States where doing those kinds of things at work is just not even thought about, not even… you know what I mean? Not even considered and so working with Scribe, not only is that provided, there’s a space for it and all those kinds of things but it’s also welcomed.

And so just having that mentality of like, who I am is welcomed here has made me feel a hundred times better, it made me feel like, “Oh man, I should have been looking for this type of work environment that allows for my religious freedoms to not judged” — rather welcomed is a good thing to think about and there are many companies out there that have those values, you know?

And I think when we are put in a place where we have to go to legal counsel and you are sitting in front of me saying, “Hey Hussein, maybe it is time for you to think about X, Y or Z” and I just love that because it’s not like, “Oh yeah, let’s go sue them if they do this.” It is not rigid and constructed negatively, it’s very positive.

So I just want to say, that I just appreciate your line of vision. It sounds very human. What do you think contributes to that? What do you think is kind of unique about your law firm? It sounds like that you really want to amplify the human persona overtaking things to a very serious unneeded territory of more lawyers, more courtrooms, all those kinds of things.

Alan G. Crone, Esq: Well, I think at the Crone Law Firm, one of the things that we do is we try to solve a problem and sometimes the only solution is you got to sue somebody, you got to fight for your beliefs, that sort of thing. One way that I think that a person can avoid these situations is whether you are hiring someone or whether you’re looking for another job, to figure out in that job interview you can what the company’s mission is and how well-articulated the mission is.

If the company does decision-making based on whether the particular action furthers the mission of the company, then it shouldn’t matter whether someone is a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, black, white, young, old, all those things — if you as an employee can contribute towards achieving the mission and all of the decisions are made based on that, then everybody’s going to know where they stand.

But all too often in situations where, frankly, the company is liable whether I am representing them or an executive or whomever I might be representing, where the company isn’t really focused on its mission. They start to make decisions for a lot of sometimes crazy, sometimes inappropriate ways and that includes how to discipline, who to discipline and so forth and if your coworkers or your boss has spent more time talking about each other or engaging in drama that does not further the mission, then that’s a pretty good indication that it’s not a great place to work from a moral standpoint and it probably isn’t a great place to work for your career because you are going to get involved in all of these side discussions that really don’t have any productive effect.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So yeah, this is great, man. I just appreciate your very humble approach to all of this. It sounds incredible. How would you say this book, and this conversation, leads and contributes to the larger conversation about workplace rights and responsibilities? What do you hope the impact of the book will be on this sort of ongoing overall conversation especially in recent times, right?

With COVID and the tension that we all know and feel, how do you feel this book kind of contributes to that?

Alan G. Crone, Esq: Well first and foremost, I wanted to write a book that people could understand what the law is and what the law isn’t. We talk about antidiscrimination laws, we talk about restricted covenants, and agreements like non-compete or non-solicit agreements. We talk about electronic information and how to handle confidential information.

I tried to write a book in such a way that if you are an executive and you’re having to manage people, you can learn from this how not to make mistakes and either intentionally or unintentionally to illegally discriminate but if you feel like you’re the victim of discrimination, you can read this and get a little bit of a better idea on whether or not you have legal recourse or if you have to engage in some non-legal self-help.

So that’s the first thing, I wanted to write something that was approachable, that explained the law in non-legal terms so that it would be useful and then I think the other thing is that one of the themes that pervade in the book is what I said about the mission. Most of the disagreements or disputes or snafus or whatever you want to call them that I see when I’m working with clients, 99% of them are all about communication and a lack of transparency.

I think the American manager isn’t trained very well in constructive confrontation and I’ll give you an example. This is a story from the book that I think surprises a lot of people. I had a fellow come see me about 15 years ago. An African-American guy, he was probably 60 and he had been working for this same company for, at that point, I think, 25 or 30 years and he was a manager, kind of supervisor, of a work crew.

He habitually would show up 15 to 25 minutes late every day for 30 years. He gets a new supervisor and the new supervisor comes to him and says, “Look, you got to be here on time. You are 15 minutes late. If you are late one more time, I’m going to fire you.” Well, he was late. He gets fired, he comes to see me and he tells me this story, a little bit longer than the way I just told it to you and he said, “You know, it’s got to be because I’m black or old.”

I said, “Why?” he says, “Well, I’ve been late every day for the last 30 years and it didn’t make a difference, what changed? Nothing changed, so therefore it must be because I’m black.” I understand where he’s coming from, old man, but they didn’t sit down and explained to him why this change was being instituted, why it was important for him to be on time and there were some other managers who weren’t given the same kind of scrutiny.

Which gave us a little more leverage on the situation than we might have ordinarily had. We’re able to resolve that dispute but I think if this manager had sat down and said, “Look, I’m new and it’s really important for me, for us to start the morning strong and want you here 15 minutes early so that you can get your crew ready to go and we can be productive,” I know exactly what he would have said but I think the outcome would have been a lot different.

Then just for the first time after 30 years saying, “Hey, you were late. You need to show up on time tomorrow or you’re fired.” So that’s an example of the manager not really understanding how to constructively confront this man on his tardiness and why it was important for him not to be tardy. I’m not saying that he should continue to tolerate that but there is a way to make that happen so that the other man doesn’t believe he’s being discriminated against and go and see a lawyer.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful because that really brings the book to full circle in the sense that this is how accessible the language is in the book, you guys, to our audience, whose people out there that struggle with all kinds of things. Whether you own your own company or working for someone else of course, these are very tough conversations and they’re hard to bring up with our managers and the people that we feel like, in many cases, feel like we should be taking care of by them.

But when they approach our situation a little differently or we feel a little differently, yeah, it’s going to get you to know, confrontational. It may get obvious, when we get to sit down with some lawyers but obviously, there are so many things that I highly agree with, that most managers unfortunately are not trained in communication very well. They are promoted, they’re called accidental managers, and they just kind of got bumped up.

Not that you know, it’s to degrade those people that are in those positions by any means. It’s that they are not — really trained to take on a group of people and even their higher-ups and learn how to be transparent on both ends sort of like a double-edged sword but I’m glad that people have found you in ways that they have and I’m glad you’re able to help them with solutions that are direct while almost being educational, which is why I feel like you wrote such an incredible book because you’re able to take these conversations and break them down into bite-sized pieces so that we can understand where our rights are and where they are not and that’s so powerful.

So Alan, my friend, it’s been an honor sitting down with you and getting to know you today. I learned so much, truly. Every time I’m on an episode like this, I learned so much and today was no different. So thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences with our audience as well. The book is called, The Law at Work: A Legal Playbook for Executives and Professionals. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Alan?

Alan G. Crone, Esq: If you Google Alan Crone, Attorney, Memphis, you’ll get more information than you probably want but my website is cronelawfirmplc.com.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful. Well, thanks again, Alan. It’s an absolute pleasure having you on the show, my friend.

Alan G. Crone, Esq: My pleasure, Hussein, it was good to talk to you. I’ll see you around campus.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love it, man. Thank you.

The post The Law at Work: Alan G. Crone, Esq. appeared first on Author Hour.

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Fear is a vicious cycle. Guilt, shame, and blame imprisons your joy and innate sense of worthiness. Exploring beliefs and personal narratives through the lens of morale is a pragmatic way to break the cycle of fear and initiate virtuous cycles of love.

Welcomed back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by author, Violetta Jean, who is here to talk about her newest book called Morale Matters. Let’s flip through it.

Hello friends, and welcome back to the Author Hour show. I’m super excited today because I get to have, not only a guest but a friend. Her name is Violetta, and she is here to share with us her beautiful intimate book of a journey about the ideology of morale and how that impacts our lives in so many unique ways. Violetta, thank you so much for joining me today, I really appreciate your time.

Violetta Jean: Oh, thank you, it’s my pleasure.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. So I watched you start with Scribe, obviously early on at the very beginning, and this book is a beautiful manifestation of these things and these journeys that you’ve gone through. From the beginning, it was really beautiful to see you pour your heart into it in the sense that I really want to create this for my children, and I just found that very profound and powerful.

But before we get into the book and all the amazing things that you share, I would love to give our audience perhaps a little bit of a background, maybe where you grew up, someone that inspired you while you were growing up and perhaps led you on this journey or maybe you pointed yourself in that journey. But in any case, I’d love to know a little bit of your background.

Violetta Jean: Ah, well, I had a childhood where I moved around quite a bit, which was a lot of fun. Actually, for me, I didn’t find it terribly difficult. I was born in the South, in Florida, and lived in Georgia, Tennessee, and then moved up to Wisconsin and then back down to Florida. So I’ve lived a lot of places. The west coast, the Washington State, I’m in New England now, and it’s been quite a journey.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. That’s amazing. So when would you say someone came along and perhaps inspired you to, you know, move in the direction that you, whether got into the type of work you got into or just inspired you, somewhere along your journey?

Violetta Jean: Yeah, I think, my first interest when I was a young woman was in psychology, and I’ve always been kind of drawn to just understanding the human experience and seeking joy, this much joy and health and you know, wholeness in the human experience as possible, and I got my undergrad in psychology and did a little bit of work with different groups and ended up going back to school for nursing.

I was very drawn to that field as well, incredible experiences as an ER nurse and ended up working as a research nurse, which was really fun, and then my children started coming along. I have three children and was very involved in that raising them. They were quite close together, and the point where they kind of, were becoming a little bit more independent, having a little more free time in terms of my focus, this inner artist kind of came back to life that had been really very silent since I was a young child.

So I just was born singing, I love music. Yeah, the inner artist kind of started coming back, and I started writing in a different way and writing music as well and journaling that kind of led to this book actually, just you know, trying to find that joy, that wholeness in life that I think we’re all seeking.

The Necessity of Morale and Rediscovering Who You AreHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that so much. I’m glad you took us there because it kind of starts to bring us into the book a little bit, and that journey in and of itself of the different chapters throughout life, right? As we phase in and out of the things that we are passionate about, there lies dormant the inner artist ever so wondering when the time will come, right?

And I think, I can totally relate to that on so many levels, you have no idea. I deeply resonated with your book in so many components, especially when it came to fear, when it came to love and how we transcend, I guess, or build a bridge between the two, and you talk about that so beautifully.

I love this topic very much because my next book that I’m working on now is about these ideas of creative fields, and I’m excited to talk about this, except for I want to frame sort of what your book is concentrated around, how you use this tool of morality and morals and just morale in general but how you frame it and bring it into context is actually beautiful.

So could you share with me and the audience how do you define that frame of morale?

Violetta Jean: Yeah, I feel like I have to start that question with kind of what led me to being so fascinated with morale. It was a response to just seeing a lot of despair around me, which I kind of consider the state of just the absence of morale are just critically low, low as a morale. Again, morale being cheerful, confident, engagement with the sacred work of living and just as a mother, it’s very concerning to hear stories of children and young adults and people of all ages who are struggling so much with despair.

So it kind of just led me to get really clear for myself, how do we find joy in daily life, you know? How do we accomplish what it is we’re trying to do with our lives, our purpose in everything, and the term morale is kind of developed and this really began to represent this whole thing that I was seeking. It’s just such a simple concept. I think it’s pretty easy to recognize in oneself and others and in groups, and I love the concept because it speaks to the spirit and the presence of something much deeper than what we’re seeing on the surface.

I think we are able to hear someone’s voice or see somebody’s posture or just be in the presence of somebody and can sense that spark, that presence of morale or the absence. So I guess as a mom, I just, I know what it’s like when there’s just really not a lot of joy in your days and you’re kind of just going along and not building your life around that value of just the human dignity of being able to enjoy this experience of life and being engaged and feeling like you’re contributing.

You know, that confidence piece that you’re contributing, and you know what you’re trying to do, and you feel like able to move forward in the ways that you want to and grow and evolve, and so that was really the beginning of the journey. Just recognizing that I needed to have that worked out just for my own benefit but as a mom, also to be able to demonstrate that and hopefully teach that to my kids that that is what we’re here for, to feel good and feel joy and to be engaged with life.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that is so powerful, and it’s so timely. I feel like, like you say in your book, because, I feel like the world around us feels that way sometimes, right? It’s in a place of despair and it’s, we want to help, and we went to do all these things, but also it’s extremely tiring and extremely exhausting to just think about the endless things that happen around us and the things that we can’t control.

However, we do control things, and that’s our state of mind, how we react and respond to things and create the space, but from that, what kind of actions do we take? What kind of example are we setting, whether we know it or not and as a mother, that I feel like that pressure is, I don’t know, probably tenfold in the sense that your kids are not only needing your for sustenance but also needing you for guidance in some way shape or form especially the very early age sort of compass.

And so this journey of morale starts to take you from one place to another, but so you sort of reintroduced, I guess, a piece of you that’s art, and then you introduce motherhood, and all of these things start to, of course, in many ways, for me, it was fear. Fear has always plagued me in the sense of wanting to fit in, growing up in America, you know, all these things.

So it plays a weird role in how I go about living life, but it wasn’t until I even noticed that it was there that I started seeking out ways to help myself reframe that. What was that like for you? What was that journey of sort of perhaps uncovering some of those fears and realizing how to navigate it?

Violetta Jean: I resonate with the feeling that you don’t even know it’s there. It just feels like who you are, this is your life, this is what it’s always going to be like, this is what it feels like to be you, yourself as a person. It’s hard to recognize that fear is really a filter, it’s this filter made of all these beliefs, and so many times, limiting beliefs that we pick up along the way about what we can do, what we deserve, what we’re worthy of.

It takes a lot of courage to start to look at that because I think we try to avoid things that are painful to look at, but it’s the only way to just kind of realize that they’re story, their beliefs, they’re just that… we are entitled to with the creativity and imagination that we’re born with, our intelligence, to create that story on purpose and create the story that supports. You know, the word I use is, supports the morale that I want to live in.

I want it to be cheerful and engaged and confident, and yeah. I think that’s the way I go about dealing with fear. Love and fear, everything. They say there’s only two emotions, love and fear, and it’s funny, the word fear. I think a lot of people don’t recognize that they actually are in fear. They think it’s, “Oh, I’m just anxious about this” or “You know, I’m just… this situation is overwhelming” or “This person says something unkind.”

So many different names for it, and then just depending on how you name it, that decides if you feel like you have any control over it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful. I love this so much. I can’t even — again, I can’t even tell you because it’s something that obviously we all struggle with. This is the — I’ll go there for a second if you don’t mind like — what the Prophet Mohammed said that the biggest holy war is our internal war, is our internal dialog, right? And that’s the holiest of the battles, right? Because it’s the one that we technically have to try to win every day, and you ruin that every day by practicing morality.

By practicing ethical behavior, right? And of course, no one’s perfect, right? These are all things that we’re seeking to get better at in different ways, and everyone comes to it in a different way. However, I strongly believe that art bridges the two, and it starts to make the two at least, talk to one another, to understand one another, and I think we fear what we don’t understand and we don’t understand fear, you know what I mean?

Like I didn’t understand it ‘till like, you know, my late 20s, maybe early 30s, which is like a really long time not to know something so huge as a part of you. Like, I just… like, where, who, why am I not been taught this, you know? But that’s not for people to teach you. It’s for you to understand and unfold because it’s the hardest thing to even recognize that there’s something off or something that’s not moving you in the right direction.

For me, I’m reframing it as my warrior, and this is kind of how I talk about it in my book. There’s like a bodyguard, but we have completely misunderstood, miseducated, and mis-trained this amazing billion-dollar soldier that we don’t use wisely for these battles, right? And so it’s like that retraining, which I love. So you have a very sort of… so many moments in your book that really drew me in and hooked me.

But you talked about that power of not only imagine but, you know, the impactful moments where you reclaimed the innocence, and you know, find this inner worthiness, which is so profound for me. Can you sort of take us there a little bit and for you, when those kind of moments happened where you sort of rediscovered these components of you, I guess if you will. Re-establish them so that you could build that confidence, I guess.

Violetta Jean: The way I would describe it — and to sound like I’m not answering your question right away, but I feel like we’re all involved in this, you know — I would describe it as a sacred evolution. Like any plant, we are striving to grow, and we encounter these situations where we feel stuck, feel this desire, this kind of innate need to keep growing and developing.

But there is something that is making that painful or difficult or seemingly impossible, and I think those are the moments that you really come face to face with your fears, with the limiting beliefs because that is what holds us back from becoming, and being, expressing who we want to be.

I would say that just kind of my personality and kind of just, you know, messages we receive in the world as I really trusted that the methods of fear were what was going to help me become who I wanted to be and express what I wanted to express, you know?

It’s like this message of, be hard, be judged, judging yourself and your actions, and if you just keep on doing that long enough, then all of a sudden, you’re going to break though and some happy and, you know, loving and joyful and I was just… really as a mother, I wanted to be a perfect mother, and that is, in and of itself fear, you know?

And so it was a hundred percent trusting fear to be a better mother, to be a better person, to be a better spouse, all the things, and it just got to the point where I could see that that was really not working because it’s using that kind of tool on yourself to become what you’re trying to become.

It’s really the opposite of what we need to open up our hearts and thrive and be loving and joyful with our kids and just show them that life is this incredible experience, difficult and hard and incredible, exquisite, joyful, beautiful at the same time and so that’s just kind of motherhood is really what was a strong enough motivation for me to confront my fearful beliefs.

My relationship with just believing that fear would keep me safer, fear would motivate me to be what I wanted to do, to be what I wanted to be and do what I wanted to do. So with motherhood, I know I didn’t want to teach my kids that, like 100% not. It’s just, you know, it led to very low morale.

I felt not a lot of joy, I didn’t feel confident that I was being who I wanted to be or that what I was doing was leading me towards where I wanted to go, and so that was the experience for me personally that it was enough of a – it was just too important to keep going in that direction, and I needed to find a new way to be.

Moving from Fear to LoveHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful, and you sort of started showing that energy, of course, into the understanding of morale and sort of how it uplifts us and brings us to this new plane of, I guess, existing in the sense of, this is a place or a platform that I can see my day-to-day actions in a positive way and let go of the sort of, I guess in my perspective and how I read things was that sort of let go of the controlling aspects as much I can, which is like surrendering.

Then allowing whatever to happen, happen, and I will get better at reacting and responding in ways that are more aligned with the ideals of morality or the ones that I want to move forward with. I think that’s so powerful because it puts that choice in your hands, and as you start to kind of build this bridge or this transfer of energy if you will from fear to love, what happens? What was happening in your life?

What were you creating? Can you describe that a little bit? How you sort of, I guess, you can’t fully shift everything from fear to love, right? There’s got to be a balance, but in your — I guess to shift the weight back a little bit to create a balancing sort of effect, if you will, for you, what was the day-to-day…? I am not trying to talk about like hacks or anything like that, but what were you starting to do differently that was starting to manifest in reality, that inner world, external world, what was happening there?

Violetta Jean: It was kind of interesting as, you know, there was a collection of stories that I had heard on the news, and then something kind of near and dear to me happened that really just brought my focus in to, this is the most important thing in your family right now is to figure out how to live more joyfully and really see more of the sacred in this experience of life and to see more of the sacred and who we are as human beings, you know?

It really was an intentional decision to stop and reassess and just kind of look at my own energy and my own thoughts and my own beliefs and everything, and the funny thing is that as soon as you kind of bring your awareness, awareness is just so tremendously powerful. You bring your awareness to what it is that you’re doing, and you can recognize how inefficient it is.

So I had made this decision, and I started to write the book kind of just to if something was to happen to me and my kids were on their own, what would I need them to know about making it through hard times? What would I need them to know about how precious they are or how much I love them? What would I need them to know? So that was just my focus, and my attention was moving to this kind of really powerfully loving states.

The book really is kind of flowed from there, and I kind of realized somewhere along the line that I was basically being drawn to like leave this container of unconditional love for my children that they could come to it, whatever something happened to them or they’ve done something or whatever the situation is where they are experiencing this hard times that innocence is still possible. And to me, innocence is just a state of being in relationship with love where you’re not drawing yourself outside of the circle of love for any reason, and it is available every second of the day, it is completely independent of what’s happened to you or what you’ve done because it’s just, it’s always an option to turn towards love and to be nurtured and just return to innocence. That’s where in my opinion — I wrote the subtitle of the book is revealing because I think that these things are naturally there when we’re free, when we’re in a loving state, when fear doesn’t really have us trapped or held in some kind of an unhappy place and energy of I think our — I truly believe that our natural state is a joy of being alive, just experiencing everything and what was kind of interesting is unexpected, I’ll tell you, is what happened with just kind of releasing a lot of like just out of knowing like they honestly get into the point where I don’t trust fear to make me a better mother.

I fundamentally believe that the ways of love are going to get me where I want to go, and it’s just gradual process because we’re holding on, we’re using excessive force and pressure and judgment and blame and guilt. All these things that we’d use, it’s a little bit of a process to start letting those go and start trusting just kind of your own nature, you know? Your own beautiful desires and goals and just, you know, trusting all that to unfold with the energy of love.

So as I did that, it was releasing limiting beliefs. I was kind of becoming much freer. The joy doesn’t – it is not something that I don’t think we have to force. I think it just comes when we’re free, when we’re in innocence, and so from that state, all of a sudden, that’s where my little child was, you know, my little artist, my little singing self was just in there waiting, and she’s like audacious as ever.

She’s like, “Let’s go,” you know? I start writing and singing it, so that was just completely – but it’s beautiful because I don’t think there’s anything better I can do for my kids than to role model me sharing my gifts with the world and having the confidence to pursue my dreams and do that. So that’s a lot of the story that, of course, I used in the book. I believe the sacred bond to my children and my family of origin, and my husband and I don’t want to use details of our, you know, relationships in a book, to me doesn’t feel right. So yeah, that’s kind of how I have illustrated the journey in the book.

Lessons Learned Along the WayHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it is so profound, and I love it because there is again, why I resonate with your story in particular ways. It’s this idea of going from scared or what we think we are scared, right? And turning that into sacred. It is literally the same work, just with some letters moved around, and they both totally have complete emotional responses, right? So I love the word sacred, and I love that you use it so eloquently.

It’s because it’s what we transfer into what we become, that’s the sacred process that we cherish, and I think that’s the thing that we want to pass on is those learned opportunities that are sacred to pass down or pass on, and I feel like when I wrote my first book that those ideas that I was passing on to my nephew, right? Were those things that I felt were sacred to me, right? And how they help me in my challenges, and so I love that because, for me, it just completely resonated.

But this shift from being scared to being in a place where no, this is a non-negotiable. Like when you say something is sacred to someone, that’s like a, “Okay, man, you know that’s ancient,” you know what I mean? Like there’s something very visceral and spiritual and connected to something so you just feel it. Like as soon as somebody says sacred, it is connected to divinity in a way, and it’s hard to describe.

But only you, of course, what’s sacred to you and what’s meaningful to you really comes through, which in your case is the power of morale and why it matters. So what was your favorite part of pulling the book together, and what did you learn from that journey?

Violetta Jean: I think writing this book was definitely a difficult journey. I think the hardest part for me, getting to the point where I valued my voice, what it was I had to say enough to put it out there, just really wrestling with a lot of vulnerability, and that was the hardest part of the journey and so and still, I think I’ve sent out advanced copies to you know, my wonderful family who is of course, very you know, they’re supportive and all of that.

So it’s begun, just people are reading it and just the process of working with everyone at Scribe, that is probably my favorite part is just these other people having this conversation that you know, manuscript is kind of a conversation I think, ideally when you’re entrusting relationship with the people that are going over your work and giving you feedback and asking questions, and I think that’s been the most, you know, the relationships that have formed have been very satisfying.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: What did you learn from that journey? What was your biggest takeaway?

Violetta Jean: What I didn’t expect until I was in it is that, in a way, a book is done when you decide it’s done. I think I thought it would be like as concrete as like going to the store and buying a banana, you know? But it’s like this thing just keeps evolving, and you’re like, “Well, should I put this in, or you know, is this too much?” or “Should I take this out?” or meanwhile, this book was years for me.

I was working on this, and it was the ideas behind it and everything were developing over years, and a very distinct part of my spiritual, mental, emotional journey through life is just figuring out this piece of like how to engage with life from this place of morale of just really putting that above everything else, you know? It is more important than the goals or this or that.

It’s like, how am I experiencing my life? How do I make this what is driving my life and make that be love? So that was like a very profound period, and so for this, the whole time that that was really the focus of my life, this manuscript was there, and it was just growing and changing and going in different directions, and I started writing songs, and it was like, “Should I include the songs in the book?” and all the songs are totally related to what I was going through because they’re like two flowers on the same bunch, so at the same time.

So that was my favorite part, is just like realizing that everything is evolving. There is no done, there’s no end, you know what I’m saying? Like it’s not so concrete that we get to —

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s all interconnected.

Violetta Jean: We get to say, “Okay, I’m done working on this book” because I am kind of just ready to move on from that, that place, and so it was definitely time to just move on.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: One of the hardest things to learn, of course, as an artist to know when it’s time to stop the one thing so you can continue the other thing, right? No, I totally feel you too, like I have painting like crazy. I’ve fallen in love, and sort of that was my thing, the inner child thing that I have avoided for a while was the painting and the graphics and the art, but I did it for a long time, but it was for like business.

I feel like that kind of sucks the joy out of it in some way, shape or form. So canvass painting was my way of sort of communing, and it totally, I mean, in the last year, just a resurgence, and now, it’s like and just like you said, like the singing was complimentary to the writing and vice-versa. I feel like the canvass is contributing to the new writing and vice-versa. It’s like you’re 100 percent right.

When you are in this flow of allowing and going into the sacred, right? Instead of being scared, we really find, yeah, we find some of our self and it’s beautiful to put that in its place in our life, in our daily work. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with me today. I am humbled to have watched your journey unfold literally in front of me through the mediums of Scribe, and I’m so grateful to have been a small part of it in any way, shape, or form.

But it’s so amazing to see the book out in the world and celebrate it and I can’t wait you know, as I know here’s the thing about a book like yours, it gets more timeless as time goes on in that it becomes more valuable for your kids and your family as time goes on because it is such a beautiful archive of time and who you are and there’s nothing better to cherish from our loved ones I feel like than in the sort of encapsulation like a picture does but words really go deeper.

Violetta Jean: Wow, that’s beautiful. That is a beautiful way of saying it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So I commend you. Aw, thank you. Well, that’s how I felt from your book. I just feel like this huge – seriously, I feel so connected to my spirit. It makes me want to just go paint right after this. So again, it’s so inspiring, truly. So if you are listening out there, please, go get my friend’s book. The book is called Morale Matters: The Joy of Revealing Innocence, Empowerment, and Sacred Work in Personal Mythology.

Besides checking out the book on Amazon, where people can find it and buy it, of course, where can people find you and connect with you? Is there a website or something like that that we can connect people to?

Violetta Jean: Sure, I think the simplest way would be to go to my website, violettajean.com, and I have links to my Instagram, is my kind of social media platform of choice. As a busy mom, I am not aiming to keep up five different things, so Instagram is where you’ll find me, and then I also have links to my YouTube channel. I have recordings of my original music as well and a link to buy the book, of course, and can join my newsletter, all from my website, and that’s violettajean.com.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful, I’ll be visiting that right after this. Thank you so much, Violetta, I appreciate you.

Violetta Jean: After you paint, after you get your painting, that little child wants to get out and play.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I promise. Yes, it does and you totally brought it out, so I appreciate it. Thanks again for your time, your energy, and the space that we got to create this beautiful conversation around today. Thank you for all of that, I really appreciate it.

Violetta Jean: My pleasure, and thank you so much, Hussein.

The post Morale Matters: Violetta Jean appeared first on Author Hour.

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Ever heard of Tide Pods? My next guest shares his journey from chemist to entrepreneur and teaches readers the key lessons he’s learned throughout his career, as the primary designer of the global strategies and relationships that enabled this story of successful innovation.

Welcome back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and my next guest is Scott Bening, who is here to talk with me about his newest book, Formulating Solutions: Lessons from an Unexpected Entrepreneurial Journey. Let’s get into it.

Hello my author friends and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m super excited because I have my good friend here, Scott Bening, who just launched an amazing book called Formulating Solutions. Scott, thanks for coming on the show, I’m really excited for this.

P. Scott Bening: I’m excited, too. This is going to be a fun chat.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man, before we get into the book and all the amazing wisdom and knowledge that you got to share and of course, all your stories, I really want to get to our audience a little bit about you and who you are. Perhaps, where you grew up, personal background a little bit, and maybe someone or something that inspired you the most growing up?

The BeginningP. Scott Bening: Well, I grew up in Buffalo, New York. I was born actually in the city of Buffalo and then when I was in fifth grade, I think it was, we moved to the suburbs. We left after our neighborhood started turning the wrong direction and I think my mom, being an educator, wanted us to have a better place to be going to school. So we went to a town called Williamsville, New York.

Which is pretty famous because, I mentioned a football book, Rob Gronkowski went to Williamsville High School. Everybody saw him on TV last night, I think. It’s a beautiful, wonderful area, there’s so many people in Buffalo that have moved away and they all want to come back, that’s because of the people. I didn’t have that desire. I didn’t have that opportunity either with my career growing and going international, I guess, and moving around as I did.

Yeah, I grew up with a mom that was a teacher and a dad that sold insurance and made ends meet as much as he could. And my mom always wanted us to have the best from an education perspective. I have a brother, older brother, and younger sister and she reached the goal of allowing that to happen, and I had a few people that I looked up to as I was growing up, and all I did was wanted to play sports.

I was a football player, a hockey player, any kind of sports, I just love sports. But I also, for some reason when I was in high school, had a connection with chemistry and I think maybe that’s because I had an uncle that was pretty close to me in age that was also a chemist. And he ended up having a very wonderful career at Ashland Chemical and I watched what he was doing, and I think I talked a little bit in the book introduction about that. Hey, he had a Corvette, he had a nice house and I wanted those things.

I wanted to be able to have that kind of a life and be able to make ends meet without a big problem, I guess. And back then, in the 70s, plastics were a big deal and chemistry was a big deal. So I had a push to that and then went to a university that I was able to play sports at Saint Laurence University in Kent, New York, and also was able to excel in chemistry, which those things usually don’t mix very well.

And it was like, chemistry, sports, music, three things that really don’t all jive together, and I was able to pull it off, somehow, with the support of a great family and friends. So went through college, got out in 1981 — if somebody can do the math — and started a career because I had to start paying student loans back right away and I wanted to make money.

I wanted to be on my own and it worked out great. I did some internships and then when I got out of school, I had actually a couple of choices of where I was going to go to work. I went into a laboratory setting for a company called Spencer Kellogg. It was a division of TextRun and I was very lucky because the head of the sales department, for some reason, took a liking to me and asked me if I wanted to become a technical marketing representative.

I remember saying, “What’s that?” It was actually the time in the world, I think, where people were smart in business and many of these technical companies or chemical companies where they thought, “Hey, we don’t need a sales guy to go out and just sell, we need a sales person to be a marketer but also a technologist.” So, you kind of put two or three people inside one.

So I was talking to customers, I wasn’t just talking to a purchasing agent. I was talking to their technology people, their tech service folks, their chemists, and that was the beginning of me trying to develop the career that I had, where I put all these pieces together. So, I was very fortunate we had that opportunity back in the early 80s. One thing led to another, another company here and went to work for Bayer or Mobay, it was called in the US back then.

Today, everybody knows them as Bayer, like Bayer Aspirin. I went into the area of coatings. To the layman, it was paint. But in our world, it was coatings. I mean, I was working on projects where between floor coatings, to bridge coatings, to stealth bomber coatings. You think of everything in the world, just about, today has a coating on it of some sort, and it was very strange.

Because when I went to interview for the job that I got at MonoSol, which is a division of Chris Craft, they were making film, rolls of plastic, dissolvable film. But I realized what they were doing is they were basically making a coating and putting it on a belt and then peeling it off and then rolling it up. It was very much like the coating industry training that I had had for the prior seven or eight years and I kind of fell in love with what I was seeing and I thought, “This is really cool.”

I do remember vividly the first day I went to their manufacturing facility, I made it through the interview, I made it through the talking to the business people and the sales manager, and they were trying to find someone to be a technical marketing head to try to take this tiny little business and do something with it. Well, when I went to the factory, I remember, I probably had a pinstripe blue polyester suit with a three-piece, with a white tie.

And I walked in this factory and it looked like I stepped back into the 50s. Everything was grey, steel case desks, linoleum floor. Looking around, there were secretaries typing away with carbon paper. I’ll never forget thinking, “Wow, I haven’t seen that in a long time.” And they had a little room that had a machine in it and it was a fax machine, they said. They thought, “wow” and I remember asking why there were no computers.

They said, “We don’t have computers, we used to have one in that room but it’s gone, it broke and we don’t use computers here.” And then I toured the factory and had engineer/plant superintendent person looking down at me. Some sales guy coming into this, just a punk kid sales guy but then, I asked a lot of questions about their filmmaking and their defects and I remember, his name was Art Ortega and I remember him, he was a short gentleman.

He looked up at me, he goes, “You know a whole bunch about this stuff, don’t you?” And I said, “Yeah, I do. I know how to formulate these things because I’ve had the experience to do that.” And I always had respect given from him because I wasn’t just a sales guy, if you will. So I went to work there. I remembered going to this factory from where we lived to thinking, “Wow, I’ve driven by this little building for eight or 10 years and I never knew what they did there.”

I remember calling my wife, I had a Ford Taurus but I had a bag phone, for those of you that remember what those bag phones were, and I called her from my car with this bag phone and said, “You know that spot we drove by all the time?” I said, “That’s where I am.” She couldn’t believe it and I ended up taking a job there, it was a chance. My wife was working, she’s also a chemist.

We didn’t have children and it was one of those, “I‘m going to take a flyer here because this looks really fun and I don’t know if I’ll ever get an opportunity like that.” So 30, 34 years later, here I sit, taking a, I guess, guiding is the best word or fostering a company that had a few million dollars of sales with mostly one customer that had nothing to do with the Tide Pods, actually. I know they’re destined to hit a billion in sales pretty soon, I just see it happening.

Tide PodsHussein Al-Baiaty: Well, there’s a lot in the middle of that because I am super-interested. And for those who are just tuning in and listening, I am really excited because this Tide Pod story is an interesting one, you go into this space. So, the Tide Pod thing is one sort of obviously innovation and growth and all those good things.

But then it’s like, the scaling of the company, the partnerships, there’s so many angles to come at this. Growth, intellectual properties, all the things that you mentioned throughout your book, they all come, of course with layers of hardships, but also layers of success and obviously, nothing comes easy.

You work your butt off to help grow the company, but where and when did the Tide Pod, let’s start there, really come to fruition? And then, how did you see that in its global state and what was—let’s start there. Let’s start with the Tide Pods because I think that’s a really powerful story for anyone that is—for me I always thought I wanted to be an inventor when I was a kid.

But I was an artist, and I was always tinkering with things, taking things apart, making them better, whatever. This idea of taking something really simple or what seems really simple is actually really complex. Let’s talk about that for a bit.

P. Scott Bening: Yeah, so I will start and then we’ll go backwards. So 2012, Tide Pods was launched in North America. In 1999, the first single-unit dose, soluble film sachet of detergent was launched in Europe. That was the beginning of testing this type of technology with the consumer and was actually done with a company called Unilever, you know them as Lever Brothers or Unilever now and another company called Robert McBride, who made store brand materials for companies like TESCO and Sainsbury’s and The Big Box or grocery stores over in England.

And before that, the whole decade building up to ‘99, the unit dose concept started to take off little by little in the institutional and industrial side of the business, and that was really the proving ground where we could say, “We’re going to make a packet and fill it with stuff, work with the right customer or the actual material producer.” But then we had to make it look good, and then it has to then withstand a consumer who doesn’t read instructions and won’t do what they’re supposed to be doing, and it has to be safe and it has to have shelf life.

And so it took about a decade to actually make that happen but I’m going to go back even farther and tell everyone that in 1962, the first unit dose laundry detergent was launched by Colgate Palmolive and it was called, Action Bleach and MonoSol actually worked with that company. I was three years old when that happened, by the way. They had an idea, they had some technology that was pretty crude back then.

Well, what happened with Colgate, because I got to know the people that were retired and old and we talked when I came to MonoSol about what their experiences were and why did it fail? And the answer is, it failed because the washing machines weren’t ready. The consumer wasn’t ready, it was one of these, like, “Wow, this is science spaceship stuff.” Way ahead of its time. And they only launched in on the small part of, I think the northeast part of the country.

They realized that they were going to have to put so much money behind advertising and somebody killed it at one point. Very, very suddenly too, I heard. That really hurt MonoSol even though they’re a small company, it killed their business to the point where one of the old general manager, his name was Omar Heart, had told me, he said, “It’s a good thing kid, that we had stocked money away for a rainy day or we would have all been out of work when that happened.”

So they had saved money as a small, independent company in case they had fell in bad times, which they thought that this was where they’re going to go, and it all fell apart. The company MonoSol tried to revive that a couple of times, actually with Proctor & Gamble and with Clorox in their early 80s but they never were able to put everything together technically to make it work, to where a brand like Proctor & Gamble or Unilever would put their flagship behind it.

So Tide Pods was actually a decade in developing. It took about 12 years to get Proctor & Gamble with us after launching the single-compartment material. They test marketed in England, in Germany, in France, and that was always going to be a decent business, but the big thing was going to be, will Tide go into unit dose? And P&G put gazillions of dollars behind this and the biggest thing they put behind this was they trusted us.

I talk a lot in the book about relationships and trust. Had we not developed this trusting relationship and battled through 10 years of co-development, I wouldn’t be writing this book. I wouldn’t be here and I think I state that in the book too. If it wasn’t for Tide Pod launching, I wouldn’t be writing a book because MonoSol would have been successful and it would have never been what it is today.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful because you talk about that. You talk a lot about forging lasting relationships in business because things do take time and opportunities may flex and unfold into so many different ways, but it’s that staying persistent. You have this innovation, this idea, this concept, and obviously it takes time for things to catch up because sometimes innovations are ahead of their time, and it is about timing.

Sometimes you don’t need to be first to something but maybe you can figure out a way to be maybe first in the market or first to appear in X, Y or Z segment, and I think that’s really powerful. Where would you say that, in working with these relationships, when did you leave like, “Okay, this product once it actually takes off and gets launched, it’s going to almost revolutionize and bring something completely new to the industry?”

When did that belief take hold and how did you use then the idea of building relationships to really build the business?

Building Relationships into BusinessP. Scott Bening: It’s a loaded question, as you were asking it and building it, I keep thinking about again, about the transparency and the trust. There were some key individuals that were involved on the Procter & Gamble side but I have to say, prior to that to get the precursor for this done, was with Unilever and Robert McBride and one of my partners that helped me build our business in the relationships in Europe, Jean Pierre E. Grolier, known as JP, who passed away, and that story is in the book of what happened.

He died tragically in the middle of all this but it was because of those relationships and the fact that even in these large companies, there were individuals that were able to look beyond their typically B2B relationships and think entrepreneurially and think about innovation and figure out how to build that trust and transparency, which look, I was the little guy. I was trying desperately to build those relationships so that I could earn the right to go to that next step.

But the key was getting a few people to trust us, trust me I think to a large extent, that we were going to be able to deliver. I mean, if you think about it, a company like P&G has a flagship brand, billions of dollars in sales, and they’re going to risk all of that on little MonoSol that was 20 million dollars in turnover at the time maybe, and they sneezed in 20 million’s out the door and that meant everything to us.

I think that our heart and soul, and also the sound capability that we had technically and our chemistry impressed them to the point where we had been able to do something, and they felt that we were going to be able to do things that P&G wouldn’t be able to do on their own. So they needed us, they wanted us, the relationships were ever so important there to earn that right to go to that next step to the point where we developed the relationship where we were working as if we were one company.

It takes so much to get to that especially in the world today. Everybody is looking over their shoulder and to be able to build a trusting relationship that’s open like that, open innovation, is very difficult.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Very collaborative. And I feel like, when we think back to business in the 80s and 90s, I feel like I think about it in a way that was very competition-driven, very competitive. And not that business isn’t still competitive and competition-driven, but in a lot of ways, the ones that really succeeded, they figured out ways to collaborate and really work with each other, and I feel like there’s strength in both companies.

Whether one company buys the other out or however that ends up happening, which we’ll further talk about it in a little bit here, it’s really interesting though because that approach of collaboration leaves so much room for potential opportunity, growth, resources, empowerment, distribution, you know really, the list goes on. What would you say in that long run of really building up to the launch of Tide Pods, what would you say was your favorite part?

I know you talk about culture and what that employee workflow looks like. How were you able to go in and upgrade this 1950s little company into something really modern, and almost catching up with its time?

Modernizing a CompanyP. Scott Bening: Another loaded question but that’s good. When you were talking about the progression and talking about competitiveness, when you look at industries today and this whole unit dose Pod business, there is an industry factor here too not just, there’s competition of course but all of the leaders in that business want the other companies in the same space with the same type of technology.

They all want theirs to be the best, but they create an ecosystem in the marketplace where if one was going to go off in a certain direction and be an outlier, you wouldn’t have that synergy supply chain capability, and watching that happen was very cool when we did this. Meaning, yeah, I was incredibly close to Proctor & Gamble but they were also very close to Unilever and Henkel and Reckitt Benckiser and Colgate, and all these companies were competing in the marketplace for the consumer to buy their stuff.

But we were able to customize what each of those companies needed technically, and to be able to do that and had so many people say, “How could you possibly sell to all of these folks and treat them all the same?” And by and large, we always tried to treat them the same to not be biased because someone bought 40,000 tons versus 5,000 or two tons, we try to treat everyone the same.

In the beginning stages of the book, I talk about the smaller people allowed us or the smaller companies allowed us to cut our teeth to learn how to do this, to build the relationships collaboratively, to earn the right to be able to work with these big guys. And if I step back and try to answer your, what was the coolest thing or the most fun part of that was to sit back and to figure out how did we navigate?

We were able to navigate in that whole space with people we were boxing, as it’s been said, we’ve boxed way over our weight class all the time. You’re a featherweight and you’re boxing Muhammad Ali in the ring and you’re moving around. So being able to do that was really, really fun and I don’t know if that was fun scaling up. I just said, what you said about turning this outdated plant into a modern, I remember the day that we turned the first new production line on and I’ve never built, it’s called a casting line.

I never built a casting line in my life and none of the people there, they were all, frankly, they were the people that built those lines were retired or dead. And so we had to figure out how to design and try to improve on what our predecessors had put together, the real founders if you will, and try to improve on it. And I mean, it just happens over and over and over to where 30, 40 production lines later, which are all over the world, the last one is the best and then you retrofit back and keep that.

It is a never-ending battle to try to make it more efficient, better quality, it is cheaper to run, all that kind of stuff. And I think that was a real joy to be standing there and watching very proud people literally turn a piece of equipment on. It is about as long as a football field, and you stand up the other end and you say, “Wow, this stuff works. It’s coming off and it looks great” and that was a real great feeling in this process.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s always so amazing, right? Like making one Pod in a lab and all those kinds of things, and the components coming together for it to work successfully is one aspect, then taking it to production and scaling and scaling even more, that just sounds so profound. It’s got to be a problem when you bring what I like to call scrappy people, right?

They know what they’re doing but they’re also still trying to figure things out as they go. And I think there’s something about that. I think it creates a bond. I think it creates a company culture of people working towards, I wouldn’t say a goal but maybe an outcome. And the outcome is, have a healthy company altogether that every involved benefits from and thrives from.

I think it’s really cool, man. I really like enjoyed that part of the book where you talk about the organizational culture aspect of companies and then how you ended up scaling that. So walk us through the last phase of this. You grow this company and now Tide Pods are out in the world, you launched in America, what was that like, the explosion of, I guess you could say success? I’m sure it came with hardships but what was that like for your company?

P. Scott Bening: The funny part is in 2012 when Proctor & Gamble launched Tide Pods, that was the year I sold the business, my partners and I sold the company to Kuraray and when I think back of you know, people say, “Why did you sell then?” Well, it was a time in our life where we had already scaled the business well beyond the wild expectations of my financial partners, and we had an opportunity and I was looking forward thinking, “If this goes like we think it will go, this company is going to be five times bigger in five years,” and that’s exactly what happened.

What it took to do that was the strong support technically but also financially from Kuraray to want to invest to grow the business. Whereas I’m not sure how, I’m sure we would have found a way to do it. The banks at one point were clamoring to lend us money and we were lucky that the way we did it, we used a lot of our own money to build the business to that point, actually launching that product and then me telling Kuraray at one point, “Hey, this is really going to go somewhere.”

Well, it did and I was right. We were true to our projections. In fact, we exceeded all the projections that we told Kuraray, which is very rare for that to happen when people are selling a business, and that’s one of the reasons I stuck around because it took me a decade to get away from business and I am not completely away from it. I’m still advising them and I am on the board, but going through I felt like it was almost I can’t let go of this because there is another mountain to climb, another plateau to hit.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s almost like your baby, right? You want to see it mature and grow and be this success that you’ve always wanted it to become, really powerful. So as your reader picks up the book and like for me, it was hard for me to put it down because again, you’re such a great storyteller and all these ups and downs and while you still embedded all these gems of wisdom in there for entrepreneurs, there’s a lot of innovation and I love that because in innovation, there is a lot of patience and failing.

The taste of patience at the very end is very—it’s like honey. It feels good, it tastes good and it’s all those things that you really worked hard towards. Now you’re able to pick the apples, if you will, and really run with that. But what would you want your readers, when they pick up the book and go through it, what do you hope they feel after putting it down?

P. Scott Bening: That it’s possible. And they might not all be entrepreneurs and have the luck that I did or the fortune to be able to be in the right place with the right mentors, but I am hoping that they can see that I am a person that never set out to do this. I didn’t say, “Someday I am going to own a business. Someday I’m going to be able to sell it and then continue” I never planned to do that. It evolved and happened.

But I do think that when they read the anecdotes and the accounts of what went on, that they will hopefully learn some things because there’s lots of takeaways there, try not to make this mistake or here’s the things that I could have done differently and more efficiently that would have changed the tides a little bit. I always said when I was writing this, this is the book that I wish someone had given me 30 years ago to read, so that I can learn from others.

But also, not have fear and also don’t get stuck. Don’t get stuck. And I hate to use the word “corporate job” if that’s not for you because I was feeling that early in my career, thinking I have to wear that polyester pinstriped suit and I have to show up to work and I have my shoes polished and my briefcase will look a certain way, and I really didn’t like or want to do that. And it took a lot for me to believe that I was allowed to do something different, that I was allowed to step out.

Then having done that, I hope they learn from me that it is possible to do that, and you can’t do it alone either. I think that’s the other big key takeaway and I didn’t do this alone. I mean, I had so many people that helped make this whole thing happen.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that man, it’s so powerful. Scott, it’s been just an honor sitting down with you today and get to know you a little bit, a little bit about your story and I’ve learned a lot. I mean, just listening to you it’s very inspiring, to see you go on this mission to just really unfold the mission without intention of, like you said, like, “Oh, I want to do this and I want to do that” and being really rigid.

It was more like an evolution of sort of what happened, which is really quite motivating. And the idea that it’s for you will never miss you, but you just trust that process. You lend yourself to that process and showing up to yourself and your work and your community in a way that didn’t feel like fitting in a box, which I love, because you created Tide Pods and the world that we know today, things that I get to use.

So, much appreciation from that respect and of course, congratulations on your book. I’m so grateful for your stories and your experiences today. The book is called, Formulating Solutions: Lessons from an Unexpected Entrepreneurial Journey. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you Scott?

P. Scott Bening: Well, on LinkedIn, you can use my name, it’s P. Scott Bening but also there’s a website called one word, formulatingsolutionsbook.com, all one word, Formulating Solutions Book. And you can, I think, read the first chapter for free and then connect with me if you would like to. And one thing I wanted to say that your comment and I keep reminding people, I didn’t do Tide Pods.

I was part of a team of global team people that made all the stuff happen not just MonoSol but even our customers, engineers, suppliers, service providers and I could never probably get it right in thanking all the people that had their hands in making something like that happen, because it is complex. It is very complex but it looks really simple to use, which was the whole goal so.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right. Well, usually the most simple things are probably the most complex things but in this case, it was certainly was and so shout out to you and all the people that were behind you, and your team and teams that brought this thing to life. First, the book is remarkable. It talks not only about the story but again, the gems along the way. Scott, it’s been an honor. Thank you for coming on the show today, I appreciate you.

P. Scott Bening: Hey, it was my pleasure, Hussein. Thanks so much for having me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Absolutely.

The post Formulating Solutions: P. Scott Bening appeared first on Author Hour.

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My next guest author explores anxiety from the lens of a creative, demonstrating how anxiety makes us feel fearful and stressed in an effort to help, though, it’s actually doing anything but. In fact, the instinct to run from anxiety’s uncomfortable sensations does more harm than good. Welcome back to the Author Hour podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty, and my next guest is Christopher Glatis. He’s here with me to talk about his new book called When Your Mind Screams. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the show. I am here with my friend, Chris Glatis, who’s here to talk about his new book, When Your Mind Screams. Chris, I’m so excited to have you on the show today because the topic is juicy. How’re you doing, Chris?

Christopher Glatis: I’m doing great. I just want to let you know, the last name is actually Glatis.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh, Glatis. My apologies.

Christopher Glatis: It’s a long A. No problem, no problem.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:My apologies. How do you feel today, man? Your book is coming out. I know you put some time and energy into this thing. Overall, how are you feeling?

Christopher Glatis: I feel good. I think whenever you put out anything – I’m also a creative. I’m a writer, a screenwriter as well. When you put stuff out like this, you never know how people are going to respond. I mean, you have a small group of people around you that give you feedback. This was really, really personal, and I feel a little naked. But I’m excited about it. I think that there’s a lot of things in this book that work for me and my struggles with anxiety. So I figure it’ll work for someone else.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:I love that so much. I’m glad that you mentioned that you are creative, that you’re a filmmaker and an artist, just in general, because I too am an artist. I associate myself with artists through my whole life. It’s interesting to perceive anxiety from that lens because it is a little bit unique, and it is really powerful as well, especially from the creative sense.

But, Chris, I want to go back in time a little bit. I want the audience to get to know you a little bit. Maybe share about where you grew up, who are you surrounded by, type of people that influenced you, and then how you got into your line of work, but also now a deeper sense of understanding this concept of anxiety. But I want to go back in time a little bit and share about who Chris really is and where did he grow up.

BeginningsChristopher Glatis: Sure, sure. So I grew up on the East Coast in Bethesda, Maryland, which is right outside of Washington, DC. I love the area, a lot of rich history. Obviously, that’s the political hub of the US. I live in Los Angeles now, and so entertainment here is like what politics was to DC.

My father was in the military. He ended up getting involved with a naval engineering company. That was his business. My mother also worked for the government for a little bit. I ended up going to school down in North Carolina. When I was in North Carolina, I went to school called East Carolina, and that’s where I really got the bug for the creative world and filmmaking and just the arts in general.

Towards the end of my time there at East Carolina, I was like I want to go to film school. Obviously, I have – There’s so many filmmakers that I admire and love what they were doing and the stories they were telling. I think, really, that’s what got me excited, was the storytelling aspect and being able to just create something out of nothing, and then put it out to the world. I don’t know. The whole process just was fascinating to me.

I got my master’s in film in Washington, DC at American University, which is also right outside of Bethesda. For a while there, before I came out to LA, I was bartending. There was a group of guys in DC, who they created this wonderful club. It was called the Eighteenth Street Lounge. It actually – Then they went on to open up all kinds of other things. It was weird because there was a period of time I was like, “Should I stay here in DC? I could get into business with these guys. Or should I follow my dream?” Then that’s when I headed out to LA, and the rest went from there.

So that’s kind of the background, and I will say that when I was in college, really going from high school to college was really when the anxiety for me started to go come forth, and jumping into that next step in my life. It was scary because back then, there wasn’t really a lot of information out there. I mean, there was, but it was really clinical. I think women were more – They kept on saying women more was susceptible to this. So men really didn’t come forward. They kept it in. They didn’t bring it forward. So that’s where it came from and how this all started.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:That’s a beautiful journey, man. I mean, it sounds like you really started tapping into your creativity, and that, obviously, piqued your interest. But going in that world, it’s the uncertainty with anything creative. It seems like in our culture, to practice that or go into those fields, there is this sensibility of like, “What’s going to happen? When does my career take off?” There’s all these, especially when you’re young and you’re really trying to figure out the world.

But then there’s a sense of you that is leaning towards this creativity. So as you start doing that, it sounds like this anxious part of you starts to come out, or perhaps maybe it’s been there. Now, you just notice it more. Where did you start feeling that, and how did you – I mean, I know you said you were trying to read up on these things, but it’s too clinical. So how did you start to figure out this idea of having anxiety? What do you do with it? What do you do with that energy? How did that evolve throughout your career?

I guess you start going off, and you’re writing film and all these good things. But there’s this part that we cannot ignore as creative, and that’s our anxiety. Can you talk a little bit about more about how you started navigating it and learning about it and, I guess, healing yourself through it?

Christopher Glatis: I bring this up in the book in that when I started to have these panic attacks and just generalized anxiety towards the end of my high – really, it started hitting me right at the end of high school. Unfortunately, my parents really didn’t know what to do with it. Now, I don’t know if they were – I don’t really know what it was, but there wasn’t a lot of conversation around it. I was told things. Maybe because I was a man, to go work out, like just burn off some energy, whatever it was. They were not there for me going through this, which was really hard.

So I just started to do research. I found some books that, like I said, were more clinical. I did work out. As far as just burning off some energy physically was helpful. But it was a really scary time. Really, when I got to school, when I got to college is when I really couldn’t – It was hard to keep a lid on it anymore, and I just picked up a phone book. There were phone books back then. I found a psychiatrist in the area, and I went and saw him. Within five minutes, he was like, “You have panic disorder.”

It was weird because I felt a ton of relief because I was like, “Oh, my God. There’s a name for this.” But at the same time, I felt like I was broken in some way, right? As far as being a creative, another thing I write about in the book is that we – Creatives have an unbelievable imagination. When I say creatives, I think creative people are in all areas, in business. They could be everywhere, right? It’s not just creating art.

The issue is that we have unbelievable imaginations, right? Those imaginations can be used for good, but they could also send you down a really dark road. So it’s really about keeping – I think what I said in the book was that when I’m sitting down, and I’m writing something, or I’m on the set or whatever, it’s let that creativity run wild. But if I’m not in that mode, I hear something about something in the world, in the news, and I start using imagination to go down this really scary path. I really have to make an effort to put a stop to it because it’s a gift. But it also can be a little bit of a curse.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:That’s really powerful. Because, like I said, I agree with a lot of what you’re saying, especially, like you said, that’s a period that you do feel that anxiety. But the moving through it, understanding it, naming it, and just learning about it when somebody points it out. I remember when I started seeing a therapist and she started pointing things out about how I saw the world. I had a very traumatic childhood, so it’s like I didn’t even know that I went through trauma. I didn’t even know what trauma was until I was in college. You know what I mean? Unless it was physical trauma, I didn’t understand it.

Once you start understanding what’s actually happening in your mind, you can further try to learn about it or discuss it in a way that you can articulate it in a way, and you’re bringing it to light. The more you bring it to light, the more it reveals itself, right? I love that you broke your book down into acts, obvious. I look at life in that way too, like this act is temporary, and I hope the next act is longer, right? They broke down the acts in a very beautiful way, but you sum them up in like a word. I thought that was so powerful.

You summed up the first act, this idea through breath and breathing. Can you talk to me a little bit about that first act of yours and what do you mean? How do we carry our breath? What does the breath have to do with any of this, just see through understanding our anxiety? Then more specifically, go a little bit deeper and talk about fears. Can you take us through that journey a little bit?

Photo by Burst from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-raising-two-hands-374672/

First Act: BreathingChristopher Glatis: Sure. I appreciate you bringing that up about your experience with trauma. I think that that’s – Going through COVID, what we just went through, there’s a lot of stuff that’s bubbling up to the surface. People struggling with mental illness and trauma is getting a spotlight now, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of, and I think it’s something that lives in our body. It really does live in our body.

So on your question, the breath, I think what the breath does for me is it takes me into my body. It pauses everything, right? I just breathe. I might put my hand on my chest, and just like I’m here. I’m present. My feet are on the ground. It just puts the brakes, even just for a moment. Because as anxiety sufferers, we tend to live in our head, right? Maybe I’m speaking generally, but I do believe that I lived from the neck up forever, right? So if I live from the neck up, the breath isn’t there, right? It’s usually very, very shallow, and that just exacerbates the mind stream, the negative mind stream that’s going on.

I think that to pause and take a breath or a few breaths, and they have all these wonderful different breathing techniques now, and there’s a 4-7-8 breath, which really you could do that three or four times, and it slows down your heart rate. It brings down your blood pressure. So I really think if you don’t have that, that’s kind of the basis for everything else. Once you can land in your body, breathe fully, deeply, you can then walk through the next steps.

Just really quickly, what I tried to do – I think anxiety sufferers also try to overcomplicate things, right? Or complicated things make them even – Also make them more anxious, right? So I try as best as I could to make things really simple because this – If something – Sometimes, people will be like, “Well, that’s too easy. That’s not going to work.” I believe that the simple things in life are the ones, the things that work the most, right? I think we tend to overcomplicate things in all areas of our life.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Yeah. It’s like you’re right. This idea of that’s way too easy for it to be the answer and it’s like – I mean, if you think about how complex oxygen is just in the sheer beauty in it, that it quite literally nourishes everything, why not it nourish you, if you are intentional about how you think about just breathing in general. It’s the most repetitive thing. We take it completely for granted. I mean, I know I did. I took it completely for granted, up until I started learning that managing my calm was managing my breath. Like if you want to remain calm, you manage your breath. I mean, that’s one aspect of it.

It was profound when I learned that, right? How I apply that now, whether I’m running, whether I’m getting ready into prayer, or get ready to go into painting or working, it’s the one thing I started to lean in and just be like, “Okay, couple of deep breaths. All right. Now, I’m in this space. I’m here now. I’m in this space. Take it away muse,” or whatever it is, right? But I love that.

Then you really go in deep when you talk about fear is excitement without breath. I saw that, I was like, “Man, it’s so deep.” But can you share a little bit about this idea of fear being excitement without breath? What do you mean by that?

Christopher Glatis: Well, that definitely wasn’t my term or my phrasing. I loved it, and I think that if you look at it clinically – I’m not a medical doctor or a neurosurgeon or anything like that, but I do believe, and I think it’s been proven, that anxiety and excitement fire the same parts of the brain. They fire up the same parts of the brain. So what I’m trying to say there is that our perception of what is going on is the key to unlock all this.

I say that – Someone says they have anxiety. What does that mean? Like if something in their external world, maybe they just lost a job, they just broke up with someone, whatever it is, that creates anxiety, right? But if we look at something in a certain way, it’s going to create anxiety. If we just shift our viewpoint just two percent, it could actually create excitement. Maybe that job that person couldn’t stand, and this is going to open up a door to a new job. So it’s kind of like almost like a reframing.

At the core of it, I think what that means is that it is firing in the same parts of the brain. If we bring breath to that scenario, we can really settle in and go, “Am I excited now, or am I feeling anxiety?” I mean, before I get on a roller coaster when I was younger, you know how you feel that it doesn’t feel great, but you’re excited, and even before I got on this call with you, it was like there was a little bit of unease going on. But I was like, “That’s excitement. That’s not anxiety.” I’m rambling.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Totally. No, it totally brings it together because it’s you choosing. It’s being intentional about where you’re channeling. It’s like, okay, here’s the river. But you get to choose where you want to point the river, what direction, sort of a negative stimulus or positive one. If you can just have just a moment, that split second decision, where you get to decide like, “Oh, no, no. Actually, I’m excited,” and that’s what this feeling is.

How does fear and excitement and all these things working together in tangent, how are they bringing to the spotlight what you believe anxiety is? How do you start to manage it through the breath? I guess what I’m trying to say is, how did you start learning about these things, and how did you start applying your breathing, your perception, these tools that now you’re starting to add to not in a way fight or whatever, but really to understand anxiety.

Christopher Glatis: Yeah. Well, look, it took me a long time. I think that that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to write the book is that it’s really the book that I would have liked to have when I was younger, because it speaks to people in a conversational way. I don’t want to baby anyone either. This is a tough road, and you have to – One of the things that I think was helpful for me is to learning how to lean in. Not to lean back from the fear or the anxiety, but to actually engage with it, right?

This takes one caveat. I’ll say what I was mentioning to you before about the breath work and also being able to try to figure out if it’s fear or excitement, is that there are times when it’s overwhelming. There’s definitely times when I’m overwhelmed, and I can’t do any of that. I’ll either just do something to distract me from the feeling. I mean, that happens. That does happen. So this isn’t something that you really got to practice. It’s a muscle, right?

I think just over the years of all the different people that I’ve been involved with, whether it’s therapists or psychiatrist or my wife or just things started to come together and congeal for me, right? The one thing I realized was that with everything that I’ve read and everything that I’ve taken in and everyone that I’ve talked to, these three things seem to come up constantly, right? The breath, the observation, and letting go, allowing.

That’s why I was like – Because what if I would feel anxious? I was like – I get on YouTube and I’ll listen to a podcast or I’ll listen to a meditation or I never knew what to do. I never – Now, when it happens, first thing I do, I go to breathe. I think this is – The great thing is it’s accessible to anyone. It really doesn’t require any tools, except for the individual and a little bit of willingness to take a leap off into what may appear to be a deep end.

Second Act: ObservingHussein Al-Baiaty:What I’m trying to gather here for our listeners and for myself is that as you grow to understand, you also grow the tools of how you perceive and see that all human beings carry, right? It’s just, again, how do you perceive it? How do you work with it? How do you challenge it? How do you get better through it? It sounds like you started picking up tools and ways of dealing with what you innately have. Again, not to run away from it, but to lean into it and utilize that energy for your own improvement.

You sort of sum up act two, this idea of confrontation and what you do in that space when things are overwhelming and heightened all your emotions. You use the word observe. Man, that’s so powerful too because the ability to step back from what’s actually happening in front of you and to almost not have judgment, not react, but to almost start developing a response system, where let me just sit back for a moment. Let me peel myself back. Let me get this 10,000-foot perspective, which I found was really powerful.

But can you speak to that a little bit? When and how did you pick up this idea of observing around when things are heightened so that you can sort of move, and navigate through it the best way that you can?

Christopher Glatis: Yeah. Probably, I would say journaling probably started this process for me because when I was younger, I used to do Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages, which came out of The Artist’s Way. She was talking about these Morning Pages being like windshield wipers for your day to clear out all the muck. When I started to look at the things I was writing, I was like, “Wow. You wouldn’t say those things to anyone.” The things you say to yourself on a daily basis that go through your head, you wouldn’t say that to anyone, not even a stranger. I realized that it felt good. I felt good after putting all that out there, and I was able to see, just get all that out, see the ticker tape that was going through my head, right?

I think that journaling and meditation would be probably the areas that really brought this forth for me to really understand that I can separate myself from the thoughts, right? For such a long time I was like, the thoughts are me. We’re connected. I have to trust them. I think it was Tara Brach who is saying your thoughts are real, but they’re not necessarily true, right? So the observation part to me is so key because once we start to see the flow that’s going through our mind, we can then say, “No, that’s not true. That’s not true. I’m not going to engage with that. I’m not going to engage with that,” because we’re on autopilot most of the day.

I catch myself all the time still on autopilot. If I start to feel anxious, I sometimes will wind back the clock a little bit and be like, “Oh, there was something I said to myself or went through my mind 10 minutes ago, and that’s what I’m now stressing about.” To sum it up, it would be probably journaling and meditation, I think, were the keys to unlocking the information that I put forth in that section.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:That’s really powerful, and I think this idea of just creating this practice, again, it’s that repetition and practice of what to do with this energy, right? Like when it comes up, you have these thoughts. These thoughts can derive negative emotions and negative ideas. It can take a creative person’s imagination to a place where it doesn’t really need to be in. It doesn’t serve them.

As an artist, I grew up – I had an amazing father, man. He painted. He literally rescued our lives from our refugee camp through painting physical art that he sold to the soldiers in Saudi Arabia back in 1994. He was able to build these connections and help us literally come out of the refugee camp because of how he was able to do that. But do talk about pressure. Talk about all these things. Talk about anxiety. He has seven kids, right? Like literally sitting in this camp. I think about that all the time.

Christopher Glatis: You create that book. It’s a book right there, man.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh, though that, I wrote the book. Yeah. This is how, literally, I came to Scribe, and I now work with Scribe and all that good stuff. But, yeah, man. No, it’s a powerful thing. But what I’m trying to say is, for me, when I start to think about stepping into my art, stepping into painting, stepping into writing and poetry and whatever, you have that voice that comes up, and it’s just like, “Okay, how do I navigate this voice? What is it really trying to tell me? What is the story that is real and not real? Are these things that I made up? Or are these things actually there?”

For the most part, my mind is so creative that it does make up shit. You know what I mean? So is it true? Probably not. Then, obviously, the moment I reflect any of those feelings to my wife or my amazing friends that really helped me navigate those things, they’re just like reflecting the truth. The truth is a lot of those stories are in my head, and it’s like, okay, so now I can channel that into writing. I do the prayer, the Islamic prayer. Those things all helped me so much, just kind of home in, get to the calm. From the calm, I can go do my practice. I love that. You’re making this all physical and tactical and easy to kind of – I don’t want to say easy, but to build up a habit that can really serve you in the end, right?

Christopher Glatis: Yeah. You made a great point too. The whole thing about having a team, I write about that as well. You have people that you can bounce things off of and say, “Am I crazy right now?” The other day, I called a buddy of mine and I go, “Look, I need an objective viewpoint right now.” That is gold because sometimes you’re so trapped in the mind stream, you can’t get out of it.

That’s the other thing. Probably the last two, three years, I’ve been doing some trauma work and realizing that how everything does live, your body knows. Your body speaks to you. My body has been speaking to me for a long time, and I wasn’t listening, right? So that’s why the whole point of the book is to get out of your head and into the body. Or at least get a little bit out of the head and more into the body because the head is where this anxiety – It’s where – There might be some trauma that lives in the body. It’s talking to the mind, and it’s creating all this stuff.

Sometimes, you have to sit with really uncomfortable physical feelings. But if you do it long enough, it tends to off gas, and it tends to leave the body. But you have to feel those feelings. I’m still – Get on that. But you made a really good point about having a team.

The Daily Practice of Letting GoHussein Al-Baiaty:Have a lean into those people and just lean into these external things that I feel like are helping me always process the emotions and the creativity as well, and that energy. So this is great, man. I really appreciate this conversation because, again, I feel like we just vibe from artist-to artist level.

But I think these are tactical things that anyone can use, anyone can apply, is really powerful. What would you say a daily spiritual practice that you do that really helps you reach that calm? How did you end up building that?

Christopher Glatis: Yeah. Well, that’s another – The anchor for the day, right? I usually wake up fairly early, 6:00, 6:30. I try not to touch my phone or emails or any of that stuff, until I bring up the phone maybe to put some music on or a meditation. But I find that how you start your day is going to paint the rest of the day, right?

So I do some breath work. I do a five-minute journal. Me and my wife had been doing the breath work together, which is great. The meditation, I try to meditate twice a day. Usually, the first one is no problem but the second one sometimes, it’s hard to get to. I’ll do that.

I’ve been doing this intermittent fasting. So sometimes, I don’t eat till later in the day. But I think that just starting off without all the inputs from the world is helpful. I know everyone can’t do that. It’s not accessible to everyone because they’re either on call, or they have their doctors, or they have to be able to respond to people immediately. But I find those things. If you look at breathe, observe, let go, which are the sections of the book, it kind of encapsulates what I do in the morning.

The only other thing I’ll say that I try to do during the day is if I feel like I want to speed up, like I feel an urgency or a sense of speeding up, that’s the signal to me that I either don’t want to feel something in that moment, and I need to slow down. If I can just stop, like when I’m spinning 10 plates, it sometimes feels good, but I’m probably trying to avoid something, so I’m getting busy, right? With everyone in my life during the day is try to respond, not react. It can be so hard. Even with myself, just take a breath. Okay, I’m going to respond now. I’m not going to react to something that happened when I was a child.

Those things, that morning practice, which you’ve probably heard many other individuals and authors and thought leaders, they all have some sort of morning routine. I think that that’s been the most helpful for me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Very powerful, man. So the last component, which brings this all together, this idea of letting go, and if you were to sum that up, paraphrase it, if you will, your book goes extensively into it, which I love, but this idea of learning to let go of things.

Obviously, we can’t disconnect and sever. There’s no bridges to burn, right? These are your emotions. This is who you are, and you have to just learn more about who you are and how those components work. It sounds like that’s been your journey as a creative is to learn about that in the form of anxiety. But how does letting go really impact the whole formula and bring us home?

Christopher Glatis: Yeah. This one’s probably the toughest one for me. If I could, I’d love to start with that because I think that is probably one of the most important things. But it takes a while to get there I think, and I always thought the idea of letting go or surrender meant that you just threw up your hands and you were a doormat. I really had to, over the years, I kept on trying to understand what does this mean. How can you be in the moment when you’re feeling extreme fear or whatever, and you just don’t do anything about it? You just sit with it. How can that be possible?

I think what I finally landed on is it’s not doing nothing about it. It’s moment to moment, you’re letting go of outcome or what the world is giving you. If you can do that, you can then make the proper decision to move forward, if that makes sense. You don’t want to fight. You fight the feeling. You fight anything. It’s going to persist. I think I did write about this in the book that we really have control over very few things. So I mentioned in the book talking about when you go to sleep every night, you let go of everything. You trust. You trust your body is going to keep on working for you. It’s a huge letting go every night, but we just take it for granted.

But I just want to – This is a good time here. I wanted to circle back to when I was talking about my parents. I didn’t talk about that much. I still have a – My father passed away in 2003. My mom’s still alive. I had a difficult childhood, and it’s tough to talk about. I do dive into it pretty deep in the book. But I guess the letting go around that, for me is, look, they probably had – I knew my grandfather. I knew three of my grandparents. But I was young. I don’t know what my mom and my dad went through when they were younger. They clearly had their traumas, and they did the best they could with what they had.

Unfortunately, it ended up with me being neglected in certain ways, right? But I’m doing – Every day, I try to let go of whatever my perceptions are around what should have happened or whatever and try to be compassionate and, ultimately, forgiveness and love. It’s really hard. It’s really hard, but it’s something I work on every day. I think that kind of encapsulates the letting go because that’s a big one.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, I’m so glad you went there. I think it’s so powerful that this idea that once you rise through layers of your understanding of yourself, the things that make you anxious, the things that never really made sense, the frustration, the anger, once you rise through that, especially creativity, I feel, really takes you there. Because I feel like in order to really produce your most heartfelt creative things, you really have to make amends with these feelings because they can get in the way of you producing the work that you ultimately dream of producing, the stuff that you really are passionate about, all those things.

I feel like as creatives, if we don’t deal with and understand our internal clockwork, if you will, the things that are making us tick, that anger us, whatever, we don’t understand them and position them in a way that can really help us, as opposed to get in our way, there’s going to be issue. It sounds like throughout your book, as I skim through it, I realized you were really just elevating yourself through. You’re transcending these things as you dealt with them head on. It’s really beautiful, man, because the letting go part is I feel like where I’m at today.

It’s like realizing that like my mom didn’t finish fifth grade. The only language she knew is how to love me physically and talking to me and in her way of controlling, but there was so much trauma in her childhood. Now, I’m really growing and breathing that. Because I recognize myself and recognize where all those components are in me, I now can see them in her and how she deals with her day-to-day stuff.

Again, the things that she hasn’t dealt with, the things that – So there’s a lot of letting go. Like you said, there’s a lot of forgiveness. I’m more tempered. Like you said earlier, I’m not rushing to get off the phone. I’m really like, “Let me see where this conversation goes with mom today.” You know what I mean? And really being intentional about that river and pointing it more in a positive lens. Because in the past, when I was young, I would be angry, or my mom doesn’t understand me or whatever it was. I wasn’t at the wheel. My true self wasn’t at the wheel. It was a part of me that didn’t understand.

I love that, man, because you really bring it full circle for me personally, and I just appreciate that. The letting go part is for sure the hardest, but it’s the one that you have to earn, as you try to transcend through these other steps and processes. So you really brought it home, and the book is fantastic. I can’t wait for people to get out there and get it because it’s a gem, man. Thank you for sharing your wisdom, Chris. I just have to say congratulations because writing a book is no easy feat. That’s for sure.

Christopher Glatis: Yeah. Well thank you so much. Your awareness is amazing. I mean, that’s one thing I’ll say is I wish when I was younger, that I had the – It’s more accepted, I think, nowadays, like which is fantastic. Mental illness, people struggles, people are putting it out there more because I think it needs to be out there, and people were open to it, right? So I think it’s amazing, and it was really great chatting with you. Yeah, it’s fantastic. Thank you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty:Absolutely. Yeah, Chris. Again, man, I learned so much today. Your experience and your stories are just profound. Again, I encourage everyone listening to go get this book. The book is called When Your Mind Screams: Finding Peace and Confidence in the Midst of Anxiety. So besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Chris?

Christopher Glatis: Yeah. So I’m slowly building all my networks. For a long time, I didn’t really have much. But if you just look up my name, Christopher Glatis, on Twitter, Instagram, and also Facebook, those are all live, and I should have a website going up soon. But those are probably the easiest places to connect.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, thanks, again, for your time today. Congratulations on your book. I cannot wait. Again, man, I had a fantastic conversation. You’ve been brilliant, absolutely brilliant. So thanks for coming on the show today. Appreciate your time.

Christopher Glatis: Absolutely. You’ve been a wonderful host. Appreciate it.

The post When Your Mind Screams: Christopher Glatis appeared first on Author Hour.

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Greed, exploitation and so many fees, all hidden in plain sight. That’s your financial advisor, whose services and advice have been the outdated VHS player of retirement.

Welcomed back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and my guest is Greg Aler. He’s here to talk about his new book titled, Fire Your Financial Advisor, let’s get into it.

Hello friends and welcome back to the show. I’m here with my friend Greg Aler today and we’re going to be talking about his new book, Fire Your Financial Advisor. There’s some interesting stuff going on in this book and I’m excited to dive deep today with Greg. Greg, thank you so much for joining the show.

Greg Aler: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be on here and talk a little about the book.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Definitely man. So you know, at the beginning, I’d love to give some context to our audience about sort of who you are, where your upbringing was, what was it like growing up as Greg and how did you find yourself in the financial industry to begin with?

Greg Aler: Oh wow, so that’s a big question. Who is Greg, right? I grew up in a small town in Ohio. You know, obviously, I think kind of the American dream, right? My parents were hard working, school teacher, my old man was a factory worker, grandma was a bus driver. So I had a pretty typical upbringing, parents who loved me, took care of me. Yeah obviously, we were never really rich, we were never really poor, just somewhere in the middle.

Obviously, I was the first Aler actually to go to college. So I was kind of paving the way down that road, got into finance a little bit. Along that route, went to Miami University and found my way drifting over to the practice of law, unfortunately, ended up at law school, Case Western and then you know, took my first big firm job over in Chicago, where I ended up working for one of the largest firms in the world, Kirkland Elis for about a half a decade before I basically kind of wound down, try to start my own gig, right?

I was tired of you know, working for the big, “the man” if you will and I decided to kind of hang my own shingle and started my, I guess, I started the journey towards the financial service industry, actually opening my own estate planning and elder law practice in around 2010.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah and from what I’ve read and just kind of gathered about you. You started basically, three multimillion-dollar, almost separate types of businesses that was somehow interlinked, of course, with your knowledge base which is really profound and powerful. It sounds like you learned so much along the way that you are, once you kind of hit that breaking point, you’re like, “Okay, where can I actually take this and apply it?”

But in your book, you described the financial industry as sort of like, you know, the evil empire, if you will. Can you expand on that a little bit and let us know sort of, you know, obviously coming from your experience, it’s a big statement. So let’s get into it a little bit.

The Evil EmpireGreg Aler: Yeah. I mean, chapter four, I think is actually called the evil empire. You know, how we got in this mess, before I kind of dive into the financial industry, I had a unique opportunity. Most people are like, “Well, how did you get all this information or how did you have this perspective?” and the reality is, in some ways, I was a double agent, Hussein. I really was.

I was, I’m going to say an estate planning attorney by trade. So I was meeting hundreds and hundreds of financial advisors all the time and I was hearing how they ran their businesses, what they really thought, kind of how they charged, what they did or didn’t do for clients and really had a look behind the curtain in a very unique position that they were letting me in because they didn’t view me as competition.

They didn’t view me as someone that was obviously, you know, going to take, you know, or take shots at their gravy train. As our business grew and obviously, the law firm grew across the state of Ohio, we ended up having about you know, 13 offices but you know, I looked at it and said, “You know, why don’t we try to do the same thing for the financial industry that we did for the legal industry?” and that’s what I did.

Firing up Golden Reserve gave us the opportunity to take everything we learned over the previous years and we basically, when it came to the legal practice, we kind of killed the billable hour and tried to innovate and when it came to financial services, I mean, there was a litany of issues but Hussein, really the main issue we saw was that they were charging a lot of money and not doing a lot.

The evil empire chapters are about how fast they grew and the first half of the book really breaks down how we got into this mess. I mean, from 1978 basically, you know, we killed the pension and the IRAs and 401(k)s came roaring in, and no one was there to help these everyday Americans. So we basically had to start creating these retail financial advisors and we ended up start selling more and more, you know, retail mutual funds, which really weren’t part of the market before then.

And that really ballooned and snowballed and you know, I think if you really dig in to how did this perfect event happened, well, interest rates came down, our economy went up and then we had this huge need and all of a sudden, this evil empire said, “You know what? We have a bunch of plumbers and teachers and people that have lower-level financial savvy, we can basically charge whatever we want” because remember back then, we had rotary phones, Hussein. I mean, we had no way of accessing any kind of information.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s like infiltrating our social fabric in a way, right? Because we don’t know how the financial industry works and what it actually cost to know it, it’s like putting your health in the hands of the doctor. You know, in today’s world of course, you can look up all kinds of health things and you can look up multiple different doctors that kind of give you different options and ways of looking at something specific.

But of course, yes, back then, you had no idea and you were just kind of listening to what you were told or trusting like what your neighbor or your friends or someone that you knew give you some advice. So where does that take us? So you go through this phase of growing your business but also you start to understand the behind the scenes but where does this passion for helping, what you say about, you know, the 95 percenters, right?

The rest of us who aren’t necessarily, like you said, financially savvy, where did this passion really come into play to start wanting to help and educate that section of our social fabric, if you will?

Greg Aler: That’s a great question. I ask myself kind of what I wanted to do with my life for so long. I was chasing that, you know, goal post, if you will. You know, everything was bigger and better and shinier and then I got to the pinnacle, obviously, working for one of the largest and most prestigious law firms in the world and I was just making rich people richer, and I looked back at my roots and I looked at kind of my family and who I was and how they raised me and it just, it kind of rang empty.

So coming home and our estate planning firm was built on servicing people that have less than two million dollars. Estate planning was usually something reserved for rich people. So the law firm kind of started that rally cry and the financial services, you know, the Golden Reserve launch of that business really just was the extenuation of making sure that the people have less than two million dollars have some place to go because their needs are different.

The needs of someone that’s got a helicopter and flying private is exponentially different than someone that has you know, $750,000 in an IRA and there’s a huge disconnect on those services because what happened back in the 80s and 90s is, essentially, we just inherited this top 5% kind of charge 1% model to pick a bunch of investments but really, that’s not what most Americans need.

They don’t need someone to pick investments, they need a guide. They need a leader, they need someone to protect them from the real risk of retirement because they have issues like, “How do I pay taxes on my IRA?” you know or “What if I go to a nursing home?” and those are real fears and expenses for the everyday retiree that you know, the top 5 percenters will never have to worry about.

The Retirement PlannerHussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful like sort of reframing how we see retirement and how we see ourselves in it and what we actually need and not necessarily just a financial advisor but a guide that can really help us navigate all the steps that come along with that, right? Financial is one aspect, this is the money but then you bring up a very prominent thing to think about is your health, right?

Where does that play a role and what actually happens when you get too old where you can’t take care of yourself? These are very interesting things that I feel like many people think about but sometimes obviously, your financial advisor is not going to help. Perhaps they will, perhaps they won’t but I just don’t feel like that’s like going to the banker for your knee problems. It’s going to be a… not necessarily a two way street there.

So can you introduce us to the concept of the retirement planner, which you propose in your book so well, and how that came to be?

Greg Aler: So what we wanted to do was stack a value-based proposition for retirees of services that will actually do things. I think you hit the nail on the head, Hussein, when you mentioned, you know, what are they going to talk about? Financial advisors will talk about everything. They’re great at talking, they’re great at sending birthday cards.

They’re great at grabbing coffee, they’re great at talking about your grandkids but when it comes to actually doing anything, they don’t do much other than just sell you investments, most likely investments that you probably don’t even need. You don’t need to take that much risk in retirement for most retirees.

So when we look back at kind of what is the retirement plan and why do we build it and why is it such a prevalent part of the book, it’s because we wanted to stack together services that we thought retirees need and at the end of the day, it was about having someone to actually do an IRA tax plan. It’s usually everyone’s largest asset.

People tell you how to put money in, but they never tell you how to take money out. So that’s a big part of what our retirement planners do. They work with their team of CPAs that are on staff, and they do the actual tax plans. They actually do the tax returns. We have attorneys in-house that actually do the legal plans.

Obviously, none of this matters if you don’t have the legal components to take care of. You know, whether it be a healthcare power of attorney, a financial power of attorney, a will or a trust. All of these things equal obviously, a successful trip down retirement mountain and if we don’t have the right guide and that is who we think the retirement planner is.

They’re multi-disciplined doers as supposed to investment-selling talkers, and I think that’s a challenge to the industry is that, you know what? Talking about investments isn’t getting it done anymore because frankly, everyone figured out that ETFs and index funds are pretty easy way to ride the market, if that’s really what you want out of your retirement and you don’t need a financial advisor to pick Facebook versus Apple, right?

I mean, it’s just not something that’s required skill anymore and there’s not a lot of value and what are you going to do? Charge them 1% for the privilege? I mean, that’s pretty pricey, Hussein.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man. I mean, you understand that world way more than I could ever possibly put it together but what you’re saying to me is very invaluable because personally, when I look into the future, right? And think about all the different things that I want to ensure that I have, you know, definitely my health, right? Definitely the things that I need in place, as far as like, you know, having that income that I need specifically for that lifestyle that I hope to have.

Really asking myself those questions over the last five or seven years to be honest with you, has led me to reaching out. I have a few friends in the financial industry that just kind of reaching out and having those conversations with them but you’re 100% right, it’s something I never really considered is, how important having lawyers and in the accountants and the health advisor.

Like all kind of working together to making this thing possible down the line. I just appreciate that because you’re right, I feel like this idea of switching from just the financial adviser to this idea of a guide through a retirement planning, is more like a coaching, if you will, and I just appreciate that. What are the characteristics, as your book identifies, is making a retirement planner sort of like the hero for retirees, so you got the evil empire and you got your hero and how you can put those two together.

Greg Aler: Well first of all, let’s make sure you hide my book if your friends come over from the financial industry. They’re going to wonder what’s going on if they see a book called, “Fire Your Financial Advisor” on your kitchen table. They’re not going to be very happy, Hussein.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: They might not be but that’s okay.

Greg Aler: That’s okay. Every story has a protagonist and an antagonist, right? Everybody needs a hero, and I think it comes down to a different state of mind, really a mentality. When we view ourselves as someone that is built to protect and guide, we always talk about ourselves as sheepdogs, it sounds kind of silly. We talk about guiding people through retirement, and we walk it with them.

The reason we walk with them is because most of us have similar backgrounds. We don’t have the silver spoon, the typical, “I took over my daddy’s financial services company” you know? When you have that sheepdog mentality and you’ve walked it with them, most of us have worked in factories or you know, tied steel, or worked in construction crew, and did the jobs that everyday Americans usually have to do, growing up and working through kind of those trials and tribulations of life.

You know, I bagged groceries, that was my first job and understanding all those things means that we understand how they live. We understand what their concerns are, we understand how they spend their money, how they view their money and that puts us in a very unique position to walk with them and when we’re protecting and guiding, we’re not only doing that but we’re also fighting off the wolves and we take that very seriously.

We’ve viewed the financial industry as kind of you know, the wolves out there looking to take advantage of retirees because if you really look at what they do over the last years, I mean, think of the commercials you see on television about financial advisers. They never talk about services; they talk about how they charge you because there is really nothing to talk about. They talk about fee only.

They talk about, “Obviously, I’m a CFP. I’m a fiduciary.” These are all just jargon and void of any real action because if they really button down, they still, the only real service, all these industries do is pick investments and that’s not what 95% of retirees need and I think as the Internet has obviously opened Pandora’s box of information, people are slowly coming to the realization, “What am I really getting if I have a half a million dollar IRA and I’m paying my financial adviser 1%? That’s $5,000 and then I am paying another 1% for the mutual funds he sold me, that’s $10,000. I am paying this guy $10,000 to pick some mutual funds that he’s guessing?”

I mean, that doesn’t feel like a very good gig because whether or not your money goes up or down, they’re getting paid no matter what and there is a misalignment in that value proposition, and I think that’s where we want to put the flashlight on with this book of saying, “Listen, if you feel like you’re getting the value you’re paying, then great, then don’t do anything.”

But if you have some questions on the missing pieces of your retirement puzzle, and things we think are really important that are getting glossed over or not even addressed, and you are still getting charged one percent, you probably should kick the tires a little bit. You probably should kind of take a step back and say, “Is this person really my buddy?” Because that’s what they want, Hussein.

They want someone to continue to say, “Oh, you know, let’s rely on that relationship that we’re your friend. We take you golfing. We go on vacation with you. We take you to these…” because if you have a relationship, it’s going to make it much harder to ask the hard question, “What are you charging me? What are you actually doing?” You know like every other vendor in your life, your doctor, your accountant, you’re going to ask what the bill is, right?

You’re not going to have any issue wondering what you are paying but when it comes to your financial adviser, it’s just this weird Stockholm syndrome-ish effect where these people are literally charging whatever they want and no one knows how much they’re paying them, it’s insane.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful to think about, man. You really set the foundation for how to start perceiving this so-called friendship, this so-called connection and vibe because what is it really based around and how to just kind of take a step back and re-evaluate it a little bit. I think that’s really powerful.

Greg Aler: Yeah, I mean, I think the question is simple. If you took your money away from this person, would they still call you on your birthday? Would they still be your buddy? Would they still take you golfing? And everyone knows the answer is no, they won’t. They wouldn’t. They wouldn’t maintain that friendship. Anyone that’s left the financial advisor knows that.

You know, the relationship is built as a distraction device to hopefully make sure that you are not paying attention or you’re too confused by too many charts and statements to really ask the right questions of A, “What am I paying?” and B, “What am I getting?” and if those questions get asked, most people aren’t going to like the answers.

If you are dealing with your traditional Edward Jones, Raymond James, Edelman, Fisher Investments, all of those people are built on a chassis of really just picking investments and then talking about a bunch of buzzwords and hopefully handing out some business cards where you may or may not end up talking to an attorney or account to take care of some of the biggest risks in retirement.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful. What would you say like the number one thing some of your clients come to you for as far as getting that guidance? What do they are actually seeking? What do people — I mean of course, the financial aspect of it but what do they also asking for?

Greg Aler: People come in and they ask technical questions, right? Like they say, “Well, how do I take money in my IRA and pay the least amount of taxes?” or “How do I protect my house from the nursing home?” or you know, “How do I get the right level of risk?” or “What is the right level of risk I should be taking in retirement? Should I use an annuity?”

We get a lot of questions but what this all boils down to and people are desperate right now, I think even in 2023, they’re desperate for leadership and I think when you go and talk to a retirement planner, that’s the first thing we do as a sheepdog, right? We talk about we want to be your leader in retirement. We want to help you make those decisions that you can lean on.

That we can show you the right paths and I think that’s really what people wanted is someone to lead them and to inspire them, you know, week to week, month to month, year to year and when those terrible events happen, guess what? We’re in the meeting with you when a loved one passes away. We’re in the meeting with you when someone goes in a nursing home. We’re in the meeting with you talking about your next tax return. We’re in the meeting with you if you want to change your plan because you just had a new grandchild.

Those are things that people want, they want to know that someone cares and that they are going to be with them when they need them the most.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful and again, it ties right back into our human emotional needs. Of course again, there is always the financial aspect of it but I feel like as humans, we want to be able to connect. We want to be able to live as healthy as we can, and we want to be able to trust if you will that we work with. I think that is a huge component of the people I try to choose to work with.

It’s really based on a foundation of true understanding, “What do I get for X?” and it’s like especially the people I work with and are ones that I trust like it’s crucial and I love that you said that, “You know, like here is the plain piece of paper. Here is the exchange of what happens in this planner” and I just appreciate that. While working on the book and this journey because it is a journey to write a book and you yourself took the reins, what was that like for you and what was something that you learned and would pass on?

Creating An ImpactGreg Aler: Writing a book is really hard, is probably the first thing I would share. You know, I write a lot of copy and over my career I’ve always had a knack for writing but sitting down and building a story that’s cohesive and entertaining and educational is hard. I mean, it’s all got to work together and you know, I would tell anyone to make sure that when they start writing a book, it’s probably going to not look at all what you thought it’s going to look like when you started.

I think my entire title, table of contents, storyline, everything changed two or three times, you know, over the course of the first probably three or four months, getting it down on paper. It’s hard when you get up at 6:00 on a Saturday to hit a deadline and you got to know, you got to crank at a chapter. You got to just, you know, sometimes like anything else, you got to sit down and do the work, and sometimes it’s not great, and then you just rewrite it.

You rewrite it and you keep pressing on, and at the end of the day, I’m kind of cheating because this is my life’s work I am writing about. I am not writing about a fantasy novel or some kind of murder mystery. You know, this is who I am, this is our mission. This is, you know, I have built three companies around the principle of taking care of the little guy and you know, this book is basically us ringing the bell and telling the world our story and you know, in a lot of ways that made a lot easier.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful, man. What would you say has been like the most rewarding aspect now, finishing up and getting it out in the world?

Greg Aler: I sent it out to a series of obviously folks to read ahead of time letting them know that, “Hey, the book launch is coming up. I’d love to have you read it and if you could, obviously write a review and say something nice if you like it” and I guess I was shocked of how many of my personal network stayed up and started reading it that weekend. I sent it on a Friday, and I was getting messages at midnight on Saturday that people had stayed up and read the whole thing and were sending me notes.

I guess it gave me chills that I was able to put together something that was not so boring, that people would actually stay up on a Saturday night and get through it and then that gave me a lot of joy knowing that I put something out there that was worth reading that was finishable.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man, that’s really powerful and I know it is going to create an impact, the people that it reaches but when you read or put that book down, what do you hope they feel after putting it down? What’s the thing that you really want them to feel walking away from this amazing book?

Greg Aler: I hope they feel empowered to ask some questions and I hope they feel like they deserve to have a great guide and protector in retirement regardless of how many zeros are in their bank accounts. I hope they feel like they deserve that. It doesn’t matter how much money they have, they deserve to have someone that cares about as much money as they do and if that rings true and then they can start asking some questions and challenging the industry a little bit, that would be the cherry on top for me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful. Greg, it has been an honor sitting down and getting to know you today. I learned so much. Thank you for sharing your stories and your experience of course. The book is called, Fire Your Financial Adviser: 40 Years of Greed and Exploitation of the American Retiree and How You Can Fight Back. Besides checking out the book Greg, where can people find you?

Greg Aler: Absolutely. Obviously, you can go to goldenreserve.com, is the name of our company. You can also hop on fireyourfinancialadviser.com is the book’s website and obviously, feel free to leave us a message and we would love to get back to you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much. Greg, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you man. You made this conversation super easy. I am grateful for your time today. Thanks again and congratulations on your book.

Greg Aler: Thanks Hussein, have a great day.

The post Fire Your Financial Advisor: Greg Aler appeared first on Author Hour.

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For most first-time home buyers, their biggest challenge isn’t in qualifying for a loan or securing a down payment. These steps are a part of a larger, lengthier process, one that often intimidates buyers and prevents them from taking their first step towards personal wealth.

Welcome back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by author, Ed Parcaut, who is here to talk with me about his new book called, Financial Freedom: Building Personal Wealth Through Homeownership. Let’s flip through it.

Hello friends and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m your host Hussein and today, I’m really excited because flipping through this man’s book, very intrigued. I’m very much into that mentality of trying to get another space to rent out, but this guy talks about the financial freedom of building personal wealth and how we do that through home ownership. It’s literally the title of his book. Ed Parcaut, thank you for joining me today, I really appreciate your time.

Ed Parcaut: Well, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So, before we get into the book and you really bring your wisdom to it, I want to start by giving our listeners an idea about who you are, your personal background, what’s your story growing up, and if there’s one or two people that influenced you in a positive way and really helped you shape the direction that you’re on today? So let’s jump into that a little bit.

Homeownership: Is It Obtainable?Ed Parcaut: I was born in Burlingame, California, and then my dad worked for Mabel. So we went back and forth from California to Colorado pretty much my whole life. I got stuck in Turlock, California through high school, and I realized I did not want to live in the valley. So I joined the Navy to see the world, and I got to see San Diego. It was great actually, I got stationed at Camp Pendleton, which is a Marine Corp base.

I was at the hospital and that’s where I was able to go through and get my bachelors and masters while I was in. I utilized the Navy like you should, learn from it and not just go, and I also do — I don’t know if it’s okay, but I do another podcast called Helping the Brave, which is helping veterans once we take the uniform off, and it’s because what I learned from being in and getting out and the transitioning is not as easy.

We have a purpose, you get out, you don’t have a purpose. It’s pretty hard. So one of the reasons is, if you look back at my life, my dad died when I was twelve of hairy cell leukemia, and it was from Agent Orange. He was in Vietnam; he was in the Air Force. But what it was is, it took us from middle class to dirt road poor and the reason I say dirt road poor is that’s the best way to describe how poor we were.

A couple of pair of pants, a few shirts and then one pair of shoes. So I learned at an early age, I needed to go do something if I needed money, and so I worked for my grandfather on his dairy farm during the weekends and in summer, and it was such hard work, I knew that’s not what I wanted to do for my whole life and that’s why I joined the Navy, to get out. And then from that, there is not a lot of people in my family who went to school past high school.

So I got my bachelors, I went on for my masters, and it was in international business and marketing. And so when I got out of the Navy, the first thing I got into was real estate, and it was a bad time when I got out. It was right at the start of the recession. I didn’t know how bad it was. So I kind of went back into what I knew, which was computers.

Even though I was in the navy as a Corpsman, that’s a medic, I ended up working my first two years in medical mobilization, in planning, and did a lot of computer work and a lot of stuff. And then when I transferred to my next duty station, I was supposed to go to, I ended up getting the physical therapy and coming back to Camp Pendleton, which allowed me to go to school, get my degrees. But what’s important of all that kind of stuff is that it’s shaped me where I wanted to go. And when I got out, I thought, I knew I wanted sales.

Everything was in real estate, that I knew. It was just a bad time, so for about two and a half years, I worked in the computer industry and that didn’t really work out for me, and I ended up falling into the mortgage industry, and that’s where I love numbers. I love helping people get into homes and I found that most people don’t save for retirement, but buying a home does that for them and it’s going to appreciate over time.

You’re going to pay down the mortgage, there’s just a lot of stuff you can build from that, and it changes the trajectory of a family who has never owned a home, always rented, to buying a home. And then therefore, that change is for their kids and their kids and the grandkids and great grandkids and going forward. And it’s just, it’s like the first time people going to school, it changes the trajectory of that family and wanting people to go to school.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, I can’t agree with you more. I’m so excited for this, to talk to you about all of this because I recently purchased a home in the last year or so and that was hands down, one of the best decisions I made after going to college and marrying my wife. Really, it’s one of those decisions that I couldn’t wait to make, but I knew it took time but man, there’s a lot of fears around it.

Being in debt, dude, I grew up in a refugee camp. I was a byproduct of war, sadly, ended up in the refugee camp and then we came to America. I was at the age of eight or so. So yeah, these things, you’re going to buy a home, getting to college or whatever, it’s not that my parents had encouraged that, it’s a little further than you would think of someone not knowing the language, all those kinds of things.

However, determination, resilience, a lot of support and push I was very grateful for, I got to college and then after that, I built a small business. But all of these little things really contribute to something that you talk about in your book, which I loved, is confronting that fear and really sitting with it and figuring out, “What’s the best thing I could do here for not right now Hussein but future Hussein?” And you’re right, the purchasing of a home is really about the future person that you’re trying to build for.

So we’re going to get into it a little bit. Can you talk a little bit about how your book caters this unique financial positioning and the challenges that both faced Generation Z and Generation X into getting into home buying? Because I know I kind of fit that parameter, but what are the things that financially people tend to think about as soon as they start thinking or wanting to purchase a home?

Ed Parcaut: Well, I want to add a little bit to that before we get right in there.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, please.

Ed Parcaut: All right, I started a radio show five years ago in 2008 called Real Estate Jerky, we give you something to chew on and the reason, when they came to me about the radio show, because there was a local show that people talk about real estate, but I wanted to start an educational show on weekends. It was at noon, for an hour, because I saw a lot of people who watched their parents lose their home during 2008 through 2014.

I started the radio show five years ago, so it wasn’t in 2008 but what I’m trying to get at is in 2008, through probably about 2014, a lot of people were losing their homes through short sales and other stuff, and the kids growing up during that period of time saw the stress that their parents went through and was like, “I’m not ever going to own a home that’s just because I saw what it did to my parents.” And I started the radio show to educate people on why you wanted to buy and that’s the reason, the next step for me was the book.

I wanted to educate people the way that I talk to people when I qualify them for a home loan, and how to go through the whole process, so that they understand how easy it is. So you want to do it and you want to do it again. As you’re building, you get your first home you get your second home, how all that works for you. So people don’t want additional homes but at least, owning a home you’re in, you now own that.

That is your place, you have total control over it. As long as you make the payment, nobody can tell you to do anything with it, except for the government, but other than that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: No, that’s really powerful man. And then starting this educational path, you obviously work in that industry but heavily, the idea of confronting and looking at those fears and those anxieties around what we experience watching parents go through those really difficult times and losing homes, but what’s different today? You talk a little bit about how the approach is different.

I guess it is a recession but it’s not like how I remember it. And perhaps it’s going to get worse or it’s going to get better. For me, I’m an optimist, I always think things will improve and get better, but how do you see the lay of the land? Can you provide any tips or advice on building these components that we need in search of a home?

Ed Parcaut: Yeah, I can get into all of that. First, I want to address what you’re thinking about where we’re going. First I want to say, we were in a pandemic, and then rates dropped so low because we didn’t know what really was going to go on. We didn’t know if anybody was going to live, we didn’t know any of that stuff. So the rates got so low because of that fear.

We’re probably never going to see 2 percent interest rates again in our lifetime or at least definitely my lifetime. I’m not saying we won’t be in threes and fours again. I’m just saying, to see them as low as they were as during that period of time, it’s because of what the fear was out there and what was going on and we’ve never been in a situation where we had eighty-nine million people quit work in the last three years.

We have ten million jobs available that aren’t being filled, wages are at the highest they’ve ever been and we have wage inflation. We’ve never been in this situation. Even during 1920, that flu situation, we didn’t have the same things we have now where, and I’m not trying to get political, I’m just stating what’s going on. You have a government who has been spending and I know Trump’s era that spent, but this current administration has spent so much money to further the economy, is what they’re stating, and other programs.

That is what caused the inflation so much and because of that, now we have the Federal Reserve coming in late trying to slow down the inflation and raising short-term interest rates, which are the rates that are overnight rates, the bank, credit cards, second loans, those kinds of things, but not mortgage rates. Mortgage rates were already up because of the fear that was going on with the inflation.

The mortgage-backed securities and the MBS said, “We know you’re not doing enough Fed, we know you’re not doing this, you’re not getting to the party fast enough.” And they started raising before that happened, and so a lot of people think they’re tied together. Sometimes they go on the same road and sometimes they are on two totally different trajectories, and they have nothing to do with each other, but sometimes they do.

So going forward here, we have been in a recession. The question is, are we in another one coming up, is it going to get worse? I don’t think anybody really knows. Right now, you have a fifty-fifty chance of being right more than any other time in history because nobody really knows. We are going to see rates improve over the next couple of years because inflation’s going to come in to check each month.

It’s getting better. It’s getting better because at last people are buying a lot of goods and the companies are now starting to layoff. As that happens, rates will come down because the Fed will have to stop doing what they’re doing because they’ve already caused the pain to slow down everything. But the biggest issue I’m trying to get at is, we’ve never been in a situation where we had so many people quit work and not work anymore and have all these jobs and have all this other stuff happening.

Unemployment is so high right now, and all of this is happening. Right now, it’s so low and it’s just because people aren’t looking for work for some reason, and what I’m trying to get at is, it doesn’t matter when that’s happening or what’s going on out there, you still need to buy a house when it works for you because you can’t do it just because now is the best time when you’re looking to buy.

We always get asked, “When is the best time to buy?” I said, “The moment you think about it.” You start that process. “Well, what do I need to look at first?” Well, as in the book, the first thing I talk about is your credit and how to look at your credit, and what you can do to help fix your credit if you have little issues on there and that. And so, what I do in the first couple of chapters of the book is the three major things that we look at, credit, income, and assets. I explain all that.

And then the rest of the book is, well, I break down each part of the process of buying a house. What does it mean on each one? It’s important to understand the process. And I even break down loan programs, but not majorly, because it’s not for you as the person going to buy the house to know what loan program works best for you.

That’s the loan officer that you’re going to or the broker. That’s their job. That’s what they should do for you. Find the best program that’s going to work for you, and I always say it’s like playing poker. We need to know the hand we’re dealt in order to help you on this process and how to play those cards.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I feel like for me, as a young person who, in the last few years, probably understands the power of real estate and how to get involved and how to get into it. And like you said, just started putting the ducks in a row and then was able to finally purchase a home here in Arizona. But yeah, all of these things that you’re saying it’s, you got to get out there and learn it. You got to get out there and seek it out.

Let’s be honest, you’ve been in this boat. If you are living in an unprivileged area, I guess you could say or place that’s less desirable, the poverty is not just financial, it’s mental as well. And it’s like, people around you, if they’re not buying houses, it’s like you don’t know who to go to but today, it is phenomenal with the amount of information that’s out in the world.

Now, not everything is right and not everything should be pursued but with enough research, you can find the right people to help you do X, Y or Z. Which brings me to my next question, how do you see the real estate market and home buying process evolving in the coming years, technology and all those kinds of things, to meet the needs of younger generations?

Ed Parcaut: It’s weird because I thought for sure younger generations would definitely not want to see me face-to-face, but I have more requests from younger generations to come in and talk to me face-to-face and see me. It’s almost like the baby boomer generation, they don’t trust anybody so they want to see you face-to-face. And now you have these young kids who have been tracked their whole life by their phone or other things and now they don’t really trust what’s coming through their phones, so they want to come and see you face-to-face.

They go, “I don’t care if I’m being tracked,” but then when they want to do something financial or whatever, they want to come in and talk to you because that’s how they want to deal with it, which I was really shocked because it’s a totally different generation right now, eighteen to twenty-six right now than what it was ten years ago.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Would you say they’re just more cautious, more educated, just more —how would you describe that experience?

Ed Parcaut: I would say yes to all of them. They’re more educated, they understand some of the process and most understand all the process, but they do and they’re cautious because they don’t know who to trust. Like I said, they’ve been tracked the whole time. It’s really, and I tell people, find somebody who did this. If you work for someone, go talk to them and ask them, “Hey, who helped you buy your house?”

That’s a good way to find it because like you said, if you go to the people around you, most of them don’t own a home. If they don’t own a home and they’re giving you advice on how to buy a house, don’t listen to them because they don’t really want you to better yourself. Why would they want you to do better and them do less? And so I always tell people, just go through and read my book, of course.

But you know, that’s beside the point because I’ve never been in this situation. This is so new to me to write a book. It’s the same thing I say all the time to people in my book, and I go through the process but for me, to put something together to help people, it’s normally I help them one-on-one, and I realize that I can’t help enough people without doing the book or doing other stuff that I do on the radio show.

It’s one of the issues. I’m in California. So 70 percent of the people in California will not be able to own a home, they’ll have to rent and that’s coming in about another five to ten years and that’s huge, and everybody was talking about how many people have left California in the last couple of years, 750,000. If we didn’t have those people leave, we’d have no houses for people to buy because of the inventory.

When you put all these people in the low interest rates, they’re not putting their house on the market unless they have to, right? They’re not moving up because their payment doubles. They’re not doing this, they’re not doing that, where before they were doing all this stuff. So we’re going to have issues going forward where people are handcuffed to their current mortgage and their house, and they don’t want to sell because it’s going to cost them so much more money.

Normally, they would upgrade their house for another bedroom or two bedrooms because they’re having kids and then they will scale back years later. Now, they’re going to go, “Well, I have this low interest rate,” and this is people already in the market. This is not talking about people here going forward because if you’re buying right now, you’re going to refinance that loan over the next couple of years because rates are going down, and you’re going to get a low rate.

Then you’re going to be handcuffed like other people will be, right? Why do I want to go from my 1,800 square foot house to a 2,500 square foot house with extra bedrooms for these extra kids when they’re going to be gone in 18 years from now? People are looking at all this stuff totally differently than they used to look at it. Every time there’s a life change, they would change their house, and now I see that going forward.

Instead of 85 percent of sixteen home sells being on the market, I see thirty-five to fifty. So it makes it harder to buy a house going forward. We need to build more homes. We’re right now 4.5 million homes short nationwide, and I’m going to throw a number, 30 percent of it will be in California because 30 percent of all stuff is in California, because they’re such a big state.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I mean, those numbers are huge, man.

Ed Parcaut: It’s huge. And the problem has been, we were building houses over the last couple of years, and we were taking away from that deficit about 200,000 houses a year, which is not a lot. So the way we’re building houses before they just stopped recently, it was going to take us twenty years to get caught up.

Well, they’re not building right now because rates went up, people were scared, they thought, we’re having a bubble. We’re not having a bubble, we’re in a situation where we don’t have enough houses. Yes, rates went up for a short period of time. In 2024, it’s going to get crazy again. It’s going to be like 2021, 2020 because there’s just not enough inventory. We need to build more homes. That’s how we fix this. Well, the problem is it takes twenty years to build more homes, it’s probably going to take twenty-five.

Well, if you look at the pandemic, that birth rate that happened during the pandemic was just about the same as the baby boomer generation. So in about twenty-five to thirty years, we’re going to have this huge influx of more people wanting to buy homes. If you want to own a home and you’re not worried about owning a home, it’s going to appreciate and build wealth for you over time. Buy now because now is the best time, and I don’t know if this is where I was going with this conversation, but it’s kind of how I got there.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: No, I appreciate that. It brings things back actually full circle to how to think about real estate, and you’re 100 percent right. There’s not necessarily a wrong or bad time. It‘s just, the time is now and I can’t think about the past, can’t think about all these things, you got to just think about, “Okay, what actually happens when I buy real estate just in general, as a structure? Why has this worked?”

It’s obviously built wealth for over 90 percent of extremely wealthy people. Like, there’s a reason why real estate does that, it’s a mechanism in our economy. So to understand it, to take away the fears a little bit, get to know people that have purchased homes, that’s so powerful. And I love all these stories that you brought to in the book, but I want ask you now a little bit about the book writing process.

How was that for you? What was that journey like? What did you find that you had to learn or relearn to put that pen to paper?

Connecting the Idea and Process of HomeownershipEd Parcaut: Because I came through Scribe, it made it so much easier. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without my team here at Scribe because the way they worked with me was what made it easier for me. I’m not a writer. To be honest with you, I hate writing. I did horribly in high school with English and in college and that was not my thing. I can talk all day long, yes, occasionally say, “So and um,” that’s just something that happens, but I just enjoy talking.

Where writing just wasn’t my thing or reading books is not my thing, I’d much rather watch something if I have to or listen to it. That’s why I love Audible now, I can listen to it at 1.9 and listen to the whole story that fast and just be able to get through a book in almost no time. So the writing process for me, if it wasn’t for the team I had, this would never have been done and so I just want to thank them again for helping me.

But it’s remembering how important a story is, right? And that’s the biggest thing on writing this book is each chapter starts with a story, and we explain it. So it makes it easier for you to understand what I’m going to explain, right? That’s what was different about writing is the story part, and how important that is while you’re doing the chapters and everything, and that so sometimes, we’d write the chapter and come back with a story. And every story in here is a past client. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, no. I love that part, I’m glad you brought that up because it’s so important to connect viscerally to these people. Because you can almost see yourself in their shoes, you can always imagine if you were that person. I love that because you really brought in a variety of people that you’ve obviously worked with and helped in some way, shape or form. But it was also, you started off, right at the beginning of the book, you started me off with, “Here’s a $70,000 mistake.”

And I’m like, “Man, how many of those have made?” You know what I mean? They’re like instantly, I connected, and I wanted to read more and I love that about a really powerful book and how it draws us in with the story. Let’s get a little bit—I want to talk a little bit about one or two common misconceptions that you see facing Gen Z and Gen X home buyers and how they can overcome these challenges?

Ed Parcaut: The biggest one I hear all the time is, “You need 20 percent down to buy a home.” When in reality—

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s a big one.

Ed Parcaut: You can buy it with no money down if you could do USDA or you’re a veteran, or 3 percent down or 3.5 percent down. You don’t have to have 20 percent down. USDA is a rural program that’s done in a lot of areas and it’s 100 percent financing. It sounds like you’re talking about beef, USDA, but you’re not. It’s a program, it’s a great program, it’s 100 percent financing.

VA for veterans is amazing. It’s so great now, it’s a totally different program. It used to be a totally different program where nobody wanted to take it. It’s just like a regular loan and it’s so great for veterans but that’s the biggest thing, “How much do I need to have down?” And the other issue I see a lot of is, and I don’t want to come off wrong here, but I’ll have people come to me who think they can buy a home and they don’t have either—they don’t have the credit, they don’t have a down, they have one of the three things they’re missing, right?

But they think that they can buy a home. That’s okay, that’s a starting point. But then I have a lot of people come with me who have saved money, they have an amazing FICO score, an amazing job and they’re like, “Can I buy a house?” It’s that whole process of understanding that if you have good credit, if you have a good job and you have money for down payment, not that we’re going to use all that money, but you have saved some money or you have a family member who can gift it or you can do 100 percent program. It’s amazing what you can do.

Because when you’re buying a home, it’s all about leverage, and what most people don‘t realize is if you find a stock, right? So you’re going to buy two shares of TESLA and it’s a thousand bucks a piece, you have to give them two grand, right? Or do this, if you’re buying $200,000 worth of stock and it’s Tesla stock, you’re getting twenty shares, you got to give them all that money.

If you’re buying a house at $200,000, you only have to give them a small percentage down, so that leverage is what builds for, over time, the wealth for people. And that’s what people don’t realize is, it’s always better to buy a house than rent because rent, you’re throwing that money away every month. But when you buy a house, yes, it might cost you $500 bucks more, even $1000 more a month than what your rent, is but that’s now an investment and you can write off a lot of that stuff off that investment where before you couldn’t write anything off.

A lot of people think that, “Well, that’s going to cost me more money a month.” They look at it as a cost, not as an investment. So that’s the other thing, that it is your investment and your future, and this is why I tell a lot of people, even my kids is, “I wish somebody would have told this to me.” But from twenty-one to thirty, if you put in the match you can put in your 401(k), 403(b), whatever it is, the match you can put in each year for that period of time and then from thirty-one on didn’t touch it, you’d have more money than somebody who starts at thirty-one and puts in the max every year for the rest of their life.

And so that’s how this house thing works is the same way, by building your portfolio. And what I mean by building a portfolio is for most people, if you’re going to buy your first house, and I say this in the book, try to buy units. Buy a fourplex, a triplex, a duplex, then you have someone paying rent on the other side. Yes, you’re not going to live there forever, it might not be the best thing. It might feel like an apartment but it’s your apartment.

It’s going to get to a point where they’re going to pay for you to live there and then you go and go buy something else that you’re going to live in forever, right? But this is how you start because you can get in for these things for 3.5 percent down, right? FHA, on units, where if you go in on this units as an investor, you’re paying 20 to 25 percent for those. So it’s always best, I always tell parents to help their kids buy their first home if they’re helping them.

Help them buy units because that is the best thing you can do buying forward. I helped some friends of mine up in one of the counties I deal with. It’s also in the book, I helped their daughter buy her first set of units and then they bought another, a house, and they bought a house that they live in now and she makes enough money off of those other two investments, it pays enough for her current mortgage. Also, and that’s what happens overtime, that’s how that’s built overtime.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s so powerful when we start to really acknowledge the thing that we fear and what we think we can or cannot do. And even if you can’t do it now, it doesn’t mean you should not have learned and figured out ways to do it. I love that, it’s so powerful, your book is phenomenal, I know I’ll be trying to finish it up. The next phase is definitely looking to buy a duplex or so.

So I’m excited to learn even more. It was amazing having you on the show. What do you think is the one thing you want your readers to know and, after they finish this book, what do you want them to feel after putting it down?

Ed Parcaut: I want them to feel that they can do it, that they’re able to go out and buy a home because that’s the most important thing. If they didn’t learn anything else, if you can’t do it today, it’s just a matter of, you can’t do it today. But how do you plan for the future to be able to do it? And I’ll tell a lot of the clients that come to me that have a job and I’m like, “Okay, you’re only making this right now. But if you make two bucks more an hour, you can get this home, go do that, go find a better job. Go better yourself, don’t get stuck in a place.”

And this is different than when I was raised as you go to your job, you stay there forever. Now, it’s about helping you build wealth so that you can live and retire early, the stuff that was not taught to me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much because it wasn’t taught to me either. Not because they didn’t want to, but because they also didn’t know. They came from a completely different country. So that stuff does happen, but it is our responsibility to learn and change and evolve. I totally agree with that, it’s so powerful.

Ed Parcaut: And one thing that you have now that you didn’t have and your parents bringing you here is, you have an opportunity in a country where you can buy real estate. Not every country allows you to buy real estate.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Easier to do that, you’re 100 percent right. There are countries where the government just owns everything, and you just basically pay rent forever. So we are very blessed in that way for sure.

Ed Parcaut: Because you can come here, buy real estate and be wealthy over years. It’s about planning your future and what you want to do, and some people don’t want to have rentals. I get that, I understand that, but at least get your first house and then you know, you can—

Hussein Al-Baiaty: You can think about it later.

Ed Parcaut: Yeah, you can always get a second home somewhere else to visit and all that. There’s just so much you can do with this, and then have it paid for by other people.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Ed, thank you so much for sharing your stories and your experiences with our audience as well. Thank you for just, really—the thing that, I got to mention this. The thing I like about your book and just discussing this stuff with you is, you honestly made me feel really comfortable and it’s actually fairly easy to navigate. Your book was really easy to read.

So for all of you out there that are writing a book or working on a book or simply looking for this kind of information, pick up the book. It’s called Financial Freedom: Building Personal Wealth through Homeownership. So besides checking out the book Ed, where can people find you?

Ed Parcaut: I’ve made it real easy over time, it took me a while to figure this out, but I can be found at edparcaut.com or Ed Parcaut at anywhere you do social media. I’m Ed Parcaut everywhere.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Love that, thank you so much Ed. I appreciate your time today brother, I learned so much, have a good one.

Ed Parcaut: Thank you.

The post Financial Freedom: Ed Parcaut appeared first on Author Hour.

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You communicate through more than just your words; your body shares the meaning of your ideas, especially the gestures you use while speaking. Whether you’re a business professional, artist, or student, anyone can benefit from tapping into the power of the six gesture types. Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty. I’m joined today by author Colum Morgan, who’s here to talk about his new book, Your Visual Connection. Let’s flip through it.

Hey, everyone. What’s going on? Thanks for joining us today. I’m super excited to have this next author join us with his time today. Colum, thank you so much. I’m really excited to talk about your book and your philosophies, but definitely your experiences. Thanks for coming on the show today.

Colum P. Morgan: Hussein, thank you for having me. I’m really excited to be here. Thank you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, man. Visual Connections, I loved it. I got into it the last, like I said, 24 hours or so. But before we get into the book, I love giving our listeners an idea of who you are, perhaps a personal background, where you grew up. Maybe someone that influenced you while you were growing up, and maybe perhaps pushed you along this trajectory of getting to know and becoming an expert in this field. Tell us a little bit about your personal background and the path of growing up.

Colum P. Morgan: Yeah. I grew up in Houston, Texas. I’m a Texas native, but I’ve lived all over the world since then. I’ve been able to travel to Europe and live in France. I’m living here in California right now. I’ve lived in Kansas, in New York. I’ve been around a lot of places. Ultimately, I found my way into performance. I started off as a singer and then went from singing into musical theater, and musical theater into legit theater, and legit theater into physical theater. Then physical theater just kept going and going and going until I got to just loving my new biomechanicals, I love the audience being able to have a curated body in front of them if that makes any sense. I followed my bliss, as Joseph Campbell said. I went off, and I studied all these really esoteric, I guess.

Texas kid that went off and explored the world in physical theater, I guess, is the shortlist of it all. Anyone who inspired me, I’ve always been very inspired by the body. I started working out very early 14, 15, 16 years old. I had the luck to work with a really great trainer out in Austin, Texas. She was able to give me a real command of my body and really show me just through weight training, just showing me how muscles are working, opposition, contrast all this stuff. From there, working with the body and performance was so easy for me. It just felt good to keep following that bliss.

Again, that joy just kept me in my body. I just wanted to know more and more about what people were seeing, how people were interpreting me, and how I could be a better communicator, be clear. When I went to Europe, I studied a lot of modalities and different theatrical processes in different ways to present to the audience. All of it really does have a visual element. It has the connection for the audience, the actor on stage, the actors on stage who are creating this curated movement, symphony of words and sounds and movements, and gestures are a huge part of that.

That’s where it came to was, in the end, well recently I guess, if we think about this as being the end. I found that there was for me a lack of information specifically for what was going on underneath my speech, because I was speaking and all this was happening underneath, like right, in my torso. I had all this stuff happening, my arms and everything. I wanted to know more about it. I went out looking and in the performance realm, there wasn’t a lot of information. I started looking in other domains. I had been studying a lot. We had been using gestures. We talked about gestures. We analyze gestures, but no one actually ever said what they were doing or like how we could use them better. That’s where science came in.

Science has been doing that recently. So I turned to science. I just started looking at what recent findings in human communication and gestures and even speech, anthropology, all of it. It’s just, everyone seems to be very interested in this subject. I was like, “This is awesome. Let’s make the connection here for the theatre artists as well.” Since we’re all performing. We’re now all on camera. Before, there were just a few people who were trained to be in front of a camera, newscasters, actors, people who could get up and command 400 or 500 people, but now we’re all able to command the 1000s of people. So I was like, “Well, let’s see if there’s some movement here. If we can help people communicate better.”

Since a lot of us are on camera, even from Zoom, COVID most recently. We all went on to our cameras. We all had these experiences of being framed and having to showcase ourselves in a different way. I thought, yeah, this is it. There’s some information here that people can use. I’d really like to share it with people, especially the public and also for performers. So I see the public now as performers, and that was the link for the book for me; it wasn’t just for people who get on stage. We’re all on stage now. There are none of us that are hidden anymore. We’re all being captured somehow or another, even if it’s an interaction with someone at the grocery store, we could be filmed. The communication that we give needs to be precise and clean. And it can be.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much. The reality is that everyone’s a producer now. We all have cameras, we have phones, right? That’s a beautiful thing, especially if you are a performer that can command a room, can command a center, command an audience. Also what does that say about the audience that are now engaging, right? Because we have live, we have all these things that are, again, so tapped into our palms, right? What happens then when people start to engage and push back or start to read? Like, I feel like this happens quite a bit with people that are unfamiliar with essentially performing, but they may not know they’re performing, right? By just having subtle gestures with their face, or eyebrows, or something like that and it triggers an emotion.

I think that’s so deep. Can you explain maybe a little bit about the history and significance of one or two gesture types that – I don’t want to go into all of them, of course, because I want the audience to go out there and get your book, but I want to talk a little bit about maybe one or two, perhaps three types of gestures that you discuss in your book that you feel like, they’re at the core of our human connection, human communication. What would you say maybe top one, two, or three, that you lean into the most?

The Core GesturesColum P. Morgan: Yeah. I would say the most common that we often see clearly are called beats. We see beats when we look at conversations on television, usually the most common of the gestures when we’re speaking. Now, I must say that most of the gestures and the frequency of gestures that we see 90% of our gestures are made while we are speaking. We very rarely make gestures when we’re listening, just to put that out there that a lot of what I’m talking about in the book is happening while you speak. Beats are hitting specific words. They are feeding, they are giving, they are offering, and you can hear me beat them here just in my voice. You can see that just in my voice, I can beat them in my hands. There’s an up, down, up, down. That’s what we talk about beats are noticed most likely, because they are biphasic. When I say biphasic, I mean, they don’t change shape. They go up and down.

The other gestures have three parts to them. This is where my training in biomechanics overseas with Bogdanov. He was teaching Meyerholds biomechanics, which is a theatrical element, but they analyze movement in that Russian modality. They get really specific about beginnings and ends. Here, science is talking about these structures of the gestures themselves. Beats are biphasic. The other gestures have three phases to them. The ones I think, that we often see are probably the easiest. They don’t require as much energy or rather change. You make a hand shape, and you beat it up and down or in and out, or you punctuate the words because what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to key the words that are the most important that you want the person to understand. So your body is working underneath that to make that information clear for us.

Super fun, really nice, and it’s really nice to see, because once you take control of your beats specifically, you start to notice the frequency with which they happen. That’s really fun. I like to start by just not making any beats at all and just seeing where my body wants to make the movement, and it doesn’t always happen in the arms or in the hands. We often see hands and arms, but it can happen in the body as well, too. I talk about that a little later. We take the concept of this gesture type, and we open it into the performance realm. In the book you’ll see that I go from explaining what it is, then I push it into improvement, and we talk about how it creates character as well, because beats are patterns, repetition, and keying specific things. That’s the first one.

I won’t spend too much time on these, because I want everyone to read the book, as you said. I like Deictic, as well, too. I opened the book with Deictics. Deictic is a Greek word meaning to point or to show. Naturally, they’re pointing gestures. They are things that you would point, specifically with your hands. In performance, we point with our eyes. There is a ton of showing where importance is. Deictics, to me, are where the attention goes, but we’re not always on one attention. We’re not always stuck in one place, so the eyes are where we look when we see people. I’m not looking at your throat. I’m oscillating between your eyes and your mouth. I mentioned the studies that prove that, because of that the eyes are very important.

So, I talked about Deictics as being the importance of where you look, not just pointing with your hands, but pointing with your attention in a way. That can be very important for people in performance, because at the end of the book in chapter eight, I give some exercises that are fun to do while you’re on Zoom, where you can look off in different directions, and you can set anchors. If you respond and give to those anchors off-screen, people on the other side of the screen see a person, they see a placement, they see some – they can’t see who it is, but because you are looking at it, seeing these deictic gestures over in that direction splitting your focus. It creates – it opens the space behind us as well, as for performers or for people who are on stage.

When talking in front of a group of people, where you look is super important. We often have subconscious gestures that we can do. We can drop the eyes very quickly with the deictic gestures. We look in different directions. I talk about how deictics and pointing are the first gesture that babies often have since their muscle control is not controlled yet; it’s not developed. Babies use their eyes to explore the world. So that’s where I wanted to start the conversation where we all start with the first gestures that we start making to communicate with our caregivers and our people around us with our eyes. That’s two.

Three, let’s talk about emblems, because emblems are probably aside from beats which we see people often do. Emblems are the most recognizable, I believe, because they are specific to our culture. Emblems are unique because they are the most codified of all the gestures. Codification means that you have to make it this way. If you do not make it this way, if you make a variation of the gesture, then we do not understand the gesture. The gesture has to be met socially. It has to be made in the same way. The middle finger is an example, thumbs up and the peace sign, the prayer hands. I mean all of these little gestures that we understand as a society, but if you took them somewhere else in a different part of the world, they would not resonate. People would not know what these are. So I give a few examples in the book.

I went to the University of Texas for my master’s degree. The Hook ‘em Horns was always really fun. I was in Italy one time, and I had seen someone with a burnt orange Longhorn shirt, and I sent them the Hook ‘em Horns thing. Oh, man. I got a lot of attention on that because I didn’t realize that doing that symbol in Italy is the cornuto. I was basically saying to that man in public that his wife is sleeping with someone now. It’s like this insult, and I was like, “Oh, my God.” I was like, well, that was my first exploration into the emblem. That’s the fun thing about it is that we see these now a lot on social media. We send emblems are often hand gestures that we can pick in our text messages.

I talk a little about the emblems that are simple. So we start on the top, and then we go a little deeper into them when we talk in the performance realm about how emblems are used because they stand in for words. You don’t need to really speak to say a gesture. It’s one of the few gestures that doesn’t require speech, because it stands in for the words or the phrase and you give – you hold up your two fingers for a peace sign and the word is in the gesture. It’s very close in that way to sign language, in fact.

Then there’s iconic and metaphor. Then there’s an effect as well, too. The way the book is structured, which is very interesting for me, and I don’t know if people will see this, but when we start with deictics, we start with puppetry. Then we go from that into mime, then from mime into melodrama, melodrama into realism, and realism into improvisation, which is basically the evolution of our theatre art form in Western Europe. We started off with these mimes and pantomimes. Then from there, we went into the 1800s into this melodrama with Delsart. Following Delsart, about 100 years ago, actually, I think right now, and this 1923 Stanislavski came to New York and showed us his realism from Russia. So we adopted that. We’ve been doing that for the past 100 years.

Then improv became really big. Saturday Night Live and Second City and the Groundlings, of course. So the evolution of the way I speak about the gestures also fits a historical unfolding of how our art form has been evolving as well. Like how we are connecting with the audience using different modalities.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. This new era, right, that that is presented through now our phones, right? In zoom and things like that, I feel like it’s taking that improv. It’s blurring that line between improv and the real world. I feel like, in a way, how we show up on our Instagram feed or on whatever, right? Like all of these things are actually the essential components of being human, right? And how you express yourself and obviously for performers and people who are in front of others like on a professional level, that’s different, right? Studying and learning all those things.

Today, I feel like wanting things to be raw, natural as they are because we’re just able to pick up our phone, record what’s happening around us with this innate urge to want things to be more natural, to be like, be yourself. This whole ideology of like, you are as unique as they come if you are holistically yourself. So there is no that this line between, I guess for I would say, the average human being who is not necessarily a “believes that they are a performer.” However, what you’re saying here is this idea of like evolution through, whether it’s through theatre or film, all these kinds of things, this ability to make things natural is what we’ve gravitated more and more towards. I remember watching – Do you remember watching The Blair Witch Project?

Colum P. Morgan: A long time ago. Yeah.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right, a real long time, but like, it was so – it was so viscerally different from all the other horror movies or whatever, right? There was nothing – I don’t know that I remember anything like being super scary, but the fact that it was a homemade and it looked like a VHS tape. It was raw. It was about as raw as it gets. It gave you that realistic effect even further, which I think just changed things around especially again, now, back to our phones and those kinds of things. But anyways, I love this, because this conversation for me, personally, as I do speaking, as I go out in the world and I tell my story coming from a refugee camp and growing up in America and all those kinds of things. My goal is to inspire.

Everyone you know, like, “Oh, keep motivate and inspire.” Like, what do you – I say my goal is to just stand in front of people who don’t think that they can become whatever it is that they want to become. I hope to be an example, especially high school, young college students of color because for me, it’s like you got to see the performance in order to be a performer, right? And whatever that means for you, relationship, work, all those kinds of things. The reason I really gravitated towards your book and why I’m going to finish it this weekend, is because it’s allowing me to take these components, especially like I said, earlier, I’m Middle Eastern. We literally speak with our eyes, our eyebrows, and our hand gestures, and I used to think that was a bad thing. Until I realized like the most viewed TEDx or one of the most viewed TEDx talks out there, actually, that person used a lot of hand gestures, which then I was like, “Oh, this is interesting.”

Again, coming back to your book, I find it very interesting that your work really revolves around this idea that the body is the instrument. I know as you’re a trained professional in that, can you teach us a little bit, why you believe the body can be used as an instrument in communication? When I say performance, performance doesn’t have to be just in front of an audience on stage. I think I perform around again, my friends, my relationships, my family, right? Can you tell us a little bit how we can utilize our body in thinking in that way?

Communicating With Your BodyColum P. Morgan: Yeah. Good question. Good question. The body is the instrument through which we are communicating. We are speaking out of our heads. Then we’ve got underneath our head, we have this massive form of muscle and bone. It’s a part of what we say, because performers focus a lot on developing these skills so that when we get up in front of people, we can eliminate tension, we can get rid of unwanted or unneeded things and develop just what we need for the public as a way that what I want to say for us with these gestures is you’re right, the body is we’ve had it our whole time. You’re watching people gesture on TED. You’re seeing people gesture all over the place. This is not new. The information that I’m sharing here is, that you’ve been using these gestures your whole life, technically. I mean, there’s really, all I’ve done is just said, there are six types.

The goal for that is — I believe in and my way that if you know what these six types are, it’s not that I read them on you. It’s not about me reading what these gesture types are necessarily. It’s about you knowing how the gestures are working underneath you. What your hands are doing. Is it an iconic? Is it a metaphor? Are you beating all the time? How often are you beating? Just knowing these things can help you become aware. I noticed too, for individuals, specifically and clients that I have, they become very present. They come out of their head and in their body, because it’s the body that is in the moment. Knowing how the gestures are communicating your idea.

What science is showing us, and we talk about this in the book, is that the hands are almost like a feedback loop. There’s like a, I don’t want to say a figure eight, but the gestures are helping the thought process, the thought processes is coming out in the gestures and creating the spatial dynamic that words are lacking, because we’re all using the same relationship between our thought process and the gesture and the gestures are working to communicate what the words may be lacking weight, speed and you’re showing certain things. Knowing how your hands are doing that and just by dividing it into six types, gives us a lot of – we can be more creative this way.

I think having a multitude of gestures and just, because there are a ton of things happening underneath while we’re speaking. Our hands are doing all sorts of things. You mentioned eyebrows and head. We talk about all of this in the book, as well, too. It’s all about knowing how your message is shaped. So when we talk to people, since there is so much movement around us, there’s something that draws our attention when the movement in the way that we use our bodies has a conscious joy in it. There’s an ability to be present and to be in control as we are supposed to be letting the environment control us and push and pull us through certain things.

Knowing the gesture types allows us to be in the body and to communicate with purpose. That gives us a lot of joy, because we find, at least I find, that it helps me understand the communication that I’m giving. It lets me focus on the other person. It says, here I am. I’m making my message very clear. My gestures are working for you. It’s a connection for us. It’s not just about me. I’m using gestures so that you and I can connect in a visual connection. In the fourth wall, I use the fourth wall as a theatrical term, because it’s the wall on stage that’s gone that the audience is at, but it’s the camera and the fourth wall is also the other person sitting across the cafe table from you. It’s you, you are my fourth wall. You are to where I send my message. The message is towards the fourth wall.

Our bodies are sending – they’re sitting underneath this. They have all this information. All this potential, and that’s what I want the book to do is allow this potential to be increased, to allow people access and knowledge. They’re saying, “Oh, I’ve been using this since I was born.” My body is – I mean gesturing and all this other stuff, but here we are now we can actually say, “Oh, yeah, that was a metaphor. I am using a lot of metaphors today.” “Oh, that’s iconic. That’s strong. I can make that. Maybe I get I’ll figure that one out next time when I tell that story again. I’ll make the iconic gesture even bigger.” It’s fun because you’ll see the audience gets engaged. You bring them joy, as well, too, because everyone’s making these gestures. Very few of us are actually conscious and present with them.

That’s my goal for everyone is to just share a little knowledge of what the performers on my side are thinking of. Again, since we’re all performers, it can be a great individuation process for everyone to just look at themselves and observe how you look to the world through the actions, your hands, and gestures, you’re communicating with your speech.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, I love that so much. You’re speaking to my soul, but –

Colum P. Morgan: Oh, good. I love it. I love it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Because here’s the thing, man. Like I have always been drawn by not just great speakers and things like that, but story. Story is really, it’s a very physical thing. I know I’ll be honest with you, man. When I’m on a little platform or stage where I’m performing in front of people and I’m sharing my story. There’s parts of my story where I get emotional. There’s times where my influx in my voice like it changes. I record myself all the time and going back and watching myself to see where I can spike the emotion, bring it down, “Oh, I went too long there.” All those kinds of things, all those components and I realized when I’m just at the most raw with myself and there was literally times where I would tear up speaking about my dad or something like that. Man, you can just feel the room just like basically absorb the energy, because I feel you’re not just communicating a message or an idea.

I feel like for me, man. Learning the power of the pause, ha – oh, my God, that was a game changer. As far as again, you are communicating a message. However, that message is intertwined with emotion. I mean, again, I know you talk about this as well, which is so powerful, but the intertwining, that mixing of emotion and messagerie is like it has to come through your body, holistically. The power of that pause, where you really bring that person into your world and let them sit there for just that millisecond, right, or the two seconds, or the moments where you can just let them feel it and then deliver the other side of that. Then deliver the transformation or whatever it may be.

I found personally, again, this is why you’re speaking to my soul is, I’m telling you, man. This book is so powerful, because here’s the thing, whatever we’re trying to do, business owners, entrepreneurs, whatever it is, your sales, or you’re an artist, you’re – whatever. You are essentially trying to convey a message in some way, shape or form. To utilize the cues the human body, your expression, and your energy to create this soup, if you will, of all of these things to deliver, it makes it that much more memorable and powerful. Communication just skyrockets.

I love that so much, because I feel like that’s what makes obviously it’s what makes really powerful performances and why we love actors so much, right? All these things, because they convey these beautiful emotions in such a sharp way and I love that this is your world. This is who you get to help and explore it, but now you also bring it out of that world and help the rest of us out, which I’m super grateful for.

Colum P. Morgan: Yeah.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: These – techniques that anyone can use, so it really powerful.

Colum P. Morgan: Thank you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, man. I’ll say this, dude. Like when I tell my wife, I love you. She knows like, I push it because again, she works with actors all day. I’m always like, “Babe, I love.” You know like I go – she knows I’m just messing with her, but it feels so good to just say it like that, because it’s so, it’s such a feeling I really want to get across.

Colum P. Morgan: Try this. If you’re saying try this, next time just as a small experiment.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes.

Colum P. Morgan: Next time, why don’t you try this with your wife, when you tell her I love you. Make a gesture towards her first. Then tell her you love her. See if the gesture doesn’t leave that space and create that kind of that pause in a way. Now, it doesn’t create a pause, but it does start the communication process before the word starts. We talked about this in the book, as well, too. Where the gestures happen while you’re speaking can have a huge impact on your message. So if you’re saying I love you, I love you and might be making a gesture on the love or you or whatnot. Push the gesture to the very beginning and see if that doesn’t open the space afterward and create what I call the “grand pause”, the grand the pause. It’s the beautiful pause, Maria Campbell talks about this.

Anyway, so she talks about the power of that and that does pulls people in, because, again, we’re so pushed at, everything’s pushed at us that when you open up the space you pull people in. I think I just be curious to see if that works for you. If you make a gesture to her and then say, I love you, if that doesn’t make the message more personal, because it has that pause in it before you speak, but the communication has already started. Does that make sense?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: 100%, man. You just helped me get my wife to love me more. This is great. Yeah.

Colum P. Morgan: With that and some flowers and maybe just a dinner.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh, man. I am absolutely, loving this. I feel like so many people are going to get so much out of this book, but for you, what’s the thing that you feel like putting this book together, finalizing it, getting it out into the world. What was your favorite part of pulling all this wisdom together?

Colum P. Morgan: Oh, wow. Oh, gosh. Yeah. All of it. It’s been such an enjoyable experience. The process started – we went through the whole, it was each phase of the process had its own rhythm and had its own entity and was each one of it was enjoyable. They were all separate. I think I really liked the first, probably think I think I the first edit the most when the whole thing appeared in front of me. It was all there. It was the first edit. I just thought this is incredible. This is it. There was, we went on to the second edit, which was easy, but seeing it that first time was so lovely.

The team that helped bring this to fruition is just, they were so excellent. I mean, they were Sherpas for me on this incredible mountain. The hike that we’re taking right now, I feel like I’m almost at the top of that or the end of it. I don’t know what the metaphor is here, but whatever it is, we’re almost at the end of this journey. Even this part has been really enjoyable, just seeing how all of it unfolds. This is my first book. I’m learning how all of this works.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. I also have a feeling this won’t be your last book personally, because I feel like –

Colum P. Morgan: Do you have ideas? That’s funny. Yeah. I do.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Let’s go. Bring it all out. I love that so much. What is your hope? I mean like, there are there are for sure going to be many people who will pick this up, and they’ll get through it, they’ll digest it. What is what is the thing that you hope for after they finish, they put it down, what is the feeling you hope that your book provoked?

Colum P. Morgan: Yeah. This is going to be a strange answer to answer, but I want people to forget it and just walk out with this knowledge in their body. It’s not something to distract you from your everyday life. It’s not supposed to distract you from what you do. It’s just something that you read, you absorb it, you let it go, go through the exercises at the end and learn a little more. The exercises are there to complement a lot of what was written about in the chapters. Then just let it go and just see how this resonates. If you want to make a second and third pass, I’m all about this on books. I pick up what I need the first time and then come back the second, third time, pick up different things. That’s my hope. The hope is to make people better communicators to see each other more and to know how we are seen.

The book is supposed to just give us a door. It’s supposed to just open the door and when you walk through it, I don’t want you to hang around the door. I want you to continue to walk into that room and just let that door take you to a new place. That’s what I want. I want this to be a portal to a better you. I don’t want you to carry it necessarily. I want you to have the book. I want you to like it. I want you to use the information as much as you can, but my goal is free for the reader. My goal is for them. It’s for us as a community, as well. We can hear each other better when we communicate better.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: True. Colum, thank you so much for sharing your stories and your experiences. Man, I am serious, I’m so grateful our paths crossed today, and I got to speak with you. You obviously have a very profound way of really sending your message across to others. I know I’ve been impacted by just hanging out with you for 30 minutes and throughout your book. Thank you for that. The book is called, Your Visual Connection: 6 Gesture Types for Holding the 4th Wall. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you, brother?

Colum P. Morgan: Yeah. I have my website. I’m not on social media. I don’t do any of that stuff. I just have colum.info, C-O-L-U-M-DOT-I-N-F-O, that’s me. Everything you want to know about me is right there.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful. Colum, thank you so much for coming on the show today, brother.

Colum P. Morgan: Thank you, Hussein. This has been so wonderful.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely. Wishing you the best on the launch of your book and much more successful.

Colum P. Morgan: Happy New Year to you. I think I can still say that, we’re still in January. So Happy New Year to you. Thank you so much for everything. I really appreciate it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Absolutely. It’s my honor, brother. Thank you.

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As Web3 technology reshapes finance, supply chain, social media, and other industries, my next guest’s book and message presents a clear case for including healthcare privacy and innovation within this new reality.

Welcomed back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by Brigitte Piniewski, who is here to talk about her new book, Wealthcare: Demystifying Web3 and The Rise of Personal Data Economies. Let’s get into it.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. I have a very special guest today, Brigitte Piniewski is here. I can’t tell you guys how easily I found myself getting into this book even though it was kind of techy and a little in my head-y but I’m super excited because Brigitte has got a unique message that I think really impacts a lot of us.

Brigitte, thank you so much for joining me today on the show, I’m really excited to talk about your book and of course celebrate it as it hits the shelf in the world today. So talk to me Brigitte, how’s it going?

Brigitte Piniewski: Well, thanks for having me, great to be here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely, thank you for sharing your time with me. I really want to get into your book a little bit but before we do that, I love sharing with our audience, just a little bit of a background about you, where your upbringing was, you know? What kind of people influenced you? Perhaps your mom, your father, and uncle, someone distant to get into where you are today in this work around Web3 and this idea of wealth care.

Brigitte Piniewski: Well, when I think of the early days, that phrase “it takes a village” really comes to mind. In my case, it took multiple villages. I grew up in a really small town and of course there were no smart phones back then, we didn’t even have a high school to graduate from. We had to bus ourselves over on a school bus to the next town for an hour and the next town had to make sure that we graduated from high school.

And what was interesting, I recall the teachers asking me, you know, which universities I had applied to and it struck me as strained. “I have to apply to a university? Don’t you just go the way you go to school?” and they would chuckle but they really picked up on the fact that a lot of kids don’t really have that background or the family situation that’s going to allow them to understand the opportunities that might be available to them.

And so they made sure that, you know, we applied to a university and eventually, I got in, and I studied. I went through medicine and began delivering babies for a living, and I got the impression that we would be doing really important work. You know, if we just get those nine months right and have a nice safe delivery, we could launch our babies off to a hundred years of good health but what I found in relatively short order was that that was very, very wrong.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, what a fascinating journey, and just to think, when you were young, you didn’t even understand the idea of how to apply for university, and honestly, where I come from, in the Middle East, like going to a university is a huge deal and of course, you got to apply in all those things but when we came here that’s like what my parents thought too, that you just kind of go to University like you sign up for high school, you know what I mean?

But obviously, it’s not that and you know, kudos to those amazing teachers around you that supported you and aligned you to get into university, which obviously opened up doors and unique ones at that. So what inspired you to write this book specifically about this topic? Because obviously, we’re going to get into it a little bit more but who are you trying to reach with your message specifically?

Brigitte Piniewski: With this tale telling in the topic, mostly what motivated me was as I said, I began thinking that these children would have a hundred years of good health and what happened relatively quickly over in just a few years, it started to become very apparent that we were working with incredibly faulty intelligence and intelligence that, you know, we recognize today in terms of our population health is not anything to be very proud of in terms of what could be achieved and so I thought we need to move beyond our current models of randomized control trials.

We have the technology to know so much more today. How do we get this done? Because it was really the children that made it clear that within just four years of you know, the sensitive time such as puberty, you could unknowingly reduce your opportunities in the future through no fault of your own, in ways that were irreversible.

And so that moved me away from seeing children one-on-one and I started acting as chief medical officer for one of the largest reference labs in the Pacific Northwest. We collaborated with Intel, Qualcomm, academia, technology companies to use technology to enable the smart household, the smart homes so that no one would be moving forward in their health not knowing those things that really mattered and that work moved me into advising for investors.

As more and more technology companies were showing us solutions that involve blockchain and Web3, it made it clear that this is something I needed to learn about and even the investors around me, they needed an education because this was beyond what we had trained in or used during our time at work and so I set up investor education programs and that got me really excited about Web3.

Realizing that this is finally an opportunity to transform health in ways we have been talking about for decades but have never really achieved. But of course, doing this, it’s going to take a village as well. A lot of diverse stakeholders have to come to the table, we need a common language and a common vision and that’s what made me motivated to write this book and get started with this conversation.

About Web3Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful, thank you for bringing that all the way home. Like I’m very interested in what all you have to say about Web3 but for those of us that don’t understand Web3 fully or even remotely, can you kind of talk a little bit about what Web3 is or that technology and then what issues in our current healthcare system do we believe Web3 can help address?

Brigitte Piniewski: So I guess the easy way to think of Web3 is to walk us back to Web1. So Web1 is that first model of the Internet that allowed us to basically share information. So think of that as seeing an encyclopedia online or on a screen instead of in a book and Web1 model was provided to you know, flatten access to information.

So that everybody anywhere, regardless of whether you have that encyclopedia at home or not, could get access to what was on those pages and so the model at that time was really an opportunity for everyone to participate in the knowledge that was available but what happened with Web2 and we can think of Web2 as the time at which we started to transact.

So buy things online, create web spaces and companies online, what happened there very quickly, it was large companies that could take advantage of Web2 technologies and commerce in ways that you and I, the average individual could not and so what we saw was a growing asymmetry, where large financial institutions and companies were able to harness most of the power of Web2.

And what we’re looking at Web3 is an opportunity to take back that ethos of Web1 to say, “We would like as individuals to participate and manage our digital footprint and be able to decide ourselves where and when our individual data streams are being used for what purposes” and the beauty of what Web3 can do for healthcare is take us from where we are today.

As I mentioned, our knowledge and our intelligence is incredibly faulty. We’ve made so many mistakes, we didn’t even get the basics right when it comes to things like calories, nutrition, you know, the war on fat should have been the war on trans fats and so fundamentally, there’s lots of opportunity in the current system to get things wrong.

But what we’re talking about with a Web3 future is this opportunity to have individuals safely and effectively collaborate with their own true health experiences at scale and this is really important because as we talked about earlier, the children can have you know, their futures rearranged in the space of four years and every four years, we have another cohort of kids moving through puberty and we’re not able at all to understand how to protect them against this today.

I think the other thing that’s important is, healthcare without Web3, we can only offer average. Today, every time we manage an individual, we’re actually managing a population. You walk into the clinic, we see a population, which means we can only give you average but at the end of the day, no one wants average.

You know, if your wife was diagnosed with breast cancer tomorrow, she doesn’t want average. You don’t want her to have average, you would like her to have an optimal health outcome. But in order for that to happen, we would need to have access to the plethora of individuals that have had breast cancer previously and what were the details and the co-occurrences that collaborated in ways that made it possible for some folks to have an outlier outcome versus those that did not.

And so that is offering us an opportunity to finally get to the place where no health experience is wasted. It does evaporate, we have a place to carefully and effectively store it for the benefit of ourselves as well as the benefit of each other.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s so powerful. I mean, you put it so eloquently, obviously, this is work you’re very passionate about and where you see the cross section between, you know, health, wellness, of course but also the future and what technology is able to do for us and how we can use these new tools or tools in general but this idea that we can own our sort of fingerprint back. Whatever decision we make going forward, it helps us all collectively and so powerful.

So in the text, you mentioned the concept of accidental wellness and how it’s a thing of the past. Can you elaborate on what you mean by this and how Web3 technology can help prevent it?

Accidental WellnessBrigitte Piniewski: Yeah and that relates back to this idea that I started with in medicine, thinking that we were launching our babies off to a hundred years of good health. Remember when we grew up, most of our parents didn’t have to know how to feed us. They didn’t have to know how to move us. They didn’t even manage our sleep because we didn’t have the access to screens and technology that’s available today.

What has happened since that time is the defaults have all shifted such that items that don’t resemble real food are you know, cheaper, more convenient and easily consumed, such that passively, all of the future cohorts will never be accidentally well again. We would need to engineer in real food. We need to engineer in activity as we move away from you know, activity-based employment to knowledge-based employment.

Now, it’s possible using a screen to keep the brain so busy that we can sit for hours at a time and employers will have us sit for eight or more hours at a time and this is something that our biology has no knowledge of. You know, our biology has no idea that we are carrying a smartphone, that has no idea that you know, we can control the photoperiod, we can make it light and day at any time according to our own choices.

And so we’re working with a biology, which has an operating system that expects the defaults that were available when people used to be accidentally well. Those conditions no longer exist on the ground and therefore, we need to figure out how best to enable an environment that allows future generations to be actively well.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That is so powerful and just to think about you know, for me just sitting here listening to you, just think about how fast this has happened. Like I mean to me, I feel like, in 2004, maybe, 2003, 2004, when I had my little Nokia, little, you know, snake phone where I’m just playing games on it to where, you know, here I am talking to someone that’s quite literally like engineering the future and what that looks like for humanity.

And the thing that we’re talking about is that same thing that’s evolved, of course, is consumed us in such a way is completely and utterly changed how we operate in the world and to think back to our biology, our humanity and the structures that make us, what we are and who we are, are now so intertwined with this screen. You know, I’m just thinking, I’m like, trying to take it all in.

To be honest with you, like, I just kind of zoomed out and zoomed back into our conversation because it is profound to me how fast this happened and what is that like for you as a person that’s heavily involved in this work? How do you feel about the speed? I feel like we went through a time warp, personally.

Brigitte Piniewski: Totally but I think that what we’re left with is the vast majority of the population seems to feel as if healthcare is keeping up with the times and I think that that’s a thought you need to erase from your mind immediately. We have not kept up with the times. We offer the right drug for the right person at the right time, that’s going to give you average, that’s it. There is nothing beyond that that we can guarantee or achieve with the current model.

We need to get to this place where we can, you know, safely and effectively pull our experiences and by the way, at the same time, create an inclusive business model that will actually make it happen. I mean, up until recently, we’ve been asking people to use technology to track their steps or monitor their nutrition because it was good for their health. That’s way too low a value proposition to have many people participate indefinitely.

But with the use of Web3 and these novel technologies, we can tokenize behavior and your health data can become a digital asset that you manage and control that becomes an economic asset for you as well and so finally, we can solve some of the big problems in healthcare such as the quality and quantity of data as we purposefully put in our steps alongside or lab values, so that at the end of the day, our lab values will be worth more.

So for instance, you know, an HDL, a lipid panel without understanding what type of activity was associated with that lipid panel is worth less on the open market than one that is and so I think there’s an opportunity here using Web3 and the book tried to make sure that we’re giving concrete examples about this. We offer a bit of a primer with new terms so that the novice reader doesn’t get lost.

With these concrete examples go through and touch on things like blockchains, tokens, NFTs, DOWs, Metaverse, so they can begin to take shape and make some sort of sense and then we offer both current and future scenarios as well as a bit of a framework using a three-technology zone model that I think is very high level but that’s where we need to start so that we can have a diverse group of readers begin to be able to have these conversations, no longer shying away from them.

Some people somehow feel like this is, blockchain is too hard and hopefully, this book will make it clear that it is definitely not too hard and we absolutely can all participate. At the end of the day, actually, it’s inevitable. I mean, which group wants to continue just accepting average? We all want optimal and more and more, there are so many intelligent folks on the planet that this will happen. It’s a matter of where will it happen first.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful and you sort of wave in a flag amongst, I’m sure, many others, about the opportunities. It’s gratifying because you are focusing on energy instead of like fearing what all these potential new technologies can offer and filling them with positive possibilities, opportunities, things that can actually help us eliminate some challenges that we’ve had and that have held us back.

Can you speak about the importance of something really big, the importance of privacy in healthcare and how Web3 technology can enhance it? Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Brigitte Piniewski: Yeah and so in healthcare, I think the general population seems to feel that the HIPAA regulations are what protects our privacy, so every time we see a clinician we’re asked to sign a slip that says that our visit is going to be HIPAA protected. The issue there though is that the health systems today are at liberty to remove identifiers from our visit and then use that data for research and other purposes at their discretion.

So what Web3 offers however is an opportunity to ensure that your health data on your own personal, you know, longitudinal record is managed in such a way that it has a built-in audit control. You can authorize segments of your data to be used for specific purposes at specific times for specific reasons and all of that using the technology is easily auditable and this is something that hasn’t been possible prior to Web3 approaches.

Before it would have been impossible to ask people to manage and control their own records. It is just too much of a technology ask but now with the use of a Web3 base technologies, I always think of them as kind of mathematically fortifying the Internet where the Internet can basically provide a longitudinal health record that is, you know, something that the individual now owns and manages without a lot of tech-savviness required on their part at all.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that. In a way, it is sort of like my health dashboard and I can kind of analyze and look at past, you know, where I am at today and by this idea and forgive me if I get it wrong but I am just kind of expressing what you are telling me in the sense of like tokenizing my health, those steps, those workouts, the boxing class, whatever it is that I am building better heath improves and adds value to this tokenized version of myself, if you will, or can you explain that a little bit further on the idea of tokenizing and kind of where, you know, transactions in this cross-section between those transactions and healthcare.

Brigitte Piniewski: Sure. So I think what you’re describing has been kind of the typical model where we’ve been using technology to reflect back at you your own sleep for instance and you’ll have the pleasure of seeing your exact, you know, one-person sleep every day and it’s yours but in Web3 based phenomena, you don’t live in isolation. You kind of live with a crowd in your pocket, where you can have an opportunity to say, “Hey, I am not sleeping well.”

“I can’t figure this out as an N of one, let me tap into my community to determine who’s sleeping well regardless of where they are in the planet and what are the combinations of co-occurrences they’re using that kind of match the sorts of things that I would be willing to do.” And so we are launched right away into a high fidelity understanding of not only are you sleeping, you know, poorly or not, but why it is that that’s the case.

It’s informed not by, you know, years of the sleep lab and randomized control trials but it is informed by individuals that are part of the free living system providing you access to the ebb and flow of sleep as it happens on the planet.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Crazy because I just took the dashboard and made it literally three dimensional, right? Instead of just looking at it on a flat surface, now I get to see so many different variations. That is so powerful and thanks for contextualizing that for me.

Brigitte Piniewski: Think of it as almost end dimensional. Right now, we don’t have the opportunity to query. We can’t even query really important things because we haven’t had a way of safely and effectively maintaining our health data. We don’t have the opportunity to say, you know, assume somebody suggested to you, you needed back surgery. You went, “Whoa, wait a minute, back surgery, what’s the outcome for me being in my mid-20s doing this now?”

It would be ideal for you to tap into the hundreds of folks that have gone before to have high-definition understanding of what their outcomes were like and why and whether this is the option that you would like to pursue at this moment. We keep thinking of health as an isolated event or an individual event. It won’t be good, we’ll never get to our best health outcomes unless we do it together, unless it becomes a crowd-based event.

But we need to have the technology to allow us to safely and effectively share our health experiences.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful and really reframing the way we think about our healthcare, just personal healthcare is actually connected to almost everyone and the more you know, not just from one specific doctor or a few doctors, really hundreds if not thousands helped if not millions of people around the world that are experiencing something similar that kind of match up to who you are, how you are and identifies a series of ways to look if there are solutions perhaps.

That’s so powerful and thank you for really, I guess, you took me from an iPhone screen to like a big television screen as to how to look at this, that’s so powerful. Thank you for clarifying that, yeah.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/alphabets-close-up-computer-connection-532173/

WealthcareBrigitte Piniewski: Yeah, I would just add that, you know, this sort of massive equalizer effect. So what we’re talking about is a fire hose access to the truth, you know, fire hose access to on-the-ground truths and if you want to understand truth, you really need to have the expression of both good health and bad health and obscure health and you know, we all as individuals are remarkably unique and we approach the way we live our lives in very different ways.

If there was a way to effectively digitize that, make it explorable and reap the benefits financially for doing so, we would have access to a level of truth that doesn’t exist today and a level of knowledge that we don’t have access to today. So I’m reminded always that more wealth or I guess the best way of putting this is new knowledge is the foundation of new wealth and so collectively together, we can build this fire hose of knowledge that would then be the basis for this next leap of wealth creation.

Remember the Internet was a huge leap in wealth creation as more and more commerce went online. Now, we have an opportunity to you know, put the amount of transactions you and I engage in, put that on steroids.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That sounds so powerful, which leads us of course to such a great title to the book, Wealthcare. This idea of looking into the future and seeing all the possibilities that are for me, for others around me and how we can collectively really come out on top, get healthier, get a better perspective on who we are and how we operate and sort of like really lean into the fact that we are unique and that we are though we’re unique that is a huge sign of our unity, right?

Is that we are unique individuals that go through things differently, however, understanding that vast world of knowledge, there are patterns and there are patterns and clues and ways where you can understand yourself that much better. I love not only books like that but people like you who crush all this wisdom together because this is years in the making and bring forth a book to kind of help us understand in the next wave of the world.

I genuinely appreciated today, it’s been just an honor sitting with you and getting to know you and learn so much about your work. I’m really excited for this book. Before I let you go, I do want to know how do you want that reader to feel after putting down your book, having finished it, read it thoroughly, you know, enjoyed it, got through it, what do you want them to feel when they walk away from that book?

Brigitte Piniewski: I really like them to come away with this strong conviction that Web3 is not just crypto, that it’s really an amazing collaboration highway that you know, we the people, we can coproduce the high fidelity intelligence that matters to us, to individuals as well as each other and that, you know, healthcare has not kept up with the times and that’s an idea we want to erase from our minds that we no business knowing as little as we know today.

That average is not enough, it never was but now, we finally have an opportunity to offer optimal to ourselves and each other and that that’s something we’re all going to have to roll up our sleeves for and participate in and as you say, the world is changing quickly, and we don’t want to be left behind. We want to have a world where we have agency over our digital footprint and be in a place where we have an opportunity not just to reach our full health but our full wealth potential by doing so.

You know, just one last thought. I was thinking about—I mentioned transactions, and I’m thinking while we’re having this podcast, you know, today we might have had a handful of transactions. You might have bought some coffee, maybe some groceries, purchase something online but what we really see this Web3 model moving forward enabling for us is kind of a quiet hum in the background.

Where a podcast like this you and I would have both had a few hundred transactions happen with our digital footprint in the background without us having to be involved but yet we could be absolutely convinced and confident that they’re happening according to our preferences and this will give us an opportunity to have that value tracked and perhaps overtime, be sufficient in terms of value creation that we can start to talk about.

Even you know, audacious dreams like universal basic income because certainly the industry has proven to us that our health data is very valuable. There are billions in terms of financial transactions going on with health data today, they just don’t include any of us, and so I think that is something that can comfort us to know that our health data is very valuable and at the same time, we now have the technology to participate in making that available safely and effectively to ourselves and each other.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah and of course, take back some of the piece of the pie or get more of the piece of the pie because it feels like at this point, I have been putting into the piece of the pie, right? When I think about healthcare, it doesn’t seem like it wants me to do anything with not only data but just like the actual cost of physical healthcare. So again, just bringing all that idea, this idea of let’s bring—reign our powers back.

Allow us to be in control, be educated in that way, and know the power within how much our actions, our knowledge, our wisdom is collectively worth and how valuable it is to so many industries that earn money from it on a daily basis in the background without us even knowing. I am so thankful for your conversation today and your time because I hope that our audience learned a lot because I am still learning.

I feel like I am still processing this conversation and things are hitting me slowly. So thank you so much for that. Again, I have learned so much, your stories and your experiences are obviously, you know, they are going to be challenging the world we see in it of itself and I commend your work and I am just honored today having learned from you today.

Brigitte Piniewski: Great. Well, pleasure speaking with you Hussein. I think we think of this as expanding the workforce, you know, industries operate in isolation and now we’re expanding the workforce to include all of us.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful. The book is called, Wealthcare: Demystifying Web3 and The Rise of Personal Data Economies. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you?

Brigitte Piniewski: So you can find me on LinkedIn at Brigitte Piniewski. I am also on Twitter there, the handle is WealthCareWeb3.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful. Well, thank you so much again Brigitte. I really appreciate your time today.

Brigitte Piniewski: Thank you.

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For most patients, a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s creates a future without any proven treatment to stop the inevitable progression of symptoms. My next guest’s new book dives deep and how lithium is a valuable answer, from years of research and experience working in the field.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast, I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty. I’m joined by author Tom Guttuso, who’s here to talk about his new book called The Promise of Lithium. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m Hussein. Today, I’m super excited to have a friend of mine come on the show. His name is Tom. Tom, thank you for coming on the show today. I really appreciate you. I want to mention why you’re a friend. It’s because we met at the Guided Author Workshop. Here we are now celebrating your launch of your book. How incredible is that? Welcome to the show, my friend.

Thomas Guttuso, Jr: Thanks, Hussein. It is very good to be here. Amazing that in one year, I have a book.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, yes. It’s like, the process worked itself out. I know, it wasn’t easy and we’ll get into that for sure. The book is called The Promise of Lithium. I remember you sitting there, sharing with the group about your book. Being very passionate about the topic of your book, which is just remarkable. I remember going around to tables, and a lot of people were sharing like, why they wanted to write books. Yours was profound. I remember it, it was this really unique urge to want to help people. I’m really excited that you’re here and to get in this topic a little bit.

Thomas Guttuso, Jr: Great. Excited to talk about it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. All right, so before we get into the book, I want to tell our listeners a little bit about who you are, your personal background, where you grew up, high school, college, whatever. If you want to share about a person that helped direct you in a way, that changed your life in the positive direction and who would that be?

Thomas Guttuso, Jr: Yeah. I mean, first part is I grew up in a suburb of Buffalo, New York. Did high school here. I went to college at Cornell University. Spent a year out in California trying to learn how to surf. That was a bit unsuccessful at the time. Although, I’m definitely a more accomplished surfer at this point. I came back to Buffalo, received a master’s in psychology and then went to medical school at University of Buffalo. Residency in neurology and a sub-specialization in movement disorders, which is mostly the study of Parkinson’s disease. Did a lot of research in Rochester and came back and joined the faculty in Buffalo at University of Buffalo in the medical school. That was in 2003, and I’ve been here since 2003.

In terms of who inspired me, which you just asked me before we started this, the first person that popped in my head was my oldest sister. It must have been some time in middle school, she bought me a book for Christmas that was called The Brain. I just devoured the thing. I was so interested in it. I think that’s what got me started. I just found the book fascinating, thinking about what our brain does, how it is responsible for all of our emotions and everything we feel and how it works, these chemicals and this electricity and these pathways. That just, I think, kindled my interest in neuroscience and then neurology and research. She’s been quite an inspiration ever since. I bounce everything off of her. Of course, she read the book and had many critical comments for me, prior to getting sent to the editor.

Lithium and the BrainHussein Al-Baiaty: Of course. Of course. Oh, I love that so much. Well, thank you, sister, for helping Tom realize his full potential and make this incredible journey throughout the understanding of the brain, which I mean, let’s be honest, it is hands down the most valuable real estate in the world, is that right? At least that’s how I was taught about it. It’s so valuable. I feel like, I know so little about it, even though I’ve read as much as I could. But not in a medical journey, if you will, but really try to understand myself and my trauma.

I love your approach. Your book is, again, so easy to navigate and get into, because it’s very story-driven. I really want to get into, if you can give us an overview briefing, how does this idea of lithium play a role in the functioning of the brain? Obviously, we know why you chose to focus on it, because seems like you were just channeled by it and fascinated. I’d like to know, where does lithium play in all of this?

Thomas Guttuso, Jr: Very little is written about the necessity of lithium for brain function. Lithium is just one of the elements on the periodic table of elements. It’s an ion. It sits very closely to some other elements that are critical for brain functioning; sodium, potassium, calcium. These things have been studied tremendously, and how important they are for function, physiology and disease process.

Lithium, really, not much. Lithium has been mostly relegated to basic science world, in petri dishes, cell cultures, animal models. But it’s certainly not considered an essential element for brain functioning. I wonder if that belief in the neuroscience world should be challenged, just based on everything that I have read and learned and researched myself with lithium. That’s something, I think that’s going to be far into the future. It is a fascinating and extremely old element. When you think about lithium, what’s the first thing you think of, when you think of lithium?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh, man. Batteries, instantly. Tesla. Literally. Yeah, exactly. I mean, but my science is not very far beyond my understanding, but I have no idea.

Thomas Guttuso, Jr: Oh, but it’s true. I think that most people would say exactly what you just said. Lithium-ion battery.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: They last longer, it’s true.

Thomas Guttuso, Jr: They last longer, yeah. They’re a lot more expensive. Lithium predates the origin of the Earth. It is one of the first three elements formed at the Big Bang, the genesis of the universe over 13 billion years ago. Lithium is still part of our environment. It’s in the food we eat and the water we drink. It is with us. We all have some lithium circulating in our blood streams.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: When did this correlation start to happen? When you started to busily try to figure out some things in studies, what led you to what your book is really focused around, which is Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease? Why that area of the brain that you decided, I guess, it’s a portion of where these things happen in the brain? How did you then make the connection that it’s a deficiency in lithium, or is it too much lithium? Where did that part of the story really come into play that you decided that, “Oh, there’s something to be researched here”?

Thomas Guttuso, Jr: I wish I could say that I made some discovery in a laboratory, or had some eureka moment. But it was completely by accident. It’s described in the book. I learned so much from just listening to my patients. They shocked me sometimes with the things that they report. When I look at it, it’s not surprising. I can read about these diseases, and I can study them. The patients who are living with them, they have a wealth of information on what the diseases do, how they affect somebody’s life. In this case, what they experience when a new therapy is started.

For this lithium journey and the origin of this book, it started about eight years ago, when one of my patients with Parkinson’s, who was having a lot of trouble with a particular kind of Parkinson’s symptom came in and told me that those symptoms had pretty much resolved, just out of the blue. I was completely shocked. He and his wife said that all they could attribute to why the symptoms improved so much was because his psychiatrist put him on a very low dose of lithium. That was the start of it.

I just listened to this patient and his wife, and was fascinated that could this actually be something that could help other patients as well? I just started taking a deep dive into it. I just hit, did a literature search, started reading more and more and more about it. The more I read, I felt like Alice in Wonderland, just going down these rabbit holes, and one hole led to another. Before I knew it, I saw that that was a pretty compelling story supporting very low doses of lithium. Lithium that you can purchase over the counter as a dietary supplement, evidence supporting that it may prevent and slow both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. That’s how it started, really. It was completely by accident.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, and I would say, yes, it is an accident, but also your attentiveness to be aware. Your urge to want to help others spawned from listening in that way. I think that’s an attribute to you and your characteristics. I applaud you because, yes, again, it comes up and this may be something that you haven’t thought about, and how to really think about that. You made the connection happen and I think that’s really powerful. To me, how I define an artist is a person that is aware and is interested and is seeking not only a solution, but ways to come up with the solution. To come up with solutions, sometimes, you don’t need to come up with them. Sometimes, like you said, your customers, or your clients, or your patients are actually talking about them, but are you listening to them? That’s such a powerful way to just think about our world in general.

I commend you for that, man, because had you not been aware and listening, I don’t know that you picked up on it and moved along with it. Your interest in how the brain works is obviously fascinating, because it’s healthy, keeps going, keeps growing and changing and evolving. I appreciate that. The most surprising, perhaps, or intriguing things that you uncovered during your time researching how lithium impacts the brain and what were the benefits, besides maybe healing, or curing Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, was there any other benefits that came up?

Lithium, Smoking, and Parkinson’sThomas Guttuso, Jr: I think one of the most surprising things that I learned as I was reading more and more, and that I do describe in the book is this connection between lithium, tobacco and Parkinson’s disease. There’s been studies suggesting that lithium could be a very valuable treatment for patients with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s since the 90s. It’s nothing that’s new. Many hundreds and hundreds of different scientists have written articles on this. Their conclusions have been, this is something we need to look into. This is very promising. We need to do clinical trials. This is over and over and over again. It just hasn’t gotten traction, in terms of really generating a lot of clinical research studies in humans to investigate in patients with Alzheimer’s, in patients with Parkinson’s, can low doses of lithium slow down the progression of the disease and preserve patients’ futures?

When I find connections in humans, different things that humans are exposed to, and those associations bearing out fruit in terms of a decreased chance of developing an illness, I definitely take notice of that. One of the things that like I said, I’m a Parkinson’s disease specialist. Ever since I started doing research on Parkinson’s, I came across these studies that everybody in the world of Parkinson’s knows about, is that there is this huge inverse relationship between smoking and the chance of developing Parkinson’s disease. It’s just the strangest thing. Study after study shows the exact same thing.

It’s somewhere between a 50% to 80% reduced risk of developing Parkinson’s. The best studies show about a 77% reduced risk, which is a huge risk reduction in something that’s clearly very dangerous. It’s like, one of the worst things that you can do for your body is smoke. Yet, how in the world could smoking decrease your risk for Parkinson’s? It’s been a puzzle in the whole Parkinson’s scientific community for a very long time.

When I came across this article that was published in 1980, showing very, very high levels of lithium in tobacco, it was like, my heart stopped. I’m like, “Oh, my God. Could this be, it?” I got so into it that I collaborated with a scientist here at UB, who had a lab that had the capacity of measuring lithium levels in tobacco, and went to the 7-Eleven right around the corner from my house and I bought five packs of cigarettes and brought them over to the lab and we measured the lithium, just to confirm what this old study from 1980 showed. We confirmed that and we published it.

It’s like, okay, in humans, this exposure to low amounts of lithium from smoking, that may be what is leading to this huge risk reduction. I mean, if that actually translates to a 77% reduced rate of progression in patients with Parkinson’s, I’m sure you know and listeners know that these diseases, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, they don’t stay still. That patients continue to get worse over time. That’s the problem with these diseases. If we could figure out a way to slow them down, or stop them completely, these diseases would be no big deal. We diagnose them and we’d stop them in their tracks. That would be a huge benefit. A 50%, or 75% reduced rate of progression would be a tremendous value for patients.

That was really something that shocked me. The other thing that really shocked me was to find that there were actually two well-designed studies in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and a pre-Alzheimer’s condition that already showed that lithium, low doses of lithium significantly slow the disease progression over time.

As I started reading this and I started putting all this together, and especially when I started writing grant applications and trying to get funding to move this forward, I just felt like there was an urgency. I needed to get this information out there to patients. Honestly, my primary audience—patients are a big target of this book. I’m hoping is that the people who are reviewing grant applications, through hopefully, a conversation that this book can start will really start to feel like these lithium studies and these lithium grant applications, we need to take these more seriously. We really need to push the pedal.

Even though lithium, it’s not some exciting, sexy, new compound that is patented and under the control of a big pharmaceutical company, it’s a generic, very inexpensive compound. We’ve got some really good evidence to move this forward.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. It sounds to me like, you already pointed to the fact that it’s like, if this works so well, why isn’t it out there in the world? Well, it’s not one of those compounds that can be – it sounds like they can be very controlled by a specific big pharma situation, where – there’s huge profits behind it and all these things. It’s one of those things, it’s like, eat this vegetable and you’ll feel this. It’s one of those like, just drink water. It’s almost too easy to believe, it sounds like. You know what I mean? But it sounds like, there’s not only just so much research pointing to it, but you’ve also experienced it in your own patients. That’s really what makes this powerful, and this book really powerful was that you are involved, you’re in the work every day. This is how you’ve been able to help people.

Can you share a story, perhaps, on a patient that just came to you and having Parkinson’s, perhaps, or Alzheimer’s and having this way to treat them and say, “Hey can you get on this many, I guess, tablets of lithium?” Did you witnessed the trend going down? Can you tell us a little bit about a story, something like that, that it’s happened with you?

Thomas Guttuso, Jr: Well, it’s two different things. The way I got interested in lithium, that story I told about the patient that came in to see me years ago, he experienced symptomatic improvement. Soon after his psychiatrist put him on lithium, he noticed his symptoms were much better, and so did his wife. It was a very short-term improvement. What the book is addressing is a different application of lithium. It’s trying to slow down the disease and improve the patient’s future. It’s what we call the disease modifying therapy. That’s that potential, much greater benefit of lithium than a symptomatic improvement in person, symptoms just immediately as trying to preserve their future.

I describe it to patients as when your doctor prescribes you a blood pressure medication, or a cholesterol medication, it’s not to make you feel better right now. It’s to try and prevent something in the future, like a heart attack, or a stroke. The main application, potential application of lithium is just that. It’s to use lithium as a daily supplement to potentially slow the progression and preserve a patient’s future.

These low doses of over-the-counter lithium wouldn’t make patients feel better immediately. That wouldn’t be designed like that. Just like taking a blood pressure medication, or cholesterol medication is not going to make you feel better immediately. It’s a difficult question for me to answer, but I did. Initially, when I first got interested in lithium, I started prescribing it to other Parkinson’s patients who had that similar Parkinson’s motor symptoms, are called motor fluctuations. I was surprised and patients were very, very surprised in how well it was improving their motor fluctuations.

When you hear something from one patient, when I hear something from one patient, it really piques my curiosity. It makes me want to delve into it. When I started hearing it over and over again, that gets me pumped. That just gets me so excited to try and bring that information to the world. That is what happened when I first started using lithium off-label. Lithium, it’s not FDA-approved for treating Parkinson’s, or Alzheimer’s. It’s only FDA-approved for treating a condition called bipolar disorder.

Another really interesting part of the story is dosing. One of the biggest factors in bringing a therapy to a patient, trying to figure out what the right dose is. If you use too high of a dose of anything, it’s going to have toxicity. It’s going to have side effects. Too low of a dose runs the risk of it not being effective. There’s that Goldilocks dose. That was a really simple and fascinating part of this story initially, was that there was low doses of lithium appeared to be providing benefit for my Parkinson’s patients without side effects.

Previous researchers had looked at higher doses of lithium, the doses that are used in patients with bipolar disorder. Parkinson’s patients did not do well. They had a lot of side effects from it. That was back in the early 80s. After they published those results, showing that higher dose of lithium was very poorly tolerated, that was it. There was no more research on lithium in Parkinson’s for this particular problem in Parkinson’s patients, until I started doing work on it about eight years ago.

Dose — there’s a quote that I have in the book. A doctor and an alchemist, which I think is the old name for pharmacist. Alchemist. Paracelsus says that the dose makes the poison. Everything is a poison. If you take too much of it, even water. You drink too much water, it can kill you. Something as safe and simple as water. The dose is extremely important.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow, that’s very powerful. I love that you added that piece of knowledge to the whole idea in reducing that dose and making it to where the side effects are non-existent, and the person is getting the help that they need. That’s so powerful, and you’re changing lives with that. What I want to know now is a little bit about, let’s put it from this perspective. I mean, there’s the patient that’s going through said situation, right? Parkinson’s, or Alzheimer’s. But then there’s the people around them that have to take care of them and be alongside them. Obviously, some of these diseases are very limiting, or they create limitations to where the people around them are impacted. How would you say it improves the wellness of the people around them?

Thomas Guttuso, Jr: First of all, something that I just wanted to be very clear on and I really tried to be clear about this in the book, is that there is much more research that needs to be done. All the studies that I’ve reviewed in the book and all the data that I’ve presented, it presents a very promising, encouraging picture for the potential of lithium to prevent and slow these diseases. We do need more studies to be completed, to try and confirm what the earlier studies have shown. Nonetheless, I felt like it was important to get this information to patients and to caregivers.

For precisely, I think, what you’re getting at is that I believe that this information in this book will provide a lot of hope for patients. It has been really difficult. I’m mostly taking care of people with Parkinson’s and also for patients with Alzheimer’s disease to get excited about study after study that they see coming through the pipeline from major pharmaceutical companies. There’s a lot of buzz. These patients enroll in clinical trials, hoping that they will be able to be part of the discovery of a truly effective way to slow down diseases, or patients are so excited about potentially being involved with something that leads to a cure for Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s.

I’ve just seen the disappointment in patients’ faces after every single study has been negative, negative, negative. In the world of Parkinson’s, there is, we have no approved ways to slow down the disease, or to prevent the disease. Alzheimer’s just recently, just within the past year, there’s been two new treatments that have received approval to slow down Alzheimer’s disease. There’s a lot of controversy, especially with the first one and even the second one that just got approved. At least from the data that’s been shown so far, they’re not making a huge difference in slowing the progression of the disease. Some experts aren’t quite sure that patients will even fully appreciate the improvement.

Patients and caregivers, they’re in desperate need of hope. They understand. We don’t have anything at all proven to stop the progression of these diseases, but I believe this book will provide a lot of hope for patients and for caregivers, at least to understand what’s going on, what causes these diseases, and what’s involved, what we should be thinking about for ways to slow down these diseases. Then especially, the book focuses quite a bit, why lithium makes such good sense for those specific purposes to prevent and slow the diseases. Clearly, a lot more research needs to be done. You shouldn’t discount hope. Hope itself has tremendous qualities and improves patient’s quality of life.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so powerful, man. I can’t agree with you more. I think, again, back to that whole sitting down at the tables, and you’re just starting your book journey, you’re just one of those people that really had this intention to help and get the word out about this. I mean, it’s not a miracle drug, or anything like that. Like you said, it doesn’t sound fancy, it’s just this low dose of X pill. Obviously, you’re someone to reach out to, talk to about, listen to, read this book, most definitely, if you or your family members are struggling with Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.

Tom, I want to say thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences with me and the audience today. The book is called The Promise of Lithium: How an Over-the-Counter Supplement may Prevent and Slow Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease. Very powerful. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Tom?

Thomas Guttuso, Jr: On Facebook, there is a site on the book. If you search, Promise of Lithium on Facebook, you’ll find our Facebook page. I am blogging on there. That’s one place to find me. You can contact me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: How about LinkedIn?

Thomas Guttuso, Jr: Oh, yeah. That’s right. I’m on LinkedIn, too. They can find me on LinkedIn.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, thanks again, Tom. I appreciate you coming on the show today. Love the knowledge. Love the wisdom. Thank you for imparting and working so hard, creating such a powerful book that I know for a fact will help so many. Thanks again, brother.

Thomas Guttuso, Jr: Yeah. Thanks, Hussein.

The post The Promise of Lithium: Thomas Guttuso, Jr., MD appeared first on Author Hour.

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Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty. Today, we’re diving deep into the world of entrepreneurship and discussing the key to exceptional growth. As entrepreneurs we all want to achieve rapid growth and success, but with the high failing rate of startups, it can seem like an impossible task. What if the secret to growth is as simple as learning to listen? Today we have a special guest joining us to share their insight on the topic and reveal the key to unlocking exceptional growth for any business. Please welcome author, Matty Wishnow.

Hello. Welcome back to the show, friends. I’m here with my friend Matty Wishnow, who just launched the book, Listening for Growth: What Startups Need the Most but Hear the Least. Matty, thank you so much for joining me today.

Matty Wishnow: Thanks for having me, Hussein.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, man. Writing a book is a journey. Congratulations on finishing up and getting it out in the world. What are you most excited about this part?

Matty Wishnow: Well, I’m of two minds. On the one hand, I actually miss the writing. I’m a little bit wistful for the writing part it was, I’m not surprised at how much joy it brought me, but I’m very fulfilled, because I’ve – honestly, before I was an entrepreneur, I used to have dreams of being a writer or being a journalist. To be able to scratch that itch again, in middle age has been so rewarding. Without question the idea of having that out there for friends, and colleagues. I would say most importantly like younger founders or aspiring founders who are at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journey for them to be able to interact with it and to have a dialogue about it, whether it’s with peers or even with me. I didn’t publish the book with the idea that it was going to be definitive or the end of the story so much as I wanted it to be the beginning of a conversation.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s really powerful. I’m glad we got there, because I want to go back in time a little bit, and perhaps share a little bit of your childhood, where you grew up, who influenced you, who taught you these things early on and how have you been able to adapt them as you grow older? For me my father was a huge influence in my life, of course, my mother and siblings, but my father was an artist. So I always look for a story in people where someone came along and influenced them in some way, because I love paying homage to those beautiful people that come into our lives.

Beginnings and InfluencesMatty Wishnow: Well, that’s a lot. Thanks for asking. I grew up in the northeast. I was born in New Jersey. Then through college and after college ended up like a lot of people in New York City. I lived in Brooklyn and then Long Island City Queens for a long time before landing in Austin. I would say, growing up, I was actually a bit of a reluctant reader like a lot of boys in the 70s and 80s. I collected baseball cards. My first real joy of reading was reading first about baseball and baseball statistics and like the godfather of that is a guy named Bill James who reinvented the way people think about baseball statistics, but more importantly, as a very like [inaudible 00:03:46] writer and a wonderful storyteller. He would talk about baseball in a way that really brought me in and inspired me to read.

Then as I got older, I started listening like a lot of adolescence listening to a lot of music and reading about music a lot. A lot of the authors I was reading were writing in short form. They were writing essays. They were writing reviews. They were writing stories. It wasn’t really until later on that I started reading long-form novels, and nonfiction, but my formative inspiration where people writing about sports, and people writing about music. I would say even in college, my life took a detour, whereas I went in dreaming of one day maybe being like a sports or music journalist.

After college, I was deposited on this unexpected path to entrepreneurship. I’ve had many inspirations as an entrepreneur, but in terms of writers, it’s Bill James writing about baseball, it’s Greil Marcus, Bob Christgau writing about music, Lester Bangs writing about music. Then there’s the number of and breath of novelists or nonfiction writers. I could go on forever, but that’s not really how I ever saw myself. I never dreamed of writing the great American novel. I wanted to write readable, incisive, conversational things about topics that interested me and that I had something to contribute to.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. That’s so powerful. It sounds like you got into reading, but of course, the sport of baseball it’s attractive in so many different ways, but if it can attract you deep enough to start reading about it, that can obviously start to move those components in the mind, where you start to, anytime you want to know about anything, you go read about it, right? So the deeper you got into music and older and of course, entrepreneurship. I don’t care who you are. Entrepreneurship requires reading. It’s a requirement. It’s forever.

It’s like, one of those things I feel that has really helped shape who you ultimately become. It doesn’t matter how we learn it, right? It could be a person, or people, but obviously, certain writers had an influence on you. Rightfully so that you wanted to become one of them, right? Insightful, someone that can add value to someone’s life, but here we are talking about your book, how amazing, but between you writing a book and you feeling all inspired and getting into the entrepreneurship world, how did you get into that? Where did that unfold? How did you start learning the things that you started picking up?

Accidental EntrepreneurMatty Wishnow: Well, I am truly an accidental entrepreneur. I never like I said, leaving college, I thought one day, I would maybe work in music journalism. After college, my first job was working at a record label, but while I was in college, I had taken a couple of courses, this will date me, but I took a couple of courses in what they called Hypertext Markup Language. In 1994 or 1993, HTML was not part of the computer science department. It was part of like English, the English department, or sometimes even the art department because it was thought of as a different way of writing stories or creating digital art.

I had a bit of a propensity towards early web design, and early web development. I was also a lifelong record collector. The peanut butter and chocolate of my Reese’s pieces entrepreneurship story is in 1997 which was around the time when the first CD stores on the internet were popping up. It was when Amazon was just a bookstore. It was in the time of CD now in music Boulevard.

I had a couple of friends who were more entrepreneurial than I was. I suggested the idea of a music store that focused more on vinyl and more on independent releases: the type of stuff that I either listened to or collected and within a year between my nominal understanding of web design, web development, and the internet and my interest in music, friends and I launched something called insound.com, which was really the first indie record store. This is before vinyl made a comeback. It was really the wild, Wild West of the internet like a 1.1 or maybe 2.0. It was a lot of fun.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Tell me what happened? You guys got into this very early on internet thing that hardly anyone really knew about or if they did, they were in your world, right? Like just dabbling, trying to figure it out, so you and a couple buddies get along, you’re like, “You know what? There’s this idea. There’s a lot of indie artists out there. I like that stuff.” Again, you’re mixing what you want to do passion with this entrepreneurial opportunity. What happened next?

Matty Wishnow: Insound was almost a decade of my entrepreneurial journey. On the one hand, it taught me everything that I know about digital marketing, about search engine optimization, about user experience design, about product development, and engineering. It taught me about customer service. It taught me about supply chain management, I never went to business school. Everything I learned about how to run a business and how to provide a digital service and how to transact, I learned on the job, trial by fire between like 1998 and 2004 or five.

What I also learned was how hard the microeconomics of direct-to-consumer entrepreneurship was. The basics of Insound were I buy an LP from a distributor for $13. I sell it for $20. That’s $7 of profit margin. By the time all of our costs were accounted for we were losing money on every order, right? I had to figure out how to take a low-margin business, a business that was probably less expensive than opening a physical record store, but was still not inexpensive, and how to make that if not profitable at least break even, because within two years of us starting Insound, there was like the dot-com bust and we really had to learn about cash management. That was invaluable to me.

One of the ways we sustained Insound, which ended up becoming really – Insound, for a long time was a big fish in a small pond. It was very early to the reconsideration and reclamation of vinyl in the market and Insound was like the biggest online record store for, if you were into like indie rock, or punk rock, or new, but more experimental left-of-center music. It was a wonderful experience, but in order to sustain it, I started a digital agency, because I had learned so much about digital marketing that record companies, movie studios, they would ask, they would say, “Hey, how do you market digitally?” I started my second startup was underneath the Insound Limited Liability Company. That was called Drill Team. Around the same time, we also started a record label. There I was like 25, 26 years old running, helping run a web store, a digital agency, and a record label of which I knew very little about any of those subjects like two years earlier. Yeah.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s what entrepreneurship does, right? It takes you from one thing to another, until you really start to hone in, and like really craft those skills and start to package them in different ways. Again, the breadth of knowledge that you start to uncover by just trying things is irreplaceable. In your book, you talk a lot about this idea of healthy growth versus any other growth, right? In those years in the years after that, what did you learn about this idea of healthy growth? How did you start applying it, especially to your startups? Because, as we know, there’s a lot of startups that don’t make it past that first year, so you guys going from two to almost 10 years in business, as you’re figuring things out very early on in the .com stuff, but then post that, obviously, to take all that knowledge and apply it to more work. But I want to know, this idea of healthy growth. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Matty Wishnow: Of course. Well, thanks for asking. To fast forward after I sold my original startups, after I said farewell to my first babies. I moved to Austin and started an agency called Clearhead. Clearhead was born with the knowledge that I had cultivated through my first startups. I felt much more informed and practiced and likely to succeed with Clearhead. I had clear goals. I understood what the market needed. I understood like how I wanted to lead, what type of culture I wanted to build. You make a lot of mistakes as a young entrepreneur.

I’d say, the first 10 years when I thought about growth, what I was thinking about was fairly elementary. I was thinking about, how do I grow the top line of my business, so that I either can attract investors or generate enough profits to continue to reinvest? I was thinking about growth in fairly traditional ways. Meanwhile, the greater startup market began to think about growth in Titanic almost dysmorphic ways. When I started Insound, the idea of having like a one, or five, or $10 million business seemed amazing to me, but within a matter of months the prevailing discourse was that millions were not enough, that you had to build billion-dollar companies.

It was really early on, I began to suspect there was something wrong with how people were talking about growth. Yet, I thought it was resolvable. Then at Clearhead, I have to pay a lot of homage to my partners and my team. We did everything right. Over the course of five years, we built a company from nothing to an eight-figure business that was highly profitable. We were named one of the best places to work in Austin. I received a lot of really positive feedback and recognition. We retained employees at a very, very high rate. People didn’t want to leave Clearhead. We not only achieved every milestone and goal that we had, but we exceeded them. Then within five years, we sold the company in what was a life-changing event for almost everyone involved.

Now Clearhead was actually in what we would call the growth space. When I talk about the growth space, people who work in this digital know growth is really like performance marketing. Then also design, whether it’s product UX or digital design that is geared towards improving the performance of key metrics, whether it’s like order conversion rate, or customer satisfaction, or average order value. These were all things that I learned at Insound. It takes me back to your first question you asked me, which was like, who did I like to read growing up? I look back, I used to read writers who wrote about statistics, so very rigorous mathematically inclined writers.

Then I used to like to read writers who wrote about highly creative things and very passionate, emotional, metaphorical terms. Clearhead was the merging of those two things. It was a business built on design for performance. Loosely that space is sometimes talked about as optimization, but it all fits within the growth world of startups. 20 years into my entrepreneurial career, I was… began to think about growth, not as just like, “Hey, how do I get my startup to grow?” I began to think about it as like how do you harness data and design to make a digital product or design grow. I was really immersed in this concept of growth. However, and I know this is a long road to answer the question.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh, no. I’m happy to hear all the story because it’s really interesting to me.

Growing As An Entrepreneur and a PersonMatty Wishnow: What I never really asked myself, at any point along the way was, “Am I growing as a person, as a founder, as an entrepreneur, as a husband, as a father?” By this point, by the time at Clearhead, I was married, I had children. To what extent was I growing my startup? To what extent was my startup helping me grow? Was any of this stuff healthy? I was immersed in growth, but it wasn’t until after I sold and exited Clearhead that I begin to have these more existential questions like, wait, how are people defining growth? Is it healthy? Is there a world where in your startup and you as a founder can grow together or is it necessarily that the bigger your startup gets, the more it swallows you, or if you pursue personal growth, it comes at the expense in some way of your time and investment in the startup? That was a question that really haunted me and stuck with me after I left Clearhead and was thinking about, “Well, here I am, middle age, how do I want to spend the next half of my life?”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow, I love how that revealed to you, there is something deeper that really needs this idea of growth. We put our heads down, especially as entrepreneurs, right? Because I feel like reach our potential in some way shape or form, but it’s really the potential of what the business can do for others, customers, all those good things. Somebody holds a mirror up sometimes or we end up looking at the mirror and going, “Okay, wait a minute, what’s going on?” That pullback, that pause for the moment, this idea of, yeah, just taking a break and taking a breather and realizing where you are. Tell me like, how did you then with where you were in this moment of transformation did you start to develop this idea of listening for that growth? Did it happen internally? Can you tell a little bit about that story?

Matty Wishnow: Yeah. Theoretically, like the top of my mountain, right? I had small startups, medium startups, medium-large startups. I was at a point where I was, I could really do anything in the world. I had been deeply, deeply immersed at Clearhead in how to drive growth through design, design thinking. We had even systematized it at Clearhead. We had developed a practice that we call GPS, which posited that growth was driven not through how much you do, or how clever your ideas are, or how much you hustle, but by the extent to which you solve the problems most worth solving. We systematize this. Where do good outcomes come from? They come from successful experiments. Where does successful experiments come from? They come from smart hypotheses. Where do smart hypotheses come from? They come from the problems most were solving. Where did the problems most were solving come? They come from smart goals. We worked growth this way.

Okay. Every step of the way, it required us to listen. I’m using the term listen, metaphorically here. You had to listen curiously, but you had to listen to evidence, you had to not be biased, you had to be open to facts. You had to listen to statistics and data and user feedback, just because your ideas seem good on paper doesn’t mean that it is a valuable idea. I have failed so many times with things that I thought were the coolest ideas I ever had, that I’ve been humbled into knowing that if you don’t listen, you don’t find the truth. If you don’t find the truth, you don’t change. If you don’t change, you don’t grow, because healthy things grow. I would say for a long time, I was using the idea of listening for growth, as really a metaphor for how you employ evidence-based thinking to the growth of a design or the growth of a digital product.

After Clearhead, I realized that the thing that I wasn’t listening to enough, it was the question that stuck in my closet, which was, where do goals come from? I understood every step of the way, but when I went back to where – I didn’t have an answer and it was, it was very clear to me that I hadn’t listened to what I as a person, as a founder, as an entrepreneur, what I most desired in life. I didn’t like a lot of founders, I think you put your entrepreneurial uniform on and you forget about the things that nourish you privately and personally. Your startup begins to own you more than you own your startup.

It was with this revelation that I said, I need to hear myself. I’ve lost the capacity to hear what I want outside of Matty-entrepreneur, Matty-father, Matty-husband and that startups succeed in correlation, yes to the problems they solve, but founders succeed to the extent that there is high correlation and overlap between what they desire and what their startup desires, and that the more you listen for how you want to grow. The more you design your startup around that, the more you can have growth that is not just financially lucrative, top line, and bottom line, but the more that will correspond and nourish what you most want to be in this world, because there are some people that only want to be entrepreneurs. There are some people that want to be millionaires. I am a capitalist and I am an entrepreneur. I have been in business to make money and to accumulate wealth on some level.

On the other hand, there are other parts of me that deeply desires other forms of fulfillment, whether it’s social fulfillment, whether it’s personal fulfillment, whether it’s physical, whether it’s emotional. I cannot tell you how many founders and entrepreneurs I know who’ve either repressed that or don’t understand the extent to which your startup can rob your personal desires and how damaging that can be. Here we are in 2022 and the revelation I had was that people who just a few years ago, were considered like tech heroes. Nowadays, they look more like tech villains.

The number of CEOs that I knew that seemed like they were on top of the world five years ago, are burnt out now. The number of startups that were funded with 10s or hundreds of millions of dollars that are now out of business it’s astonishing. It’s fair to ask in spite of how much data we have, and how smart we think we are about growth hacking, as they call it. How informed we are about lean startup and about the Amazon way and the Google way. If we are so smart, why is there still so much burnout, so much waste, and so much failure in entrepreneurship?

My prevailing hypothesis is, because we have lost sight of what growth is, and because we have insufficiently defined a path where in growth can be mutually beneficial between the entrepreneur and her/his startup. When I talk about healthy growth, that’s what I’m talking about. I’m talking about long term, sustainable, mutually beneficial growth where in you can use facts and feelings to nourish both your startup and yourself.

Man, it’s so powerful, because you’re 100% right. That when we really weave our intuition or passion through those problem-solving abilities and skills that we garner over time as entrepreneurs, that fulfillment aspect is I feel like such a huge key, but it takes a realization, it takes some time to really hit some walls, right? Hit some challenges that I feel like can wake us up sometimes and realize, okay my personal health, what I seek in this world, in this time on Earth, just as important as all these growth hacks and all these things, but how do I apply them to myself and reach a level of self-preservation and all this… good ways of thinking forward? How do your principles of healthy growth and apply to different types of business scenarios? I know you talk about startups, but you also talk about traditional organizations. How would those principles apply?

How Do The Principles Apply to Different Types of OrganizationsMatty Wishnow: That’s a great question. I think the difference between a founder and entrepreneur versus like a leader or what I would call an in-trepreneur is it’s actually less difference than you would think. In other words, whether you run a department, whether you run a product, or whether you run an entire company, there are still goals, problems most worth solving, solution hypotheses, experiments and outcomes. It’s just a matter of how much control you have over them and how wide the aperture is. As a founder, you have a high degree of control and you’re looking at a wide aperture of a business. If you run e-commerce for an existing business, or you run user experience for a startup, you have perhaps less control over the whole thing, but what you are working on still has those basic dimensions to the work you do, right?

Within a startup, you can sometimes have the benefit of beginning with greenfield, whitespace and you can begin at the outset by listening for your desires, connecting your desires to goals, understanding what obstacles or problems stand between those goals and the outcomes that you seek. Whereas if you work for an existing business, sometimes you’re inheriting pre-existing mission vision values, pre-existing goals, right? In either scenario, however, there’s the opportunity over time to reconnect the activity that you had inherited or what you’ve been working on, and say, “Okay, maybe it’s a new quarter, maybe it’s a new year. It’s time to look at desires, goals, problems, hypotheses, experiments, and outcomes.”

Again, with startups, you can be starting with a blank slate, whereas an existing business, you might be inheriting a roadmap or a set of assumptions, but if you are a leader, or if you are an entrepreneur, or if you are an executive, you have the capacity to rewrite the train, right, to remove it off the path that was on and move it onto the path of healthy growth, we’re in you are listening every step of the way. Through that practice of listening to all of those things at a certain point, what you’re doing is, you’re conducting a series of experiments very much akin to how lean startups operate.

However, those experiments are now constrained by problems most worth solving, and by a set of desires of purpose. For me, that was always the thing that was missing from contemporary startup thought, which is, where are the constraints? Where are the humans in this? Not every startup has $100 million. In startups are not founded in ether. There are people involved in this. To me, startup mindset and entrepreneurship are our frames of mind. They’re more similar, ultimately, than they are different. The same tenets of healthy growth apply. It’s just a matter of at what level, how much rigor, how much fidelity, and how much control you as an individual have over the determination of healthy growth.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow. It’s so powerful, man. In this whole scope of you going through your entrepreneurship journey, this is just a quick question to just get an idea. You thoroughly, I mean, you thoroughly know this idea of growth and healthy growth, but the ideas of listening and how to embed them and where to embed them. Where do you think you pick that up like at what point in the business did you really start paying attention to this ability?

Matty Wishnow: Obviously, the idea of listening to data, listening to evidence. That’s a metaphor that is used occasionally out there in the world where you hear about people listening to your customers, listen to the data. Obviously, that’s nothing I invented. In the Clearhead world where, what we were doing ostensibly was designing user experiences and products and then comparing them to other variations. I began to realize how hard it is in contemporary society to listen to evidence. There is so much of a push towards confirmation bias or echo chambers, or there’s just so much noise out there that the idea of really just sitting and listening to facts and truth is harder than – and by the way, there’s also more information than ever before. It’s an extraordinarily hard and precious skill.

Now, when I was writing the book, I began thinking about, well, what is the practice? What is the skill that is most required for growth? It’s not exactly empathy. It’s not exactly curiosity. It is at its core listening. It’s availing yourself to openness to taking in, as opposed to your eyes, your mouth and your nose, all of which you can close. You can close all of those things. The ears, you can never really fully close, even when you plug them you still hear something. The ear is an open organ. I thought of the idea of listening is a great metaphor because it implies both an openness, but then also a tuning. At a certain point, you have to say, this sound based on everything I hear, is the true tone that I need to pay attention to.

Then something really resonated. I’ll make an obvious call back to where we started, Hussein, which is, I’m a lifelong listener of music. Music has been the soundtrack to my entire life. I lived in a house full of records. I listened to music hours, and hours and hours a day. It just felt every single sign was pointing me to the practice of growth that I have defined in the book, which is fairly rigorous like it’s fairly specific. The metaphor, the practice, the activity, ultimately, is about listening.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, man. I’m so glad that you brought us all the way back because that was my intention for that question was to really reveal to the audience the power of listening and where it came from for you. I think those early days of whether it be baseball and just learning and reading and then of course, music. Music, I mean, it played a huge role in my life in my teenage years, of course. The depth in which you took that, right, because you took that and then you put that passion into starting that early on business with CDs and vinyl and then you apply that to the next thing, and the next thing, but really, those like a sprinkle of this idea of paying attention to the sounds.

In your case again, it’s a metaphor, of course, but the sounds of trends, internet, what’s happening? That was like the initial stuff. Then of course, going deeper with the data, the craft of how you actually take that data and make it something. Then obviously you kept growing into that space of really leaning into. In a way I feel like you really had to pause to – like you said earlier really listening to yourself and then put the two together to have this this balance which again, man I just appreciate this full circle.

The book is called Listening for Growth: What Startups Need the Most but Hear the Least. I love that so much. Matty, I learned so much today. Thank you for sharing your stories and experiences with me. The book is going to be, I think a hit for me as a startup person, a person who loves business, and damn, an artists like I was swimming through that book, man. It was like 60% in about two three hours in. I was just – I wasn’t reading word for word, but I was skimming through it, but I was like wow this is actually really fun and easy to read. To all the listeners out there, I highly, highly suggest my man, Matty’s book, but besides checking out the book where can people find you, sir?

Matty Wishnow: Yeah. Well first of all Hussein, thank you for reading it. It’s gratifying to hear that it was readable and entertaining. Thanks for that and thanks for the listeners for listening. You can find me on Twitter @mattywish. You can find me on LinkedIn as Matty Wish, as well. Then you can also find more about the book and the writing I do about music and sports on the side at mattywishnow.com. LinkedIn probably first, Twitter probably second, and then mattywishnow.com that’s where I live online.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, thanks again Matty, for joining me today. I appreciate you. Good luck on this remarkable book. I’m sure this won’t be the last time we chat. Have a great rest of your evening.

Matty Wishnow: Thank you, Hussein. You, too.

The post Listening For Growth: Matty Wishnow appeared first on Author Hour.

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We all strive for a life of purpose and fulfillment, yet, few achieve it, why? Because it’s hard. Relationships, careers, physical fitness: they all take effort. Despite our best intentions, it’s easy to lose focus.

Welcomed back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by Michael Sarraille and the coauthors of The Everyday Warrior: A No-Hack Practical Approach to Life. Let’s get into it.

All right everyone, welcome back to the show. My name is Hussein Al-Baiaty and today, I’m joined by four incredible people, starting with Mike Sarraille, I got Jason, George, and Brian with me as well. This is the first time I’ve done such a huge group interview but I’m super excited because this book is robust. The book is called The Everyday Warrior: A No-Hack, Practical Approach to Life. Thank you all so much for joining me today, I really appreciate your time.

Michael Sarraille: Thanks for having us.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely. So, your little group of individuals have done some remarkable things, which you all decided to come together and put a book together. But before we get into the book and the journeys that you’ve all been on, I’d like to give our audience a little bit of a background about each one of you, just a quick one, two-minute brief of where you grew up and perhaps, one person that has inspired you or motivated you to go in the direction that you’re on today. We’ll start with Mike and then we’ll bounce around the table, that sound good?

Michael Sarraille: Love it. I’ll kick this off. So Mike Sarraille, born and raised in the Bay Area, California, enlisted in the United States Marine Corps shortly after high school and a very, very short stint in college, became a recon Marine, a scout sniper, and then eventually switched over to the SEAL teams, retired out of the military after 20 years, did 10 combat deployments and then jumped into the business world, which I am only about five years retired now.

So I’m still very much learning this new profession, which is kicking my ass, but I’m having fun. That’s what life’s about, you just keep learning, don’t repeat the same mistake twice, and been working with Men’s Journal on their Everyday Warrior initiative. I did write a book called The Talent War: A Special Operations in Great Organizations Win on Talent. From that, I started a leadership development and executive search firm and the one person that’s influenced my life, I wrote about in the book.

His name was Michael Monsoor, he was a Navy SEAL. He jumped on a grenade three feet from me and saved my life and he was previously awarded the Medal of Honor. So even in his death, I still continue to learn from him. Recently, a book was written called, Defend Us In Battle, which is his life story.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Thanks for sharing, Mike. Jason, what about you?

Jason Boulay: I’m an Army veteran, father of three boys, lifelong New Englander. I earned my college degree in life and I started a job at United Way of Rhode Island where my boss and mentor, Sandy Connor, put me in the direction of writing. I’d always loved writing but it wasn’t until college and until that first job where I really found a passion for it, and for telling stories and crafting narratives.

Yeah, and now I, with Mike and George, write articles for The Everyday Warrior, Men’s Journals, and help people pursue their goals and define their own definition of success.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Thanks for joining Jason. George, talk to me.

George Silva: Well first, I have to thank you for not forcing me to go after Mike because my resume is not quite as robust as his.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Oh, we’re not comparing man, we’re just here hanging out.

George Silva: I grew up in a teeny tiny little town called Krum, Texas. After I graduated, I had a few opportunities to go off to college to play baseball but, and because of my lack of direction at my younger years, those opportunities weren’t able to pan out. So I ended up joining the Navy almost right out of high school, like seven days, eight days after high school, with the intent to play baseball in the Navy.

That’s what the recruiter told me, anyway. I did have an opportunity but 9/11 happened while I was going through, in Navy, what we call A-school. So I got to my first command, I’m like, “Hey, I’m here, here’s my package to play baseball” and my chief laughed at me and told me to get out of his office, and then some colorful language, “We’re just going to take a quick trip to Iraq.” And so that happened.

So, I had a couple of combat tours over in Iraq, nowhere near 10 combat tours but a couple of pretty meaningful ones. I was with the Marine EOD unit out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. I retired after 20 years in the military and Mike and I connected and he was like, “Hey man, I want you to come on and do this thing with me.”

I said, “Okay,” and he didn’t give me much information about it but sometimes in life, you just have to be willing to jump. You have to be willing to go into something that you have no idea what the outcome’s going to be, and it always turns out amazing.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Powerful.

George Silva: Oh, probably, you know who influenced me, that was a question, my family. They continue to influence me every single day from my father to my wife and my kids, who I want to be is all because of them.

Brian Gordon: Yeah, I’m the outlier. Non-military, although I always grew up with a real appreciation for everybody who serves, like you, Hussein. I grew up in Northern California like Mike, Sacramento. My journey is a little more, maybe “normal.” I went to school down in Santa Barbara at University of California Santa Barbara, lived in LA, got a job, didn’t like it, got another job, I didn’t like it, and my dad came down, I’ll never forget, it’s one of those stories I always tell.

Came down, I always want to be a stockbroker, I thought that was where I day-traded my way through college and figured out how to make money. And got a job as a stockbroker, took my test, tier seven, tier 63, it was a kid like living the dream and I fucking hated it. It was the worst job I ever had.

I did bus boy, I did coffee carts, I worked at the library in college. I always worked and it was awful and I felt this horrible feeling of failure and, “God, am I going to quit this job?” One of my parents, my dad, came down and we had dinner and he very simply said, “Look, do not agonize over making decisions, it’s a waste of time. You make the decision and you move on, and you attack whatever is next and if this isn’t for you, make the decision, now it’s over and you go do something else.” And I never forgot that.

I think people tend to agonize over decisions and, “What do I do?” And they talk to 10 people and sometimes that’s good, it’s therapeutic. But ultimately, you just keep pressing forward. So I ended up moving to Manhattan in ‘99. Found my way into brand marketing, entertainment marketing, sports marketing, and by 2004, I started my first company, sold that company in 2012.

Started another one, sold that company in 2015, and realized, at heart, I was an entrepreneur. And you learn a lot of the lessons we talk about in Everyday Warrior. As an entrepreneur, man, you’re continually getting beat up and knocked down, you got to try new things, you got to try to be different, and figure out whatever your niche is. I met my wife right away after I moved to New York in ‘99, Jersey girl, which is why I live in Jersey.

And 21 years after that, well, 23 years after that, I’m married for 21 years, three kids, like I said, I have a little bit more than normal journey, right? Job, entrepreneur, wife, kids, family, the whole thing. Like George, it’s funny, I learned everything from my parents and I think so much of it, you don’t even, it’s not conscious while you’re learning and now, as a father, I have three boys, 17, 16, 13, and I don’t think they listen to anything I say.

But deep down, I know they do and so, my parents just, they were, my dad is an educator, public education, 50 years, he’s still working at 76 as a superintendent in Sacramento. My mother was an author, self-taught, picked up a book one day, and said, “I think I could write these romance novels.” Believe it or not, I never read one. That’s nasty. Well, I never read one. All my friends used to tease me.

She’s probably had 32 novels, and they’re like, “How could you never read one?” And I’m like, “I’m going to read a book about romance that’s coming out of my mom’s head. No, I’m good.” So maybe writing was in my blood a little bit. So yeah, I learned everything from them, I’ll have ended up in a very, very different sort of entrepreneurial business place than they did but fundamentally, the lessons in this idea of not quitting and driving forward, and a lot of things we talk about really came from them.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, that’s so powerful and the reason I ask, not only is it where we grew up and how we grew up that determines these paths that we need up falling into and going into but really the people. I think for me, I watched my dad paint remarkable things, remarkable people, he quite literally saved our lives from the refugee camp at which at one point we lived in.

But he taught me some amazing things that I didn’t know I was learning. That’s the thing, you don’t really realize the things until later on of course. But I grew up, man. I was painting the Michael Jordans, all these beautiful figures that I look up to, the Malcolm X. And after he passed, man, it took me like two, three years to get back into painting, and that was my cathartic way of just dealing.

And the first thing that I painted was him and it was sort of my gateway back into expressing myself, but that was like, this is the actual character whom I‘ve always looked up to. All the celebrities, all these amazing people are great but this is the person that I actually learned things from. So, I always ask that question because everybody has that unique person in their life or unique group of people in their lives that leads them into the direction that they’re going to.

So thank you all for sharing, I appreciate that. I hope it gives a general idea of who you all are and how you all came together. But in your book we talk a lot about today, we were briefly talking about it before we got on and we talked about this idea of confusion, of hacking our way through life and making things efficient and creative, and all those good things.

As human beings, we’re always looking for ways, of course, to improve ourselves, to make more money, to get a bigger house, build a bigger business, whatever it is, nicer body. But I feel like the word hack is being way overused around things that we shouldn’t necessarily be hacking and obviously, when we try to hack those kinds of things especially, like for me, the emotional trauma, things that – there’s just no way around them. You got to deal with things.

But your book really hones in on this idea. How do you all, as a Navy SEAL and people in the military and as entrepreneurs, where does this idea of the everyday philosophy meet this wanting to hack our way through life idea, and where is the bridge? Where can we be efficient but also practice all the ideologies that you all practice so well through the everyday warrior philosophy?

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/blur-chains-chrome-close-up-220237/

The Everyday Warrior PhilosophyMichael Sarraille: I’ll take first crack at this and then I’ll turn it over to the boys. So The Everyday Warrior philosophy really comes from my past life, and I would like to think I was a warrior in the traditional sense. That’s not for me to decide, that’s for the men and women that I served with to decide. But in the military and the professional arms, there are warfighters and warriors, and they’re not necessarily mutually exclusive.

You can be both a warfighter and a warrior and that’s the goal. Warfighters are trained in the art of war but not all warfighters become warriors. Men and women of integrity, of character, that have these set of attributes. I had the pleasure serving, let’s just say, the joint special operations command, which is the most elite military units in the world, where the most lethal warriors in the world are and people paid them the wrong way.

And actually, the most lethal warriors I served with are the most kind, empathetic, respectful people that you’ve ever met. Do they have the ability to do evil things to evil people? Yes. But these were fathers, these were husbands, these were sons. And what was unique about them, and then I think why the four of us came together and wrote this book is, we’ve all had warriors, mentors, and influences in our life and this book is less about us and it’s about those mentors that we had.

The book is written from observations of what really high-performing, good human beings did on a day-to-day basis. And you say things like the hack. I think, you know what? Technology is great. Nobody here is going to say that technology does not make our lives easier. It does but it starts to permeate into your mindset. You always started looking for the hack. Well, with these warriors that we wrote about, they always made the hard decisions.

Hard decisions lead to an easy life. They never took the shortcut. They never, especially when lives are on the line in the profession of war, when you take shortcuts, that’s when people get hurt. You can’t buy fitness, you can’t buy health, and if you want a hack, the only hack that you are going to attain is through repetition in extremely positive habits, that’s the only hack I know of. And let me open it up to the boys.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Absolutely.

Jason Boulay: I think it was really interesting to hear these guys talking about experiences in the military, and that the most elite level of the military. And then you apply them to civilian life and it’s the same principles, it’s the same mindset, it’s the same ideas that lead to success. And I think one of the really important things for us was to help define success for people as whatever it was that was going to make them feel fulfilled.

And it could be making money, it could be getting fit, it could be spending time with your kids, it could be just getting by. And that, I think, as we were going through the book, was our north star, which is, “How do we help people fight their way through life?” And yeah, we talked about high-performing individuals and we had stories from the military, but we really tried to just find out what the essence of that success was, to be able to apply to anybody was doing anything and I think, just one commonality is, it’s always hard.

Everything’s hard. That was the fundamental, simplest part of doing this book was, life is hard. Getting up every day and dealing with life and dealing with your job and dealing with your kids and whether you have challenges or are in a relationship, I have an unbelievable relationship with my wife. I’m blessed, she’s amazing, 21 years married but there’s days we fight.

There’s days we struggle, and this idea just not giving in and not trying to find the hack of working through things, and figuring out where you want to go and how do you get there, and I think this idea just accepting that things are hard and that you can’t hack your way thought it is really this fundamental principle for which all these lessons that we have in the book are built on.

Brian Gordon: I agree with that. I think the idea, the hack is you’re trying to get to the end, you’re trying to get to the result and when you do that, you miss the journey. You miss all the lessons that come along with that and the things you pick up that make that success last, and to make it real and tangible. So giving in to technology and warping the mindset and go, “Got to get to the end, got to get to the end,” you miss a whole journey of life and that’s a major issue.

Michael Sarraille: Let me say one more thing here. I know the guys will agree with me, is when we wrote this book, I think sometimes people write books, and this is not a knock to commercialize a mindset or things along those lines, and the last thing we wanted to do was speak from the pulpit as if we’ve got this figured out. Part of being a warrior is a mindset.

I remember meeting Brian. Brian, I don’t know if you remember this, but I said, “You are a warrior within your respected profession.” A single mom of two kids, grinding every day is more of a warrior than some of the men I served with that are trained in war. We, the four of us collectively, are still trying to figure this out this thing called life and anyone who says they’ve got it figured out, I will go against wholeheartedly.

You have to evolve and that’s what warriors do. Some warriors can be dogmatic, we don’t want to be dogmatic. No one is the same person that they were one month ago, a year ago, five years ago, and warriors know that growth in learning is a lifelong process. So by writing the book, we didn’t want to declare ourselves subject matter experts, and writing this book was very cathartic for the four of us as well, looking back on our lives and determining how we’re going to live moving forward.

George Silva: As a matter of fact, Mike, you actually mentioned that. I remember whenever you came up with that idea, you said, “This book alone will not change your life nor will any other book or seminar or whatever the case is. It’s the book in combination with action.” And I think that The Everyday Warrior philosophy, in my mind, everything requires work. Everything, right?

So the title of the book, The Everyday Warrior, it provides a framework, because we all have battles every single day. Every single one of us has battles every single day that we have to fight, and that’s what makes us warriors.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, I love this so much and again, I mentioned this earlier, I give a ton of love and respect for the men and women that serve, but we all serve our daily lives differently. How we come to those battles really shapes up who we ultimately become. And I was young, man. So 9/11, I was freshman in high school, again, a name like Hussein, I am growing up in America.

I have just been gone a few years prior, just made it to America from the Gulf War, shit we had nothing to do with. But we just ended up in this madness. However, it is a gift and a curse because the gift was I got to grow up here but I remember, I came home that day and I’m like, “Dad, what the… what does Jihad mean? This is something that’s being thrown around right now. I don’t even know what it means.”

My dad said, “It means holy war. But the holiest of all wars is the one within, the battle that you have to face every day.” The one that when somebody throws slurs at you, how do you hold yourself and ground yourself and not engage and make yourself look horrible? Or being confrontation or… I think he said, “Everything will unfold.”

And currently, this is why I was so excited to talk with all of you, currently the book I am writing now is about that internal war that we have, the battles that we face. And like you said, whether it’s a mother of four, anyone that’s out here in the world just trying to make their life just a little bit better, it is an everyday battle. So I can’t agree with you all more because I feel like since that time in my life until today, I’ve really had to face my own internal battle with the one that’s happening outside.

Really come to terms with who I am, genuinely, as a person of peace and love and kindness and generosity, and not allow this exterior façade to determine for people who I am. That was a really big one for me and I think over time, I realized that I am going through this battle and I have to become my own warrior, and the way I do it is through art, through self-expression, and helping others do that as well because that’s healing.

So I think for me, writing my first book was completely cathartic and just super. And so now, everyone I meet, I’m like, “You got to write a book. You got to do something like that because it helps you heal.” So we’re talking about that, what was the process like for you all pulling this book together? What’s one thing that you felt surprising about the book writing process and that journey?

The Book Writing ProcessJason Boulay: For me it was how the team really worked together and everybody had their input, and we discussed topics and went back and forth and argued our points, and really how open Mike was to that and to hearing us out and listening to the team, and putting together something that really represented us as a group.

George Silva: You know, it’s funny, when we first started this whole process, I was not even supposed to be part of the book. That goes back to what Jason said earlier and what we had talked about in the book about the journey and the destination. We always look forward to the destination and we forget it’s really the journey that makes the destination great. It is the journey that makes life great. It’s the journey.

Mike just completed the Triple 7 and you know, during the planning process, that was fun. It was energetic. And Triple 7 is this thing where Mike jumps seven planes in seven days. You know, the planning process of the book, it was fun and planning process of anything is really fun. Going through it, that’s what’s amazing. That’s what you remember.

When you finally do get to the destination, at the end of the book or at the end of Triple 7, you look back on that and you think about all the funny times and all the hard times. And so for me, doing this book really just comes down to the journey and how fun of an experience it was.

Brian Gordon: The group part of it was fantastic. I think one of the things we talked a lot about before we really started on the book was that society coming out of COVID and civil unrest that was happening in this country, and there’s a lot of divisiveness that was going on that was really having an impact on people, and it felt like a really important time to try to put something like this out there, to help people figure out in their own way how to deal with that.

I think having people from different walks of life, who grew up in different places, who had different life experiences talking about their perspectives, and again realizing that you can distill that down to things that we all have in common as people. And Mike and I look on the surface, we come from totally different place, although we’re both white males, so I’d say we start there, right?

Where we went after that was really, really different, and I think it was amazing to see. And it is sort of iconic of what we talk about in the book of we are so much home, we’re alike, and we achieve success in the same way, and if we lead a life of purpose and if we lead a life that’s built on achieving success, not at the expense of others but in partnership with others, wow, what a great place this would be.

So I think just figuring out how our life experiences somehow could get distilled down into things we all really agreed on and felt were important, and try to hopefully see that other people could see the same thing, that was a really fun part for me of going through the process, and I think eye-opening and I hope people read it. I hope they agree, I hope it resonates with people that don’t look like us or come from where we came from because these are universal themes and concepts that we hope help people.

Michael Sarraille: Hussein, we talk a lot about journaling because that has been very critical in all four of our lives, and it is part of our reflections process and our learning and growth process. So you could really view this project and this book as journaling on a grander scale. And then also, one of the things we talk heavily about in the book is the concept of tribes. I find very little pleasure in personal achievements if it’s not with my brothers and sisters that I hold dear.

When I wrote this book and we came together, it’s a no-brainer. It’s amazing what we can accomplish when we are part of a team. That doesn’t mean agreement, we were not always in agreement, but we’re always in alignment of what we wanted to give to other people, and I think we all believe in plagiarism and let me explain that there’s nothing plagiarized in this book.

What I mean by that is, Brian would give his philosophy or Jason or George would give his philosophy on a certain component of life, or maybe we were talking about an attribute or maybe we were talking about best practice to living a fulfilling life, and I would look at George, Jason or Brian and say, “Hey, do you mind if I take that as my own?” And, of course, the answer was, “Absolutely.” Absolutely, that’s the whole point.

Everyone has a story to tell and it’s almost, oh, it’s an insult to keep that information to yourself. If I’ve got good information that I think can benefit somebody else, I’m going to say it and ultimately, that person will determine if it’s value to them or not. But this concept of tribe especially, in such a world that, I should not say world even though it probably applies, but to a nation that is so divisive right now, kills us.

We have more in common than we have in difference and, as George said, the Triple 7, man, I could have went and done that by myself but I called 10 of my brothers, let’s do this together, much like with these guys in this book, because there is just so much more pride when you do it alongside what you consider to be the brotherhood or sisterhood or your family.

The Gift of MindsetHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s really profound, man. We’ll go through real quick and I want to know for everyday people out there that are just going through life, whether they’re working on something creative or writing a book or taking care of their kids, whatever it is, they’re battling, they’re going through it. So what’s a mindset, and we’ll go through and just share one mindset that you would give to someone as a gift to hold on.

So that they can take that and use it as a tool, absorb it, and so when they go out in the world or they’re internalizing these things, what’s one thing that you would all share? It could all be the same thing or it could obviously all be different, because I kind of want to make them different but you have four tools as supposed to the one, but obviously, you guys go deep into this in your book, which is where I want to lead people to.

What would you say for you, Brian, what’s that one thing that you would share with that special avatar, that special someone that you hope they could take away from and really going to their battles and coming out the other side having felt good?

Brian Gordon: There’s a chapter on embracing failure and for me, books like this are written and people have preached all this stuff. A lot of times, everything feels absolute and it feels really intimidating. Mike talked about journaling and I am a failed journaler. I do it for a little while and then I fall off and I stop doing it and then I realize I’m better. I am more thoughtful, I am more productive when I do that.

Then I get back on, I do it again and then I always fall off again. And I think when we talk about embracing failure, yes, it could be, “I tried to start a company, I failed, and I learned and I’m going to try and do it again,” or it could just be, “I was going to work out today and I didn’t work out.” That doesn’t mean you can’t do it tomorrow or the next day. You give yourself permission to be human and to screw up and to fail and to not be perfect and to not be consistent.

I think a lot of times, when we say we’re going to do things and we start and we fail, that’s where we give up and we feel bad and we feel not worthy, whatever the heck it is. To work out once in a week is better than working out zero. So you know, good shit, you did once. Now, next week maybe you do twice. So I think this idea of accepting failure both in the grand sense and then in the most micro sense, to me, is the biggest gift that you could give somebody. And just letting it not be the end of whatever it is that you want to do, just try again the next day.

George Silva: So the failure chapter, it’s so powerful. The way it starts off, and I absolutely love it, and that’s how you build a warrior mindset is just one setback at a time, right? We put the word “ATTA” in there for a very specific reason. Brian and Mike and Jason and I, we started a company called ATTA. It’s meant to be whatever it is you want to make it as one blank at a time, one goal at a time, one step at a time, one failure at a time.

And so for me, thinking back to writing the book, we had to plan this. And in every single chapter was a step. Every single paragraph was a step. In chapter seven, we talked about one step at a time, how success isn’t bought, it’s earned. It really aligns with our ATTA brand. It is a mindset that people have to adopt. You are going to fail, period. Everyone has failed in their life.

I don’t care who you are, the first time you stood up to try to take a step, you fail. Everyone is going to fail, you have to get the negativity of failure out of your mind and you have to build a plan, and you have to achieve one step at a time to accomplish every single one of your goals in life. If you think of something as a whole instead of in little bitty chunks, little bitty steps, you’re going to fail.

Having the failure chapter in there and then coupling it with the one step at a time mindset, for me, that’s my favorite chapter because it equates to everything in life. There are really just three steps that you have to be able to obtain success, and you have to be able to properly plan. You have to be able to properly prepare and if you do those two things, then you should be able to execute.

That’s it, no matter what you have in life, whatever it is your goal is, if you can plan correctly, you can prepare correctly, you will be able to execute it. So the one-step-at-a-time chapter for me is my go-to.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. I love the ATTA. Jason, what do you think? The one thing you want to give away to someone?

Jason Boulay:I think mine goes very close to what George and Brian said, it’s that perfection is an illusion and pursuing progress or perfection. I think people are disillusioned now, celebrity culture, curated social media, there is this unattainable standard that people see and I think it’s too easy to try to compare yourself against that and never be able to live up to it.

So I think once you realize that, it’s a freeing thing and it allows you to start paying attention and focusing on what matters, which is pursuing the progress, making yourself the best, having the best life you can have, trying to achieve your definition of success, whatever that may be. It frees you from all of this stuff that doesn’t really matter and it allows you to put your focus where it should be.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Amazing, I love that. Yes, progress over perfection, man, let’s go. I love that. Michael, what do you think brother?

Michael Sarraille: You know, I would say no one can define success for you but you and society naturally places a lot of sort of expectations upon you. If you’ve got to do this to be defined as a success or you’ve got to be this person, and that’s not true. I went to Navy SEAL training with a guy, first-generation Korean-American. His father was an alcoholic, was abusive, and his father had a very defined vision of what success meant.

This individual that I talk about went on to not only become a Navy SEAL, he was a Silver Star recipient, a Bronze Star recipient, he became a Harvard-educated doctor and eventually, became a NASA astronaut. I mean, the guy is super-human in a lot of ways and he did this all by the age of 34. But I interviewed him, and he is a good friend, later in life and he said he finally came to the realization that his definition of success did not align with his father’s, and he had to come to terms with that.

He had to define success on his own terms and then pursue that definition of success. So a lot of people don’t take the time to look inward and say, “What is success really mean to me?” Hey, if it’s money, I’m not saying that’s wrong. That may work for you. If it’s fulfillment, if it’s impact, if it’s purpose, then you have to ask yourself some hard questions and you really have to take time to sit down, and maybe sometimes to sit down not only by yourself but maybe you have a spouse, a husband or a wife, and have that conversation of what does success look like for us, what truly matters?

And a lot of people, and we talk about it in the book, a lot of people don’t take that time or go through that process.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful. I literally can’t agree with you all more. I feel like there are the three wise men, which we all know about, but I have four wise men in front of me and I’ve learned so much today. You’ve all reiterated so many beautiful important insights on how to really encapsulate and absorb the everyday warrior mentality and how you enact it out in the world.

The book is insanely powerful, jam-packed with stories, I highly recommend it. Michael and the rest of the gang, thank you all so much for your service, your sacrifice, your business ownership in helping our communities and the people that you bring onto those companies and organizations. I am super grateful to have just had the pleasure of just speaking with you all today and learning so much.

But I know this book is going to create an amazing ripple effect throughout the communities and the people that it will touch. So thank you all for getting together, arguing, bargaining, whatever it was that you did to bring all these ideas together because I am sure there is a lot left off the table, and I hope you all can come together for another one. The book is called The Everyday Warrior: A No-Hack Practical Approach to Life. Besides checking out the book where can people find you all?

Michael Sarraille: You know for me, it’s mikesarraille.com, all of the other guys, go on the Men’s Journal, The Everyday Warrior, they can also find us there. Guys?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful.

George Silva: For me, you can reach out to me at legacyexpeditions.net. There is an info button there, you can just click at it, the email will go directly to me. On Instagram, it’s @mr._george_silva. I had to put the mister because there was already another George there.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Love it, Brian?

Brian Gordon: Yeah, you could find me on LinkedIn. We talk about social media in the book, I’m not a big fan of social media and I don’t really frequent it but on LinkedIn, you could find me and it is pretty easy to just use my name, Brian Gordon.

Jason Boulay: I agree, on LinkedIn and I would direct people towards The Everyday Warrior on Men’s Journal. Read the content we’re putting up there and the articles, and it is a lot of actionable, good advice.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful. Thank you all so much today for joining me. I appreciate your time, again, your service, much appreciated for my soul to all of yours. Thank you again, you guys are fantastic, man, keep doing amazing things. I appreciate it.

The post The Everyday Warrior: Mike Sarraille, Brian Gordon, George Silva, and Jason Boulay appeared first on Author Hour.

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When you live with back pain, you live with equally unbearable side effects, anxiety, depression, fatigue, feeling hopeless. You’re fighting a daily battle, impossible to articulate and difficult to see.

Welcomed back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and my next guest is Dr. Gregory Lutz, who is here to talk with us about his dedication to finding a healing method that truly works and is here to celebrate his new book, Heal Your Disc, End Your Pain, let’s dive into it.

Hello, everyone, thank you for joining me today. I am here with Dr. Gregory Lutz, and I’m super excited because this man’s work is amazing. It’s around healing something that we all at some point go through. Dr. Lutz, thank you so much for joining me today.

Dr. Gregory Lutz: It’s a pleasure to be here today. Thanks for having me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Absolutely. So I want to start off by giving our audience just a little bit of a personal background, perhaps where you’re from, where did you grow up and how you got into this medical profession?

Dr. Gregory Lutz: So I grew up in north Jersey in Wayne, actually, and you know, my father was a physician and my mom was a nurse, and so he had a home office, and so we were exposed to the medical profession from a very young age, and you know, it was nice to see, you know, my dad and my mom helping patients, and I think it left a great imprint on all of us and actually, you know, all my siblings are also physicians. So I think you know, we all had a – it all had a profound effect on all of us.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so beautiful. You know, you kind of talk about that a little bit about how your mother was also just an exceptional cook, and they like to host even other physicians and doctors, and it seems like you were just very much emerged in that world.

What was something that your dad perhaps or mom, early on, kind of really honed in on and taught you? Something maybe it could be a characteristic, it could be a personality trait, something that they helped you really hone in on.

Dr. Gregory Lutz: Well, you know, I think both of my parents were very giving people, and I think that they always spoke about medicine in such high regard, has such a noble profession, and you know, the continual learning that goes on with medicine was something that they really cherished and valued. You know, it’s a lifelong learning, and I think education was really, you know, highly valued in our family.

Back Pain Is an EpidemicHussein Al-Baiaty: That’s so profound, and I just appreciate that because I grew up a refugee here in America, but like, you know, I remember my parents unfortunately, they didn’t get past high school, but to them, education was certainly everything, but they taught me the many characteristics that could help in education was the added bonus, right?

And you’re 100% right in that, it’s this idea of forever learning, but when you learn it at such a young age from parents who really, you know, not only like, push it on you, right? It’s one thing if your dad really wanted you to be ad doctor, but he was a mechanic or something, and then that happens too. It’s a whole other thing when the whole atmosphere around you in that environment really cultivated that.

So I thought that was really beautiful, and it kind of led you down this path. You know, you went towards, obviously, you know, pursuing this medical profession, but there was something that you have – you discovered throughout your work, was this idea, you know, this back pain world, I call it the world because I’ll be honest with you Dr. Lutz, like I don’t know anybody…

You know, maybe with the exception of a very few minimal people that don’t have or suffer from or talk about some sort of back pain. I know I have and I learned a lot of like stretching techniques and things, but even with that, you know, it still bothers me every now and then, but how did you fall into that niche specifically?

Dr. Gregory Lutz: So you know, like you said, it’s such a common problem, and even in medical school, they would say the patient has low back pain, and yeah, that’s a symptom. It’s not really a diagnosis, and there’s no other area of medicine where you would say, the patient has lung pain, you know? They have pneumonia, they have a specific condition, you know?

And so I felt like it was kind of like an area that was like a little bit of a pioneer field because the treatments that we were offering patients were not working that well, and I felt there was something missing on the diagnostic side and certainly on the therapeutic side, and so it intrigued me, and when I was practicing, a lot of the other doctors didn’t want to see the patients with chronic low back pain.

I felt like I could offer patients, at the very least, for being a rehabilitation specialist, you know, how to take care of their bodies, to at least eliminate some of the pain through exercise, and then, as I learned some of the interventional procedures, we would guide precise injections of steroid around inflamed nerves and disks and that would give patients really good pain relief at least temporarily so they can get into a rehabilitation program.

And then there was only later, maybe over the past 15 years when I started to hear more and more about regenerative medicine and that stuff I really learned from the vets, the veterinarian physicians that came to our farm and it was not really through my practice or my hospital I was affiliated with. It was really outside of medicine that I started putting two and two together that this could really make a good impact and something that’s the number one cause of disability in the world, it’s not just in the US, it’s worldwide like you said. It’s so prevalent.

So that’s really where I felt like I had tremendous experience seeing these patients for about 20 years, but I wasn’t getting to the root cause, you know? I was putting the fire out, or making them feel better temporarily, and it was only when we started doing these procedures of intradiscal PRP did we see people turn the corner for good, you know? And they just dropped off the medical treatment plan, and that was really profound, and so that’s why in this book is really an effort to kind of educate the public about an option that many don’t know is out there.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: No, that’s so powerful because this idea, again, it was something I feel like happen to you at a very young age, which was like just always be learning, right? Even though that you’re in this path, you open up to other ideas that could potentially help your patients.

It wasn’t just a matter of, “Okay, let’s just do what we normally do,” thought of different ways and having this idea of, you know, when the vet came and worked on your whatever, animals, there’s something that clicked and started realigning, and for you, that was really powerful, and I know you talked about these patients that you had at like early on in your career. I believe you named her Beth.

She had gone through like two surgeries, and there was like an exception amount of pain that she was suffering through, and I feel like you talk about how you sort of carried her story. I feel like that that sort of helped your narrative in really wanting to help people with this lower back issue and obviously, it’s huge issues.

So it’s one that I definitely agree with in the sense of like, a lot of treatments just — I know my brothers have, specifically one of my oldest brothers, he suffered a lot from back pain and so, he got hooked on opioids and so on and so forth, and I know you talk about that as well, but it sounds like you found a way down to that root cause.

Can you break down a little bit about whether it’s your working pattern or all of these things, you have back pain now, and for you, your thing was the root cause can be eliminated with X, Y, or Z or prevented, and I love that because it’s again, something that you don’t talk about when you’re with your doctor. You just have lower back pain, but you talk about this root cause that causes this pain. Can you share about that a little bit more?

Dr. Gregory Lutz: So there are like many causes of back pain, and so part of the challenge as a spine specialist to hone in on, you know, what are the most likely or the exact cause of back pain. Over 50% of back pain is from a problem with a spinal disc, and the discs are the cushions that are in between each vertebral body, the bones, or the spine that keep it flexible and keep it able to move and load bear and give you the ability to stand upright and twist and turn and do your daily activities and sports.

So you know, we essentially, have a structure that is somewhat flawed. Like in other parts of your body, if you cut your skin, or you know, tear the skin, your blood supply is readily available to bring healing cells directly to the skin, and the tissue regenerates in most cases, beautifully, like it never happened, and so the problem with the spinal discs is that basically, they have a gelatinous core, which is called the nucleus pulposus and then surrounding the jelly to keep it contained are 15 to 25 circular fibrous bands.

And that portion of the disc is called the annulus fibrosis, and think of it as like a circular tendon. So when that tears from trauma or overuse or whatever injury occurred, the likelihood of that healing is very poor, and as that tear propagates, then people can start to experience pain, and there’s varying degrees of pain. There’s pain that’s episodic or there’s pain that becomes chronic.

It can involve your lower back, it can involve your legs, a combination of both, and if keeps tearing and then the jelly extrudes, that’s called a herniated disc, and then you could have severe leg pain and weakness, and so the idea of the disk is just the structure that needs to be healed is kind of a paradigm shift because none of the treatments, there’s no drug, there’s no surgery that heals the inside of the disc.

So that’s one major root cause is let’s just think of it as an unhealed wound, and like any wound, when it tears, it can become infected with bacteria, and I think this is where I think, we might be killing two birds with one stone with our intradiscal PRP because the type of PRP we use also has a very high content of not just platelets but also white blood cells, leucocytes and we’ve seen a big difference in outcome when we use what’s called a leucocyte rich PRP versus a leucocyte poor.

So I really do believe that these tears are often infected with overgrowth of bacteria, and that causes exquisite pain for patients that just doesn’t get better with the traditional treatments, and so you can understand why taking Advil would not be a cure, why just exercise alone would not be a cure and why surgery would not be a cure.

You have to address the underlying path of physiology of trying to heal the tear and get rid of the overgrowth of bacteria, and that’s where precisely injecting a high concentration of your own platelets and white blood cells seems to have a profound effect, and it’s such a simple, elegant solution to a very major problem.

So and that’s basically the book in a nutshell. It’s like use your own cells to heal your disc and then get on with life. This shouldn’t be nothing more than a hiccup in life, and it’s really been a wrecking ball for so many.

What You Need to Heal Is Already Inside of YouHussein Al-Baiaty: Dr. Lutz, I got to be honest with you man, I mean, I think you’re probably the first doctor I’ve ever spoken to about, you know, what happens in the back and like how to think about it. You’ve really simplified it, you know, by just saying, “Look, here’s tear, what happens to your skin when you tear” you know it’s like, your body has the systems, the things that need to go to where they need to be to heal that part of the body.

It’s like, if you apply that idea to this area of the body that I guess, you know, from my – this is not my world by any means, so I’m just really dumbifying here, but it sounds like this area of the body, the spine doesn’t get the amount of blood perhaps that it shoulder because of that injury or whatever it may be and you are coming in, you’re taking the blood out. You do this procedure where you spin the blood to separate the healing properties.

I am assuming, again, I’m really dumbifying here, and then you inject it back into the area where we need that help from our own structural systems that are already built in to do the healing for us. That perspective just makes so much sense, and you’re right, it is simple, it’s elegant. Obviously, it’s very sophisticated and hard on your end as far as being a physician and how you apply it and all these beautiful things.

You even shared a really cool story around, before you had started performing this with patients with back pain. You talked about this patient who you basically tried this trial out on their Achilles heel, I believe?

Dr. Gregory Lutz: Achilles tendon, yeah.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Achilles tendon, I‘m sorry. You know, that was just such a powerful thing because it was like two or three months later, if I read that correctly, and it was like, that person was feeling really good. The tear was getting better, and like a year later, they were playing tennis. Can you tell a little bit about that story because I thought that was really profound?

Dr. Gregory Lutz: Yeah, and you know, these are things like when you look back, and you feel like there’s a little bit of destiny here because I had just seen some of our vets inject a horse of ours, he was lame for months and then within three weeks, he started running around the pasture like a pony, and you know, the vets would come to the barn, they would take the horse’s blood. They would spin it in the centrifuge, and it just inject it in the slot in the ultrasound like it was very simple.

And the vet, his name is Dan Kennin, told me, “You know, you should look into this for your own patients.” And I said, “No, yeah, this is really interesting.” And I did some homework on it. I looked at the publications that backed the science, and it was a little bit rudimentary, but it was very safe. It’s just taking your own stuff and using it in a way that it’s meant to be used. So I ordered a PRP kit for my office in New York.

The day it came in, this patient comes in and he was in his early 70s, was a very successful hedge fund manager who had already invested in a PRP company. So he kind of knew what PRP was, and he said, “You know, I tore my Achilles tendon, I love tennis, I don’t want surgery, I’ve seen some complications, and I want to try to heal it with PRP, and I hear you’ll do anything.”

He said, “I will not do anything, but I will do this, let’s try it.” He and I did not know whether it would work. So we did the standard PRP kit, we spun it. It takes about 15 minutes, you take his blood, you spin it for 15 minutes, and then like you said, it separates the cells based on their specific gravity.

So the red blood cells go to the bottom of the tube and then on top of that are the platelets and white blood cells and plasma, and then you just suck out the plasma and concentrate the platelets with the white blood cells into maybe two or three teaspoon and then under ultrasound, we just injected it directly to, you know, his Achilles tendon tear. So you know, we didn’t know what was going to happen.

That was the very first patient I ever did, and that was back in 2008, and so he came back a month later almost pain free. When I saw him the first time, he was in a boot limping around for six months. So he said, “No, it feels much better.” And so I said, “Well, you know I looked at that under ultrasound, it wasn’t fully healed, but it looked better.” I said, “Let’s do it again.” So we did it again, and then within a few months, he was back on the –

It wasn’t a year, he was out back on playing tennis. He had not played tennis for over six months, and he was back on the tennis court playing, and I said, “Well, let’s look at the MRI and just see. Is it just pain relief, or did it actually heal?” And when we did the MRI, it was completely healed, no tear, it looked completely normal in a 73-year-old, and so it was like that was my first case, so that was really eye-opening to say the least because you never see Achilles tendon tears heal.

They always go to surgery for the most part, and his tear was like over 70% of the diameter of the tendon.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s what I found really interesting too, it was on his – I mean, he was basically prone for surgery.

Dr. Gregory Lutz: So when you get that kind of first out-of-box experience, so we didn’t start in the disc, we started with tendons. So we would do Achilles tendons, patellar tendons, rotator cup tendons, gluteus medius tendons, and almost everybody was getting better like it was very rare that people to not have improvement. It was one of the best procedures I’ve ever did in my whole medical career. It was that gratifying.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That is so powerful, and to just hear you talking about it, I mean, it sounds like it was a very, like a turning point in your own life and career.

Dr. Gregory Lutz: Right, because the tendon is similar to the disc. It has poor blood supply, it doesn’t heal well, you can’t really inject steroids into it or it will weaken the tissue and cause rupture within, and it just seemed like we were sending too many people for surgery for tendon disorders let alone, you know, final fusions for disc disorders and so what’s interesting is the same collagen that makes up a tendon makes up the outer rings of the disc.

Type one collagen, and so I said, “You know, if it has that much of an effect on a tendon, maybe it could work on a spine inside the disc.” But that is obviously a much more dangerous place to inject things, and so we decided that, you know, if we tried a few patients and we started seeing some good results. So then we said, “Well, let’s do it under what’s called an IRB,” which is an Institutional Review Board on the research protocol.

We did set it up with using like the best study design that we can use, which is a double-blind randomized control trial, and so that’s where it really came out of our sports medicine practice treating tendon disorders first because, you know, we felt like that was a more comfortable place to start.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That is so powerful, and like your ability to connect the two and then furthering your work as you progress this new way of doing some. Well, perhaps not a new way of looking, at doing something, but maybe it was. I am not a 100% sure in the medical world, but it sounds like it was just a different way of doing it, and you came on and you started introducing that.

So what was it like to do that for your first patients to help them out with their disc? What was that experience like?

Dr. Gregory Lutz: I mean once, you know, like in this study, we used a PRP system that was concentrating the cells to maybe five times your baseline platelet concentration, and it was so rigorous like the design that if a patient got better it was clearly from the PRP because each patient was so well selected and then, what we showed was that in this one study of about 50 patients, the treatment group has statistically significant higher improvement in pain and in physical function and patient satisfaction compared to the control group.

So that is pretty convincing, and then we followed those patients for overtime, and we were able to get over 70% follow-up at five to nine years after that single procedure, and the majority of patients were still better from one single injection of PRP.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: One injection? This is so amazing.

Dr. Gregory Lutz: One injection, and so like I said, patients that the average pre-procedure symptom duration of these patients was four to five years. So these were patients that had been through many injections, many epidural steroid injections, many physical therapies, and they were looking at a spinal fusion, and all of them were candidates for fusion and only six out of the 50 went onto a fusion.

So it was a big change, and that was first out of box technology. Now, what we are putting in to disc is the concentrations of platelets are like 20 times your baseline with really high white blood cell counts, and we’re putting them in precisely into tears using a catheter. So now our success rate is approaching 90%. So I think what we’ve done overtime is just say, “Okay, if five times baseline worked, how did 10 times baseline, how does 20 times baseline?”

Because we don’t know the upper limit, but you know, the system, we created a new PRP system that can concentrate sometimes up to 40 or 50 times baseline. So we are just studying the effects. There is probably an upper limit, but we haven’t seen it yet.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: This is what’s really powerful, okay, I got to commend you because this work is just – I mean, you know it’s a hook. You read a lot of things, you talk a lot about, especially with what I do in these conversations, there is so many remarkable people that come on the show, but your specific work, your scenarios, your stories that you are telling me right now and then in line with what I know about the world as far as back pain in general, is just this direct connection to hope.

Like there is absolute hope to helping someone who has severe back pain, and it is preventing them from just living life. It could be picking up a kid. It could be, you know, just driving, moving around. I just have seen what it’s done to my brother, to be honest, this is first-hand experience, and you know, he’s had multiple injections and the steroids and all that stuff, and you know, he’s always just like, “Man, dude, nothing works.”

Like workout, make sure your back is strong. You know, he is always giving me those advice, and I love that, and I appreciate that, but what you are talking about is so powerful in the sense of like you’ve dedicated the last 15 plus years to honing in on this very beautiful, simple, elegant way of approaching and healing, and I think that’s the most powerful I think word we can use in this discussion is that this is a healing ideology not necessarily just a preventing or going into surgery is so – I can’t fathom going into surgery for back pain.

I just, you know, just being out for weeks. I just got to commend you, man, it’s amazing what you’re doing, and I love to hear that you are taking this into like more of a broader sensibility and educating others and writing a book about it. Can you share a little bit about sort of the, you know, these innovations and what the future looks like for people who suffer through this back pain and how you intend to help educate other physicians?

Dr. Gregory Lutz: So you know, like you said, like historically, all of our treatments are focused on more symptom modifying therapies. Well, all along what we really needed were structured modifying therapies like intradiscal PRP, things that created the healing and what’s nice is in our office we have an MRI, we can do an MRI anytime we want, and we have hundreds of patients now that just show their tears healing.

So what we have seen on a more consistent basis is like there’s about 50 different types of PRP systems that are commercially available, but none of them were specifically designed to treat degenerative disc disease. What we did was we spoke with, they call it operating equipment manufacturer, so an OEM. An OEM makes devices, and I had a very good relationship with a company in Boston called Ranfac.

You know, Barry Zimble is their chief operating officer, and Barry is the nicest guy. He wants to make a buck, he wants to do it with making an impact. So you know, to develop he and Andy, Miguel Cody, who is the owner of another company collaborated with me on making a PRP system that could concentrate the platelets in the white blood cells to higher concentrations than the best PRP systems in the market.

So it’s really just basic math, in order to get higher cell counts, you just have to take larger volumes and concentrate to lower levels, and so you need systems that can handle a higher volume of blood, and so they designed a very simple system and sure enough produces 30, 40% higher cell counts than the leading competitor. So that was an innovation that has definitely translated into improved outcomes.

Then the traditional way of putting PRP or anything into a disc is using a straight needle technique. The way you have to approach the spine to avoid the nerves is to come in from the side at an angle and invariably, you would end up more in the middle of the disc, which is called the nucleus, and so when you inject, you would have to have tears that communicated with the nucleus to get good flow into the annulus.

So we designed this needle system, a catheter that’s made of Nitinol, which is a flexible metal, and it has a preset curve, and so you can stick a straight needle into the disc and then, you know, really in a very elegant way curve these catheter right into the back of the disc almost like a semicircle and just bathe the back of the disc where all the tears are with a super concentrated PRP and that procedure, we call disc heal, and it’s trademarked.

We are meeting with the FDA at the end of this month on a trial that we are proposing, and we will get feedback. If they give us the green light, then we’re going to take that, the combination of the super concentrated PRP with delivered with the catheter as the ideal way of doing this procedure, and so hopefully, the FDA will be reasonable, and we can go into a clinical trial to get a claim because that is the problem with a lot of these regenerative treatments.

It’s that they are all done in what is referred to as an off-label fashion. Like they are FDA approved devices, but they’re not approved for that specific purpose. So in my office, I could sit down with a patient and say, “Listen, I think this is what’s best for you.” But as a company, you can’t really promote it because you haven’t gone through the necessary regulatory steps to get the claim. Hopefully, we can get a claim and be the first company to treat degenerative disc disease with a biologic.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. Well, I hope you know, not only do you get this, but it starts to become a widely accepted format for how to heal these disc, because let’s be real, this is like you said in your book as well, it is a pandemic. The back pain is just much a pandemic as COVID-19, right? It is probably worse because it’s lasted way longer. Thank you so much, Dr. Lutz.

Today, you know, you really expanded my mind about hope and possibilities, and you know, it’s like you haven’t even been busy doing anything. I mean, I don’t think your parents would be very proud of you. I think you have done incredible work, and you know, I am honored today to have just listened to you speak so eloquently about your work and your intention of helping people.

I think what a great thing to really wrap your arms around you and your team and your colleagues to not just identify these cures and identify how to heal but like really invest the time, resources, energy, you know, even creating the smallest of things, the right needle and the shape that it needs to be to you know, it is just beautiful. I think it is a work of art what you have been doing. So thank you so much, I commend you for that.

Dr. Gregory Lutz: Well, that’s great. That’s very kind of you, and you know, I really enjoyed the interview, and you know, you did a great job.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Thank you so much.

Dr. Gregory Lutz: So I hope we get the word out and let patients know that, you know, there is other solutions than drugs and surgery for their back pain.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I will absolutely be in touch, but I wanted to ask you one more question, if you don’t mind. If there is one thing you want people to walk away with from this book, your readers, your specific readers, what would that one thing be?

Dr. Gregory Lutz: The one thing that the audience should know is that, you know, back pain can be healed, and everything you need to heal is already inside you. It just has to be guided in the right spot, and that’s where we help.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, you are a wizard with words, let me tell you. I think that was so well put. Thank you so much Dr. Lutz for coming on the show and sharing your wisdom. The book is called, Heal Your Disc, End Your Pain: How Regenerative Medicine Could Save Your Spine, beautiful title. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you Dr. Lutz?

Dr. Gregory Lutz: I’m in New York City at the Regenerative Sports Care Institute. It is a private clinic that I founded about six years ago to offer these procedures in a more cost-efficient place than the hospital setting.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Can people find you on LinkedIn, reach out to you for questions if they have them?

Dr. Gregory Lutz: Absolutely.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful, all right. Well, thanks again for your time, much appreciated, keep going with your work. I know our world desperately needs it. So thanks again for spending your career doing this amazing work.

Dr. Gregory Lutz: Well, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you, and I really enjoyed the interview.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I appreciate it.

The post Heal Your Disc, End Your Pain: Gregory E. Lutz, MD appeared first on Author Hour.

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Welcome to the Author Hour podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty. My next guest is CEO and philanthropist, Micheline Nader. In her new book, LEAP Beyond Success, she introduces a transformational system called LEAP, which is designed for leaders who want to accelerate their growth and impact. I’m excited for this episode because Micheline is a true gift to our world and I can’t wait for you to hear her remarkable story. So let’s get into it.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. I’m here with my new best friend, Micheline Nader, who’s here to talk about her new book, LEAP Beyond Success. You guys, I’m so excited because Micheline is somebody so unique, so beautiful. Her story is profound. I’m really excited to have you on the show, Micheline. Thank you so much for taking the time and joining me today.

Micheline Nader: Thank you, Hussein. The pleasure is mine.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Absolutely. With our audience, I love giving our audience a perspective, a window, if you will, into your childhood, into sort of where you grew up, what was life like, what were the people around you, like the ones that influenced you and motivated you. Can you kind of give us a brief recap of sort of your childhood and your upbringing, until we get to the good stuff about writing your book?

Micheline Nader: I was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and I had a beautiful childhood and upbringing. Between Beirut and the mountains in the summer, a beautiful family, everything was like a dream. Until of course, the war in Lebanon started. That was when I was going to college at the American University of Beirut. Then, life took on and a really strange way. Because, as you know, Hussein, probably, you’ve experienced that in your own country. That wars, not only tear people apart and tear countries apart. They shatter our emotions, our mindset. They shatter our being at the core. Then our reality shifts. How do you deal with this and how – not only that, how you allow for the leadership inside of you to expand and to unleash as you’re going through a crisis like this?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s such a powerful story, because the moment I opened up your book, you literally take me into that world in which you’re literally laying in a tub, war is happening outside, chaos is ensuing from bombing to bullets flying. You just really reconstructed—for me, I instantly got emotional. I’m not going to lie to you. For me, it brought back my memories to that time of the Gulf War. To go there with you, and then here’s sort of what happens next. Because not only are we going through these extremely terrifying moments, right? The only thing at that level that truly exists in our minds, I feel like and perhaps I’m wrong, the only thing in your mind, I’m sure was hope. I feel like hope comes in and saves the day in different ways.

However, if we go back a little bit in time, you talk about your father and him passing on, sadly, from cancer and you’re at a very young age. But it kind of motivated you to go find the cure for cancer, which when that happens, I feel like there’s something else that really comes to life, like your greatness starts to unfold. In that moment, it sounds like, when you were going into school in nursing and learning the medical world, you didn’t stop there. In that moment where you’re in the tub, your phone rang. Can you describe that story a little bit more for our audience and what happened when the phone rang?

Micheline Nader: So literally, the week before that, I had graduated my Masters of Public Health and I was going for hospital administration. My intention was to go to Johns Hopkins. But in the meantime, I had applied for a job at the American University of Beirut Medical Center. It was the biggest hospital, teaching hospital in Lebanon, of course. As I was just resting after a night of crazy war, like literally, we had lost the top floor of our building. Then the phone rang, that my first reaction was like, “Wow, I’m still alive.” Because I know and I had that brief moment of rest that I was still alive. Then, the voice announces that they would like to see me for a position at the University of Beirut Medical Center, which is like really the first medical institution in the Middle East. Just to give you an idea, this medical center, we used to see like 350,000 patient visits at the outpatient department. The voice said, “We’re interviewing you” and I said, “Which position are you interviewing me for?” The voice said, “You will know when you come here. It’s highly confidential.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So you go in for the interview, the next day, distraught, I’m sure from the night before of just chaos. Walk me through that. What happens next?

Micheline Nader: So I called my aunt. I was 23. I said, “Do you have something for me to wear?” It seems like it’s a very important position. The only thing that they said it’s an executive leadership role at the hospital. This what happened—I had to borrow clothes from my aunt and go for this interview with the medical director. This is when he announced to me that instead of doing my training as a resident in hospital administration, I was going to be recruited as assistant director of the hospital. Back then, we were three, the director and two of us, assistant directors. I had the responsibility one week. We were like alternating, one week the director, one week the other assistant director, and one week it was me to have the whole responsibility of the hospital during a war and in a war zone.

That was the highlight when I say I was baptized by fire. I say, sometimes you don’t really know that you’re a leader, but you’re entrusted into a leadership movement. I remember, my dad was a networker, yet his dad owned a business. At that age, he had to handle and manage the business. So how do you allow yourself to discover that leader within you?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful and this just unfolds. I wouldn’t even say the beginning of the journey. I feel like this is in addition. This is the part of the journey that really starts to take you and start to shape you into who you become. I feel like as much as it was a gift, it was also—it’s like putting yourself out in the line of fire. I mean, it was completely courageous for one, to show up to this interview and to take on this role. Because it’s such, at a young age—I feel like when I was young, I knew I could do anything. I was really empowered. I was blessed. I had my mom, and dad and my brothers, and they really made me feel like I could do anything. However, that’s not the case for many people. In your case, you really just had to believe in yourself and show up.

You go on and you start working this very intense role, because let’s just take a moment here. A war, a civil war is not something to take lightly. Then to work at a hospital where a lot of these injured people for whatever reason, are going to end up and then to manage the chaos. You got doctors, you got patients, you got all kinds of different variables. So I commend you and I’m grateful that you stepped into that believing could simply just show up to do it as very powerful sister.

But let’s get back into your book a little bit. I love the simplicity of your book and you broke down your system of this L-E-A-P, this idea of LEAP, which stands for Lean, Execute, Align and Program. Can you share about how that developed over time? Because I know you went on to do many more things after this amazing experience. Can you share about those experiences and how LEAP became sort of the foundation in which you started to stand on?

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photography-of-yellow-green-red-and-brown-plastic-cones-on-white-lined-surface-163064/

Foundation of LEAPMicheline Nader: Yeah. If you read through my book, which I believe you did, you saw that three years after, I went to Paris to be at the American Hospital of Paris. Then I worked also with the French government on turnkey projects in Africa. Then after that, went to Canada and the US when I started my own chain of long-term care. I had gathered an international experience. But what I did, not stop believing that my initial experience that we discussed during the war had shaped my leadership and in the best ways, I could say. Because throughout my experience, even when we had crisis, management crisis, when we had challenges. I not only kept my calm, I knew how to operate, and that was because the system of priorities that I had developed under that warzone, was a very important system that helped me overcome everything. I knew what the priorities are at each level.

But then, with the experience came also the growth and development. I became also my passion, which in this book, I draw a lot, because they say lean into your passion. Why do I say that? Because I discovered that a lot of leaders became very successful. I mean, they are like, immensely successful, but they were not fulfilled. I discovered also that some leaders will never be able to attain their full potential. And that I found out because of my passion, and self-growth and development, what I own my own company, and my chain, and several of my centers and I had a lot of directors and CEOs reporting into me I discovered that my leadership team meetings turned out into really leadership growth and development sessions. We had them like every week. Our executive leadership team was every week and my leaders wanted to be in those meetings.

At one point, they call them the Oprah Winfrey, and then the Oprah Winfrey meetings. But what happened with the company, these leaders became the coaches of their department and the company started soaring. Success not only followed, but fulfillment. People were happy to come to work because they found the team that could support them. Then I saw that some of our centers became the best in that state, innovation, and people did not need me to guide them as a leader of my organization.

What happened then, the leap started happening. It wasn’t a small progress. It wasn’t a small innovation. It was like, “Oh, let’s leap into a complete different thing.” Like one of our centers was just a normal, long-term care nursing home in the State of Oklahoma. Then all of a sudden, that team decides they wanted to answer and fulfill a need of geriatric psych in the State of Oklahoma. It became the best with the lowest number of medications. We had a system.

As I was evolving as an individual, as I was evolving as a leader, that I made the system available to our directors and whoever wanted it. Then I felt that those people who were invested in their growth and development were the most successful and it’s not a surprise. I mean, Daniel Goleman, with his study in the Harvard Business Review found that people who have the highest emotional intelligence are highest on the spectrum of success, right? So then, I discovered that what I love. My passion took me through different expressions of leadership throughout my career. But at one point, I discovered that my passion was going to lead me to write about this, do workshops and help leaders evolve.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it’s so powerful. I feel when you said that these experiences were expressions, and then basically was cultivating and bringing out more of your emotional intelligence, to embed in certain aspects of what you were doing. This sounds like the most fulfilling aspect of that, was how you were able to get that across to your team, to your leaders, who then got that across, right? Because you can’t be everywhere at the same time. This idea that they call it, the Oprah Winfrey meeting, it just goes to show actually how your emotional intelligence, has unfolded to the degree that people loved and looked forward to a simple meeting that talked about these things that you care so much about, and how it—kind of like the river breaking off, and it just kind of flowed into the right places.

It’s very powerful, and how you took your passion, and the impact, and you really deployed it in a way that’s very selfless, I feel like. These are the things that you picked up because of the experiences you’ve had. Because let’s be honest, not everybody learns leadership in the moments of war, right? Because that is going to bring out the best in you. Sadly, because those moments are so—they’re so deep, right? They’re so—they are pulling at you in every direction. However, when you’re staying calm, and learned how to position yourself to make effective decisions in those times, I feel like that is probably one of the most powerful. I mean, I hate to say this, but I can’t figure out another word, almost like warrior-esque mentality of, you’re in the eye of the storm, and everything’s happening, but you’re calm as a butterfly and just moving through it. I don’t want to make it seem that easy. Of course, it’s not easy. But it sounds like your experiences really added to that.

Can you discuss a specific incident where executing from your purpose led to a successful outcome? Can you share a little story about sort of how you understood your purpose and what that led to?

Executing from Your PurposeMicheline Nader: So, as I say in my book, purpose is a nebulous word and a lot of people shy away from it, because it may have a connotation, religious, spiritual. In reality, purpose is only one you contribute your passion to the world. Only that. When I discovered that my passion was, that I was able to demystify these big principles or something that is very complicated and put it in a pragmatic way that can help leaders evolve, they can help them up-level their game in a way. Throughout my career, especially when you first grow from management to becoming a leader, you realize that a lot of people don’t want to be leaders, they want to be followers and that’s okay. But even if they’re followers, they’re leading some other people. Even if you’re at home, you’re leading someone, right? Even if you’re a housewife, you’re leading.

They don’t realize that leadership is actually an innate capability of the human species. A lot of people say, “We’re not leaders.” But what I discovered when people shy away, because—and I described it really well in LEAP Beyond Success, but stopped by either our mindset, or what we say, or our narrative or our experience about the past, whatever is in the past is giving us the present, except if we deal with that past. What I discovered when people connect to their passion, then they will be able to lead, and then they will be able also to decide whether this passion is going to lead them into a purpose for life or not. This what happened to me. If I was leading only for myself, only for my success, only for financial earning. If that was my ultimate measure of success, then I could not execute from my purpose because I would be moving from one job to another, any job that would give me more remuneration or more earnings. But if passion and fulfillment are the ultimate measure of success, then you can lead a purposeful life. This is when you get the fulfillment.

Throughout the experience, if you look at your life, and you know that your passion was to add. For me, it was to add value. If I’m adding value, and I’m contributing my passion to the world, which my passion was to demystify big projects, principles and render them pragmatic, where the leaders can not only grasp but can use them and utilize them in their daily work or living, then it doesn’t become only about me. I mean, success is very important and it means a lot for leaders, especially in the beginning of their career, but it won’t create fulfillment.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: We see it a lot in modern-day world, but continue. I’m sorry.

Micheline Nader: When you really understand that you want to contribute your passion to the world, then that becomes a purpose of yours, then you can create your own mission statement that will direct to. People don’t know sometimes that executing from that purpose. If they look back at that life, they’ll see how that purpose has been unfolding all along.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, and how it’s interconnected almost with really not only who you’re becoming, but the situations that you’ve been in, the circumstances that have put you in certain places and what you did to come out of that. The purpose is like unfolding alongside how much you pour that passion into whatever you’re doing. I think, yeah, that’s so powerful.

Micheline Nader: Exactly. If you’re committed to something bigger than yourself, this is a source of power and inspiration.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. It requires you to expand. It requires you to bring more of yourself to the table, be more passionate. I love that idea, because what you’re tapping into something so, like you said, innate in all of us, it’s just how do we break the shell. And believing in yourself, and those kinds of things, of course, all tied together. Can you share any, I would say, maybe one or two techniques or practices that you use to program your emotions and maintain a positive outlook? Because just talking to you before the recording, you just have this really light, sort of beautiful poetic way of just your perception on the world and I love that. So I wanted to ask about, how do you maintain a positive outlook? What do you deploy? What do you practice?

Maintaining a Positive OutlookMicheline Nader: So that’s interesting, because that’s really very important. You have to quiet your mind and do some introspection in order to know whether it is at the level of decision making, or at the level of reactivity. Whether this reaction and that emotion that is linked to that reaction is coming from the past and it always does. Because if you’re reactive, it means that it’s coming from a past experience. If the past is giving us our present leadership, then we can’t evolve. Because all that we do is to repeat the past, whether it’s your emotion or your cognition. If you’re thinking about the same thing, and having the same emotion, you’re going to act the same way. This is what’s giving you your behavior, and the world and what you’re creating is of the same. It’s a vicious circle, you’re repeating the past all over again.

In Leap Beyond Success, the in order to leap, you have to come from the future. You have to be able to envision the future. Then, as if you’re far-reaching and you’re bringing the future to the now. But at times, you’re doing this because you have a big dream. You think about the future, you want to bring it to the now, but then something inside you tells you, “Oh, no, no, you can’t do that because this is not reasonable.” Right? Oh, because when you did that a few years back, it wasn’t successful. You failed. So the past comes in to play a role and does not let you propel yourself into that future.

One of the practices I do whenever I have a reaction or anything negative, you feel it whenever any thought, any negative thought. You stop, you pause, your ask yourself, you breathe, have like three breaths, not a lot, not asking you to go meditate on the mountain. But just take a few breaths, like okay, take it easy, and then think. Where is this emotion coming from? It tells you, okay, because maybe yesterday, you got into it with one of your staff members. Okay. But that same emotion, where did it come from, and you go back. What else? When did this happen before? Until you get to the root of it, and the root of it may be as simple as a failure. That’s why I describe in my book, the leadership, an emotional logo.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: God, you have such a beautiful way of describing the depth of these ideas that you not only talk about in your book, but that you’ve obviously have lived and you’ve experienced. These ideas of just taking moments, collect yourself, keep your calm. Because from a calm place, you can make a decision that’s not reactionary, more of a response in your training. If I trained myself to think from the future, which the future is actually, you can decide if it’s going to be positive or negative emotions. You can justify your positive outlook by the unknown. And because it’s unknown, you can create it. This idea of reflecting, asking yourself where that emotion is coming from, that’s so powerful.

For me, I feel like I started learning about this after my father passed. I sought some therapy, and all those kinds of things and I finally started sitting with the traumatic experiences of the war, when I was young, and the refugee camp, and all of these things, and really started to put in place things that were altering my emotions. I’m like, “Okay. I can’t make this business decision.” But it was actually embedded in, like you just said, past experiences that didn’t work out. So I had to really change my mindset on how I see my future self and not allow my past self to just hold me back. It’s all done out of fear and protection, but once you start to discover, really put things in place, then you can push yourself forward, which is so powerful. If your readers pick up your book, right now, and begins reading through it, and they finish it up, what would you hope they feel after putting it down?

Micheline Nader: Everyone is going to feel what is important for him or her. Most of the time, when I do workshops—by the way, I did better testing on the methods that I described in the book—most of the time, we have breakthroughs. Even the most resistant leaders, if they don’t have a breakthrough right there during the workshop, a lot of them register breakthroughs after. Because it’s a big relief when you have a tool that helps you overcome the moments that you were talking about, the war, that pain, that fear that stops you. But if you have a tool, or where you can, as you said, quiet your mind and go back to that experience.

For you, it was traumatic. For me, it was traumatic because it had to do with the war and war is always traumatic for a lot. For a lot people, it could have been insignificant for us, but it was very important to them, right? Could be a kid that his mom left him when he was young to go take care of his sibling. What he made out of that experience [was] that my mom doesn’t love me and lived his life or her life through that. So when you can go back to those moments, like for me, when I go back to that moment, where I was thrown an emergency room when we had 80 injured and I was on call. Then, I had someone holding a gun in my head, telling me, “If my cousin does not survive, you’re going to die.”

This moment is not insignificant and I was pregnant at that time and I was alone in the office because it was a Sunday. I emerge from that reasoning, and saying, “Okay, this is what we’re going to do. Because if you do this, you’re not going to win. If you kill me, there is no chance for your cousin to survive. If you let me go, I probably can help at the emergency room.” I convinced the person when I’m like 23, 24. That experience could be very traumatic. It could stop a person from going in any emergency situation saying, “No, no.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I had my fair share.

Micheline Nader: Right. I had my fair share. I’m not going to do that. Or if you have this tool, let’s say one, small tool, and I describe a lot of tools in my book as you know [inaudible 0:30:49]. But one tool is to go back to that moment and see what you learned from it. And what you learned, like for me, my priority system has helped me million times more than being in that crisis tuition. When I start being grateful to that moment, and change my narrative about that moment, and how I frame it, and I bring that emotion from the past. I can even isolate it and attach to that experience a positive emotion that tells me, “Wow! Look at how many people you have impacted with this. How many people benefited from you being grateful to that moment.” Then I can flip it, and I can transform it. This is what I do. You ask me what do I do. This is one of the tools I practice.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That you deploy, yeah. This is such a powerful tool, because the hardest lessons come from the toughest teachers, right? But usually, they’re the best lessons and they’re the lessons that really stick in our memories. I think, unfortunately, these events that have started you off at a such a young age, that started triggering all of these things into place, and how you are able to reflect back on them and say, “That was a really insane situation. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, of course,” all these things. But here’s what it taught me, when you can reflect that deeply and be that introspective, which I love that you talk about that. You talk about the marriage between introspection and being pragmatic. There’s this emotional and very logical viewpoint that you can direct yourself from. It’s so powerful.

I’m just grateful that you sat down, you brought all this knowledge together. Not only this knowledge, but really your experience having lived such an immense and beautiful life in serving others, under high degree of pressure, I would say. I think the whole medical world. I worked at a hospital for like three months after I went to university for architecture. Because I just couldn’t find work in architecture in that moment. That was a very interesting, very beautiful learning experience. However, it was probably the most stressful environment I’ve ever been in. Because I’ve been—I grew up around a lot of—my mom and dad were fairly sick, here and there, so we always visited the hospitals and things. It was just a place that I was just like, “Wow!” I always felt a ton of gratitude for everyone that worked there.

I made an effort to just say hello to every single person that worked at the hospital because it’s not easy. I feel like whether you’re the nurse, or the custodian, or the person at the very tippy top, there is no easy job in that world. The fact that you went on and took it to different places, and tried such different methods, and approaching people and helping people, I really feel like that experience exposed yourself to yourself, and what you are truly capable of. It’s so empowering, insanely inspired by your story and I’m going to finish up your book this weekend. I’m really excited to do that.

But Micheline, I learned so much today. Thank you for sharing your stories and experiences. The book is called LEAP Beyond Success: How Leaders Evolve. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you?

Micheline Nader: They can find me on my website, michelinenader.com. They’re going to find a lot of information about also my previous book right now. In a month, they’ll find a lot of information about the book that is going to be released on the seventh of February. And on Facebook, social media, Micheline Nader author, you can find me. LinkedIn, also. They can find me on LinkedIn. They will be able to buy the book from Amazon or other distributors and on my website as well. I really wish for the leader to be able to take the tools, to leap.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes, it’s so powerful, and I love this idea of what’s beyond success and it’s truly your evolution what you do with it, where can you take yourself next. So powerful. Everyone out there, go get the book, LEAP Beyond Success. Micheline Nader, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I very much appreciate your time, your commitment and your service to our world. It is a privilege to have gotten to know you today.

Micheline Nader: Thank you, Hussein. Same here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Absolutely.

The post Leap Beyond Success: Micheline Nader appeared first on Author Hour.

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A young physician’s most important asset isn’t an investment or real estate portfolio. It’s the ability to earn a good income, performing that specific specialty. Potentially eight figures or more, this asset needs insurance but insurance that truly protects your income and safeguards your quality of life isn’t easy to find.

Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by author Billy Gwaltney, who is here to talk to me about his new book called Disability Insurance for Physicians: A No-Nonsense Guide to Protect Your Most Important Asset.Let’s flip through it.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Author Hour show. I’m here with my friend, Billy who just launched his amazing book called Disability Insurance for Physicians, but man, as I was reading it, I was like, “Oh, I might need to get some insurance for my hands as an artist.” So I’m really excited to have Billy here with me today; thank you for your time man, I really appreciate it.

Billy Gwaltney: Yeah, thank you, thanks for having me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, Billy. So I’m really excited because, you know, on this show, I love sharing with people who our authors are, and I like to get them to go back in time a little bit and share about their personal background, perhaps where you grew up, maybe a person or two that influenced you in your life that helped you kind of get on this path that you’re on today.

I’d love to not only hear about it but, of course, share it with our audience. Can you go back in time with me a little bit?

Billy Gwaltney: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, I’d be glad to, thanks for asking and it is an honor to be here. So I came into the insurance business back in the early 90s when I was still in college. I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I wanted to be in control of my own destiny, I wasn’t really sure what I was signing up for at the time, and that was okay.

There were two people, you know, I was raised in the south but have traveled a good bit and currently live in North Carolina, I have worked with clients all over the country and actually all over the world because our clients move everywhere, which I love but what happened when I was in college and then started working in the insurance business is I met someone who was my manager at the time who ended up becoming my best friend and was in my wedding and kind of somebody that I’ve kept in touch with even to this point.

So I’ve known him for over 30 years and he was just kind of a rock to a certain degree because there was a lot of learning and a steep learning curve when it comes to finding your way in the insurance business, I was doing financial planning and investing and those kinds of things and I was kind of a jack of all trades, a master of none and he was really instrumental in helping me stay the course and with the belief that I would ultimately find my lane.

There are people that come along that for some reason, seem to believe in us more than we believe in ourselves, so we can borrow their confidence when we don’t have any and lean on that and I was able to do that and I’m grateful for that. His name is Bruce. There’s another gentleman who kind of is almost like Bruce handed off the baton to a gentleman named Brian Maser, who came into my life about 2009, somewhere at that point.

So my journey is not all been kind of a smooth road, it’s been kind of a starting point and I’m in a really good place. At this point, as far as I’m excited about where we’ve been and where we’re headed, the road that I’m on, but it’s been a windy road and so I was a jack of all trades and a master of none, I eventually got out of the insurance and investment business for a year or two to go into real estate and was really bad at that.

And so it was back in near the ‘08 crisis and those kinds of things and so we had a financial crisis and had to start over and so I came back into the insurance business after a brief hiatus when I really never intended to come back. I was done, and I came back to just find a way to pay some bills, that’s what I needed to do, and I mentioned this in the book as I started kind of finding just a way to pay some bills, I met a guy who needed up becoming my mentor who focused on disability insurance.

His focus was, you know, just being really good at one thing, okay? And kind of saying “Hey, instead of trying to master a lot of different things, what if you decided, “I’m going to be a specialist in one thing and I’m going to own that” not for any glory or anything but just to be really good at one thing” and there was something that really… that ignited something in me that had been dormant up until that point or at least from my recollection.

Brian invested in me in a way that again, he was like, “Hey, if I can do this, you can do it.” So it’s one of those kind of things like hey, if you stay the course, if you’re persistent, if you do a few simple things really well, then the sky is the limit, okay? And so there are so many metaphors to that or analogies to sports and other things like it’s down to the blocking and tackling, it’s down to the fundamentals.

If you can do these basic things like better than anybody or better than you ever thought you could but just continuing to hone those skills and get good at that, then you’ll be surprised where the market will make room for you because in our society, in our economy, there’s room for experts. If you’re really good at something, then the market will see to it that you’re rewarded for that and word gets around so Brian was really, instrumental in getting me to that point. I started my own company around 2009, right in that area where the focus on disability insurance and that’s kind of you know, it’s been kind of off and running since that point.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that so much. You know, it’s beautiful when we meet those individuals or we grew up around them or anything like that. To me, it’s always interesting how those development years, you know, whether they’re younger, like, right, ages like three to eight or 10 or you know, middle teenage or even a little bit into college, those years are so fundamental.

For me, I met, like you, so many sorts of mentors, teachers, thoughtful people that got me thinking in the directions that are very similar in your case, where it’s like, “Yeah, just get better at one thing at a time” you know? Like, you could have everything but one at a time.

Billy Gwaltney: Even as I talk about the mentors, I’ve got really good parents. My parents, they’ve loved on me and paid for my college and did a lot of things that I’m grateful for but they didn’t have that kind of expertise, so they did what they, you know, they got me to the next level, right? And it’s like, you know, the good Lord has seen fit that other people, that I never really knew beforehand would come along and see something in me that I didn’t see in myself at the time.

It’s really cool and I think about that but the way you asked that and even talking about it now, I’m getting kind of nostalgic. I’m not overly sentimental but I love those men for what they’ve done.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: The reason I asked that question is because, you know, ultimately, this is a thread that connects all of us, no matter what we’re pursuing or building or creating in this beautiful world. We have actually been touched somehow, shape, or form by someone or something. You know, earlier, I had an amazing author that I was talking with and you know, it was their passing dog that completely transformed their life and seriously, right?

To each person their own but that’s how we are connected to our world and our environment. I have no doubt in my mind that someone will feel the same way about a tree or, you know what I mean? That’s the beauty of it is that there are these mentors, these things that make us realize our greater potential and I love that you shared that because ultimately, that’s where our connectedness is and as soon as we tap into that, then we’re able to kind of break your book open a little bit and get into the meat of things, which I’m excited to kind of share a little bit.

But can you tell our audience that you know, who aren’t necessarily familiar with your specific occupation, what is own occupation disability coverage and how different from other types of disability coverage and you know, why you found yourself there specifically?

What Is Disability Coverage?Billy Gwaltney: Absolutely, yeah. Good question. The type of disability insurance I broker is my audience are young physicians who have invested a lot of time, money, you know, sweat equity, financial equity into becoming really good at a particular skill or expertise and so sometimes, it’s like trying to be the best ever at one thing.

Now, obviously, you know, certain physicians are generalists in what they do. Others are more specialized but even just in medicine in general, they’re investing a lot in becoming really knowledgeable and experienced and qualified to care for people who really need their expertise and their attention.

What the type of insurance I broker, own occupation disability coverage is a way for people to have financial security, if and when they ever realize that an illness or injury is going to keep them from earning an income because they can no longer do their specialty and so the book is a comprehensive guide to protecting what ultimately is a physician’s most important asset, which it will never be their retirement account.

It will never be a real estate holdings or those kind of things, it’s going to be their ability to get out of bed and earn a good income because they’re really good at a particular thing or a particular specialty. What I do is help them ensure that if they need help, if they cannot do their specialty, if they can’t get out of bed and go to work because of a back issue or there are so many different situations that can cause someone to not be able to work, this coverage is going to kick in and compensate them and help them be able to pay their bills.

Stay in the home they want to live in hopefully, maybe still send their kids to the college or their school, private school they want to send them to, still accomplish some of the dreams that they set out to accomplish had everything going well and so own occupation disability search, when you really drill it down is helping someone who has a really good plan A, which is to be really good at their skill, that if that plan A doesn’t work out, it’s the best plan B on the planet.

It’s the best way to make sure that you’re still going to have a good shot at achieving the goals that you want to achieve maybe just through a different route when that first route no longer is an option.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: And again, this is why I like your book too, man, because you make this stuff very digestible. It’s very easy to read and pick up the information. So yeah, I felt like you’re just… I mean, I’m not a physician but it spoke to me because I think at this point, if you’re in a “career” and you use your hands in any way shape or form in my mind and legs, body, right? Like that’s very important. Hell, even our minds, you know what I mean?

Billy Gwaltney: Your eyesight, your cognitive ability.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, exactly.

Billy Gwaltney: Like the majority of claims are illnesses, not injury. So a lot of people think, “Hey, I’m getting this coverage in case I get you know, run over by a car or in a car accident” or whatever and those things happen. They certainly happen but over 90% of claims are illnesses like musculoskeletal, which are like back issues. You have a herniated disk in your back and you can’t get out of bed.

Well, at some point, that’s going to impact your income. If your employer expects you to show up, it doesn’t matter how brilliant you are. Maybe you can do it remotely for a little while but if they’re expecting that doctor to stand over a patient and operate or be in clinic or whatever, at some point, it’s going to impact their income and so this coverage allows them to be compensated if that happens.

Even if it’s like you say, well, you hurt your back. Well, think of, if you’re in constant pain, how well can you concentrate on what you’re doing? Like if you’re in pain right now, how engaged are you in this conversation? I mean, it’s just going to be difficult to do and if you can do it, it’s going to exhaust you at a certain point and so this coverage is designed to make sure that those gaps are covered if they ever occur.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Let’s say for example, taking a few months off, whatever, six months off to kind of regenerate your arms or legs, depending again what posture you’re holding, you know, I can just see it. I can imagine how exhausting just being a physician is, especially during surgeries. Those things are hours and hours long sometimes, and they probably perform God knows how many hours a week.

Billy Gwaltney: And it’s got to go really well.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, exactly.

Billy Gwaltney: Like, they’ve got to be dialed in, right? I mean, it’s not like, “Oh, if you get it 50% right, that’s okay.” I mean, there’s a lot riding on that event and that focus and what’s happening.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: They’re right up there with pilots, right?

Billy Gwaltney: That’s right. There’s a lot of pressure.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: The level of cognition and lots of pressure.

Billy Gwaltney: There’s a lot of pressure. You said, “How does this differ from other kinds of insurance?” There are only a few contracts, there are only a few insurance companies that offer the kind of coverage we’re talking about where, if you hurt your back and can’t go to work, even though you’re still smart and could potentially do something remotely if your employer expects you to show up physically, then you’re considered disabled.

There are only a handful of contracts that provide the comprehensiveness of the definitions that we’re talking about. Now, as an independent broker, there’s nothing special about me being an independent broker, right? An independent broker has access to probably 75 or so insurance companies, okay? Right now as of today, there are only four that offer this kind of coverage.

So it’s so easy to think for someone, who is not getting good information to think that they’ve taken care of this in their contract, what they don’t know is that, if they do become disabled, there’s a high probability they won’t get paid, okay? It’s so easy to get this wrong and this is where the passion in me comes out, where it’s not just, “Okay, you can’t just check a box to check a box.” It’s got to have the right language.

So the other kinds of insurance, I help clients with life insurance too when they need help because it’s so closely related but there’s never a debate on when a life insurance claim is going to be paid, okay? Either you’re breathing or you’re not. People are standing around going, “I wonder if we should pay this claim? Are they alive or not?” I mean, people tend to know and same is true with health insurance.

If you go to the doctor, something’s going to get covered, you’ve got dental insurance, you go get a cleaning or a cavity filled and then you’re going to get paid something. With disability insurance, there can be a lot of debate on what does it mean for an oncologist to be disabled or a pediatrician or a surgeon or a family doctor or whatever.

There can be a lot of debate and the threshold for meeting the definitions of disability and the threshold for being considered partially disabled and a recovery benefit, there’s so many nuances to this coverage, it’s very detailed. I always say, “The devil is in the details” and so you can have coverage even with one of these top four insurance companies and not get the right definitions on it and so I spend a lot of time.

I have physicians that come to me and go “Hey, I’ve got coverage, I’m not sure it’s the right thing, can you help me?” and we review it. I’ve just stopped being shocked at seeing things where I’m going, there will be two or three different writers that are not included that are absolute must-haves and I can’t explain why that is.

I’m not in the room when people are having these conversations, what other brokers do or whatever but what I do is that, so many people having been in the insurance and financial services businesses for over 30 years. That very few people in my field even want to do disability insurance.

I mean, because it’s complicated, it’s weird, it’s odd and the devil is in the details. It’s just complicated enough to cause people to not want to deal with it and that’s not only true from the consumer standpoint, it’s also true from the insurance broker or agent standpoint. So anyway, sorry, I could talk for a while about that, I just get kind of going.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: No, no, this is great because here’s the thing, you know, this is actually the extent of the wisdom that you have and how much of that that you poured into the book in such a precise way, to help those individuals sort of make those decisions and of course, get with the right experts to help them through because I’ll be honest with you man, I mean, like my car insurance is complicated.

I can’t even… right? It’s one of those things that most people, it’s like the IRS or taxes, it’s stuff where just like, “Can I just do what I love doing? Can somebody else just deal with this?” but here’s the thing, that someone else can be someone who can help you, guide you, stick along you, stick along your side, right? Your coach, your mentor, and of course, people like your financial advisors.

People like your insurance brokers of course, all that good stuff are people that we want to lean on and trust, and when you have such a wealth and breadth of knowledge and expertise in the field that is someone that I would want to work with just because I would trust that you know, when you analyze what I have going on and you say, “Oh man, you know, I see what you do and I see what this can afford you to do but I don’t see the match here.”

“Here’s something better,” probably cheaper, this, that, or the other. The person that comes up with solutions, right? You’re that person, right? Like, because we love those people in our lives and I think this is why your book is so necessary, especially for the people you’re trying to serve. So in your book, you mentioned the importance of having a good broker and when purchasing disability insurance, can you expand on what makes a good broker and how they can help readers make informed decisions?

What Makes a Good Broker?Billy Gwaltney: Yeah, good question, good question. Your broker is important and ultimately, because the clients that I work with, the people that I am in the marketplace to serve are young physicians who are highly intelligent, often maybe the smartest person from an IQ or SAT score standpoint in most rooms they walk into.

So these are really sharp people that are usually smart enough to know that there’s a lot they don’t know, and disability insurance is complicated enough that trying to do it through googling your way or just talking to an 800 number or website is asking a lot and so ultimately, they want to talk to somebody that knows what they’re doing.

There are different levels of insurance brokers or agents, some are more generalists, some are financial advisors that use the disability insurance approach or sale as a way to kind of grab somebody as a client and help them with other things that they’re really more interested in, like life insurance or retirement planning or whatever and those can be okay.

But what a lot of my clients don’t know is that I help other financial advisors design their disability policies for their clients. In other words, financial advisors will contact me and go, “Hey Billy, I’ve got somebody that needs some disability insurance, can you help me figure this out?” because they don’t know and they’re not paying attention to one company – I don’t want to name any companies here but there was one company that was a French player in the disability marketplace, they’re getting out of the market as of May 1. They just announced that like two days ago. So many of my colleagues have no idea that that’s happened, and so that would obviously impact if I’m a buyer, if I’m a consumer, I would want to know that.

That’s important information to know and so this is just complicated enough to where a specialist is needed. I’m going to use an analogy that I think you’ll appreciate and I know my clients tend to appreciate. If I need knee surgery, okay? Then, the question becomes, I’m not going to go to my family doctor, okay? Because they don’t even operate.

They’re a true generalist. I also really probably don’t want to go to a general surgeon. Now, general surgeons are really good but they operate on a lot of things like gallbladders and other things and then you have, in the orthopedic surgeon world, you have these knee specialists, where all they do is operate on knees, okay? That’s it, okay?

You don’t come to them when you have COVID, you don’t come to them when you have the flu, you don’t come to them… they don’t do anything else. They do this one thing, knees, all day, every day. Well, when I’m getting knee surgery, that’s who I want. I want the knee surgeon. I don’t want to go to the general surgeon, who I’m sure could figure it out.

They’re certainly smart enough to research it and get it but ultimately, they’re going to kind of be figuring it out on the fly. I don’t want them figuring it out on my knee, I really don’t. I want the person that’s done 10,000 knees to do my knee so that it’s just another knee, and there’s no better way to do it.

They’re the best on the planet at it, they’re the guru on it, right? They know it and so that’s what ultimately what disability insurance is, is that it’s just complicated enough that if you want to make sure that you’re checking the box correctly, you would really want to go to a knee person. You want to go to a specialist that what they do all day every day is this and that’s it.

Now, I mentioned I helped clients with life insurance but that’s when they bring it up, when they just say, “Hey, can you help me with this at the same time?” or down the road but my focus all day every day is disability insurance because it’s so easy to get it wrong and I want to make sure that based on where I am, it’s pretty easy for me to get it right.

I would think that’s who the marketplace tends to want with this kind of thing. I’m not saying that others can’t figure it out, so I recognize that can’t be everything to everybody. The point in the book is to kind of put some of those secrets out there and they’re really not secrets. It’s just that not a lot of people understand to the level that we’ve been dealing with or doing it and so I put that out there.

So now hey, take it to whoever you want to work with, find a specialist ideally because you got a lot riding on making sure that this is right. So the time to find out that it’s not right, if you’re not careful, that can’t be once the claim is filed, right? Because it’s too late to do anything about it and so there are a lot of people that may think they have good coverage or they think they’ve checked that box and they’re not going to know until they ever file a claim.

And then they’re going to find out that “Uh-oh, that would have been something nice to know a week earlier.” I’m passionate about getting it out to the market. Here is your way to know so that whether I help you or somebody else does, just make sure you get it right.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that so much man because you are very transparent in that you care genuinely about the wellbeing of the individuals you work within that, look, man, life is life and things come up and having something to just kind of help you out during those times is crucial to think about it holistically is obviously very beneficial especially physicians. My God man, the way you describe them, my sister works in that world, my nephew’s in medical school. So like, you know it’s already off to a, you know, a tiring start for him, you know what I mean?

Billy Gwaltney: Yeah, sure, absolutely.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: He’s just headed in that direction of, “Look, you’re going to put a lot on the line here, your body included, to serve the world, the communities that you want to serve and help” and so it’s one of those professions that’s of course, not just mental but physical as well, very exhausting. So I’m grateful that you’re out there helping them in the ways that you are.

Billy Gwaltney: Well thank you, I appreciate that. I mean, physicians, they’re some of the absolutely hardest working people I’ve ever seen. I talk to them at 6:00 in the morning or 9:00 at night, and they are not sitting around watching Netflix. They are wide open, especially in training but even after that and there’s pressure.

You know, if things don’t go according to plan, everybody wants to blame the rich doctor but they don’t recognize, you know, they went into half a million dollars in debt for the privilege of becoming good at this and they’re training and they put their life on hold to get really good at it and here’s the other thing, we need more of them not less of them.

Just looking at it from a supply and demand standpoint, we need more doctors. I don’t work with attorneys and I’m fine with attorneys, I’ve got a good one but we could go a year or two without any attorneys graduating and probably be okay as a society. I think we could absorb that, right? We can’t handle that, and I don’t mean any offense to attorneys.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: In the medical field, no. The medical field is essential. Look at the pandemic, like we can’t go an hour without medical professionals, this world, like an hour is a lot, you know what I mean? And I think so many people, you know, my dad used to tell me this and we’ll bring it back to the book, the hero in my life who is my father and he used to say things like you know, “Hey man, your health is the crown that you wear and anytime you’re not healthy, you’re taking it off your head and so that’s the most important thing.”

Your mental health, your physical health, you know, it’s the thing that gets you there, you know, I’ll never forget that and here’s the other part, the people that can help you maintain that are professionals, you know? Whether it’s your professional in learning Tai Chi or yoga, right? Or your professional that you go to, to do your yearly checkup. You know, like, these are individuals that are working very hard and they need the work that you provide which is the other side of that.

So I love that man. I love that your book, again, brings us back to these full stories, just really informed way of thinking, kind of weave your input but also your stories and experiences, which is very profound. What was your favorite part of pulling this book together, and what did you learn from that journey?

Billy Gwaltney: I think it was exciting to me to get it all on paper, have some… the editor and people that I’ve joined up with in contract with to help me through the process and the journey, to have them, to actually be acknowledged that what I have to say is something really worthwhile. I don’t mean to make it sound like I didn’t think it mattered. If I bring up what I do at a cocktail party, the subject is going to change pretty quick, okay?

I don’t have one of those cool professions, you know? The insurance guy, right? And so there are a lot, you know, cooler things to talk about when you’re talking about just life in general but what’s really interesting to me is that these physicians, the clients I work with, the smartest people in many rooms they walk into, they really value this information and there are not many people that have it.

There are not many really independent brokers that really specialize in this and I wanted to get it out there to them in the quickest, easiest, simplest way where a really smart person could read it for a little bit and kind of feel good about the direction they’re going. I wanted to respect their time because I know they don’t have a lot of time. I try to be careful about making it long-winded.

You know, if I could have done it in three pages, I would have. I think it’s important though to tell some of the stories. One of my favorite stories was getting the client’s okay to talk about helping him navigate a claim. Interviewed him for a podcast series that’s coming out, and he was very open about how he had gone through this claims process, but things got lost in communication between him and the insurance company he was initially denied.

And he contacted me kind of in a panic and fairly upset, and when he told me, I was upset too because I’m like, “I don’t want clients not getting paid when they’re disabled.” So as I dug deeper into it, I said, “I think I might be able to help here if it’s okay with you” he authorized me to speak to the insurance company.

I got involved and come to find out, that the things he was telling me, it was almost like he had told me things that what got communicated to the insurance company was something probably about 30% of what he told me and so I said, “We’ve got to fix the communication, there’s just some things lost in translation here” and so he didn’t know what he didn’t know, right?

But people are not used to navigating claims. Even smart doctors that are dealing with these medical conditions, they’re not sure how to explain what they’re going through to someone who they’re not sure if they should trust or not. It’s a very scary time as well and so I was able to help him navigate that, he got approved and it was probably one of the best days.

I remembered when he called me and said, “Billy, I got the letter, they approved me” and he like, started crying on the phone. I mean, I was like, “Oh my gosh” I didn’t get paid for that and there was nothing… but it was something where I was like, “I’m going to make sure that when the crap hits the fan, you not only have somebody that cares about you when you’re buying it, not only when you need to update your address and all that kind of stuff.”

But there’s going to be a point where sending an email or locking into a portal is not going to be enough for you. You’re going to actually need to have somebody that knows what they’re doing and empathizes and kind of can take your side, who knows the lay of the land kind of guide you through that and that was just a real honor.

I knew things about this person that no one in his life knows and it was just an honor. So I shared that story in the book. I wasn’t sure I could, I was scared to death to bring it up even as the client because I was like, “He’s going to tell me, don’t you ever share this with anybody” but he was honored that I would even want to talk about it and so I would never have come across that.

I don’t think I would have given it a whole lot of extra thought had I not been writing a book and it’s not to say that I want to put it out there so I can show what I did. Of course, I want to put my best foot forward but at the same time, I just wanted to… whoever somebody gets, just make sure it’s somebody that’s going to pick up the phone if you really need it.

And that they’re still doing what you started doing with them when you started or someone on their team is still doing it because I’ve got a really good team too and they make me look better than I would ever look on my own and my clients love them and so that’s a really big part of this to just have somebody with you, which is where the expertise comes in.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: This is why I’m asking these questions, you know? The idea is behind great books, there are you know, amazing people who come to that knowledge and wisdom through the variety of stories and experiences, right? On top of layered, of course, science and proof and all these things that different authors bring to the table or spiritual experiences or whatever it may be.

For me, it’s what that person has gone through and then what they’re sharing and for me to just read through your book, again, this is adaptable. To me, I’m like, “Oh, I can see how this applies to my life” and I’m not even a physician. I can’t imagine how good it is for a physician who you’re actually speaking to, which is again, what makes your book really powerful.

Thank you for sharing your stories, your experiences with our audience today, and of course, myself. The book is called Disability Insurance for Physicians: A No-Nonsense Guide to Protecting Your Most Important Asset. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Billy?

Billy Gwaltney: Oh yeah, website is ownoccdisability.com. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can email me, billy@ownoccdisability.com and happy to answer any questions. Thank you for the opportunity and it’s an honor to be with you, I really appreciate it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, no this is a great episode. Thank you for coming on the show, your time is super priceless to me. So thanks for everything today man, it’s a very indulgent conversation. I feel like I learned so much about something I knew nothing about, so that’s always fantastic.

Billy Gwaltney: Well thanks Hussein, yeah, it’s an honor. I appreciate it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Thanks a lot for sharing today, Billy.

The post Disability Insurance for Physicians: Billy Gwaltney appeared first on Author Hour.

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Why does one entrepreneur struggle through 80 hours a week just to make half as much as another working 20? You’ve always been told the secret to success is working hard and clawing your way to the top, but what if it isn’t?

Welcomed back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty, and my next guest is Charlie Gaudet, who is here with me today to talk about his new book, The Predictable Profits Playbook. Let’s get into it.

All right, everyone, welcome back. I’m here with my friend, Charlie Gaudet. I’m super excited about this conversation. His new book, Predictable Profits Playbook is amazing, and it’s an update to his original version. Charlie, thanks for joining me again, I really appreciate your time today.

Charlie Gaudet: Yeah, you are very welcome, thank you for having me.

An Entrepreneur in TrainingHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely. So Charlie, you know, I always like to give our audience a little bit of a personal background, sort of where you grew up, the people that sort of inspired you and moved you, all those good things before we get into your entrepreneurial story. Let’s talk a little bit about your background.

Charlie Gaudet: Sure, I’ve been an entrepreneur since the age of four, never had a traditional “real job.” After graduating from college, I started a business, nominated by Ernst Young as being one of the nation’s best seed stage companies. Twenty-four, created my first multi-million-dollar business and then from there, I continued to build and grow a number of different companies until 2010, that’s when somebody after they pay me to help them grow theirs, and I started Predictable Profits and over the years, we’ve taken many companies over the Inc 5000 Fastest Growing Companies list.

Recently, took an agency from a million to about 45 million in six years or so, thereabouts, and just with the work that we did in 2020, the International Business Times reached out. They called me the go-to business coach for seven- and eight-figure companies, disrupted their list of the top business coaches crushing 2022, and they put me at the top of the list, and then the LA Tribune did their list of the top experts to follow and during the recession and then listed me somewhere around three or four, and I do have a bone to pick with them because they put me behind Tony Robins and Grant Cardone.

So I guess, I still have more work to do. Nonetheless, I’m surrounded by good companies. The business owners, you know, typically, seven- to eight-figure CEOs that come to talk to us, and they’re usually asking one of three questions or maybe all three. They’re saying, “What’s it going to take to help my business grow faster where some months are feast, some months are famine, how do we bring more predictability into the revenue?” and the third one is, “Just, the company’s far too dependent on me, how do we scale?” and that’s my life.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I love that people will come to you, see, you got so good at growing business, people come to you and pay you very well, handsomely, to help them sort of navigate those waters, especially in downtimes. But you came up with these ideas, and you grew your businesses, but they were based around some certain principles and ideals that I feel like you grew up with because growing up, you know, at the age of four and starting a business, it’s fairly young and you had your early, sort of taste and insight into that.

I read a little bit about your father and sort of the things that he embedded within you that I feel like, helped you throughout your journey. Can you reflect on those stories a little bit about your father and the things that he taught you?

Charlie Gaudet: Sure. So my dad’s been really successful throughout life and has done real well and there are things — the entrepreneurs come in two forms. You see the entrepreneurs that you want to be like and the entrepreneurs that maybe you don’t want to be like, and I think that, you know, with my dad, I definitely saw some things that I wanted to emulate and things that I just hope that I didn’t have to deal with as much on my business.

If we start with the things I hoped I didn’t have to deal with but ultimately, didn’t know any different so I followed in his footsteps originally was this concept of hard work. I mean, my dad would say, the secret to success is hard work. So I’d set my alarm for 3:30 in the morning, so I wouldn’t “oversleep.” I took that so seriously that if I got up at around midnight to go to the bathroom, I would just start work because I was up so I just fired up my computer and start working.

I would work every waking hour of every day, seven days a week, and I didn’t discriminate against holidays or whatnot. I worked the holidays, but then I realized that even though I worked harder, all of my competition, there were other people that still managed to work 40 hours a week and yet made 10 times more money than me.

So I had to figure out, what were they ultimately doing differently, and that story what they were doing differently is what I put in the book, but eventually, you know, it wasn’t that it was looking at these people making more money that had me curious, but it was being forced in the hospital from a stress-related condition that actually was causing my organs to shut down and literally was starting to kill me that forced me into that position.

Those are the negative parts or one of the big negatives, the other negative that I would say that I borrowed from my father that I didn’t like but then eventually found a way around it is that, he said, “Look, nobody can do it as well as me” and so, so much of the company was dependent on him, and when that’s the case, it does stifle your ability to grow and scale.

Now, the right systems, the right processes, and so forth will allow you to get beyond yourself because no company should be dependent on any one person, even the business owner himself but, you know, when I look at the different things that you know, my dad did give me, and one of the things that he always focused in on is making sure that you are the best.

When I say the best, like, there were people that delivered really, really good products and services, and then there were people who were clearly best in class and my dad always made sure. I mean, I started working with my dad when I was really young. I think third grade is when I actually started going to his office, but he would say, “Hey kid, you are a Gaudet, you know, you make sure that everything that you do is the best because people are going to be watching you” and that’s the case.

I mean, we really made sure to figure out what we have to do that was just that much better, and that was a good lesson that was passed to me and, you know, you mentioned earlier about me starting my first business at four years old. Well, I didn’t learn that lesson of being the best when I was four years old. I learned that lesson the hard way, and like many entrepreneurs today, they think that, you know, the purpose of the business is to make money.

I mean, that’s what they taught in B school, the purpose of business is to drive shareholder value, and so at four years old, I obviously didn’t know the shareholder value, but I thought the whole purpose was to make money and so, you know, I sat on the porch of my parent’s house and I just started drawing all these pictures, and I took all these pictures and then I went to my neighbor’s and I tried selling them for 25 to 50 cents apiece.

And here I am, a little kid to my neighbor’s house and, you know, who is going to say no to a cute smile, and so they were going into their change wallets and drawers and pulling out change and just handing them over to me. Until I came across Mrs. Hersey. I knocked on Mrs. Hersey’s door and I gave her my sales pitch and she said, “Okay, show me the artwork, Charlie.” I pulled out my artwork, and she stopped and she stared at it.

And then she looked at me straight in the eyes and she said, “Charlie, is this your best work?” And it was really nothing more than scribbles. It was a volume play for me, “How much artwork can I actually create so I could just sell it to all these people as fast as possible?” And I looked at her and I mean, I still remember, I was so embarrassed that I could feel my heart beat in my face, like, I could feel the blood in my face and the heartbeat.

I was so embarrassed by that question, but I answered honestly and I said, “No, it wasn’t my best.” And so she said, “Well, then I can’t pay you the money you’re asking for. In fact, I know you want 25 cents for this, but frankly, Charlie, these scribbles aren’t worth any more than two pennies.” And so I took the two pennies with my head hung low and that was the last house that I went to that day because I couldn’t go to any more houses selling scribbles.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Half-assed stuff.

Charlie Gaudet: Half-assed stuff.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: You have to level up your game, yeah.

Charlie Gaudet: Yeah, amen.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It sounds like we get those people throughout life, right? They challenge you to your core. You know, though it’s a blow to your ego, to who you are, to your work, or whatever, sometimes it’s truthful and sometimes you need to hear it, and so what happened after? I want to know what happens next. How did you overcome this and come out to the other end?

Charlie Gaudet: You know, people think that entrepreneurs are, well, some entrepreneurs are born, especially when they hear the story that I was an entrepreneur since the age of four. This is just believed that, “Oh, you are born an entrepreneur.” But that was another, if you want to call it gift, I got from my dad so to speak, an indirect gift.

My dad, I actually didn’t really know my dad all that well until the third grade, and that’s because my dad got up before I was awake and he went to work, and he came home after I went to bed and did those seven days a week and so I didn’t really know him all that well but when I did see him, he would tell me, “Hey kid, if you ever want to make it in life, you got to be an entrepreneur.”

And so like most kids and still, here I am in my 40s, and I feel like to some extent I’m actually still, you know, trying to seek my dad’s approval, even though I know he’s proud of me, and the whole deal and whatnot. I don’t know that that feeling ever really leaves you to some extent. At that age, at four years old, when I hear that over and over again, “Man, I wanted to get my dad’s approval.” And so I started this business just so I could tell my dad, “Hey, I’m an entrepreneur too.”

And I remember walking around with my friends, talking to my friends about, you know, all these companies that I was going to start and whatnot, and meanwhile, they’re more interested in what kind of ice cream they want to eat, you know?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, that’s interesting is when you grow up around certain environments, certain people, how your mind is being developed at such an early age, obviously, matters, you know? Especially when we’re seeking love and approval at that stage in our life, right? And if there’s one way to do it is, “How do I get this person’s attention?” right?

And so you were on that path but ultimately, that serves you and, you know, it serves you to a certain degree until it ends you up in the hospital, and then you’re like, “Wow, okay, I got to reframe, I got to change some things to approach this in a healthy way” right?

There’s nothing wrong with that urge to be, you know, validated and seeking approval and all those things, but there’s a health boundary to that to where it’s not solely dependent on others, right? It’s also dependent on yourself, and there’s a healthy correlation that happens and that happens over time and for different people.

It happens in so many different ways, and so, for you, it sounds like, you know, throughout your book, it sounds like you were seeking this better version of yourself but also to, you know, this is something you were good at, obviously. You were really good at building businesses and helping others do the same thing, but it also drove you to the hospital.

So what happened in the hospital bed that lit up some lightbulbs to go a different direction to have a more healthy approach and then create this predictable profits methodology? What happened in those days?

Charlie Gaudet: So when my wife picked me up from the hospital, I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid. At that point, I was over a million dollars in debt, and here I am in my early 20s. Not just over a million dollars in debt, I’m paying double-digit interest rates on that debt. So I mean, every day that passed, it was thousands of dollars that I was now having to owe and so, and I didn’t know how to get out.

I mean, I just saw my primary strategy was hard work. So not to sound too cliché but the thing was we said, “Well, how do we work smarter?” And that’s when I really started paying attention to what some other people were doing, and I started asking myself different questions, and over time, I just obsessed for myself with studying and observing and researching, and I began to see a very similar type of playbook so to speak, that the most successful companies had and you know, that’s what I put inside the Predictable Profits Playbook.

Everything that you know, I have learned up into that point, but it was funny because so much of what I originally started learning was observing through others, but then as I stared to apply this stuff myself, other opportunities began to emerge, and I remember there was one time that we worked with an accountant at a big bust and accounting firm and the principal of this big firm came over to my house completely unexpected one day.

He just started knocking on my door, and I opened it. Look, when you’re an accountant, especially if the principal of a firm shows up unannounced, like, you know, you could feel that little ball in your throat going like, “Uh-oh, what the heck is happening right now?” And I opened the door and he says, “Can I come in?” And I’m like, “Oh damn, this can’t be good news.”

So he walked right in, and he sat down at the breakfast table and he said, “All right, Charlie, lay it on me. You paid fair market value for everything that you have here, and you’re selling it at a fair price, but the one thing I can’t figure out is that you have one of the highest profit margins in the entire industry, what are you doing differently?”

What he wanted to make sure is I wasn’t doing anything illegal, but the truth of the matter is, you know, at the time, I was building houses back in the day and when you’re building houses, most people turn around and they build one house and then they sell it to somebody and they move on and then that’s it.

But I looked at it, I was in all this debt and, you know, I had to make all this money and so forth, and I looked at it and I’m like, you know, “Man, but they’re buying so many other things. What if I forged a relationship with other people?” Like furniture companies and home theater companies and TV companies and home alarm companies and porch furniture and driveway seal coating and all these things that make a house a home.

What if I go to each one of them and I say, “Look, here’s the deal, if I could bring you qualified customers, would you give them a discount for doing business with you?” And most of them said yes and I said, “Now, in exchange for me bringing you this qualified clients, you don’t have to pay to acquire them. You don’t have to pay to, you know, for the advertising and marketing and whatnot. So would you give me a small percentage of sales?”

Now, some of these companies were big companies, and they said, “We’ve never seen this before.” This is way back before affiliate marketing was popular and all these other stuff, and they’re like, “We’ve never seen this before.” But they were willing to do it, and before long, I was just getting these checks, thousands of dollars that came in on their own and the funny thing is, I assumed everybody was doing this.

So when my accountant told that to me, I looked at them like, “What are you talking about? I mean, doesn’t everybody do this?” And when I shared with them what I was doing, he said, “Wow, unbelievable, I never heard of that before.” But you know, that’s – so we take that philosophy, and then we’ve also used, you know, that among many others and applied them into, well, a multitude of different industries across the board from B2B services, to travel, to restaurants, agencies, you name it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right, so you just take this methodology and apply it to where it’s necessary?

Charlie Gaudet: Let’s think about this for a second. You know, the one guy who is making it on the news all the time is Elon Musk, right? Elon Musk is all over the news. Now you, whether you like him or hate him, it really doesn’t matter. The more important thing is, where did Elon Musk really cut his teeth? What’s the most famous business that he, you know, became CEO of back in the day? PayPal.

He went to PayPal but then used very similar business philosophies to take PayPal and then roll it into what company after that? Tesla. Then he did, you know, Tesla, he just focused on, you know, the boring companies coming next, but then he did Space X and then now, Twitter, right? You can’t talk about more different companies. I mean, we’re talking Twitter and Space X and, you know, electric cars and PayPal. Yet, he is the wealthiest man in the world.

I was talking to my brother the other day, and I said, just to put it in perspective, Elon Musk is a hundred billion dollars wealthier than Bill Gates. I mean, unbelievable. I guess, the important point is that if you can learn the foundational business principles that is a reason why companies succeed. If you have a playbook that helps companies succeed, you can take that same playbook, and it doesn’t matter if you’re in space or electric cars or social media, and you can still take that playbook and install that and find success.

Looking Both Near and FarHussein Al-Baiaty: Once you create your methodology, you can start to apply it accurately, but you talk about this in a very unique way, and you kind of introduce your book with this idea of positioning, and you say, you got to keep your eye on the market and keep your other eye on the niche.

Can you talk a little bit about those two ideologies? Because you know, having a business, starting a business and shifting gears as I’m trying to do, I’m learning a lot about, “Okay, you know, I got to really focus on niching down.” But what is this idea of keeping an eye on the market also meant o you?

Charlie Gaudet: So there’s this concept when it comes to corrective eye surgery. There’s a special type of Lasik surgery that gets performed, and what happens is they have one eye nearsighted and one eye farsighted, and all that means is that in business, you want to have a very similar approach. You want to be able to have that one eye nearsighted focused on the most important things that matter to a segment of a market, a niche of a market, but far-sighted, knowing how things need to change, adapt, and so forth in order to stay relevant.

An example that I like to give is Borders Bookstore. You know, Borders thought that they would niche into these specialty bookstores and so forth without realizing that people were going into digital readers, and they failed to adapt and went out of business, and there’s niching at a mass market level, but then there is niching at a more smaller market level and most of the people who are going to be listening here, most of the people in this world actually are on that smaller level.

In today’s more discerning market environment, if you think about it for a minute, let’s pretend for a second that you’re in sports; you sell sports products retail, right? Let’s pretend for a minute that’s your niche, you sell sports products, and you do it in retail. If you are going to go to an agency and you’re like, “I need a media buying agency.” And you look at your competitors and you see here’s one guy who says, “Hey, we’re a media buying agency, and we serve everybody. We serve this person, that person” blah-blah-blah.

“Anybody, any size, any budget, come to us,” and then you see another agency that says, “Hey, we specialize in retail companies, online retail companies, especially those who are selling sports goods.” Now, which one’s do you automatically going to assume have the solution to your offer or have the solution to your problem? Which one do you think is going to perform the best? The specialist, right?

The specialist, the one who, and naturally you are not only going to assume they’re going to perform the best, you’re going to expect to pay more money for specialty, and so when you look at today’s market, in today’s market there are so many because we don’t have the boundaries of needing to drive and do business within just 15 miles of our physical location anymore with the Internet. We can do business anywhere around the world.

There is so much opportunity everywhere, even the tightest niches within reason, but even the tightest niches give you the opportunity to create multi-eight-figured businesses. Simplification and niching down are opportunities for growth. I mean, it’s funny, I was sitting there at the TD Bank Garden in Boston, and I was watching a show and I just started gazing off and I am counting all the seats in the section in front of me and just the section.

Just like one little square section, and I’m like, “Isn’t that funny?” TD Bank, there is multiple levels, there’s thousands and thousands of people here, and this is only this tiny little section of Boston, but if only I had one little section right there, just that one little section, is a multi-eight figure business alone for me. It’s just that one tiny little section, and I’m like, “It’s so funny in perspective, everybody thinks they need to go wider and so forth and try to attract to so many people.”

There won’t be enough customers, but you only really need a tiny, tiny little section and just be the best at it and be the best at marketing, be the best at delivering, you know, be the best at sales, and you could have enormously successful business.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, and I love how you’re just applying that truth that you came to know just from early childhood development, your father, all these things, and you are applying it to say, “Okay, look, just be the best at sales. Be the best at marketing,” you know? And if you just improve one little bit at a time, if you just think you are the best at that, well, what is the best deliver. You know, how do they deliver?

Where do they deliver? And all of these things, and it is just going a mile deep and an inch wide, I love that so much. What an amazing philosophy that it’s honestly carried you?

Charlie Gaudet: You know what? Being the best also means you can’t be the best unless you’re different.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right, you got to be unique, standout.

Charlie Gaudet: You got to be unique, right, and so, so many people are sitting there and they’ll go, “I’m going to be the best. So I am going to pull up my competition, and I am going to copy the best of what my competition is doing.” We see this over and over again, and it’s like, “No, you are actually following your competition.” You are not being the best. To be the best actually means that you must be different.

In the book, we talk about the positioning and how are you going to create that unique advantage that is unique to you and nobody else, you know? So that’s a huge part of it, how are you different? How is your offer different? How is your company different? How is your experience different? All of that is really important.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, it is very profound. I mean, once I learned it was like 2013 or something, and somebody literally was like, “You have to reposition.” And it made me really understand. Like I went from like, you know, a manual press, doing everything myself, all that good stuff, and I read two books. It was like Positioning and The E-Myth, to accompany with from like, I don’t know, I think we’re making maybe 80 grand a year to like almost half a million the next year.

By just applying that principle, and I became one of the best print shops in Beaverton because I was heavily involved with the community and schools, and I just kept going deeper and deeper and saying like, “How can I serve the people that want this service in ways that no other person around me is doing so?” And like this is when I started speaking.

So I would just be like, I would hit up the school or schools I went to or whatever and just be like, “Hey, you know, I could come to your class and talk about entrepreneurship or my refugee experience,” or whatever it is to inspire the kids and, you know, the teachers love that and there is so many clubs within every school, every university, right? And they all get t-shirts at some point in the year, and it just dawned on me that if I could just give up what I’m good at naturally on the backend, I would build these relationships that, who else would they go to?

Obviously, we want to work with people that we trust. We want to work with people that are offering something unique. Even a fair price, it doesn’t have to necessarily be cheaper, and that is something else I realized too, and so like you said, man, like you know, growing a business and all of these things, it is really about finding out more of yourself, more of what you are leaning onto and how you can identify those things to bring the “best” thing forward.

You really sort of exemplify that throughout your book. Can we talk about a little bit of, you know, this idea of when upgrading the buyer’s experience, I feel like that is something you talk about in your book, but it is how people started identifying you as to hire you as a coach, to hire your consulting work. I want to bring you in, and I want to bring you in for a specific reason, but you really talk about how to upgrade this buyer’s experience. What does that mean to you, and where did you learn this philosophy?

Charlie Gaudet: I mean, there is two types of buying experiences. There is a transactional buying experience, and then there is a transformational buying experience. I think one of the best examples that I can think of is a company called Jordan’s Furniture and Jordan’s Furniture, they started off as I understand it like every other furniture company. You know, you walk through the doors, and you just pick and select what mattress and furniture and whatnot that you want, but they are also trying to find ways to differentiate themselves in the market.

What they did is they actually created an experience, an experience that is so compelling that I took my girlfriend, my now wife, there on our second date to Jordan’s Furniture. Can you imagine for a minute taking somebody you just met on a date at a furniture store? I mean, that just sounds, you know, crazy, but we went there and they had a band performing on stage. It was like Mardi Gras, they had a little town, a little street set up, and they had Mardi Gras.

They were handing out beads, there were food concession stands and ice cream, and it was a lot, a lot of fun. There is another Jordan’s Furniture where I used to live, and I took my kids there and we did a trapeze experience there, and we watched a water fountain show, and then we went to an IMAX movie, all part of buying furniture experience. Now, it was so compelling, and they did so well, here is this little company in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and Warren Buffett took notice and acquired the entire company.

It’s all because they did something different, they offered a different experience. They focused on the transformational part of the experience, and it doesn’t matter if you’re B2C or you’re B2B. You know, people come to you because of what it is that you are going to do for them, but people will stay with you based on how you feel. Now, I wish I could tell you that I was so ingenious that I came up with that, but it was actually a good friend of mine, Carrie Wilkerson, that told me that, and it just rang so true.

I’m like, “You summarized that so perfectly.” People come to you based on what you do, but they’ll stay based on how you’re feeling. That whole transformational customer experience is all based on how are you making your customers and your clients feel and do they feel like they are just a number. Do they feel like you genuinely care about them? I am going to tell you something that most people don’t know that I think you’ll find fascinating. Have you ever heard of Darwin’s survival of the fittest?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I’ve heard of it, yes.

Charlie Gaudet: Yeah, and so Darwin’s survival of the fittest traditionally people think about it as meaning as you’re – as long as you are the biggest, baddest, toughest animal in the kingdom, then you are going to survive. Traditionally that is how that is interpreted. What if I told you that that’s actually not the real core fundamental reason why animals survive? That you don’t have to be the biggest, baddest, toughest animal out there. That surprise you?

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, you have my attention. Yeah, I am surprised, but you also have my attention. Yeah.

Charlie Gaudet: What you have to do, Darwin’s survival of the fittest, ultimately what it means is if you aid more to the survival of others, they will conspire to aid in your survival. So the same thing applies to business. If you help other people get a greater result, a greater experience, if you help them get more wealth, more money, save more time, feel sexier, find more love, lose more weight in a way that is easier, faster, quicker than anything that they’ve ever tried before, they will conspire to do whatever it takes to help you succeed.

That means they will refer other people to you. That means that they will stay loyal and buy more from you and so forth, and you could see this even with Apple computer. I have a friend of mine that said he moved out to Utah, and I asked him why he chose that location, that specific location in Utah, and he said because we don’t want to be further than, I think it was like 30 minutes away from the closest Apple store and because Apple from him was a big thing.

So the litmus test that I like to ask our clients and I would encourage our listeners to ask themselves this, if your company disappeared overnight, would you be missed? Now, if you think about it, if Apple computer disappeared overnight, some people would, you know, lose their minds. They wouldn’t know what to do. They don’t want to go back to PC. They are not going to go to Chrome books, they will lose their mind.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Nope, yeah.

Charlie Gaudet: But then there are other people, there are other companies out there, I mean, think about it, if Walmart disappeared overnight, I mean, it be shocking that a company that big disappeared overnight but do you think they’d be missed? No, you just do more business at Target or wherever.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Exactly, I would say probably not, but it depends on who you ask, I’m sure.

Charlie Gaudet: If CVS went out of business, you just go to Rite Aid. All these companies out there that are –

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Company experience is transactional, yeah.

Charlie Gaudet: Yeah, it is all transactional so –

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s very interesting how to identify and then understand where you are in that, you know, one of two ideas, right? If it is transactional, you make them feel good, and I think when I started speaking, and I really fell in love with it and sort of uncovered a new person inside of me that loves to do this and loves the engagement, especially with the youth, there was a part of me that really became free, right?

But with that, I had to learn the craft of speaking, the craft of storytelling. Again, this idea it’s like once, you know, like yes we can all be born entrepreneurs, but you still have to learn to be an entrepreneur. You still have to go through the trials and tribulations, right? I’ve had a gift like you are at three, four, five years old, I was in a refugee camp watching my father paint while I drew next to him. I drew Mickey Mouse and these things.

I have this gift of drawing, but to learn how to actually use this ability in life and make it something that I can rely on and, you know, which led me again to t-shirts and printing and graphics and design and architecture. So it’s like this one thing, which is picking up a pencil and making a symbol like you did, right? Leads you down this path if you could just trust it enough that it will, once it gets good enough, well-rounded, it will pay off in the long run.

However, you still have to hone in, understand your craft, position your craft, who do you want to serve, what do you want to say with that, all of those things that led me to understand that buyer experience, and I love that you shared those stories because for me, they became like, the people I worked with, clients and everything, that I just always looked at them not as clients or customers, I wanted to become friends or family with them, right?

That is how I always treated people is like I want to turn these people not to just rely on me for this service, but they might call me to go have dinner with them, right? And talk about other things, other than – so how do you position your business to be able to do that, to get so emotional, and when I applied that to speaking, there is a famous quote, right? Like the people won’t remember what you say, but they will remember how you make them feel.

That will ever sit with me so well because it sort of defines how we can carry ourselves and how we can carry ourselves throughout business by making people feel good and helping them do their thing. Like you said, they will come together to make sure that you are still thriving, and when I close down my print shop, man, I got to be honest, there are so many people that reached out to me.

They were like, “Why would you do this? Well, now I have to go find someone else,” you know? And I am so grateful for that because it is missed in that neighborhood, but you know, for me, it was like growth and doing other things and all that good stuff, but you are 100% right. When you are missed, people will look forward to working with you, that’s when you can really drive the change, the impact, all those wonderful things you wish to create.

Charlie, I’ve had an amazing conversation. If there was one thing that you want people to walk away after reading the book, I want to walk away with this feeling, what is that thing, that concept, that feeling that you want people to walk away from your book?

Charlie Gaudet: Oh, the one concept, the one feeling. Well, I would –

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, you know I got to make it simple.

Charlie Gaudet: I like it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s not that simple, but I want to simplify it.

Charlie Gaudet: You know, in some cases, I would say confidence. In other words, so many people are sitting there asking themselves, what’s the most important thing that I should be focusing in on right now that’s going to be making the biggest difference in my business? If there is one thing I’d like people to do is be able to see this and, you know, the feedback I’ve gotten is it’s that it creates that aha moment for them.

It’s like, “Ah, this is what I’ve been looking for. This is what’s been missing.” And so yeah, that would be the big feeling that I am hoping people get from this.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Charlie, I learned so much today. Thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences. I feel like we can talk for hours, but I know you don’t have that kind of time. Again, I really appreciate you. I want to ask though, real quickly, if you are, you know, I know your book is very much targeting specific people. Who are those people? And if they are listening, I want them to reach out to you because, man, you have helped so many different types of people at that elite level I would call it, but if they are out there, they are listening to you, who are they?

Charlie Gaudet: We have worked with, you know, multiple different companies. We have clients who are startups, and we have companies, brand companies you would know that are worth hundreds or they’re worth billions, but they are doing, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, but our sweet spot really is that seven, eight-figure entrepreneur.

So if you’re a seven, eight-figure CEO that you’ve realized that most of your success right now has been primarily driven from hard work and you’re looking to scale the company to the next level by applying some real proven strategies, those are going to be our ideal client. That is our sweet spot, and I would encourage anybody to just reach out, and we’ll have a complimentary coaching session and just kind of see what kind of potential is there.

You know, whatever you decide beyond that point, well, you know that is completely up to you, but we believe that every interaction that somebody has with us should be an interaction where there’s, you know, where we can value. So yeah, that’s what I’m saying at, you know, predictableprofits.com is where we’d recommend people to come check us out, and yeah, then we’ll go from there.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful. Charlie, thanks again for your time today. The book is called, The Predictable Profits Playbook: The Entrepreneur Guide to Dominating Any Market and Staying on Top. I appreciate your time today, brother. I know this book will impact many people, keep doing what you’re doing. Thanks again.

Charlie Gaudet: Thank you.

The post The Predictable Profits Playbook: Charles E. Gaudet, II appeared first on Author Hour.

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As an entrepreneur, you’ve poured passion and determination into your business. Reaching the next level means raising capital and finding investors who believe in you and your vision. Most rely on plans and projections as the foundation of their pitch, but my next guest is telling us we have something way more powerful, our stories. Welcome back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host, Hussein Al-Baiaty. My next guest is Steve Distante, who’s here with me to talk about his new book called Pitchology. Let’s flip through it.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the show. I’m here with Steve Distante. I’m super excited to have him with us today, because he’s going to be sharing some really exciting stories and experiences around the art of raising capital. Steve, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your time.

Steve Distante: Thank you, Hussein. Pleasure to be here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. This new book Pitchology, I’m really excited to get into, because most of our listeners are in that space of entrepreneurship. They’re in the space of always elevating their credibility and who they are around their niche markets and what they’ve mastered over time. I’m super grateful that you’ve brought your wisdom to this book. I really want to give our listeners an idea of who you are, where you grew up. I know you have a really funny, interesting story that you started us off within your book around selling manure, but I’ll let you share the beginnings of your entrepreneurship journey.

Steve Distante: It’s so funny people like to hear that story. I’m one of five. I’m the middle child. I grew up right near some horse trails. I used to get up in the morning and go to a little bar and Little Red Barn behind my house. At six I’d have to pull this wheelbarrow up the hill with my pitchfork. There would be a nice hot steamy pile of fresh manure, I’d get like two, three, four, fill up the wheelbarrow just a bit, bring it down. Then I’d run into one of my neighbors. It was my way of being able to communicate with them—entrepreneurship, selling them something. It was $1 a load. Miss Barker was my best customer. Her sparkly eyes, she’d hand me the dollar. You have food for my tomatoes. As the story goes, I’ve been selling shit ever since. I was six years old. I’m an entrepreneur all my life. Again, it’s my way of communicating with the world, if you didn’t realize that most entrepreneurs are introverts.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, for sure. I very much caught the entrepreneur bug at a very young age, selling euros at a Saturday market with another Egyptian guy that my dad met. I definitely got —that’s how I was able to start talking to people. I was very young. I was like 13 years old, but I just love that. The early start to how we think about ourselves and how we value ourselves is very interesting. Who did you ideally write this book for? Who are you specifically trying to help with your message?

Steve Distante: In the circles I’m in, we call that “who do you want to be hero to?” I want to be hero to my fellow entrepreneurs. I want to demystify money for them so that they’re able to not only raise capital, extract cash out of their business, maybe exit or so, but know what they’re getting into. I made this book for them to be able to share. It’s funny, Hussein, I have said this, and people have given me good feedback on it. It’s the reality of things. I didn’t know people didn’t know what I knew. That’s just funny. I wrote the book on it, because I enjoy being able to empower entrepreneurs to raise capital, but holy cow, this has been explosive for me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s wonderful. I love that you brought that to the table, but you have a wealth of knowledge. I mean, you’ve been an investment banker for quite some time. How did you get into that world? What led you into this new understanding of how entrepreneurs can get funding? Can you talk to us a little bit about your investment background? How many different types of people you’ve helped before? What are the typical things that you looked for when you were trying to help people in that world?

Steve Distante: Well, it starts with me wanting to be, I’ll start where I was in school to be an actuarial science, major stats and so on. I came home. My dad had this rule at the house, which was if you’re home [and] you’re not going to college, you got to pay rent. I do anything not to pay rent. I had many jobs, but then I decided to go to school a local community college. I met a professor, Professor Francis Purcell. He said, “Accounting is the language of all business. If you get this stuff, you can understand any business.” They didn’t have entrepreneurship programs when I was going to school. I decided that was going to be my chosen profession for a short period of time, my major, but just to be able to understand.

I moved on, graduated from St. John’s. I ended up at a firm at the time was called Deloitte, Haskins and Sells. I was part of the Big Eight. I don’t even know how many bigs there are nowadays, but I know Deloitte still exists. It was like the best firm you could possibly go to. I used to do audits. It was interesting. I had so much life experience, compared to the other accountants who are working there. They haven’t even had jobs. I knew how to run an X tape and a Z tape on a register, because I was working throughout my years, learning, just picking up information all along. That’s what I’ve done.

I ended up breaking away from the big eight. I went to a small firm and ultimately built an accounting practice, but then an accounting office where you go get your income taxes done, but I had 33 tax offices and did about 37,000 tax returns a year. I didn’t do one of them. I could, of course, but I started to build that along with financial services investments in such side as well. Over the years, I’ve acquired three broker-dealers to RIS or Registered Investment Advisories. As Michael Gerber says, who’s in my book, I work on my businesses, not in my businesses. I have an amazing management team, led by some wonderful people. One of which is my wife, who’s the CEO of the company, that allows me to do things like this, write the book.

Raising capital, I’ve been—it’s not a popular phrase, but the truth of the matter was, instead of Pitchology, it was supposed to be called Pitch Slapped and that word, but I almost got slapped for saying that. It wasn’t to be derogatory and it had been construed as derogate to women. I said, “Oh, man, I would not want to be derogatory to women,” so I changed it to Pitchology, but Pitch Slapping is when, I mean, most of us, especially if you have a little bit of money have been approached by people looking to have you listened to their pitch, and then invest in their company, and they don’t listen. They don’t listen.

At my firm, I’ve done capital raises for companies, where I’ve helped do the due diligence, which is I actually go out, meet the team, understand the product and so on. One of the ones that really turned me on to the idea of doing a book on this was a company called World Tree, and World Tree grows the world’s fastest-growing trees. They grow in about 10 years and draw down about 11 times the carbon of any tree on Earth. When you cut them down, they grow back from a stump. We did about 10, definitely no capital raise for that is like one of my fun projects. It was an impactful project. I did a VR pitch film for them, where you actually went to a woman-run farm who had these trees. In VR, virtual reality goggles, you could look around the farm. You can see what they’re doing. It was just a visceral connection to what they were doing.

I realize that on these pitches, what happens is people fail to talk about the most important thing than their journey, their failures. Everybody tries to just project out these next 20 years. We’re going to make a half a gazillion dollars. They think that’s what’s most important. The reality is, that’s not the most important thing. People want to know who that entrepreneur is, and are they connected to the project that they’re doing? Is this the thing that their life wouldn’t feel complete unless they actually did it? That’s a real really big part of what compelled me to get into writing a book about this. Being exposed all the different modalities and the people that very much part of why this was done the way it was done.

Why You’re Doing What You’re DoingHussein Al-Baiaty: It’s very powerful man. I really love all the stories and all the experts that you brought in and interviewed throughout the book. I want to know, for example. I’m an entrepreneur, and I got an idea of cooking up or I’ve been cooking one up for a couple years. I’m ready to get some more money, because I know, I’m tapping out of my cash flow. What would I do next? What’s my next big thing that I would need to start preparing a pitch? Where do I start? What things do I need to gather that I can bring to the table in hopes to raise some capital?

Steve Distante: Hussein, that’s a great question. People want to know how much you believe in your idea. People want to know, what your confidence level is on this, or you just want OPM as Danny DeVito call that, Other People’s Money. So in that, there’s two questions I’d ask. The first question is, and you don’t have to answer these. It’s just for illustration purposes. Is this your first time being an entrepreneur or is this adventure? Are you a proven capital entrepreneur and this is a capital raise for a new concept for you, and you’ve already had success in business?

Those two questions are important, because the person who’s been an entrepreneur had a successful exit, had a successful business, has been a seasoned entrepreneur is more likely to take a concept and then fund it out of the gate or spend some of their money and then do a capital raise, but the budding entrepreneur who’s never done anything before, who’s looking to come to the table and say, “Hey, I want to raise some capital. Here we go.” They’re typically going to do their own money, then friends and family, maybe an angel, maybe a crowdfunding, these are the easy, low hanging fruit, or there’s something tied to that as well, which is, if you’re willing to go to friends and family, that means you get it, you understand, you’re confident, or you’re a criminal, which we hope you aren’t. You’re willing to put your reputation with those loved ones around you in order to get to the next level.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that, because it frames it in a way that is like, if you can show your competence, you show that you are committed to this service, or product or thing that you’re trying to do. They’re really investing and it sounds like in who you are. Which is where the next part of my question comes in, how important is your story? I know you really harp on that. Can you share a little bit about why that story that you bring to the table is almost just as if not more powerful than statistics or projections that you can outline? Why story is so powerful?

Steve Distante: Yeah. The first question is, in your story, why you’re doing what you’re doing? If it’s to make money, well we’re not interested. If it’s because I had a child who died of —and this is a horrible story— but I’ve heard it over and over again, because of something that wasn’t correct, and I develop this process in order for no other parents to ever have to go through this. I’m interested in that story, because that’s from the heart. That’s the kind of person who will never, ever allow failure to get in their way. The money is going to be able to help them to get to that next level, if they can demonstrate it.

The ‘Why’ is really important. The ‘Why’ you’re doing what you’re doing, but then also the vulnerability, because there’s no better tuition, we’ll call, it then losing everything, or losing to something that you’ll never do again. That’s the tuition when you get hit with a big lawsuit or whatever it is. That vulnerability allows us to understand your story and where you’re coming from. Typically, from those sorts of circumstances, you come out stronger, you will not repeat that episode, and you’ll be more responsible or more aware, or more cautious, or whatever it might be. Those stories really have a lot behind them. Unfortunately, people like to show up in the Sharkskin suit with a nice tie and however they’re trying to do is to pitch and come off as this Titan, this Gladiator and that’s not what people want to know. They want to know you. That’s really what they want.

Unicorn HunterHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. That’s so powerful, right? Because it’s that ability to trust, right? I think once people get to know you and understand that you are trying to work through those weaknesses or whatever they may be, right? You have been sued before, in my case, I’ve been fined by the NBA making T-shirts like, so I understand that. I’ve carried these things as an entrepreneur, as a person who puts their creativity on the line. Your willingness to go to that edge and figure out what you can’t do, what you can do, what you’re capable of. Again, that’s how I discovered how I was able to like, “Oh, I got to hire somebody for this.” Because that is a weakness that I’m not going to go invest three, four or five years in accounting, right, to really sit down and figure out every aspect. Maybe I can just team up with somebody who has that accounting degree, or whatever, just has that experience and expertise.

I think for me, when I looked for people to help me in my business. I certainly went to friends and family, but I was very particular. I think it was about not only able to trust them, but it was, what else are they valuable at, so that I can seek guidance as well, right? It’s like, I know, you can manage my books, because that’s what you do for a living, and you’re helping me out, especially as a startup business, or whatever and you’re going to help me with $1000 bucks to get this thing or that. I also want to know how I can really get better at my financials as I grew up.

I think having that guidance is so crucial. I think, you’re right, other people’s money is great to help build the thing that you’re doing, but it’s also really, can that person help you grow as a person, as well? I think for me, that’s always been a thing associated with money is can this person mentor me? I love that idea. You took it home for me. I just was able to connect. You talk about these different types of angels, right? Family, friends, and then you got the venture capitalist, which you call Unicorn Hunters. Can you go a little bit deeper on what a Unicorn Hunter is?

Steve Distante: Yeah. I’m looking for companies that are going to value exponentially. They’re looking for that next big thing. So that was an adventure capital, typically, they’re going to take about 20% position in the company. They’ll likely advice. Similar to what you were just saying, which is, what else do they bring to the table? They’ll be able to bring relationships. They’ll be able to bring guidance and some key elements that you might be missing as an entrepreneur. Unicorns, though, are companies that will grow by 1000 or more 1,000% or more. They’re looking for those big hits. Typically, in venture capital, it’s accredited investors that are investing, which means wealthy people are super accredited investors that are, and this is risky money for them, but the person who puts together the venture capital portfolio is risking their own money as well, in order to be able to usually over a five year period, outcome in a particular area.

It could be health sciences that say. I know we talked to Will Wiseman about that inside. Just to reiterate what you had said, I want this book to be a multimedia experience for entrepreneurs, so that not only do they get to read the chapter, but how do I get you interested in actually reading the chapter. We put a QR code, or two or three in each chapter that goes to a podcast, and to YouTube, same content, but if you like to look at it, or if you’d rather listen to it, but then I’m doing it on Audible also, and the audible is just going to be just the book. Still, those podcasts are going to be extra information on a particular topic where I get to collaborate with people, and talk to them a little bit about that.

Back to the Unicorn Hunting, you can actually listen to Will Wiseman talk about his VC Fund and how he does it and how it’s put together. I really to ask the tough questions, because when I’m doing these I’m coming from a novice position, not that I am a novice, but I want to ask this to get it down to its most basic terms, so that anybody could listen to this and understand what the hack VC Fund is, an angel investor is, and so on.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s amazing, man. Can you share with me a little story about a company that you believed in, and maybe they pitched you something and you really believed in, but maybe they didn’t have the right, X, Y or Z perhaps. Then you gave them some guidance. Then maybe they were able to come back and you’re able to fund them. Something along those lines like a story that highlights, not only what were you looking for, but somebody that is actually listening and what they do to come back and get funding. I think that’s for me, it was like multiple tries, right? But it’s always refining the pitch a little bit more, right?

Steve Distante: Yeah. There’s this next gen group, which is 50, 60,000 young entrepreneurs and they had approached me with a safe note, simple agreement for equity. The way they were pitching it really didn’t make a whole lot of sense, that there was no clarity on exits. I’m a big person on exits like, how do I exit from this? There was no clarity on the benefit of collaborating with them. If you read the chapter on collaborations, which is based upon some conversations with Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach, that is one of the most wonderful things is collaborations. Back to next gen. When I was speaking with them, they were looking to raise capital. They were doing it in a way that almost felt not for profit-y. The reality is they are a for-profit organization.

The way you reposition them was to go out into the marketplace to find people who they would align greatly with, very much like you were saying, Hussein. What can this investor do for me? That became the most, easy thing for them when they readjusted their focal point, not from going to people just to raise capital and hope they’ll be happy with the potential of making money in the future, but who aligns with your values your mission? How could they benefit as well from a collaborative perspective? Next gen, readjusted, and there are people lined up to be able to speak with them. Once they did that, it just made it that much easier.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful, Steve. That’s the thing with me. It’s like, understanding how you can improve what you have going on, on the table. When you bring those conversations, the things that you need to work on are always apparent. I think but it’s getting through that fear, stepping into it. I think it’s really powerful that you brought that story up is brings me to my next idea is like, there’s crowdfunding now is huge. I know you mentioned this in your book, which is beautiful. It’s a thing now, especially happening with young people, young entrepreneurs, perhaps. I know it’s very difficult to crowdfund, because the economy and audience, you need a group that really believes in this product or service that you’re trying to pitch out in the world. to do it right is very difficult. Can you share some insights around how you potentially or people that you know have approached crowdfunding for successful swings?

Connection and Uncovering the NeedSteve Distante: Video. Video. Video. Let’s make sure we got some video. I think you might know I’m a documentary filmmaker, as well. Video is always going to be king. Interesting, I was consulting with somebody who shall remain unnamed at this moment. You’ll understand in a moment why. I was looking through the pictures and they were all blonde, white people. There was zero diversity on their race and their race was crashing. I said to Joe, “Look who’s on the screen, like who does this relate to?” The person happened to be blonde and white. The truth is, DEI is very near and dear to my heart. I’m an ally to many people. In the entrepreneurial world, I belong to a group called EO OneWorld, The Entrepreneurs Organization OneWorld.

Back to your question about crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is for regular people, non-accredited investors to be able to get invited into something fun. Everyday like Shark Tank, and being part of something and to be able to early order something, support an entrepreneur. The Crowdfunding went through an interesting history, I believe. It was Oscar Jofre, who I interviewed for this, who really gets deep into some of the history, but the truth is Reg CF, which is Regulation Crowdfunding was started under the Obama administration.

The idea was to be able to raise capital in a non-regulatory environment, where you’re out there not getting hit up by the SEC, and FINRA, and having to jump through all these hoops for very expensive startup costs to be able to do the raise. It was a million dollars when it started. It took like 10 years to get to a $1,000,070 or eight years to get to a $1,000,070, which is nothing in the world. It’s been increased recently to $5 million. It makes it a viable way of being able to raise capital and as Stephen Covey used to say, “Start with the end in mind.” You’re absolutely right, if you don’t have a good following. How do you get the following before you actually do the crowdfunding? Because doing the crowdfund is not going to be the way to get your following. It’s quite the opposite.

Once in a while as Unicorns as we use that term in another part here. Once a while is Unicorns that have something so unique, so different, but the reality is you do need your following, and I’m going to give you an inside scoop here. I know for a person who is just doing a million dollar raise. They were working with a couple — with a platform which charged them five or 6%. Let’s say it was five, would be fair. They were working with a marketing company that was charging 8%, so up to 13%, right? Their goal was to raise a million dollars. They needed them to spend $200,000 in advertising to hit the million dollars. So 200,000 is 20%. Let’s put those numbers together, it’s going to cost this person 33% to do a million-dollar capital raise. 33% are you kidding me? So really careful what you fall into. That is really tough territory.

Sure, if you got to 5 million, and it’s, it’s $200,000. It’s a substantially smaller number, but the reality is, there are some things that we’re not thinking about. Most people don’t – I’m just going to put it this way. I did this because I didn’t realize people didn’t know what I knew and when you put on that accounting hat, people’s eyes gloss over. It’s very — money is important, profit is important. If we’re going to do this capital raise, to what end if it’s going to cost you more money than it actually is worth to you if you don’t have the profits built in. Crowdfunding is a viable way, like you said, we need the following first, a compelling story, a video, good video content, just realize you’re talking to the world. The world is not exactly like you, so you need to be aware of that when you’re putting content out.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. It’s really powerful. I love that you said video content. I mean, we are in the age of video is how we consume the world, how we get to know one another, because of brand, get to know whatever it is through video. I love that you mentioned that, because I think just the whole idea of documenting your journey that becomes your story. People like to be a part of stories, right? If I’m documenting what I’m working on, my service of business and building up a small audience, and you compel them to help invest in you or whatever it is. I think people want to be a part of those stories. I love that you really brought those together. Steve, what would you say your favorite part of writing this book has been? I know getting the wisdom out can be very cathartic, of course, what’s been your favorite part?

Steve Distante: My favorite part of writing this book is the people I have connected with and the need that I’ve uncovered. I’ve uncovered that the demystification of money is so necessary. Often in an entrepreneur’s shoes, you’re in your place and private equity approaches you or a SPAC approaches you. It’s the only thing you know. So when that happens, where do you go to find out what other sources of capital raising there are? As I went through, as I mentioned, I presented to 350 entrepreneurs as a pre-release event at the Genius Network, great organization. I started realize how much people didn’t understand about raising capital, all the various modalities, but also, and this is a big deal.

These people who I’ve been in contact with and over and over again, having discussions have invested in other companies and don’t know what they did. What I’m doing now is that built a platform that people can subscribe to, and they can put the deal that they went into, and we have a methodology of analyzing their deal, telling them what they were in, and keeping the company that they invested with accountable for what it is that they promised they were going to give feedback. Also understanding what their exit is from that company, because a lot of times people throw something at a company and just forget about it. That’s not a good way of being able to invest your money.

I am looking to build the world’s largest community of private deal investors, so that we can fund some of the greatest deals that are out there and give them some real value from that perspective. People who are reading this book are typically entrepreneurs, typically are looking at an exit at an acquisition at a capital raise. I’m, again looking to demystify all of that for those people, but there’s also sometimes a sequence.

In one of the stories that’s on ESOPs, Employee Stock Ownership Plans. There’s a story of a woman. Everybody knows her. I won’t mention her name, but she sold her company 75% of her company to private equity for $900 million. She gave all her employees two first-class tickets around the world and $10,000. That sounds pretty cool, but the reality is had she set it up as an ESOP an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, and then allowed private equity come in one, two, three years later, whatever it is, likely everybody in her company would be a millionaire or a better. That’s a better story. She would have kept more money in her pocket, because there’s a lot of tax benefits around ESOPs.

I want to educate the world and being able to compensate or reward the people that worked with us, that helped us to take our businesses to that next level, and then some, and give back to them. The truth is, the governments got it all set up that it’s beneficial from a tax perspective. That’s really where I’m coming from. I realized that I become this evangelist for just literacy around funding, literacy around deals that you have done and to be able to help people who are funding do it in a smart way with the end in mind.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s Steve, that’s so powerful. I love that you really brought us home with all these ideas and stories. I think, you’re right, I mean, in the sense of coming at it from the wisdom that you’ve carried all throughout these years and where you started to where you are today. This wealth of knowledge that most people don’t really quite know or don’t understand, or like you said their eyes just gloss over when it comes to accounting. Steve, I learned so much today, I think I’m just grateful to hear your stories and your experiences. What would be like one thing you hope people would walk away after reading your book? What would you hope that they walk away with, once they’re done?

Steve Distante: An appetite to support fellow entrepreneurs in their journey. That’s really big for me. I like that we make money when we sell or we make money in our businesses and so on, but the private investors, meaning going into private investment deals, has been an area that there’s a lot of distrust, and then subsequent to the deal after they’ve actually given the cash, not great communication. I’m looking to narrow that gap and bring people confidence that when they put money in, they’re going to know what’s going on. I can’t insist that the company provides the information, but being put into a platform like I’ve created, will give them that confidence that at least they have a much better chance to try to do it on their own.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. It’s very powerful, very powerful. The book is called Pitchology: The Art and Science of Raising Capital for Entrepreneurs. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Steve?

Steve Distante: On the web at pitchology.ai that’s .AI, instead of.com, that’s the best place to catch us. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook and so on. If you go to the website, you can actually request a book, up until a certain date and then you’ll find us on Amazon as of February 1st of 2023.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Sounds great. Congratulations on your book. Have a fantastic rest of your day. Thanks again for joining me, brother.

Steve Distante: Thank you very much.

The post Pitchology: Steve Distante appeared first on Author Hour.

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Most people limit themselves to their labels. They embrace barriers based on the box that society puts them in but your adjectives aren’t your destiny. My next guest proves your merit should always trump your labels. She didn’t confine herself to the adjectives of middle-aged or female, instead, she became one of the first three women to graduate from the United States Army Ranger Program.

Welcomed back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and my next guest is Lisa Jaster, who is here with me to talk about, and celebrate her new book, Delete the Adjective. Let’s flip through it.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. I’m Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined today with my friend, Lisa Jaster, who just launched her new book, Delete the Adjective. I’m super excited for you guys because this book is amazing. It’s easy to read, it’s easy to follow but it has a very deep and unique story, which I’m super excited for. Lisa, thank you so much for joining me today.

Lisa Jaster: Thanks for having me, Hussein.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely. So Lisa, you know, we have an amazing audience who I feel like deserve to get to know you a little bit on a deeper level and I feel like you know, always want to start these episodes by getting people to share a little bit about you know, you, your upbringing, your background, sort of where you grew up, the people that perhaps influenced you. I know your father played a role in your upbringing and all these good things. So can you share a little bit about your background?

Lisa Jaster: Yeah, so I guess starting from now and moving back, I am an Army reserve officer. I’m married to a Marine Corp reserve officer. We both own our own businesses and are attempting to be entrepreneurs. We do have two kids and we live in Texas. How I got to where I am now is I grew up in a small town called Plymouth, Wisconsin and I read this book called, In the Men’s House.

Of course, now that I’m about to publish my own book, I really understand how influential a good book can be and my grandmother had bought it. It was written by a woman named Carol Barkalow and she was one of the first women to graduate from West Point. When I read the book, my father was a class of 1968 West Point grad. Carol was class of 1980 and I thought, “Wow, this sounds really, really hard. I want to do this.”

And my mother, while she was raising me and I talk about this a lot in the book, is she used to say, “Don’t ever look back on your life and say I should have, I could have or I would have” and so, starting in 7th grade, when I read this book, I kind of lived by that mantra. So I’ve gotten myself in a lot of trouble to, on one extreme or the next, to include signing myself up to be one of the first women to attend and ultimately graduate Army Ranger School.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So let’s go ahead and talk about that a little bit. Could we dive in, what was that process like? You know, signing up, where did the fear come in and then starting Army Ranger school because I feel like you know, you spoke about this a little bit, you were one of very few women that have gone through and actually graduated at around the time that you started. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience?

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/silhouette-of-soldiers-walking-40820/

Becoming an Army RangerLisa Jaster: Yes, of course. In 2014, I had been an active duty soldier for seven years from 2000 to 2007 and then I had a five-year break in service. In 2012, I got back in the Army and in 2014, there was a discussion about whether or not all branches of service, all MOSs, military occupational specialties, should be open to women and part of that was opening up the Army’s premier in leadership course called Ranger School to women and should some women succeed, that would very much push the discussion into whether or not women should be allowed into the course.

I actually got talked into it. I like to say, I got goaded into it by Sergeant Major Robbie Payne, who was somebody I was working with in the US army reserve. I had gotten back into the reserves in 2012 and he, in partnership with my husband, kind of pushed my buttons and the short version of it is that they basically said, “You know, be the change you seek, right?”

You want all the opportunities in the world open up to whoever has the best resume or should be, based on merit in those positions and I had the opportunity right then and there to prove that just because I was a woman, I shouldn’t be disqualified from a military leadership school and so in October 2014, I put my name and social security number into the Internet hat, shall we say? And ultimately became one of the 19 women who attended the first integrated Ranger School class in 2015.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Absolutely incredible. I know you drop us into—like, when I started your book, I was immediately hooked because, you’re literally army-crawling, dragging yourself through the mud, right? And you’re on this like, I guess, I mean, forgive my lack of terms here when it comes to military but you’re literally just army-crawling through the mud, trying to do this mission.

But then you were supposed to listen in and kind of get some intel, however, you kind of revealed yourself and then from there, there was like the being screamed at in your face and all these things but you also kind of paused. I’m seeing this chaotic event kind of unfold in my imagination and here you are getting yelled at and then you have this pause and moment, where you thank this person that’s going off on you because they’re teaching you something.

I really want you to kind of unfold that story for me real quick and our audience and just kind of take us through, you know, the absolutely difficulties and challenges that you faced during that time.

Lisa Jaster: That story is such a great example of my attitude at Ranger School or at least, what I tried to maintain as an attitude at Ranger School and that was to realize the opportunity I had. Now, when you’re the first in anything or when you’re the odd man out in any environment, it is too easy to be the victim or to feel like, “Well, I’m getting my butt chewed because I’m a woman” or “I don’t know what I’m doing” or you know, really let that internal voice bring negativity.

And throughout my experience at Ranger School, I would look up and I actually wrote that in my cover, in my patrol cap that we wear, our soft baseball cap looking thing. I wrote in there, look up, so I always remembered and I would walk around the woods or I would look at the faces of the men because at one point in time, I was the only woman left at the school.

The other two had graduated and I would look at the faces of the men and tell myself, “Wow, I get to be here” or “I would have missed this sunrise” or “I would have never been able to walk in the Appalachian Trail had I not come to this school” and this specific story you were talking about, I’m getting reamed because I was doing a reconnaissance mission and by definition, a reconnaissance mission is to go and recon an enemy position and then leave without ever being noticed to report intelligence to your higher headquarters for follow on missions, so you know how to react to this enemy.

Well, me being an outdoors woman, I love hiking around in the woods and I stalked up to a very, very close position as if I was out in the woods with my husband bow hunting and I wasn’t actually busted by the enemy but the RI, the Ranger Instructor kind of busted me out because in reality, the people I was spying on would have been at a higher state of alert and would have noticed somebody crawling that close to their position.

And as he was lecturing me and explaining to me all the ways I messed up, I started smiling, which of course, makes an instructor mad because he’s wondering, “Why are you smiling? You don’t respect me? Is this just a joke to you?” and had to explain to him that this was the most fun and most educational experience I’d had in the military, in years, in years and he was like, “Uh, so you’re thanking me for yelling at you?” I’m like, “Yes Sergeant, I am.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: How did he feel about that?

Lisa Jaster: I think he was confused because I don’t think that that had ever happened at Ranger School, much less, having somebody who was a first and coming there with the attitude like, “Oh my God, I get to be here” not “This is going to suck or how hard is this?” But literally, my attitude was, “I get to be here.” He wanted to yell at me more but he wasn’t getting the reaction he expected. So he just said, “Okay, get out of my face.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Get on with it, right? That’s amazing and what an amazing attitude to have because these are the things that we, I guess, you know, for me, reading that and learning from it, you know honestly, I think back when my dad was trying to discipline me, right? In some way, shape or form in the idea that you know, he really wanted me to for example, like, not give in too much into the norms and the culture around me.

Because for example, like you know, I grew up Muslim so we didn’t drink, right? And so for him, it was just like, “Look, like, doing that kind of stuff is not necessary, is not, not going to be you, that’s an option that you have but you got to think about what does that do to your body? You know, let’s think about that for a moment” but the way he did it, it made me always, you know, as I was hanging out with my buddies or whatever in high school or later on in college, those conversations were so in-depth, right?

Like, we really would have a deep conversation, he would allow me to ask questions. You know, whether he did it like from faith or whether he did it just from like looking out for me as a father, there was times where he would, you know, get angry or get frustrated but I looked at those moments and I remember them as being – it make me smile today. Like you said, they make me smile today because those moments that I had with my father were so embedded with what he was trying to really teach me in that millisecond, that decision.

It’s like, “Do I take this drink or do I put it down?” and every time I think about that I hear his voice, right? And so those movements that you know for the people that are trying to discipline us into thinking a certain way and if you are grateful in that specific moment, in of itself, it’s so empowering. Of course I was young, so I didn’t know what the hell was going on but in your scenario, you’d gone through these types of training sessions before but in that moment for you, you felt the sense of gratitude, which I feel like just shuts down anybody.

I mean like, when you’re just grateful for something like that the emotions kind of just run away, but I do want to talk a little bit about this crazy eight. I do want to mention to our audience too that during your time at Ranger School, you basically had this little notebook that this is basically how you wrote your book. So can you talk a little bit about that and then talk about the crazy eight?

Lisa Jaster: So part of ranger school is, for anyone who is unfamiliar with the military, is testing leaders to see if they can act appropriately, keep their bearing in very stressful situations. Obviously, they can’t beat us up and shoot live rounds at us, so we shoot fake rounds and we have fake artillery but we know it’s fake. The students knew that stuff was fake.

So they have to get us to that place of stress some other way and they do that through extreme physical exertion, hiking through the woods with an 80-pound rack on our back. The average Ranger School student in a nine week period walks about 200 miles and their packs, our packs weighed anywhere between 60 and up to a hundred pounds, depending on what we’re carrying on in any particular day.

So we’re physically exerting ourselves, we have minimal calorie intake, we eat two meals at about 1,200 calories a day and we usually eat them dinner would be at three in the morning and breakfast would be at four in the morning and then you don’t eat for the rest of the day while you’re in the field and then so you’re physically exerted.

You’re calorically deficient and you’re not sleeping during that 3:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. period, you’re eating and getting your sleep and trying to setup for the next day. Again, that’s while you’re in the field, so you’re stressed and exhausted. Well, you can get in trouble for falling asleep or not paying attention or missing details when you’re out on a mission.

So if you want to pass, you want to graduate, you have to keep your senses as tuned as you can under those conditions and one of the ways that most of the students did that is you wrote everything down. So we wrote our mission information down, I even wrote information about the people that I was sharing a foxhole with, so that if they tell me their life story one night and then the next night we’re in a foxhole together again, I wasn’t like, “Are you married? Do you have kids?”

I wasn’t offending them by not remembering our deep conversation the night before. So I ended up taking extremely thorough notes the entire time we were out there and most people did and a lot of the notebooks would include things like, just to stay awake, people would write down foods that they wanted to eat when they got home or what kind of sheets they were going to buy because all they could think about was sleeping.

And so your notebooks are these crazy muddle of anything that goes through your head. Like you said, I ended up writing my book off my notebooks and letters I wrote home but part of that too was I had almost an entire notebook on the crazy eight and 19 women started their first ever integrated Ranger School class in April of 2015.

After the first week, it’s called the Ranger Assessment Phase, it’s actually four days long, only eight of us were left and so during the actual active course, we didn’t really get to know each other because we were separated in three different units and in the three companies, we were each divided in different squads.

So we really didn’t get to know the other women but there was a break between phases and we all had to live together because there’s army rules that when you’re not in training, the genders must be separated. So the eight women suddenly were sleeping in four bunk beds together and I got to know these ladies in a really short period of time and in a very stressful situation.

I was really worried because I worked as an engineer in the Army, which is predominantly male, I had—the Army’s predominantly male and then engineers are a more male-centric discipline, then I worked at project management at Shell Oil company and with other engineering firms and which is also in like I said earlier, engineering is a very male dominant environment. So I had never been in a room with seven other females and there were seven other females all trying to be firsts.

So I was really, really worried that we were going to just clash and bump heads and be hyper-competitive and it turned out I felt like I was in an alpha female sorority. It was absolutely fantastic. These women ended up being the type of people that in the military—one of the biggest compliments you could give someone is to tell them that you would share a foxhole with them, meaning that you know that you’d be safe with them in a combat environment.

There were seven other women that without a doubt to this day at any given point in time, I would share a foxhole with them.

Crazy EightHussein Al-Baiaty: A part of me feels like they feel the same way about you because you all share that moment in time again, that capturing this energy if you will in a bottle, right? Now, you get to carry these experiences, the memories, the bond really throughout your life, right? You could feed from it. Tell me, are the crazy eight still hanging out or what’s your deals now?

Lisa Jaster: Every once in a while, there will be a group email or a text message but we’re also on some of the same like Facebook chat groups and three of us who actually graduated out of those eight, we do keep in touch a little bit better just because there is that tie holding us together but now that we’re talking about it, I probably need to reach out to those ladies because those are people I don’t need to lose out of my life.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So I am sure it was like an encouraging time as y’all are push one another and really help one another kind of get through these tough challenges. What was one thing you really learned from one of these amazing eight other individuals, women, that were going through this time? What was something that you picked up that you’re like, “Man, I am going to carry that” I am going to carry that through this, not only through this challenge but maybe my life, is there anything that stood out to you?

Lisa Jaster: There was a point in time when we were all breaking the ice. It was the first time we were all together and able to speak openly and everybody was kind of telling their stories and it was me and one other girl that were significantly older than the rest of the women. So we were in our mid-30s and everyone else was nowhere near us, let’s just say that and so myself and the other woman, older woman were in a little bit more of a listening phase, just because that is part of being a different demographic.

Well, she started jumping in. She had more in common with some of the ladies and then I just would ask a few very pointed questions and one of the women asked me on our way out to dinner that night or not really ask but stated, “I bet you were a badass when you were younger” and it really stuck out to me about how you present yourself and the idea of really this book like I don’t want to be a badass when I was younger.

I want to still be a badass, so how do I make sure my sword stays sharp? How do I make sure that it wasn’t—it isn’t a, “I bet you were something when you were younger.” It’s a, “Wow, you were something then and you’re a different something now but you’re still pretty amazing” and it almost forced me to look in the mirror and think, “I can’t age out of this. My body is going to break. You know at some point in time, I am not going to be able to deadlift as much or run as fast, so how do I continue on this progression of always trying to be the best version of myself?”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That’s very powerful and that is a very powerful thing to take on with you, right? I love that that time and space also, you know, like I feel like in a way pump more energy into who you can become, right? Just kind of having a shift in perspective a little bit, I love that. What was the most difficult part would you say like about writing this book? Because writing a book is a difficult feat in it of itself.

But there is always moments I feel like in the writing journey that authors tend to especially ones telling stories like yourself, tend to get vulnerable, go to a space where like, “Man, this is like dragging through that mud.” Did you have any of those moments in time where while you were writing the book and what pushed you through?

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/gray-white-click-pencil-159585/

Writing the BookLisa Jaster: Very interesting question, honestly. So my original manuscript is a complete vomit of everything and—

Hussein Al-Baiaty: As it should be.

Lisa Jaster: Yes. Yes, I think it should be especially when you are telling a story and then you decide what parts of your story are the most critical to get your point across. In that original story, I put a lot of who I am and how I got to be who I am into the original writing, and what I hadn’t realized was I am completely comfortable sharing everything I can about myself, who I am, how I came to be.

I am unlike a lot of people who have been firsts, I had a great life. I’ve had a great life, I wasn’t—I didn’t have a whole lot of negativity to overcome from my youth or any of that. So I thought this was great to put out there because a lot of times, I read these stories of successful people and it seems like you’ve got to pull yourself up from your bootstraps, which means you have to be in the gutter to be able to rise above your past.

Well, I don’t have that. I had a great childhood. I have a great family and so I wanted to tell people the story too that my family is amazing and what ended up happening is I went to my family and they didn’t want their story shared. So there was members of my family who really took offense to how I was describing the details of my childhood because I was also putting their childhood or their earlier years out there and that isn’t my story to tell.

So I wrote all of this in 2016 and sat on it until, I mean, it is 2023 now, I sat on it for all those years because I didn’t know how to tell my story without telling theirs and that could potentially be unfair to them. So I think that was the hardest part about actually bringing my book to the finish line.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that deciding what stories go in and what actually makes it and then you layer that of course with how other people feel. It is a common challenge actually for many authors and I thought of myself there a few times in writing my book and so yeah, it is always interesting to me though what does come up for certain authors and what actually makes them pivot a little bit or go deeper into one story or not.

That’s really powerful. What would you say is the most unexpected thing happened while writing a book?

Lisa Jaster: The amount of people who actually have wanted a copy, even people don’t know. So you know, when in the process of trying to do some PR work and get the book launch out there, complete strangers are reaching out saying, “Hey, I want a signed copy” or “I want this” and when it’s your own story, it doesn’t seem like it’s a big deal.

When somebody contacts you and, “Hey, I’ll pay extra” or “Hey, I’d like to come and meet you” or “Hey, can I talk to you about this?” that’s really shocking. It is also a realization as I mentioned earlier about In the Men’s House, how impactful a well-written story can be.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I feel like especially from your perspective, right? Think, you know, again like you just said earlier like the people we look up to the most, right? Especially doing high endurance or military whatever and sometimes they share their stories and they talk about their childhood and it was just like a disaster, right? That was their way of kind of piecing things together because they knew they can go through difficult times but they needed to sort restructurize themselves if you will.

Terrible use of word but you know what I am trying to say here and I think like for me personally, I started running like crazy in 2020 while I was writing my book, infusing those two together that was probably the most I exerted myself physically. I started running just like six, seven miles a day and then I would come back home and write but I also felt this lift, a weight lifted because I was sharing my story so deeply with just the computer, right?

I am just getting it out but I have never gotten it out to this level. I actually was a mess, I was in a refugee camp for like a good portion of it. So just talking about it in a way that I just wanted to share that story in the most deep way I can and then like later added it and refined it of course but for me, the physical exertion actually kind of matched that sort of cathartic feeling I was really enjoying and I just felt every day, I just felt lighter and lighter that I could go further.

Perhaps my endurance was building but you know, metaphorically I just felt lighter and lighter. So I love that, I love that the act of writing does something unexpected to the author as well and it sounds like for you, there is a lot of these people who seek individuals like you because I feel like not only they want to know your story but I feel like there’s a connection, right? There is a deeper connection.

That you don’t have to come from a messed up traumatized childhood to do something great with your life, right? A lot of people like I just feel like sometimes when I share my story go like, “Oh, I have never gone through anything crazy like that, like why would I ever share my story?” and it’s like but you don’t need to go through something crazy to share your story. You are an amazing human being, you know?

So I love that perspective but do you know further why you think people are seeking you out to have these types of conversations with you?

Lisa Jaster: You know, I recently heard some people cannot be what they cannot see and I think that is such an interesting phrase because I’ve never felt that way, so I didn’t empathize with that but it is very, very true. It is hard to be something that no one has tried to be before but with my story, it is not about a woman who is trying to go to ranger school or to break barriers.

The story is about someone who’s been put in buckets, hence the terminology with the adjectives, someone who has been put in buckets that they’re not comfortable in and I’ve never been comfortable being referred to as a female soldier because soldiering isn’t about gender or I mentioned it earlier about being a badass for lack of a better term, I am not older and I don’t want my age to limit how people view me.

I still want to be tough as woodpecker lips and somebody that others want to revere and respect and it might not be for the same reasons as I grow and change but it’s definitely for that. So I think the reason why the story is being accepted by more people than I thought it would is because that it’s not about ranger school. It is about being a person who has been put in a bucket because whether it’s society, whether it’s other people or whether it’s themselves, they are stuck in a bucket that they’re not happy in.

They need to know that other people are willing to jump outside of their adjectives, outside of their descriptors and become the person that they want to be who is on the inside.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful. That really leads us to my final question to you, which is if you were to give one lesson away from the book or hope the idea that someone’s reading your book and is now done put it down, what do you hope that they walk away with? You know, what is that feeling you want them to really walk away from the book with and understand?

Lisa Jaster: I want them to see people and allow themselves to be surprised by them. I am five foot four, 140 pounds. I like to think I am not ugly, I like to think I don’t look like a dude but I like to do dude things. So I want somebody to look at me and be happy when they hear, “Oh, she likes to hunt and she does Brazilian Jujitsu and she likes to lift weights but she also likes to wear a dress and go out to dinner with her husband and teach her daughter how to properly put on makeup.”

So I want people to close that book and be introduced to someone who believes in deleting the adjectives. Therefore, they are going to move forward and see a person and say, “Okay, I see what I see. I wonder what’s behind the surface.”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Lisa, what an honor and a privilege to have met you today genuinely. I love this sort of you know, disconnection who you think you can be, what you are and all of these things and what buckets you’re in, all the way to this transition of just really becoming who you want to become and just focusing on that and this idea of unravelling yourself. I love that so much, you really brought it forth with your book.

I highly, highly recommend it. I am grateful for your fortitude and your service and the life you lead. I’ve definitely learned so much from you today. I mean, I will continue reading your book out throughout the week and really try to finish it because I felt so drawn to it and it brought some memories up for me and so I learned so much. So thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences.

The book is called, Delete the Adjectives: A Soldier’s Adventures in Ranger School. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you?

Lisa Jaster: The best way to find me is on any social media. I just go by Lisa A. Jaster. I do have a Twitter and a Facebook page that’s called Delete the Adjective and those are great resources to find me as well.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Amazing, you can also find the book on Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble and so on. You all have a fantastic rest of your day. Again Lisa, thank you for joining me. I had a fantastic conversation.

Lisa Jaster: Me too, thanks a lot, Hussein.

The post Delete The Adjective: Lisa Jaster appeared first on Author Hour.

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Every business leader has its dirty little secret tucked away, ever dreaming they would share with anyone, let alone clients. Revealing it tells an important story and lays the groundwork for genuine connection between you, your clients, and those you serve. It inspires others, showing them that honesty is a priority and accountability is unconditional.

Welcomed back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and my next guest is Matt Shoup, who is here with me to talk about his new book, Painted Baby. Let’s flip through it.

A Budding EntreprenuerHussein Al-Baiaty: Hello, friends, and welcome back to the show. I’m here with my friend, Matt Shoup, who is here to talk about his new book called Painted Baby. I’m very excited because Painted Baby drew me in like right away. From the intro to the first chapter I was already hooked, so much story. But Matt, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I’m really excited to talk about your book and how you came to all this wisdom that you’re going to be sharing with us today.

Matt Shoup: Well, thank you for having me. It’s great to be here with you.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, absolutely. Matt, I want to start by giving our audience a little bit of a preview, sort of your background, your personal background, where you grew up, how did you get into the painting business which later came to, you know, you got to talking about storytelling and the power of story and all those good stuff, but before we get there, I kind of want to get our audience to know you a little bit.

Matt Shoup: That sounds great, let’s do it. Yeah. So, I grew up in Northern New Jersey until I was about 10 years old, and I just remembered getting into a lot of trouble. I was super brilliant with math and a lot of academic things, and the schools just couldn’t keep me busy enough. So, I would just find myself into trouble a lot, and I didn’t really fit in, in terms of, you know, I got bullied a lot growing up, I wasn’t a sports kid.

So I was, just kind of having trouble finding place, and when we moved out to Northern Colorado from New Jersey, I had asked my parents to give me a couple of hundred dollars to buy a boom box, and they wouldn’t give it to me. They said, “You know, you got to figure that out on your own,” and they laughingly said that, so I took their lawnmower and then went around the neighborhood and started knocking on the neighbor’s doors and started a little lawn mowing business.

And that was one of the first times for me that I was able to find some validation, some acceptance in business and hard work, and going out and making something for yourself and really did that from nothing. So, I continued to do the same snow shoveling, selling candy bars at school, you know, out of my locker, and business just became my thing from a very, very early age, and I just really leaned into that.

And fast forwarding a little bit to end of high school, getting into college, I attended Colorado State University from ‘99 to 2003, and I’ve gotten recruited by a college painting company and worked with them for four years in the spring and the summer, while I was studying at CSU and learned all about the residential house painting contracting business and business world.

I took a brief semester, spring semester of my junior year, and I studied and lived in Spain and absolutely fell in love with Spain, that’s a big part of my life, and yeah, when I got back was kind of at a crossroads. Do I want to go back to study? Then I went out one night here, locally in Colorado, and ran into my now wife.

So we met, it was love at first sight. For me, not for her, and it took her a little bit to get around to that, but we graduated and to get around to that, but we graduated and got married, and I wasn’t going to go back to this painting thing. You know, it’s a summertime kind of a dirty job, you’re outside, it’s hot, you’re getting messy, and I didn’t think that, you know, there was any future in that.

I made quite a bit of money painting houses over four years in college, but I spent three times what I made. So you know, I’m married and found myself six figures in debt, and I was working a mortgage banking job, thinking that that was kind of the next big thing that I was going to lean into. I had a friend of mine that was very successful in it and couldn’t be further from the truth. I just did not like the business.

The business didn’t like me back, we weren’t getting along, and I was literally plotting my escape, working at a local corporate, you know, very conservative bank, suit and tie every day, and just really wasn’t happy and was planning to leave kind of on my own terms and those terms got brought to me actually by the bank president. It was March of 2005, he called me into his office and said, “Go put all your stuff in a box,” and fired me.

Threw me out of the bank, so I’m six figures in debt, a hundred dollars left to my name, and all I knew was, you know, business is my thing, and I’m going to make it my thing, and that’s how I launched my painting company, M&E Painting. That was the birth of that company, and that’s a little background on how I got from there to here.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wow, man, I love that story so much because I see components of myself in your story, you know? And this is the most…this is kind of a great segue into, what we’re going to be talking about next and what your book is about. It’s just sharing a little bit about who we are, you know, where we grew up, and for me, like, okay so like, I came from a refugee camp, I grew up in America, but like we had nothing, you know?

Like, my parents are on welfare, we’re on subsidized housing, of course, right? Like, they barely knew how to speak English, so it took some time, right? All those immigrant stories, right? But man, like that lawnmower? Best friends, you know what I mean?

Matt Shoup: That was my buddy. Yeah, the lawnmower was my friend.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, here’s the thing, we couldn’t even afford to have a lawn mower, so I would go to my neighbor, and I would ask him like, “Hey, can I pay you $20 to borrow your lawn mower for the day, but I’ll pay you and bring back the lawn mower all cleaned up at the end of the day.” And then my goal was just to go and like hustle man and I did that for a few summers until my dad dropped me off, one of his friends owned like a gyro joint at like a Saturday market.

I remember him taking me there, and I thought we were just hanging out the Saturday market, you know, “Cool, me and my pops and I” no, there’s always a lesson. So he drops me off, and he’s like, “Hey, you know, this guy’s Ahmed, you know, he’s going to teach you how to make gyros and like learn how to do the till,” and I’m like, “What is happening?”

I’m like 14 years old, 15 years old, but he saw this like, energy in me, I wanted to make something for myself, and you know, I didn’t want to burden them by asking money, you know, for new shoes or for whatever because I knew I got a lot of siblings, we were hurt in the greatest financial situation, but I saw an opportunity to put myself to work.

I love when we take that upon ourselves when we’re young because it starts to get us to see the world differently. Like you said, you know, like, “My friends eat chocolate, oh, it’s a perfect opportunity to go buy some chocolate bars and sell it to them,” right? And so understanding our world that way at a very young age, it will start to seep in later on, but later on, it’s interesting, right?

We kind of start to conform to society’s norms, and they’re like, “Oh, you know, she’s at this banking job,” or whatever it may be, and you find the friction, and you realize like, you’ve been this different kid your whole life. You know, you’re going to be also a different man grown through that, right? And so you built this amazing painting business.

You start this painting business but tell me about that, like, tell me about those days because they’re not easy but got you back into painting houses. Was it just out of sheer like, “Okay, I know how to do something, and this is how I’m going to do it,” or did something else happened?

Matt Shoup: I would be honest and tell you that when I was in the mortgage business. So I bought my first property before I started working this mortgage job, and I got into the mortgage business because of the gentleman that I met, he did my loan. He was a young successful go-getter, and he was flashing his money around, and he took me to lunch in his really nice car and was, you know, throwing all the money around, so I was chasing the money and I go, “Hey, it’s a shiny object.”

I’m young, very impressionable, and yeah, but I just didn’t – I didn’t like the environment being in there. So I realized there was a point in my life when I said, “Hey, this is great, you know, I’m chasing the money, but I don’t love what I’m doing.” And when I got fired, I was standing there. I literally had all of my professional belongings in a cardboard banker’s box, and I blew the single middle finger salute to the boss because he wasn’t very friendly about how he told me.

He said, “You know, put all your stuff in a box,” and he said, “Maybe you should go back to that painting thing” and he, you know, singed up his tie, and he said it with a little bit of a smirk, very condescendingly. So I replied the way I replied, I kicked the front door of the bank open, and I’m standing there and all I could think, I said, $2,800 in 28 days.

So the motivation to that was, I need to make $2,800 in 28 days, it was back to 10 years old, $200 for the boom box, and I said, “How do I know how to do this with the resources I have?” And I said, “Well, I guess I’ll go back to this painting thing,” and there was a part of me being very young and again, upset about what happened was, “Yeah, I’ll prove you wrong, Mr. Banker. Sure, I’ll go back and do that painting thing and make a million dollars doing it.”

So literally, my drive short-term was pay the bills, but then there was also this seed that got planted not saying it was the right motivation, but it was motivation anyway is, “Hey, I’m going to prove you guys wrong. You said this, I’m going to go out and do it,” and that’s all I know how to do, I didn’t know how to make $2,800 in 28 days doing anything else.

So I literally went to Cinco’s, copies there, I made some crooked cut business cards, and I went around the closest neighborhood to where I lived in Fort Collins and just started knocking on doors, and I did that for the rest of the year, and we pulled in about a half million dollars in top-line revenue that year.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Incredible.

Matt Shoup: Yeah, it was super cool. But again, the whole thing was like, I told Emily, “We’re going to do this ‘till we find out what we really want to do. This will just hold us over.” And I hit the end of the year, and I’m sitting there like, “Wow, you actually can make a living doing this, let’s grow this, let’s scale this, let’s take this to the next level.” And half million became three-quarters of a million, a million plus, multi-million, and we just kind of went on from there.

The painted baby is about a really big lesson I learned about how we present ourselves as business owners. The stories we tell, how we market, how we sell, and that we’re really missing an opportunity to build deeper relationships that can last longer and obviously benefit your business in the long run but just benefit you and the relationships you have personally.

Seek Authenticity, Not PerfectionHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. So powerful man because that whole starting a business because somebody else doesn’t really believe in you or doesn’t think you’re the right fit for something and, you know, coming out of college, I studied architecture and like, I wanted to go work at Nike. I wanted to like, get a job, you know, an architecture firm, anyone that would take me on, really in a design world, and it was like 2010, and it was like the worse economic state, right?

Like no one was really hiring, and I finally landed an interview at Nike and, you know, two interviews in fact, and unfortunately, they basically hired somebody within, which is great but it really like, started brewing in me like, “Man, I knew I was that right person for that job.” And the way the meeting felt was like, “You’re not good enough for this.” And that was the furthest thing from the truth.

Because I went on to start an apparel printing business which later grew, and then we ended up started working for Nike and even that thing grew, which is just crazy. So like, I set that like fire in the beginning, it’s great to have because it really pushes you, but then you have, you know, you have something else that comes along, whether it be your kids, your wife, you know, your growth, your personal growth, that takes on, and you start to see yourself, your business and what you’re actually building and what it’s worth.

I think for me, I was like, “Oh, I have, like me and my brother can do these T-shirts, you know?” and then it grew to like, 10 people, which in your case like, you grew your business almost tenfold, right? And so by just believing in yourself and saying like, “I can do this.” And that’s very powerful. However, how we present ourselves, man, how we do our pitches, how we do our sales, you know, the entrepreneurs, that is a very distinct thing.

And you’re right, we always want to show the reviews, the positives, the shiny brochures, the beautiful things, the great stories, right? But the reality is, whoever we’re selling to is human, and they know there’s some stuff that’s gone down and, you know, your interaction with how you opened up the book with Bill and tried to land this big contract was really interesting.

Can you tell us a little bit about your experience with this transition of a businessman that’s selling based on like, this idea of perfection, you’re turning into a businessman that’s really more about authenticity and just being completely vulnerable. Can you share a little bit about that?

Matt Shoup: Yeah, and thinking back to those first couple of years in business, I mean, I was very motivated by the numbers and the X’s and the O’s and, you know, the metrics and the sales ratios. So it’s very much focused on, you know, close the deal, do the presentation, features, benefits, that very old school, you know, sales mentality and came from a background of that with the painting environment that I was in.

But yeah, I’m sitting there with Bill, he’s actually become a great friend of mine, who is a repeat customer at that time, and I’m sitting there about to close the biggest deal of the company’s life. Our average paint job at that time, three to $4,000 to paint the exterior of a home. Bill, very successful guy, had a second home out of state, and we were going to do a full stain renovation, re-stain, remodel, and it was a $60,000 job.

So I mean, I’m getting ready for this, you know, I’ve got my really nice pen and my pitch, I’ve got the Better Business Bureau reviews, the A+ five star, and I’ve got this $4 shiny marketing brochure. Full color, it’s got photos and testimonials, and I’m like, you know, going in, getting in that state. So I sit down with them, and I give them my perfect pitch, right?

Paint the picture of perfection, and he’s a straight shooter. Like, he makes decisions quickly, and I slide the contract over and he looks at it, he slides it back, and he says, “Nope, not ready to do this.” And we go back and forth a little bit, and I said, “Bill, what am I missing here? We’ve worked for your before.”

And he said, “You know? What you’ve never told me, what I want to hear from you is tell me about a time that you screwed up and what you did about it.” And I had never been asked that before by a customer. Never been taught that, right? If you’ve learned anything about sales, you don’t go interject anything you’ve done wrong and like, think about it today, everybody listening, right? Pull up your social media.

Everything you come across, right? Is perfection, it’s the perfect life, perfect wife, perfect family, everything that’s out there, and we just…we play this posturing game, right? We’re humans in business interacting with other humans, trying to serve them, but we’re being inhuman when we’re trying to be perfect. So you know, I’ve come up with this saying, and this comes up in the book a lot is “Painting a picture of perfection prevents true connection.”

So, Bill and I, we’re missing something at the table, and he’s harassing me a little bit, he’s a friend of mine. So he’s like, “Come on, Matt.” He’s like, “You’re not perfect dude, tell me something you’ve done.” I said, “Okay, we painted the wrong color on a house once.” And he goes, “That’s not a big deal, that’s easy to fix.”

I said, “Well, we painted the wrong house once, we actually showed up with the crew, and I had written the address, the street versus the drive, and there was two different street, same address, and we actually start prepping and calking the wrong house.” And as soon as I tell him that, he starts getting intrigued. I’m taking him back, telling him the story, and I’m telling a really great story because I’ve told this story before.

He was very intrigued, and then I said, “All right, how’s that for something we screwed up?” And he goes, “Well Matt, I feel like you’ve got something else that you’re holding back on.” And I have never shared this story of when our company painted a baby. We actually had a paint sprayer blow up on a job site and painted a nine-month-old baby, while the homeowner, the baby’s mother, was standing there, admiring the paint job, and our crew leader was about getting ready to spray some doors.

So I take Bill through this story of just, you know, disaster and everything that could go wrong. It really is a bad day at the office for a painting company. You know, you spill paint, you get the wrong color, you paint the wrong house, those are all progressively getting worse but to actually, you know, put a young child’s life in danger and just have a pink spray explode, it was wild, but again, he’s intrigued.

He’s hooked by the story. “Well, what did you do about it?” and I told him, I said, “We’d made it right. Here is how we made it right. This is what we did.” And then he signed the contract. He said, “You’re the kind of guy I want to do business with.” And he said, “I really appreciate it. You don’t see that really at all these days.” And I was just shocked because it 180-ed everything that I had ever learned about sales.

I was happy I landed the job, and from there, you know, I really started thinking about what actually transpired somewhat at a business level, but more so just the human level in terms of how to, trusting me with the biggest amount of money he’s ever paid me, a nice home he owns and I was imperfect and shared that with him.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah man, it sounds like not only did you get your biggest check, right? But you also learned your biggest lesson, like unveiled something really powerful within you because now not only did you like earn this big check for like you’re not going to go around blowing it, right? Because you are going to invest probably. If not all of it, most of it back into the business, but now you also have this like huge level of awareness that you can apply pressure in a specific area within story to hopefully not only land more work.

But really lean into being yourself, lean into being friends with clients as opposed to just thinking of them as clients. I love that a lot. I share a lot of that commonality, but what are some ways we can explore our own stories and change the narrative to support us in our work? You know, I know this transformation happens for you, what happened next? How did you start implementing what you learned and what did we learn from that?

Matt Shoup: The first thing I did, I went back to the office, and I celebrated with the team. We had a big sales board. So I write this big massive number on there, and we did. He goes, “Oh my gosh, what clothes did you hit him with? Was it the either/or, or the Benjamin Franklin close?” or whatever, and I said, “No, I told him the painted baby story.” And they looked at me and said, “What did you do? We’re not supposed to tell anybody about that.”

So at that point, I realized I go, “Hey, I am on to something here.” So I just went out and I experimented it, right? I go, “How can you track this and measure this and see the results?” and I didn’t want the team to do it until I got a really good grasp on it. So I went out on my next appointments, and I started sharing the story. However, I was so excited to share the story that I forgot about when and how where to interject that story.

Actually kind of moved backwards, I think I scared a bunch of people. I was so excited to tell them about a time that we massively screwed up. I forgot to tell them how great we were. So yeah, in the book I talk about where you put that in the process and how to discover what that story is. So for me, I had nobody knew the story.

Bill forced me to tell it, but I really challenge the readers of the book to think about, there is an associated workbook, but hey, think of something that your competition might find out about you that at first grab if they got this information and went out and shared it with all of your customers or potential customers that that could be really bad news for your business. That right there, that skeleton per se, that is your painted baby story.

It should really explore how to capture craft and communicative message around that and go out and be the first one to share it with your customers, and that’s really what it was. We sat after that experience happened, it was about three years before I told it to Bill. You know, we addressed the issue, but we sat around as a small company and said, “Guys, we’re not going to share this. We’re not going to put this out there.”

So I just experimented with telling the story, seeing and engaging with people’s reaction, and you know, the bottom line numbers as it raised our closed rate anywhere between about 10 to 15%, but it also just made business easier because we were overpromising and then under-delivering. When you promise perfection, you’re just overpromising, and you can’t fulfill that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right, the level of expectation is set so high, especially after, you know, when you take those perfect photos, when you do those perfect videos of your product or your service or whatever it is that you are doing, right? It doesn’t mean that every single thing in this particular product is going to go perfectly flawless. So like trying to get your client to remember that you are too a human, right? Is one way to like remove that mentality that everything is going to be perfect.

So at the end of the day, the project will be done, the project will be done very well to the best of our capabilities. However, it is the getting there, right? It is the journey, it is the you and I, you know, it is an understanding, it’s the paint that didn’t show up, it is my guy who got sick, right? Those are the things that the customer can really lean on you for just being honest about, right? But if you are honest from the get-go about, “You know, usually this project I feel like this takes two weeks, but in reality, it may take three weeks simply because life,” right?

Now, there is an expectation. However, if you get it done in a week and a half, they’re just more excited, but you were honest, and then if you don’t get it done in two weeks and it does take that week extra, you’re still in that grace period, right? With the customer or the client or your friend if you perceive them as such and how you communicate with them. I love that, it is such a powerful story.

Matt Shoup: You’re creating a permission that you should have because you are human, to be human, and what I mean by that is if before, I had shared this story. I was out there, “Oh, we’re going to, you know, three days and perfect this and top-level this.” And then something happens that doesn’t go according to plan, and this promise you’re making and the first thing I do is I beat myself up like, “Oh my gosh, we couldn’t serve this customer.”

Then the customer says, “How and they are not doing what they said they’re going to do, right?” Versus painted baby story, you promise what you are going to do, “Guys, we are going to strive for excellence. We are going to do everything tiptop.” And 99% of the projects we have go really well but let me tell you, we painted a baby once. Let me tell you about that, let me tell you what that means.

Let me tell you that if something goes wrong, you’re going to get this sinking in your gut when you see or experience whatever it is, but then it is going to be followed right up by, “Wait, these guys, these gals, they are going to stand behind their work, they are going to make it right.” And it gives you that permission to go interact in that space with the customer and it just really brought down a lot of those levels of stress.

That everybody that’s listening to this, anybody that owns a business where you have something, say, blow up in a professional setting, emotions get high, and they can get out of control. This just allows everything to kind of level back down to, “Hey, what’s the issue, and let us create a way to solve this issue together.”

Live Your Own StoryHussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful, man, I love that. I love that you really kind of zoom in and zoom out of these things in a way through story, in a way that really helps, you know, just connect deeper with who you’re speaking with, whoever you are trying to communicate with, and then just by laying it all out in the open creates that honesty, it creates that trust. In today’s world, how do you live your story now, and what have you learned from your own transformation over the years?

Matt Shoup: Yeah, that is a really good question. You know, as I would say, closed off and guarded just about my personal story and kind of where I came from and the struggles I went through and things like that, so I think having this painted baby story pop up and then my ability to get really comfortable in the business space has allowed me to share other parts, you know, peel back other layers of my life with other people, other business owners, other customers.

You know, I was at an engagement the other day where we start the business small, chit-chat, and then I bring up the painted baby in the book, and then we start sharing kind of our horror stories and kind of comparing notes of you know, similar experiences like I got bullied growing up, and that was a very painful experience. Instead of dealing with it, I masked it. I lifted weights, I was a tough guy, you know, pop off to people, and you know that.

Then I got beat up by a kid half my age, half my size on the Brazilian Jujitsu mat, so that’s a whole other podcast, but it’s been –

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I think I want to hear about.

Matt Shoup: Oh, if we have some time I’ll share it. It’s allowed me to get real and peel back other layers of my story, and when you start sharing this with other people, you’ll see they reciprocate. They do the same thing. So it takes an initial, say, business engagement where I am going there to paint somebody’s house. They are going to give me money, it is very transactional too.

“Hey, you know, this guy and this guy kind of had it tough in certain aspects of his life growing up.” “Hey, so did I,” boom, and then we start connecting and, you know, you end up being there for a couple of hours or share a couple cups of coffee, and now you’ve got a friend not saying that everybody in business should be your friend but, you know, you have the pure relationships where more trust is built.

You know, the business is tangible there. You are going to have more referrals, more loyal customers, more people talking about you, and I think the biggest thing is, “Hey, this company is different, they do things differently, they connect with customers in a different kind of way that a lot of companies just don’t nowadays.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful. The reason I believe what you’re saying is 100% true is because I genuinely feel like these are the things that I practice to grow my print shop business, my t-shirt printing business. Literally, that was like one thing I was good at was just sharing stories and connecting with people, just having empathy, and it really just, dude, this is why I am doing this podcast. I am genuinely interested in people, in their lives, in their work, and how they do things.

That’s always been an interest of mine, even as I was young, but when I go drop off some t-shirts or when I meet someone, and we get to talking, getting to know each other, as you know, “My name is Hussein” off the bat that’s going to tell you a story, right? Like off the bat, so it’s like people can’t resist. “Hussein, where are you from?” You know? And then that triggers a whole avalanche of stories, right?

Matt Shoup: Yeah, and you’ve got an amazing story too to share, and so yeah, and I love that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I live through it, and I am blessed to live to tell about it, however I started not shying away from that because in my high school years, I shied away from that, right? I didn’t want anyone to know I was a freaking refugee or that I was on welfare or any of that, but then reality is like, that’s who I was, you know? Now, being open and just speaking about those experiences and helping people realize like that is not a negative thing.

That’s just the circumstance you’re in, and you can use your abilities, your stories, your art, your skill, whatever you become gifted at, put those things together to do something amazing and unravel your own purpose, and I think you really exemplify that throughout your book. I just really appreciate it, but I want to know like why did you decide to write this book and who are you trying to reach with your message?

Matt Shoup: I love being a business owner, and I found as a business owner that it can be lonely, and they say lonely at the top, but wherever you are in the journey, you know, bottom, top, middle, wherever you think you are, it’s hard to relate. So I want to have a message, I want to have a tangible message, a practical message that business owners can implement to grow their business.

I talk a lot about life leadership business, how they’re all interconnected, and I really want this message to pass through just the business level and really make people’s lives better, and I know that when I was growing my company being able to have those resources, there is authors and mentors and entrepreneurs that I really look up to. So I think everybody, you have a story. Whoever is listening, you have a story.

You can impact other people’s lives and make people’s lives better with that story, and it is your responsibility to share it, and that was a big reason behind the book, and I actually started writing this book, gosh, like seven years ago, and there was a fear that I had of putting this message out there. “What would people think?” and just the message wasn’t ready, and I wasn’t ready to put it out there.

So it was really for me, it was a project that just needed to be finished, but it really reignited me, understanding what my purpose is for the small business community is just to be here and be a light for people.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Dude, that is so awesome. I love that, and yeah man, the most powerful messages do tend to take a long time to get down on paper and get out of us because yes, what is in front of you is yourself, and you’re like, “Dude, are you ready to be even more naked in the world?” And so for a while it was just like, “Oh, maybe not like let me just wait another couple more months or a couple more years.” Or you know, whatever happens.

But when you position yourself to, you know, when it’s like, “Oh, this is actually a message that is bigger than me and myself and who I can share this with” is actually much bigger than who won’t read it or who won’t like it or who won’t, right? That is really powerful to recognize, and when you do recognize that, you start to apply it to all aspects of your life and that’s, I think, the most beautiful part of writing too is that it is cathartic, but it also helps you sort of relearn who you are and who you want to become.

Matt Shoup: Yeah, and for whoever is listening, and you told me there is a lot of aspiring authors here, if you haven’t jumped into the process yet, I am sitting there looking at the manuscript, and what’s the little reel you see on social media? They say, “Oh, it’s very, very good, very, very crap.” Like I am in the same phone call, the same sentence with the team looking at this and I go, “Oh my gosh, I love this.”

You know this is awful, and it’s this crazy, crazy journey of yeah, you are just putting yourself out there. Like it is you putting yourself out there for the world for millions and millions of people to have access to, and yeah, I think we get too tied up. My suggestion and advice to anybody that is maybe hesitant to move forward with this is there is going to be people that don’t like it, that don’t resonate with your message, but that’s okay.

Think about the, if it’s one person whose life or business or situation you can make better, it’s totally worth it, and I say go for it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Absolutely, amazing man. You’re 100% right, go for it if you are listening. So if your reader were to take away one thing from the book, what would you hope it would be?

Matt Shoup: Is call yourself out in business and life about how you are presenting yourself, how you can present yourself differently and more vulnerably, and then just dig into what your true powerful story is that you haven’t explored yet and you know, figure out a way how to craft that into messaging within your business that will connect with people, and I will tell you too, it’s not something that everybody else is doing or is suggesting. It was one of the most powerful things that I did in my business that really impacted it in a big way.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Man, I love that so much. So I got to tell you this, right? So I like didn’t talk about my refugee experience for so long, like for so long up until college or so, and then I shared it a few times in high school. It was really powerful, and so on and man, I will tell you this right now, I own a company, a graphic t-shirt company called Refutees, which is the most interesting thing, right?

Because I completely owned my story because a mission-driven brand is about, and like I said, this is why I can’t agree with you more is because your story is a core of who you are, and your story should be the coolest story, you know, and share, right? You really encapsulated that, I think, just throughout this learning from you today and hearing your experiences. I didn’t mean to share so much of my story and takeover the podcast episode today.

But I just wanted to emphasize how much what you’re saying is so true because these are the things that I have been practicing, and they really unfold in the world in a beautiful way. So yeah man, thank you for putting down your wisdom and helping other entrepreneurs really lean into their own personal story and be vulnerable and like shy away from perfection and really be who you are, that’s the perfection.

It’s you getting out of the way, it is you dismantling your ego and utilizing when you need to, right? And empowering yourself to just really be authentic with whoever you are speaking with. It’s so powerful.

Matt Shoup: I really appreciate you having me on here today. It was fun. It was really fun to hear your story, and the point of the book is that there is power in story, and I think whoever is listening they are hearing both of our stories. I mean, they’re getting two for the price of one here, you know? So I love it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Absolutely, what a deal. What a painting deal. Oh, this is great. Matt, I want to say congratulations on your book. It is so needed, and I can’t wait for it to make an impact in the world. I learned so much from you today by sharing your stories and experiences. Matt, again man, thank you so much. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you?

Matt Shoup: Yeah, I’ve got a whole bunch of resources at mattshoup.com. So if you go there, I have a free entrepreneurial tool kit, all kinds of great things that you can do to grow your business, advance your leadership.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love it. Thanks again Matt, great to have you on here, buddy.

Matt Shoup: Thanks.

The post Painted Baby: Matt Shoup appeared first on Author Hour.

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My next guest helps you deconstruct your limiting beliefs formed by diet culture and replace them with her five pillars of sustainable weight loss, build a solid habit foundation that will carry you towards your vision of weight loss, health, and happiness with the questions, journaling prompts and exercises in her new book.

Welcomed back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and my next guest is Robyn Shaw, who is here with me to talk about her new book called, Hustle but Healthy, let’s flip through it.

Hello my friends, welcome back to the show. I’m here with my friend Robyn Shaw today, how just finished up her book, Hustle but Healthy. I’m super excited to get into it, Robyn, thanks for joining me today on the show.

Robyn Shaw: Thank you so much for having me.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, this is so great. I love just sharing, you know, not just about the books that we bring on the show but really about the people behind them and the best way I to, I feel like, I can share who you are with our audience is to give us a little bit of a background, where you grew up, how you ended up in maybe perhaps like share about the people who influenced you, the people that were in and out of your life, the things, the circumstances that got you into the profession that you’re in and then why you decided to write this book but we’ll get to that later.

Robyn Shaw: Yeah, I love that. That’s such a funny question, are you a small town person or what? I grew up in a small town for sure. I grew up south of Ottawa, Ontario in Canada so, northern folk up here and I moved to Toronto back in 2011 and so I mean, I’ve lived there for 10 years and so I think like you know, the city has definitely rubbed off on me. I am an OG, like, small town girl but I’ve lived in a bigger city for a long time.

So I would kind of consider myself you know, a bit of a Torontonian at this point and yeah, I guess like, really what has shaped me to write something like this or just even get into kind of like the health, weight loss, fitness space was CrossFit. So I spent a lot of time coaching CrossFit after I did my undergraduate degree and spent a ton of time in the gym like, that’s kind of where I live.

My whole family was really into it, my brother owned a gym, I was in Toronto running a gym, I coached, you know, pretty well from 5:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m., you know, off and on like that’s really where I lived and from there it’s kind of how I really dove into it and then eventually, you know, started to see a little bit of a gap and people wanting to learn more about how to eat properly, how to feed themselves properly for you know, fitness and how to lean out or put on muscle or whatever and so it really just kind of evolve from there, like starting to give my own clients and the numbers of the gym advice and then eventually, yeah, just snowballed.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: That sounds amazing and this sort of started building out your career and that space a little bit more and I feel like now, you’re the guru behind the space that you barely knew anything about and now you’re just an expert.

Robyn Shaw: I appreciate that, yeah. Yeah, I mean, always learning, right? I think like, that’s one thing that I’ve really just love to do is constantly learn and writing is a very much a creative process of course for me and I love that part of writing and I’ve really kind of used this book and all the blog post and content that I put out as a way to just like, kind of use my creativity because I have a fine arts degree, which is totally unrelated to what I’m doing.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: No, it’s very related. Yeah.

Robyn Shaw: Related in this sense of being an author for sure but in the, you know, in the business ownership, coaching kind of sense of it, fitness coaching it, it’s funny when people ask me, you know, what’s my formal training and like, “Oh well, I painted for five years, you know?”

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I still paint today, you know? And I didn’t get a degree but my father was my trainer. My father was an artist who is a painter quite literally saved our lives in many ways but we won’t get into all that. You know, he very much taught me how to hold a brush and the layers and all these things.

So growing up, I was always felt more self-taught but I love how that creativity lended itself to you know, my business acumen or going to school or relationships. I’m always trying to find a creative way to create an experience and I think that’s the approach of the like, because you know, painting is a practice, right?

Like, there is no one masterpiece, it’s a collection of everything you do and so like, having those ideas come from that side of, I guess, our minds or our creativity but then, applying that to you know, when people think about failing today, I learned about failing a little differently. Meaning like, every painting was a try, you know?

And I felt like whatever I’m doing, whether I’m running a mile today, you know, trying to be more healthy and all those things, whether I eat better or just get to the prayer rug, I, it’s just like, “All right, I’m just going to try, this is just an attempt.” It’s not like, my end all perfection, right?

But I love that, so, can you talk to us a little bit about this idea of you know, taking stabs at things, attempting. I feel like your book kind of eases us into health, wellness and just the perception and you really talk about that mindset too.

Easing into WellnessRobyn Shaw: Yeah, I really like what you said there. Like, I mean, a lot of what you described is really just taking action on things and I think that’s really what I try and do with this book is make it simple and not so overwhelming for you to take action on your health and you know, my job and I have a wonderful team of coaches that help me, you know, run my coaching business and all of that and we always talk in our kind of coach’s development meetings or whatever.

Team meetings that, like, our job at the end of the day is to get people to act because you know, what I say in the book or maybe at least once, you know, knowledge isn’t power and I talked to my members and clients about this all the time like, your knowledge, everything that you have kind of stored in your brain about how to lose weight or what’s right or what’s wrong or these fad diets and you know, calories in, calories… like, there’s just so much information out there.

But all of that doesn’t really mean anything unless you can put it into action and at the end of the day, if it’s right or wrong or if it’s the wrong action, like trial and error is a huge part of this game. As you kind of just mentioned with like painting and creating a work of art and creating multiple works of art and just, you go through each one being like, “Oh maybe, like, maybe this was crap, you know?” Like, “Or maybe I hate this” or “But I’ll try again and I’ll try again.”

And that really is the same thing about the approach that I really like to take with your own kind of health journey is like, all action is good action in my mind, even if it maybe led you to a place that you weren’t totally happy with or the results weren’t as great as you wanted like, “Okay, now we can rule that out as, okay, this didn’t work for me.”

So yeah, I think like, that was kind of a nice way of putting how your practicing the creativity has helped you just act and that’s really what this book is about too is to really just breaking it down simply, so that people can put some of these thoughts and ideas into action that fits pretty seamlessly into their lifestyles and for this book in particular, you know, busy woman, we talk a lot about the chaos of the busy woman’s life and how we can actually take little tidbits of information and integrate it into our lifestyle.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I just agree with you in so many aspects because, you know, whether you’re a busy woman or busy man or busy person just out there in the world, you know, moving through the motions, right? You got your work, you got your job, you got your kids, you got your life, vacation, whatever it is that you’re doing but it’s the idea that you know, what I find… you know, this is interesting and I’m sure some of your clients even approach you with these scenarios, right?

Like, “I don’t have time” and this idea that I don’t have time means you’re limiting how you see time, right? Like for me, personally, and I change that perspective. When I was just, you know, a little bit younger, my brother was very much into martial arts growing up and so I was a little bit of his punching bag but he always found time.

I was the drawer, the artist, you know, the nerd kid and so I just, this is always like, amazed about he always had the time to work out and stay fit. Like, “Dude, why do I have this belly?” and he’s like, “Because you think of time differently” you know? He’s like, “You got to think about you as a part of your time” and that blew my mind, you know what I mean? I have to put myself into my schedule, like, you know, and working out is a part of that.

Robyn Shaw: Absolutely. Absolutely and I mean, you can say it’s you know, well, it could be, well, maybe it’s not a priority for you, like is this a priority, right? We do have that conversation but I think that also a big part of that is a feeling. Like, not having time oftentimes is like a feeling you’re having, right?

And that usually is that feeling of overwhelm or feeling of exhaustion or burnout and I think we take those feelings and we attach them to like, “Oh, my schedule’s too busy. I don’t have time to do things” but if we really like, objectively break down the hours in the day and the time that you do have, more often than not what we’ve seen is, yeah, you do actually have time but what is currently on your plate, leaving you feeling a certain way.

Like the perception, there’s this perception that you don’t actually have the time. So gosh, that is probably one of the most common things we hear, right? “I don’t have time. I don’t have time, like, how am I supposed to do this?” but again, like, our job and a big part about this book is like, the things that you do, they don’t have to be so time consuming and I think, that’s what like this… a lot of the kind of health and fitness world has overtime kind of depicted as like, “You have to be spending, you know, X amount of hours in the gym and meal prepping and doing this and doing that”

I think there’s a lot of that still lingering in a lot of women’s minds like, “Okay, in order to achieve XYZ, I need to put in this many hours” and it’s not true because I think we just really forget about the most fundamental parts of living healthy and that could be, you know, drinking your water or getting too sleep at a decent hour of going outside and getting some fresh air and going for walks and everybody has time for that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, yeah, you’re right and you know it’s funny because when we think about the gym, right? We think that’s where I can exercise, right? But health is not just exercise, you’re 100% right. Health is actually sleeping well. It’s being calm, it’s de-stressing yourself, decluttering. Health is in every aspect of your life, right? Like, a healthy relationship is going to get you to the gym.

A healthy job, like, you know, like, thinking about your life holistically and seeing where you can amp up the health aspect of those components is how I feel like we should think about time and space and who we are. I feel, you know, my wife really brought that to my attention as well, like you know…

I’m an artist, I’m a creative, I’m an entrepreneur so I do a lot of things in my head, of course, right? But also I’m a creative, I like making things but the one big aspect I was unhealthy in was taking care of my body, right? And it’s like if you don’t take care of this temple, who will and when, you know? And it just really resonated.

So once I started like, this is my personal perspective by the way, right? Look, once I started integrating like, “Okay, actually, health is the number one priority because if I don’t prioritize that then everything else will suffer” and what does health mean? You know, eating as best as I can.

It doesn’t have to be perfect, right? Like you said, no meal prep, no whatever, but as best as we can get it. You know, exercise, exercise as often and as long as you can. Like, do what you can but don’t not do it, you know? And that’s the beauty, I think of that mind shift and I love that you started us off with a mindset with your book and I think it’s just so powerful.

Finding Your MindsetRobyn Shaw: Absolutely and I think a big part of that like you said is, shifting your expectations and what you actually want, like, a lot of this, I mean, in the title, it’s sustainable weight loss and sustainable wellness and that is one of the key words I think and probably one of the key words in everything we do is sustainability because I mean, let’s be real here.

You can, if you want results and results being, I don’t know, you want to lose 10 pounds and you want to get leaner, you want to get stronger, whatever, yeah. By all means, go spend hours in the gym, go meal prep, go count your macros, go do all of those things where if we neglect the foundation again and that goes back too what you were talking about just now is like, your health.

If you’re not working from the ground up, which is you know, one of the five sections of this book is really working from the ground up and laying that foundation for yourself and any results that you see doing just those, you know, two things, going to the gym, meal prepping, they’re likely going to be temporary.

I always say to like, you know, everybody I’ve talked to is like, your workouts and you know, your food, what you actually put in your mouth are two small pieces of the puzzle, right? And it is the mindset, the spirituality, the self-care, the way that you think about yourself, the way that you think about yourself, the way that you talk to yourself.

Those small habits, like we already kind of touched on briefly, getting outside, going for walks, being social, like all of these things that make up a true healthy lifestyle is what’s going to ultimately carry you through to that sustainability. So yeah, I think like, I really love what you’re saying there and that is totally, totally relatable to the book I’m sure.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: It’s really profound. I mean, growing up, you know, I’m a Muslim. So like, a lot of my dad’s like, sharing of knowledge was around these beautiful quotes and around health and around…not that fully. If my dad was here, I was not healthy but like from the idea of like, he was a father, an artist, you know, creative, very spiritual. To him, he was healthy in that realm, right?

So I believe, like he said this thing all the time and I’m not sure if we came from like the prophet Mohammed or the Quran to be honest with you but I used to say that health is your crown. It’s like Shahataj, which is literally the health is your crown and so you define that how you want but that’s what makes you, you know, this benevolent being, you know, this existing, right? When someone doesn’t have health or laying in the hospital bed or whatever it is, God forbid, anything like that happens, the one thing you want in that moment is your health.

Robyn Shaw: Is you’re healthy, yup.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. And so…

Robyn Shaw: And I heard, I don’t know if you know, David Meltzer, you know? I don’t know if you know the movie, Jerry Maguire and that whole move was off of his life and so I had the chance of listening to him speak and he said, you know, one of his quotes that he said and I remember writing it down was, “If you don’t have health, you have like one wish” right? And that’s what we just talked about to have your health.

If you have your health, you can have all the wishes and desires and what’s in the world and I think like, yeah, it’s so true and you don’t realize really what you have until yeah, you’re put in the situation and that’s what we see a lot of times. Women coming to us in a situation where they’re like, “Oh dang, I’ve developed high blood pressure, high cholesterol tied to diabetes.” “I’m you know, the pandemic happened to me.”

Which has happened to so many people in terms of you know, health declining over the past couple of years and so yeah and then they realized like, “Oh man, now I’m at a point where that’s all I care about, that’s really all I care about” and I love what you said and what your father said, you know, about wearing your health as a crown. As soon as you said that, like, what I think about is like, being proud of your health, like wearing it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes.

Robyn Shaw: With pride.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Wearing it as a crown, yes.

Robyn Shaw: Yeah and taking like full ownership of your health is kind of the first thing that I thought about when you said that and that is also a huge conversation that we tend to have regularly with our members is, “Hey, like, yeah, diet culture sucks” and it has done a lot of harm to a lot of people in the sense of, you know, over restriction and overworking and unsustainable results and all these things.

Like we know diet culture has done some harm but don’t forget that you know, diet culture has also led us to be a little bit more conscious and self-aware of the actions that we are doing to take care of ourselves. So you know, we have a lot of women who have been hurt by diet culture. They have some not eating disorders but disorder tendencies. You know we always kind of outsource anything to source it out to somebody else but if they have kind of disorder tendencies, it is usually because I should say they have a long history of yoyo dieting for example, right?

Or the fad dieting or going all in and then you know, all out and stuff like that and so I think when they finally get to us and they’re ready to really take a more sustainable approach, they’re almost afraid to talk about the fact that they are on another program because they say like, “Oh, I don’t want to be associated with dieting and diet culture” and da-da-da. While I get it and while I totally am empathetic towards that, I always try and push them in the direction of it’s never shameful for you to be taking care of yourself.

You should be wearing your health and the actions you are taking towards your health with a sense of pride because you will be that beacon of light for somebody else who’s also been hurt by diet culture and maybe is having a hard time pulling themselves out of that as well. So that’s just yeah, what I was kind of thinking about when you said wearing as crown. I really, really like that image.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, I appreciate that and you really painted that image so well by sort of textualizing it a little bit more for us. I just appreciate that so much and it’s again, thinking about health holistically, it is something I feel like I’ve grown into. It’s not something I used to think about, right? The different people and the different ideas that I have been able to kind of tap into. I started falling in love with running.

I started falling in love—like I started going boxing and like just taking a class and it is just so—it feels so good on my body that then when I am creative or when I am doing something else, again, I am bringing that health along with me, right? So like after a boxing session, I am calm like you can’t bother me because I am exhausted.

Robyn Shaw: Exactly, oh my god and that’s it and I think like—

Hussein Al-Baiaty: But feeling so good like my mind is so just filled with that energy, so I can bring that again. I didn’t mean to cut you off to my conversation with my wife to you know, a call with my mom, whatever it is, right? So I just love that approach so much.

Robyn Shaw: Oh yeah and I think like what you are saying is so important too because like the point of, you know, I am a bit of a health nut. I’m a fitness nut. Yeah, I love spending time in the gym. I still coach CrossFit like I will always be somebody that spends a lot of time in the gym and coaches CrossFit and does it like that’s just who I am but that doesn’t mean by any means that this book or my practice or the content that I put out or what I am preaching is trying to get you or anybody to become that person.

Because what I think you’re saying is so important that your health practice, your whatever, like you know, your healthy living, your healthy habits, everything that you practice for the betterment of your health ultimately is to enhance the other things that you care about more, right? So whatever it is and for you and me, it is that creativity, you know, the painting whatever it is. For somebody else, it could be their job.

You know we have a lot of women who have a very important role in their job and it means a lot to them. We have some women who do also own their own business and that is very important to them. We have a mom who is obviously their kids are important to them and so really what we do is identify those things and really make those things the focus and use those things as their why.

Because I think establishing an important reason why for starting a health journey is one of the first, first steps because if your why is, “Oh, I want to lose 20 pounds or I want to fit into a pair of jeans” those are all very fleeting things, right? Like okay, you step on the scale and you see 20 pounds lost and you are happy for the moment but then what happens when you go out for dinner and need a high sodium meal and you are bloated and all of a sudden, you’re one you know, 19 pounds gone.

Are you going to be upset about that? So usually the case is yes and it derails them and so I think like where we’re coming from is establish a reason why that is so connected to who you are as a person like what makes you, you. For you, it’s your creativity. It is your art, it is your practice, it’s the entrepreneurial spirit that you have and all of these things. For somebody else, it could be their kids like motherhood, that means the most to them.

So like using that and then using health and all of these healthy practices and habits and whatever to make that so much better is really the angle that we are trying to come at it from.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I’m so glad you went there too because it just helps that picture just come to life more because you know it is important to remember not only why you’re starting but like connecting it to a deep emotional state, you know, a person or a place or a thing that can really ground us and remind us and that reminder is so crucial when things are hard when you don’t want to go do the work out or you don’t want to eat healthy at that moment.

Sometimes it’s okay to just indulge and then kind of get back to remembering but I am just really glad that you brought that up. What would you say like, you know, throughout writing and I know you’re a person that trust the process. You know, you talk about that in your book, this idea of trusting the process because you may not see the results you’re looking for, you know? You can start to see those results differently, right?

Like you said, it is not necessarily just the pounds on the scale but perhaps how you are now in your relationship? How do you feel when you come out of work or go into work, right? Like the test to whatever good you’re getting out of working out, where are you applying that? Where does it actually matter and if it lines up with where it actually matters and you are doing the right thing and I think that’s so powerful.

But since you’re trusting the process and I know we have a pretty rigorous process at Scribe as far as you know, the process of creativity, right? Trusting that things will come together, what would you say is the most difficult part about bringing your knowledge to this book? The writing journey if you will.

The Writing JourneyRobyn Shaw: That’s a good question. My writing journey I think was the most challenging part. I wrote this book like three times before it actually came to like a manuscript that I wanted to submit to Scribe and a big part of that for me was the most challenging part and you can probably relate to this maybe like let’s bring it back to art and painting for a second because I feel like I have been through this before when I was in art school trying to put together like my final kind of thesis, you know, body of work.

You have hundreds of paintings, right? You are taking a look at hundreds of these paintings and trying to put them, you know, choose ones that are going to work together, speak to one another and you know, are pretty cohesive that can stand alone as one body of work, right? So you are starting to narrow down all of these years and you know, blood, sweat and tears and smaller pieces of art and then create something new out of it.

That’s really exactly the same thing that happened with this book. I’ve had, you know, hundreds of blog posts, so many pieces of writing and thoughts and ideas and you know, three years of myself like developing as a coach but also years of going through my own personal health journey, all these things and so when it came to me being like, “You know what? I have written so much. How do I put this together and something that’s just going to read nicely as one book?”

That was honestly the most challenging part and so I started kind of like compiling all of these different blog post that meant the most to me and that made the most sense and then really putting all of those into these five pillars that are now the book was challenging, yeah, but then you know, taking the pieces that existed already, starting to add a new text and tie them all together, put it all into one body of art in my opinion or you know, a piece of work, whatever you want to call it like that was really interesting.

I guess it was a nice way to yeah, bring it back to something I had already experienced before in art school. So I think that was a big challenge but really one that I was super stoked about to be honest.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: You see Robyn, I told you, everything it connects back to that painting in art school. I am telling you, it all connects back to the canvas. No, it’s amazing. I just appreciate your able to like just connect the layers very well for our audience and I think you know, you bring such a visual representation of how we see our health and how we could see our self in a healthy way.

You know, you tapped in this a little bit earlier too. It is just, you know, how we talk to our self has to be the most—the beginning of all of these health elements because it is sometimes, I don’t know, it sometimes feel like you don’t deserve to have a healthy body, mind, spirit, you know, all of these things like the lack of deservedness, right? That we give so much of ourselves away to our world and in our work and those kinds of things.

But I love that your book really puts us back into the perspective of—from our perspective living from our needs.

Robyn Shaw: You are in the driver’s seat. I mean, you said that like take full ownership of it, right? Because it’s your journey.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Can you share a little bit about perhaps like a specific client that you have been working with and notice the transformation in them but more importantly, what transformed within you?

Robyn Shaw: That’s a good question. That is a really good question and you said something already that I can tie it back to, which was you know, when you are talking about trusting the process and results and stuff like that, that’s been a big journey for me as well to help my clients start to measure their success or progress in different ways and so let me kind of explain myself here.

I guess coming from a CrossFit background, I used to be a competitive swimmer, you know, trained as an athlete for a long time, coached a swim team then coached CrossFit like you get into that kind of like sports-specific training and your results and progress are very, you know, it comes down to the weight that you are lifting or the time you swam 50 meters or yes, the number on the scale or your body fat percentage or it is like numbers.

A lot of numbers, right? So I think that’s given me a big appreciation for that objective data to help really map out like use that objective data as a compass, as a guide to like show us if we are moving in the right direction or not.

So there’s that but then there was a point over like me developing as a coach and working with more busy women and I started to transition out of sports-specific training and working with athletes and started to work with more of like the weekend warrior, the busy mom, the new mom like all these like new types of women that I found especially when we transitioned from being in-person coaching to online.

Then, I really had to learn how to help these people identify their success that was not the number on the scale because you know, I would and we went through a tough period where it’s like all my clients are coming to me where they only see X amount of weight loss on a scale and they are frustrated, right? That happens or a pair of jeans they expected to fit into didn’t and again, they’re kind of frustrated.

So for me, I was like, “Well, oh dang” there is a period of time there was like, “Oh dang, these numbers are not lining up to the expectations of this woman. How do I help them feel better about their progress then?” So you know, very quickly had to take a look at their productivity, their energy levels, their relationship that they were having with their kids, the amount of steps they were getting in a day, how much time they were spending outside.

The quality of their food, right? Like were you eating less takeout, are you drinking less pop? All of these other like there is so many more things that matter in my opinion now more than these numbers that I was so focused on for so long, just coming from that background. So I think I didn’t answer your question in the sense of one specific client because that’s happened a couple of times but yeah, there has definitely been that transition of you know, women coming to me.

They are frustrated with their lack of progress or the little progress that they had and now from the very beginning like what I have learned to do is from the very beginning of a coaching journey, if a client comes to me, we from the very start layout expectations and talk about all of them like a plethora of areas in their life that they can have progress and what matters to them the most, right?

So, “Yeah, I want more energy” or “Yeah, I want to have a better relationship with my husband” or I want whatever it is, right? So I think that’s been a really amazing growth, that’s been an amazing growth for me as a coach really helped just opened up our eyes and my eyes and the eyes of my clients to what really, really matters in your progress and that is not to belittle the want and desire to be a certain weight or fit in, you know?

But I think it is just expanding expectations, expanding the possibilities and opportunities of our progress and growth.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: You know, I feel like life in it of itself is an obstacle course, right? I think you know, however one perceives that, whenever you build up your athleticism to, it’s like be fit for the task at hand, which is living life and if you live life with four kids and you got a hectic job and there is things but you know, you enjoy a good portion of it and you need to work on some other parts, it is really just being honest with yourself and saying, “You know, how can I level up so that I can enjoy all of these things in a way that I haven’t before?”

It is looking at yourself and saying, “You know, I can and I am able to do these things but how can I and who could help me get there?” right? It’s people like you that make those differences in people’s lives and I am just appreciative of you sitting down, writing this freaking book even though it took you many tries but that’s the thing, right? It comes from the canvass, it comes from building your body to the way that you want and your health the way you want.

You know, it takes repetition, it takes time and I am glad the book showed you no mercy in a way.

Robyn Shaw: Yeah, oh, I know. I love it. Oh, it’s been a really fun process. Yeah, anyway that’s so awesome. I appreciate that.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. So tell me if there was one thing you wish the reader walks away with from your book, what would that one thing be?

Robyn Shaw: Oh man, like it could be like one action and there is so many little bits of like actionable kind of things to kind scattered in the book and if you can put down the book and have one clear action item that you feel so a 110% confident that you can execute if not daily, regularly for life and that really could be again, “I’m going to drink more water. I am going to get outside for 10 minutes in the morning.”

I am going to meditate for five minutes every day, I mean, whatever it is, right? And there is so many little things that you can choose from kind of scattered throughout the book but if you are able to put that book down and start acting for yourself on yourself, then that to me is a huge win because it’s in my opinion, it’s not about the elaborate strategic plan that’s going to get you from point A to point B and all of the time.

That it’s really about, “Okay, what can I do today that’s going to help me be a little bit better?” because if you can do that, there is no way that you can’t move forward.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Robyn, I learned so much today. Thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences with me today. I really appreciate it. The book is called, Hustle but Healthy: The Five Pillars of Sustainable Wellness and Weight Loss for the Busy Woman. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you Robyn?

Robyn Shaw: I’m all over the place. I am on social media. So the best place to probably find me would be on social media @hustlebuthealthy on Instagram and TikTok. I have an amazing group of people on there and then BODZii is the name of my coaching company. So www.bodzii.com is where you can find a lot of information about yeah, what we’re actually doing and how our coaching process works.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that. Thanks again for coming on the show. I appreciate you. Congratulations on your book. I wish you nothing but pure healthy success.

Robyn Shaw: I appreciate you. Thank you so much.

The post Hustle but Healthy: Robyn Shaw appeared first on Author Hour.

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We all have demons, whether yours are alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling or something else entirely, it doesn’t matter. My next guest shows us in his new book, how he built an exceptional life for himself despite struggling with poverty and addiction.

Welcomed back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined today by author Kelly Siegel, who is here to talk about his new book, Harder Than Life: Overcoming Poverty, Addiction and Violence. Let’s flip through it.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Hello my friends, welcome back to the Author Hour show. I’m here with my good friend, Kelly Siegel and we just got done chatting a little bit pre-recording and I’m honestly, Kelly, man, I’m just excited to have you on the show and really dive into not only your story but your new remarkable book that’s going to be doing some extra good. But thanks for coming on the show today, Kelly.

Kelly Siegel: Thanks for having me, I bet you say that to all the authors.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: I mean, hey look, man, I do my best around here, okay? I do my best.

Kelly Siegel: That’s good enough, my friend.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Absolutely, the book is called, Harder Than Life, but I really want to go into the depth of this thing but before we do that without getting too far into the weeds, can you just give our audience a general sort of personal background of where you grew up? Maybe perhaps a person or two that inspired you to get on the path that you’re on now and then we’ll get into the weeds of things.

Kelly Siegel: Yeah, I grew up in Eight Mile in Vandyke in Warren, Michigan. The eight mile is that eight mile from you know, the movie with Eminem, very similar upbringing. I went to high school for a year with Eminem, I lived two streets away from his daughter’s mother my entire upbringing and you know, it was a… for a lack of a better word, kill or be killed. It was fight or flight, you know, where’s your next meal going to come from? Parents, alcoholic parents, basically raising yourself.

So it was all you ever knew and that was normal. I was… I hired a guy at my new company at my IT company, National Technology Management, several years ago and he wrote a real small little pamphlet book about his life and I said, “Man, this guy works for me and he took the time out of his day to write a book”. It was interesting, he’d actually been shot twice and I was like, “This is a computer geek and he’s got this interesting story.”

I said, “Man, my story is much more compelling than this and I should write a book” and he’s like, “You should write a book.” Then the pandemic came and I was like, “You know what? I might do it right now,” so that motivated me to do it. I had no clue it would be so cathartic and so… it brought so many emotions and really, I just… I learned so much.

The healing process through writing the book was amazing. There were times that I would be writing and I would just break out in tears and it just… sometimes, I’d have to call my sister and say, “Did that really happen?” and she would tell me more things. She’s like, “Oh, is that all you remember?” My sister was eight years older than me, so she remembers things more clearer than I did.

And it’s just… I want to create an awareness that no matter what life gives you, you can turn into something good and that’s what I did. I want to remind people, a portion of every dollar is going to be donated to charity. This is just more for giving back. “Hey man, I made it, I’m here, I’m alive, against all odds.”

I could have been a victim, I could have sat back and cried and said, “Whoa was me” but I didn’t. I use it as a chip on my shoulder and made something of my life and now, we’re going to write a big check to charity on the back of writing the book, the podcast and speaking engagements.

Facing The UncomfortabilityHussein Al-Baiaty: Hey man, that’s so powerful. Again, before we got on the recording, I was chatting with you and I told you there’s so much of your story that really resonates with me and it was so deep, especially how you’ve taken this story and decided to bring an awareness to some charitable work but of course, helping others. That’s really the big thing and I love that you decided to take the time to write your story, to inspire others because every story has something unique, right?

We could have gotten — again, Eminem grew up down the street from you, different story. You grew up on the other side of those tracks, different story. We all have stories but we all have something to contribute in how we can share those stories and how we can inspire other people.

So I love that, I’m grateful that you took the time because I can’t agree with you more on how cathartic it is to write a memoir type of story where you’re really just pouring your heart into it. So you take us into the book right away and you take us — you drop me into this event that really sort of shaped your life.

How did your experiences at the Full Moon party in Thailand and the events that followed shape your perspective on addiction and excess? Because I know these are things that you grew up with, with your mother and father ebbing addicted to multiple kinds of things. Can you talk to us a little bit about that experience and how reflecting back made you realize what you wanted to do in the future?

Kelly Siegel: Well, I was 30 years old at the time and it was super expensive to go to Thailand. So that was… and it was a 22-hour planed ride, you had to catch three different planes to get there and a group of guys went and I’m like, “I’ll go” and it was the time of my life but it was very eye-opening. I wish I would have used that opportunity to get clean and sober then.

I knew something was wrong, something was off because the amount of drinking. I mean, we did the hangover, the movie Hangover, before the Hangover ever came out. Ever single place that they showed, I visited. From that rooftop bar where they arrested — what’s the guy’s name? It was where the rooftop where they arrested the gentleman that’s the main character of the show to all of the clubs and everything, I was there.

It was amazing but I spent three weeks there and I barely remember any of it because I wasn’t coherent. I was drinking or doing drugs and I missed out on the whole darn thing and luckily, there was bombs exploding, there was a revolution going on, they shut the city down and luckily, we escaped unharmed but I was so drunk, I didn’t even care.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, so talk to me a little bit about where that excess started, you know? Because I know that was heavily influenced by the people you grew up around. Can you share a little bit about that?

Kelly Siegel: Yeah, my stepfather, man, he used to say to me — I remember this. I love doing this because you remember things that you forgot in the book but my stepfather was saying to me, “I do my best work when I’m hung over.” So that was his ritual. Every single day, drink, leave work, go drink until he got hammered, come home and you know, you got happy drunk and he had me playing records and that was the weird way of feeling loved.

Or you got mean angry drunk and he came home beat on you or worse yet, start off happy drunk and then turn into angry drunk because whatever clicks in his head and then my mom would come home later than him. So you had a double whammy because they didn’t drink together because they would get in fights.

So that behavior was taught, man. This is what you do, this is normal and they would rinse and repeat every single day. So naturally, my sister and me went right in the footsteps. Luckily, several years later, I had an “enough is enough”. I drank all the fun out of alcohol and now, I’m here to write a book about how — really just creating awareness that if you’re drinking to excess. And I’m not talking, you know, one or two glasses of wine here and there.

If you’re drinking to excess to where you’re getting drunk on a regular basis, then you need to look inside your life and figure out what’s going on and why you’re doing it. It’s much cheaper, it’s much simpler, it’s better for the freaking universe if you just address those demons. We will do anything as humans to avoid discomfort including pollute ourselves to excess instead of just sitting in our feelings.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah. So talk to me about that man because you described it so well throughout your book, you know, so when you were 30, you had this epiphany, you sort of woke up and not only just missed out on what you feel like is a trip of a lifetime but you were just kind of drunk through it but then you kind of woke up during that moment as well. So from waking up and then moving on, what are the changes that you started applying to yourself to really get healthy again?

Kelly Siegel: Oh, well, if you read the book, I didn’t have an epiphany there. I went 13 more years of rocking it out until I decided to give it up. So I had moments of clarity saying, “This isn’t normal, nobody should be able to drink this much, nobody should want to drink this much, this is unhealthy.” I was getting back to my hotel room, don’t remember how I got there. It was just dangerous, flat-out dangerous.

I’m on a third-world country, just making stupid decisions. So I proceeded to rocking out for 13 more years and then just eventually, I just said, “Okay, enough is enough.” I’m in and I wrote about it, I was in another party atmosphere for New Year’s Eve. It was end of 2018, beginning 2019. I’m in Key West, Florida, just having the time of my life again and I said, “I’m done, I’ve had enough, I’m tired, I’m going to take 90 days off” and I cheers a bunch of people in Duval Street, drank my drink and walked out and took 90 days off.

I said, “This is great, I feel good, I’m going to do another 90 days” and after that, was July 4th and I said, “I’m just done, I feel too good to go back.” And then, the real work started where I started feeling all these emotions. Everything that I was trying to mask, I learned the reason why I was drinking and it was not easy and that was sitting in the feelings, the uncomfortability and getting through it and I did it through a litany of different methods.

By therapy, hypnotherapy, meditating, journaling, working out and you got to remember, this was during the pandemic. So it made it extra hard because you couldn’t leave your house. So hey, you know what? Everything happens for you, not to you. So it made it a little bit easier because everybody was home. I was curled up in a ball crying because I didn’t know what I didn’t know, 43 years of coping with my not good enough-ness, my “I don’t deserve love” with alcohol, that’s how I coped. Every single weekend, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and every other Sunday, that’s what I did.

Reaching the Person You Want To BeHussein Al-Baiaty: Yeah, that’s so powerful man but the direction that you started to take was really, the transformation, right? That moment of, “I think I’ve tapped out and I’m going to try this 90 days.” Then you decided to do it again but with that time, this is what’s crazy, right?

When we start to really indulge in just practicing the avoidance of or just the obstinance of whatever we’ve tied to our emotions, then now, you can really feel these emotions. You got to understand them in a way that you probably never have or at least, just sit with them like you just said and of course, try to get the help that you need to kind of get through it.

And so you know, I love this because this is a very important message and I want to talk about not just what inspired you to write this book, because obviously, that’s pretty straight forward but who are you specifically trying to reach with your message? Because this is a very powerful one. There’s a lot of people out there that struggle with all kinds of addictions.

But tell me, is there any specific group of people that — is it entrepreneurs with addiction? Can you be a little specific about who you’re trying to reach?

Kelly Siegel: I love this question Hussein, thank you for asking it. It is so… I’m seeing two groups of people gravitate towards the podcast and to our daily post of positivity and it’s… the first group makes me excited. It’s the young people, the traditional TikTokers, you know, the 13 to 30-year-olds but really, it’s like the 13 to 25-year-olds, who are just coming into the adolescence and figuring out the world and trying to figure out what’s cool, what’s not and they’re hearing the message and they’re watching me build my body and if you see the picture on the front of the book, I’m a muscular man.

I have a six pack at 47, I’m disciplined as all can be. So say, “Wait a minute, here’s someone who is excelling in life that chooses not to drink or do drugs and sits in their feelings” and also I don’t care what anybody thinks or says about me, both positive or negative. I get all of my validation internally, not externally. It makes me very excited to see young people gravitate towards my message because in today’s world, they all want to get their likes on TikTok and Facebook and Instagram and they’re looking to impress everybody externally, internally.

So I’m seeing a big portion of the young people that I want to catch them early before it’s too late and then, you fast-forward to the next group of people, which is the 30 pluses to 30 to let’s say 50, where they look in the mirror and they’re just not happy with the person they see in the mirror. That could be a housewife or it could be an entrepreneur but specifically, it will resonate with an entrepreneur because you’re taught that every day drinking is normal around work.

I get that question all the time, “How do you own a business and do networking functions and not drink?” very easily, you just don’t. I think I just because I would leave those functions and all I would worry about was where might my next drink come in and I wasn’t even there present. That’s the big point about being clear and sober as you’re present and you’re actually paying attention to the person that is in front of you and curious and as you saw before we hit record, I want to know all about you, Hussein.

I want to know all about the person in front of me, I am curious about people. In the past when I was drinking, I just cared about the next drink, the next party, what’s going on next and how can we take it to excess. So I know that wasn’t specific but really, when they say people aren’t happy with themselves, it’s when the version of who they want to be and who they are, are far away from each other.

So if the person you want to be and the person you are very far away, this is the person that needs to read the book because that’s how I was. I hated the person in the mirror and believe me, the second I stopped drinking and drugging, that person that I wanted to be and the person I was got closer and closer and closer and now, I’m proud to say that through all of these, if I died tomorrow, I am comfortable with who I am, I love who I am and I’m a good person.

Hussein Al-Baiaty: Beautiful man, I love that. Well said, Kelly. In your book, you mentioned that your love for your daughter was the ultimate sort of motivation for you to quit using. Can you tell us a little bit about that, fatherhood and how family plays a role in your journey today to continue overcoming — continue keeping that in your past and really moving such a beautiful way forward?

Kelly Siegel: Writing a book came to light and I had some very interesting conversations with my sister, who is older than me. I read a book while I was writing called, Toxic Parents, and I unpacked a lot of feelings that I’d forgotten I had buried way deep in my sub-conscience and by writing the book, it all came out and I realized that’s not what I was going to do to provide for my daughter.

It just wasn’t an option any longer and I had my heart broken. That was part of it too and I just said, “You know what? All of the bad things in my life, alcohol has it’s correlated to. It wasn’t a 100% causation but every time something bad is going on, alcohol was right there hanging out. So by seeing a young woman — and that was a big thing too, my daughter, knowing if it was a son, I probably wouldn’t have been as influenced.

But I don’t want her to experience validation externally and I want to make sure she knows what it looks like to be treated like a woman with chivalry, with respect and it all starts with boundaries that she lays out. It’s something that we talk about and I tease her all the time like, “I’m so sorry that I’m your dad” because it’s a lot like – and my dad and his daughter, they talk about, “Let me tell you about you” and I do a lot of those same things.

Where I tell her how amazing she was, I tell her how I can’t love her any less no matter what, so it is truly unconditional love. Now, she gets a little spoiled because we are privileged. I have reached some level of a success financially so that she gets to ask for some expensive things and gets them and I get to spoil her but she has to work for it and she has chores and she’s just a wonderful young lady.

As I wrote in the book, we built a house in Florida from proceeds of my – of not drinking. The alcohol money went towards our new house in Florida and we get to leave the cold of Detroit and go to Florida. We spend every Christmas and New Year’s there and she’s like, “Dad—“ because I quit on New Year’s, every year she wishes me like a happy sober day and then gives me a hug and a kiss and at 12:01 goes to bed and says, “Another year down, I’m really proud of you and I love you” and that’s all I need to stay sober.