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What sparked this fire? · Share Your Fire

• John: And here we are. And it's been quite a journey to get here. This whole thing started in March of 2020. back in 2011, I had been speaking and coaching for a while on leadership. I wanted to be that knight in shining armor that was out there protecting people from themselves to help them learn to get along better with each other. I'd been observing people throughout from all walks of life throughout my career. I was a bullied kid in school. I knew what it felt like to be made to feel like you were less than others. And so I wanted to make sure that nobody else ever was made to feel that way. In the workplace, especially, I noticed that there were a lot of people that they would take credit for other people's work, they wouldn't give people credit for for the work that they did. They made people feel like they didn't belong, or they weren't enough, or they wouldn't contribute. And that was not true. So many people had the opportunity to, or or should say, had the ability to contribute and to make a difference. And a lot of times they were held back, or they were afraid to to move out and to take chances. And so I was out to just make a difference for people, help aspiring leaders to become better leaders. I focused on things like servant leadership and emotional intelligence and all of those. Buzzwords and and and practices that helped people stay motivated, developed my own observations and my own theories and about how to stay motivated. And I said, I'm going to share this and I'm going to be out there helping people. The problem was, you know, I'd got a few gigs here and there, some speaking gigs, but they they weren't happening fast enough. The problem was nobody heard of me yet. How could I share my expertise? Or share what I've learned if nobody reaches out to me for help, so much for being that knight in shining armor. So I tried to figure out how I can get out there and be recognized for the experiences that I've been through that I could share, plus all of those things that I learned by observing others. I watched people and and observed and was subject to Behaviors that made me feel like I made a difference, that made me feel motivated, that were encouraging. I also experienced, unfortunately, those types of behaviors that were more demoralizing or belittling. And so I knew which of those behaviors I wanted to emulate and which ones I wanted to share and to help people to adopt so that we can all work better together. And by the way, This passes over on to interpersonal relationships too, not just in the workplace. So like I said, I knew which behaviors I wanted to emulate and I collected those stories about those types of behaviors, both the good behaviors and the bad ones that I wanted to use for examples. And so I got out there on on social media. but really the first thing I did was back in 2011, the Blogs were all the rage. There were blogs all over the place. So I said, I'm going to start a blog. And I called up I started a blog called Leader Notes. And through this, my focus was to not only share the things that I have learned and observed over the years, but also to tell and share some of those good news stories of other people and things that they were doing. I couldn't wait to get this out, get this thing out there. And so I started a blog, called it Leader Notes. And I'm going to read to you my introduction that I put on that the top of that page. And it says, no matter where you go, you encounter great leaders and not so great leaders. Sometimes leaders have official positions, and sometimes they're just average members of society. Each of us is a leader in the way that we have the potential to impact others around us. I thought, wow, that is really that should be impactful. that will help to get people's attention. And then to add to that, I pulled one of my favorite quotes, this one from Charlotte Joko Beck, and I used it as a subtitle of my blog. And it's, and I'm gonna read this to you as well. This is from Charlotte Joko Beck, and she says, Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need at every moment. This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light, every traffic jam. Every obnoxious supervisor, every illness, every loss, every moment of joy or depression, every addiction, every piece of garbage, and every breath, every moment is the guru. It's always inspired me as being just so incredibly profound in that we can learn so much from everything around us and everything that transpires, both the good things that happen and the bad things that happen. that everything is an opportunity for us to learn. So I said, man, this is gonna be great. I'll be able to get attention. I'll write posts that'll enlighten the world. They'll change behaviors everywhere. It will be great. So one of the first things I did was I I did a blog that highlighted kind of a negative behavior. And it was about a cruise director on a cruise ship that we had encountered. And what Happened was when we complimented the cruise director on the behaviors and the workmanship and the encounters that we had with his activity staff. Instead of accepting the compliment about his staff, instead he said they don't work half as hard as others on the ship and proceeded to complain about their performance. You don't do that. You don't do that to guests on a crew. You don't do that to your customer base, but you should never do that anyway. I thought, wow, what a classic example of really bad supervisory behavior, right? How do you not support your own people, at least publicly? So I put out this blog and I said, boy, here goes everybody's gonna find this, it's gonna be great. And I was so super, super excited. I went, wow, look at that. I've got five views already. In just a few days, I got five views on my blog. One of them was my wife. The other four were me, checking to see if anybody's read my blog post yet. hmm. Maybe that was a little discouraging, but let's keep trying. So I kept it up. And every week a new post focusing on highlighting great behaviors and not so great behaviors and using you know disappointing things as examples. And I thought This is really gonna go and I'm gonna be able to get these stories and I would research good news stories from other organizations and people who are just doing really good in the world. And I kept it up and you know what happened? Nothing. Nothing. I was like, no. I also realized I really couldn't keep up that pace I set. Weekly posting was was a little rough. So, you know, sometimes weeks would go by without a new blog post. Some then months would go by. And the blog, it still exists, but it only gets updated a couple of times a year. If I remember. But I I knew that I needed to do something. I needed to get out there. I need I had important messages to share, lessons that I've learned from observing people and from things I've encountered and things I've done in my own life that were good and bad that I wanted to share. And I thought, well, people are going to learn from this stuff. I really want to share it. So, you know, here comes Facebook and here comes Twitter and there we go. And and then of course LinkedIn. And over the years, I real I was putting out what I thought was you know amazing content. and I was building up followership and I said, this is gonna be great. People are gonna come knocking on my door. I'm gonna get a bunch of speaking gigs and all that stuff. And then it wasn't even about the gigs anymore. It was just about getting the word out there and sharing these messages. So I learned some things as I put out these deep thoughts and sometimes some photos and even cartoons and every once in a while a video. Some of the things that I learned about social media. Pictures of my cats drew more likes and comments than my most deeply motivating, educational, valuable content. I also learned that there's people out there that no matter what, they kind of like being stuck in the victim mode and they don't want to hear any positivity and they will reach out and bash and verbally bash those people who are trying to spread positivity. It happens. We call these people trolls. We know that. so I said, okay, there's gotta be, there's gotta be more to this. You know, social media we realize is very highly politicized, especially nowadays. It's a very politically charged environment. Where we live in an era where people look to lash out at one another. That made me a little frustrated. Instead of trying to help each other, we're lashing out, and I don't understand this. So here I am trying to be this knight in shining armor, you know, wielding my sword. And I realized the sword was doing no good. And I had my shield, and I realized the shield I wasn't really protecting people either. So how then can I possibly, you know, what weapon can I use to defeat these negative attitudes and spread the light of positivity? spread the light. And I realized the light of a torch. You know, I learned this from the old classic monster movies, you know, when when they were going after the monster and trying to find the monster, or trying to keep the monster at bay, their weapon of choice was a torch. And it wasn't because of the fire, it was because of the light. Because the things we fear are the things that live in darkness, the things that we don't understand, the things that they don't we don't see well. So bringing a torch and bringing the light. Helped us to illuminate what it was that we were facing. And we realized maybe our fears were not as as founded as we thought they were. So the torch became kind of my my symbol and my realization of what we needed to do. So now how do I share that light? I looked for ways that I can get out there and you know the blog and the social media still kind of kept going, but really what can I do? Podcasts. During COVID, I put I got involved in a weekly internet radio show called Business Talk Radio. I did 30 some odd episodes where I shared messages of positivity and I would research stories about people just doing really good things in the world. altruistic, beneficial things for other people. And I thought, wow, this will be great. I did 34 episodes and unfortunately there were no listeners. So I said, okay, maybe I need to go where the listeners are. And I went out there as a guest. I offered myself as a guest on podcasts. Let's talk. Ultimately I was invited as a guest on a show called Positive Talk Radio. And I really enjoyed doing that. On that show, we interviewed it was Kevin McDonald and I. We would interview people who were from all walks of life doing all kinds of things, coming surviving adversity, but mostly doing beneficial things for others. And that was really I thought this was very inspiring. It it got unwieldy to try to keep that that show going. There was a lot going on, and I said, Okay, at some point I'm gonna just get my own. show out there at a pace that I can I can keep up. And so I thought about it for a while. and I kept thinking about how I can be out there and and make a difference in some way, shape, or form. So I've been guesting on other podcasts. I got into several books. one is the Cracking The Rich Code book series. when I first got involved in that book series, I'm thinking Rich Code, well that's not me. I'm not you know the The Wall Street guy, the business investor type guy. That's not what I'm about. But I learned that that book series was focused on richness of life. And I said, you know what? I have some wes messages there. And so I got involved and wrote some chapters in several of the Cracking the Rich Code book series. And then I got a call from this guy named Robert Jones. he said, Hey, I've got a book. that I'm doing called The Art of Connection. Connection, that's what I'm all about, inner inner personal human connection. I'm doing this Art of Connection book, 365 Days of Inspirational Quotes, and I'd like you to be part of it. And so it was just, you know, 365 different authors from around the world sharing their perspective on inspiration. I said that sounds wonderful. And so I got involved in that book series because I knew that People from all around the world were going to pick up these books on inspiration. The next one was on transformation, then gratitude, and then abundance, and then more recently on resilience. People from around the world will pick these books up and they will read them. And maybe, maybe my words might make a difference for somebody. Just like the other 300 authors, 300 some odd authors in these books, those words might also make a difference for somebody. And didn't care so much whether or not. It led to a speaking gig or a coaching job. It was more about getting the word out there and sharing whatever little inspirational messages that we could. Well, of course, those books only come out once a year. And I've been on a bunch of podcasts as a guest. And I actually co host as of this recording, I co host the Cracking the Rich Code podcast where we interview authors from that series. But it's just not still, it's still not. reaching everyone that I would like to reach. So I said I need to somehow maybe start my own podcast. So here we are. The Share Your Fire podcast going forward is going to be the same mission, getting out there and spreading the light, spreading words of of wisdom that I find from others. So it's not going to be me talking. Yeah. Maybe once in a while I'll throw a little blurb out there. But the real focus, I'm going to be interviewing people from around the world who are altruistic and doing beneficial things and maybe just. You know, finding stories of people that are just doing good things for others. And I think I'm going to stay away from as much as I possibly can the negative examples of how people get along. I think we're living that every single day. What we need is a focus on the good interactions. And so that's where this focus of share your fire is going to be. I'm going to read to you. the introduction that will be on my show. Each of us has a torch, a passion burning inside that helps ignite our motivation. When it's fed, the fire spreads and helps those around us keep their own torches shining bright. Our combined light can keep any monster at bay. On this show, we will bring together people from around the world, sparks of light and glowing embers with enlightening stories of kindness, success. and overcoming adversity, fanning the flames of love, compassion, and positivity, sharing their light to help those struggling in darkness. I am John Verico and I invite you to share your fire. Stay tuned for more.