Latest / Success Matters / Wake up to Die Again with Scott Lackey
Transcript
- 0:00You and I have met people. There are people probably
- 0:02listening right now. They're waking up every day in
- 0:04their life just to die again. They're lost, they're miserable,
- 0:07they don't know anything, they don't know where to go.
- 0:09If I need outside things to make me feel whole or in alignment,
- 0:11then I need to start looking inward and fixing what that hole
- 0:14is. Start proving to yourself that
- 0:16you can trust yourself again. You're the problem and the
- 0:18solution all at one time. We all have to make a choice,
- 0:20live with it or deal with it. Scott, thank you very much for
- 0:27joining me on Success Matters. You have a book launched and
- 0:32it's got a really interesting title.
- 0:33So tell us about the book, the title, and what led you to write
- 0:38this book. You got it.
- 0:40And thank you for letting me join you on your podcast.
- 0:44I'm inspired to be here today. And so the name of the book is
- 0:47Wake Up to Die Again, and there's a subtitle Breaking Who
- 0:50You Became so You Can Be Who You're Meant to Be and.
- 0:54Wake up to die again. Is I mean that that's what
- 0:58caught my eye. Is though.
- 0:59That's what? Tell us what?
- 1:02What do you mean? Yeah.
- 1:04Quite provocative, isn't it? Very provocative, yes.
- 1:07Yeah, and, and it really has two meanings.
- 1:11And of course, readers will dig into this through 24 chapters.
- 1:14On one side of the coin, you and I have met people.
- 1:18There are people probably listening right now.
- 1:19They're waking up every day in their life just to die again.
- 1:23They're long, they're miserable. They don't know.
- 1:26They don't know, they don't know anything.
- 1:28They don't know where to go. And my book will meet them
- 1:32exactly where they are because my life, much of my life has
- 1:36been wake up to die again. And the wake up part of the
- 1:40story is I'm on the mountaintop and I can see horizon to horizon
- 1:43and the sun is in my face, only to find out later through a
- 1:48lightning strike that something was eviscerated.
- 1:51And that was me and I was at the bottom.
- 1:55And and so that's the theme that moves through the book is waking
- 2:01up to die again. So on one hand, we're
- 2:03addressing, I'm addressing directly men and women who are
- 2:07lost and don't know where to go. And I want to walk through that
- 2:10with them in the book. And on the other hand, there's
- 2:14another part of my audience and that audiences are men like you
- 2:17and myself that have grown through these pains.
- 2:20And I want to speak to people that are looking for more.
- 2:23And so, so where there's two sides of a coin that I'm
- 2:26addressing there because I've been on both.
- 2:27Sides, right. OK.
- 2:29And when you say the lightning strike, that is a metaphorical
- 2:33or was that literally you were struck by lightning on a
- 2:35mountain? Completely fair question.
- 2:38It is the opening 1 to my introduction in the book about
- 2:42lightning strikes and the way I use lightning strikes because we
- 2:45can all relate to their power and their instance that they
- 2:50occur in a millisecond. And I, I use that metaphor and
- 2:55I'm glad you asked that because that's what it feels like when
- 3:01we as human beings are hit with life's lightning strikes, right?
- 3:05When you're sitting across the desk or on the phone or video
- 3:08conference from a doctor and they deliver the diagnosis that
- 3:11you prayed would not happen. Or when the spouse walks in when
- 3:17Dan says I'm done and leave, right?
- 3:21Or being told you're fired, right?
- 3:24There's something that we've all experienced, some of us more
- 3:27than others, and events that feel like lightning strikes.
- 3:31And again, I use that metaphor because the person that you were
- 3:35one millisecond before that event, you can never return to
- 3:39again. You've been permanently changed.
- 3:42That's ultimately what I mean by lightning strike, and that's why
- 3:45I start out the very first sentence in my book in the
- 3:48introduction of defining what a lightning strike is.
- 3:50Because as you read through the 24 chapters, I'm going to share
- 3:54some lightning strikes that will not be, you know, identical to
- 3:58anybody else's journey or life, but there will be millions of
- 4:01people who identify with exactly what I talked about because of
- 4:06the authenticity and transparency of which I talked
- 4:08about. It right OK, what lightning
- 4:11strikes happened in your life to lead you to writing this book?
- 4:15Absolutely. The earliest one, and this is
- 4:19the one I start early in the early in the book talking about
- 4:22was when I was in high school. This is really when I first, I
- 4:24didn't understand what a lightning strike was.
- 4:26But this was a first significant event in my life where I
- 4:29couldn't return to who I was a few minutes ago.
- 4:31And this was triggered by people in my in my life in a short
- 4:34period of time. A particular teacher who told me
- 4:36that I was at college material and embarrassed me in front of
- 4:39my entire senior class as I had to March back to the school in
- 4:44front of everybody. A coach who sat me down and
- 4:47said, listen, if you're going to play basketball in college, I
- 4:49need to know today because I've got to start calling people.
- 4:52And that doesn't sound like anything significant.
- 4:54But if you knew me at high school, I lived life in the
- 4:57moment. I didn't think about yesterday.
- 4:59I didn't care about tomorrow. I live for today.
- 5:01I mean, literally lived in the day.
- 5:03So when he began poking holes in the future and making me think
- 5:06about it made me uncomfortable. I didn't want to think about
- 5:09going to play basketball in college.
- 5:10I was happy where I was at. And then of course, my parents,
- 5:13to round out the trifecta, set me down on the couch and wanted
- 5:17to have a family meeting. And in my family, we didn't have
- 5:19family meetings. So this was a serious moment.
- 5:22And they sat across from me in the living room and they said
- 5:24you have three choices and you can pick any one of these three
- 5:27choices in any order. You can go to college, go to
- 5:31college or go to college. And all those, those innocent,
- 5:34really it really insignificant things hit me all at one time
- 5:40and jerked me out of my life and comfort zone where I was and
- 5:44laying in bed one night panicking on what am I actually
- 5:47going to do because now I have to make a decision.
- 5:50A commercial came on television here in the United States and
- 5:53the commercial was join the United States Army.
- 5:56And it ended with the theme of be all you can be.
- 5:59We do more before 8 AM, 8:00 AM than most people do all day.
- 6:05And I set up out of bed watching helicopters and tanks go across
- 6:10the screen. And I knew instantaneously that
- 6:14that was what I was supposed to. Didn't know why I didn't know
- 6:16anything about the Army. But I went from an absolute
- 6:21abysmal misery, not what you're not knowing anything, to
- 6:25instantaneously being fulfilled with absolute certainty that I
- 6:29was supposed to go in the United States Army.
- 6:31Now that is a mild example of a lightning strike in my life.
- 6:35I'll Fast forward to many years later because this is another
- 6:39chapter in the book where I invented a product, a product
- 6:43called the Childhood Health Passport.
- 6:45My wife and I put everything we ever had into that health
- 6:48passport. It evolved into other products
- 6:51for senior citizens, adults and pets and financial.
- 6:55And the business was doing well, not perfect, but well, but well
- 6:58enough that a private equity firm took interest in our
- 7:01business plan and the private equity firm agreed that it
- 7:05should be funded because there were great things in the future.
- 7:08And so we signed an agreement and they invested $3,000,000
- 7:11into the small company. And I'll never forget that day
- 7:14because I called the bank and I didn't say anything other.
- 7:18Could you tell me my account balance?
- 7:21And when they said it, I said thank you and hung up the phone.
- 7:24I just wanted to yell. I couldn't say anything because
- 7:27I had won the Lotto. I had literally won the American
- 7:30Dream. And it was something my wife got
- 7:33to participate in. Other family members were
- 7:35involved. You know, and matter of fact,
- 7:38that day I, I, we boarded a plane and went to Cancun, Mexico
- 7:42to celebrate for four days. Right.
- 7:45Came back, went to work and almost six months to the day in
- 7:50a board meeting, my fellow investors and board members said
- 7:55we need to take a right turn. And as the president, company
- 7:59and the management team who said we're going straight, we built
- 8:02this, we invented the company, we're going straight.
- 8:06And that was when I got my first lightning strike of the
- 8:08difference between power and control.
- 8:11I had power to make decisions. They had control in the company
- 8:14and they fired me and took everything and left me with all
- 8:16the personal guarantees. And I was financially
- 8:18eviscerated with my pregnant wife and 2 1/2 year old son.
- 8:23So the person I was that morning going into work no longer
- 8:28existed. No longer existed.
- 8:30I mean wiped out. So those two examples are easy
- 8:35examples for a listener to go. I clearly understand lightning
- 8:38strikes and that didn't happen to me, but I've got my own.
- 8:40Yeah, absolutely. We, we, we all have our own.
- 8:44And, and sometimes it can be like as you said, said with,
- 8:48yeah, your, your childhood or, or teenage years where it's not
- 8:53necessarily a thing that you recognize as a lightning strike
- 8:56per SE. Like you're going to, you know,
- 8:59you're going to decide I'm going to play basketball or not in
- 9:02college or that sort of thing. But it does does change you,
- 9:06right? It does change you.
- 9:06It can be a little thing or a big thing like you just explain.
- 9:10And of course, health, health is usually one of the biggest
- 9:13lightning strikes as we have, as you said, around that.
- 9:17So what's, you know, you're taking your business and, and
- 9:22the, the fact that they got rid of you, they left you with all
- 9:26the personal guarantees, all the debt that you had said you would
- 9:29pay off personally. How did you pick yourself up
- 9:32from that? And what did you do to, you
- 9:34know, get your life back on track?
- 9:36Yeah, you know, it it's going to, it's not going to sound
- 9:39romantic by any means. And I write about this in great
- 9:43detail in the book. And you know, this is just one
- 9:45chapter in the book. And I'm emphasizing that because
- 9:49most people when they have an event like this, could write an
- 9:52entire book about 1 chapter of their life.
- 9:55And I took a different route in that I wanted to tell more of a
- 9:59life story arc because our journeys more about our life,
- 10:04not individual events. Right?
- 10:06Yeah. And so I, I say that to circle
- 10:08back to answering your question, how do you recover from that is
- 10:12I don't know that I did recover well for a long time because I
- 10:14had all of the expected emotions of rage and anger and
- 10:19frustration and fear and lack of motivation and disappointment
- 10:23and shame. And you just, you just run
- 10:25through all of the, the buffet of emotions.
- 10:30And I went through every single one of them at various times.
- 10:33But you can't live off of that. Now some people do, I know
- 10:37people that are, you know, in their 40s and 50s and 60s that
- 10:40are still carrying anger with them from their wrongs, from God
- 10:44knows what, right. So I, I shouldn't say you can't
- 10:47live with it. You can live with it, but it'll
- 10:49eat you from the inside like a cancer over time and you'll
- 10:51regret it eventually. So, So what I ended up doing is
- 10:54I had to make a choice. We all have to make a choice,
- 10:57live with it or deal with it. And the choice for me was to
- 11:01turn around and face all of the lies that my brain was telling
- 11:06me, that voice inside our head was telling me, and turn around
- 11:08and face that and say, you know what?
- 11:10I would have just walked through all of this.
- 11:12Tell me all the things one more time that you think are true.
- 11:16And the more I went through that, the more I started
- 11:18listening to these voices going, you know, that's not true.
- 11:23That's not true. And so when I started
- 11:25reconciling those things, it actually led me to a place where
- 11:29I had a memory of, wait a minute, how did we start this in
- 11:32the 1st place? I went back to the beginning.
- 11:34How did all this get started? And, and so the, you know, the,
- 11:39I felt like this idea was given to me as a gift from God, a
- 11:43thought that was placed in my head sitting in a neonatal
- 11:46intensive care unit at Children's Hospital in Fort
- 11:49Worth, TX. That's, that's where the idea
- 11:50came to me. And I didn't implement it for
- 11:52years later. But when I went back and
- 11:54revisited how this idea came to me, my ultimate reconciliation
- 11:59was 2 words, stewardship versus control.
- 12:05And the whole time I was running the business with the team and
- 12:11leading up to it, I had this mindset of ownership.
- 12:14I own this, this is me. I created this, Megan.
- 12:19There were other people involved in the business, but this is me
- 12:21and you talking, right? So, so that was this mindset
- 12:25that I had. And I look back on it and go,
- 12:28wait a minute, this was given to you.
- 12:29If you really believe this was given to you, then that's called
- 12:31stewardship, Scott. And when you're giving
- 12:34stewardship over something, it may come, it may go, it
- 12:37shouldn't matter because stewardship is not ownership.
- 12:41That was a massive reconciliation because I
- 12:43accepted that it was stewardship.
- 12:45And so granted, I didn't like how it was moved.
- 12:48That was my choice on how I reacted, right?
- 12:51It's another thing we, we talked about in the world.
- 12:52It should never be about what happens.
- 12:54It should always be about how you respond.
- 12:57And I responded poorly, right? And so that that ultimate
- 13:01reconciliation then happened to weeks and months, but that
- 13:04ultimate reconciliation, that it was stewardship, not ownership,
- 13:07that that's where the gifts actually came from this.
- 13:11So do you, do you apply that to everything now in your life that
- 13:16you that, yeah, whatever it is, whether it's your relationship,
- 13:21whether it's, you know, the, the home you live in or a business
- 13:25you're running now that it's a gift that's been given to you
- 13:28and you're a steward of it? Or do you still sometimes fall
- 13:31into that kind of ownership part of it life?
- 13:34The answer is both, but it is rarely the second the ladder
- 13:38because I am human and, and we are, we are going to continue to
- 13:41make mistakes. But I find some of these
- 13:44mistakes are much more shallow than they were in my earlier
- 13:47life or I catch them earlier, if you will.
- 13:50So no, but I do. That did carry forward with me,
- 13:52not perfectly, but it did carry forward with me.
- 13:55And I look at everything as stewardship.
- 13:56My health is an example. I'm a steward of that, right?
- 13:59I don't control that. I influence it, but I'm a
- 14:01steward of that and my relationship with my wife and my
- 14:05son and my daughter, right? And I take great pride in making
- 14:09sure that, that, that is a family first is taking care of
- 14:12my neighbors. I, I try to stewardship that
- 14:14relationship, right? Or my colleagues.
- 14:16I, I take, I, I try to be very mindful of doing those things.
- 14:19And everybody I interact with or things that I'm personally
- 14:22involved with is having a stewardship mindset.
- 14:24And the, and the way I look at it is, is like, it's like an
- 14:27open hand, right? If you put your hand into a
- 14:29bucket of water and try to squeeze a handful of it, the
- 14:32more you squeeze, the less you have.
- 14:34And so, so that mindset of stewardship to me as an open
- 14:37hand, right, The bird's free to fly if the bird's free to fly,
- 14:41right? Yeah.
- 14:42And, and so, but but yes, and, and, and later in in my life or
- 14:45throughout my life, there have been events, and I write about
- 14:47some of them in the book, actually, where I felt like a
- 14:53possession or an asset or a liability where you want to look
- 14:56at was causing me or making me think a certain way.
- 15:01And I refuse to buy it because I didn't want, I didn't want a a
- 15:08physical object to be something that made me feel whole.
- 15:13And the way I, the way I say that is, is if I can't feel
- 15:17whole as a human being in an alignment, in the absence of
- 15:21travel, a possession, a gift, a distance.
- 15:24If I can't feel whole because of something, I've got internal
- 15:27things to work on. If I need outside things to make
- 15:30me feel whole or in alignment, that I need to start looking
- 15:32inward and fixing what that hole is.
- 15:35Yeah, that's that's the. Awareness that came from that
- 15:37and. That's that's great because
- 15:39that's a large part of why I set up this podcast is right as we
- 15:43see, particularly in kind of the social media channels, people
- 15:48who have this external aspects of success right.
- 15:51The the, the, the car of the house, the whatever it is
- 15:55sitting on an aircraft. But, but it's, it's not really,
- 15:59it's not whole, right? It's not, it's not you, it's and
- 16:02it's not fulfilling. So what is that?
- 16:04What is that whole that you're filling with that that you need
- 16:07to really work on rather than, you know, that physical aspect?
- 16:12Yeah. And, and I'd love to talk about
- 16:13that because that's one of the messages that comes out in my
- 16:16book, right? And I say basically that when I
- 16:20learned that I'm not enough for myself, when I'm not enough for
- 16:25me, then I need to stop whatever it is I'm doing and do an
- 16:29examination of what is that? What is that fear?
- 16:32What is that weakness? What is that shortcoming?
- 16:34What is the vulnerability? What, what's the transparency?
- 16:38And sometimes I don't really understand what I'm wrestling
- 16:41with. I don't know why I feel this
- 16:43way. And so I, I start journaling
- 16:46about it and, and, and trying to write and just almost just vomit
- 16:49into my journal about what I'm talking about.
- 16:52And, and, and sometimes I forget what even wrote and I go back
- 16:55and read it weeks or months later and I'm like, what are you
- 16:57even talking about here? You know, But then a little gold
- 17:01nugget will come up and go, Oh, that was that little splinter in
- 17:04my finger. I couldn't get out.
- 17:06You know. Or in my mind, you know, and I
- 17:09don't want to belabor the point here, but but I have to tell you
- 17:13the story. It's it's in the book.
- 17:15I had this. Do you ride motorcycles or know
- 17:17anybody by any chance to ride the motorcycles?
- 17:20I'm not particularly familiar with motorbikes and I don't
- 17:24think any of. Mine your fellow countrymen.
- 17:26Ewan McGregor. Do you know Ewan McGregor?
- 17:28Yeah, yeah. So you inspired me when he took
- 17:32the BMW motorcycles around the world.
- 17:34And when I saw that movie, I knew one day I was going to own
- 17:39one of those BMW adventure bikes.
- 17:42And so sure enough, I bought 1 and it was it literally, I
- 17:48believe it was the most beautiful thing I've ever
- 17:50purchased in my life. And I took it on trips around
- 17:53the United States. And I came home and my soul, my,
- 17:57my kids will tell you, my parents, my wife will tell you,
- 17:59my soul was changed when I would go on these trips, right?
- 18:02I would smile for weeks. And after a year, year to know
- 18:08about two years, I guess I've lost track.
- 18:11Something came into my brain, a little voice came in my brain
- 18:15saying you have to get rid of the bike.
- 18:21Where did that come from? And I would ignore it.
- 18:25Hours, day we go by, you need to get rid of the bike.
- 18:28Scott. It's just thought just jumping
- 18:32right around in my head and and I write extensively about this
- 18:37mental process that I went through that thought and how I
- 18:42reconciled it and I sold the bike, right?
- 18:44I won't spoil why, but I sold that bike.
- 18:47That was the most beautiful thing that I'd ever purchased in
- 18:49my life. But I later found out, I think,
- 18:53why that voice came to me to sell the bike.
- 18:56That's because I always wanted to do an Iron Man and all my
- 19:01weekend time or all of my free time was spent riding that bike,
- 19:05right. OK.
- 19:07And you're not going to do an Iron Man race and you're not
- 19:09going to be a triathlete and ride BMWGS, adventure bikes
- 19:13around the United States. Those two are incompatible.
- 19:18And so this is something I talk about is in my my speeches that
- 19:25I give the principle of exchange is that I had to exchange a love
- 19:31that I had for that BMW buy for an exchange for something I
- 19:34wanted to experience with an Iron Man.
- 19:36Two of those things could not occupy the same space in my
- 19:38life. And so I get got rid of one
- 19:42thing that I did love to pursue something else that gave me even
- 19:45greater internal satisfaction on things that you can't see,
- 19:50right. I gained all these intangibles
- 19:52that you could not see through through the train for an Iron
- 19:55Man that I would have never gotten owning a BMWGS adventure
- 19:59bike. Well then I got great pleasure
- 20:00out of. But Iron Man races and Iron Man
- 20:04training took it 10X compared to them.
- 20:07So that pain of going through that exercise that I talked
- 20:10about in the book of why I made decisions without knowing the
- 20:13outcome, without knowing about Iron Man races, I talked about
- 20:15this and what a beautiful outcome it was, and I'm thankful
- 20:18for it. Yeah.
- 20:20I mean, this is how did you get this realization that there's
- 20:26these this kind of what I suppose what I'm trying to get
- 20:29at is to your point, there's lots of people who wake up every
- 20:34day to die again, right? And they're going through the
- 20:36cycle in life every single day. They don't like the job.
- 20:40They don't like what's happening in the their world, but they do
- 20:43nothing about it and they just carry on in this cycle.
- 20:47Was there a kind of a moment where you suddenly recognize it?
- 20:51Maybe you were doing the same and I need to stop and change
- 20:55that? Yeah, but again, which one do I
- 20:58tell you in my life, right? Because, but but one that comes
- 21:01to mind since we were talking about Iron Man.
- 21:03So let's talk about COVID. Let's do something recent,
- 21:05right. I didn't have a bad COVID
- 21:08experience. I for a short period of time, I
- 21:10work from home and my wife was here during the summer because
- 21:14she's a teacher. So she wasn't working and I was
- 21:16at home and we were taking lunch walks together and holding hand
- 21:19and telling stories and it was a wonderful time of being with my
- 21:22wife. I got to know my neighbors
- 21:24better. You.
- 21:24Know. And all of that was wonderful.
- 21:26And talking about these for no reason whatsoever.
- 21:30There was nothing wrong with my life.
- 21:32I just started feeling like I wasn't where I was supposed to
- 21:34be. Right.
- 21:37Couldn't put my finger on it. It was actually pissing me off
- 21:42and and this is post selling, you know, the motorcycle.
- 21:45This is I'm in, I'm in, I'm just in the spunk, if you will.
- 21:50I thought, well, maybe I'll just start having a couple of beers
- 21:51and not maybe that'll relax me. I didn't do anything.
- 21:56So a moment, if you will. I hate to call it a moment, You
- 22:01know, it wasn't like it was epiphany, but but it came back
- 22:04to this, this. I guess I would describe it as
- 22:09numbness. Some of the what you're talking,
- 22:11there's sleep people that wake every day and they're just numb.
- 22:13They they're dead all day, right?
- 22:15I felt that numbness. And another word came to me
- 22:19during that period of time, which was broken promises.
- 22:23And it wasn't other people's broken promises.
- 22:26It was my broken promises to myself.
- 22:29And I started thinking about that, right.
- 22:30And that was the little prick of the the balloon in the water
- 22:33started coming out. So, oh, broken promises.
- 22:36I haven't broken any promises. And then I started thinking
- 22:39about. Yeah, yeah, you did.
- 22:41You know, you said you were going to do this and you didn't
- 22:43do it, and you said you're going to do that.
- 22:46You said you're going to do this and that.
- 22:48And somewhere along the way and you know, remember this big
- 22:50dream you had, Scott? Remember this big dream about
- 22:52doing an Iron Man? Remember that where we at?
- 22:56Remember you said you're going to write a book.
- 22:58Where are we at? So those were the turning around
- 23:02and me facing that noise of what was chasing me and examining it
- 23:06and unfolding it and digging into it and asking questions and
- 23:10wrestling with it. And ultimately those two words
- 23:13came up broken promises, Scott. And then it here again for me.
- 23:18I can't speak for other people. It forced me to make a choice
- 23:22and there was only a left or a right choice.
- 23:25A continue with the broken promises that you now have
- 23:28knowledge of and you will own what you sow.
- 23:33Who? I didn't like that.
- 23:34So that means I've got to do an Iron Man.
- 23:36No, no, you don't have to do anything.
- 23:38You just have to choose. Yeah.
- 23:40Well, then, by God, I'm going to do an Iron Man.
- 23:43What about writing the book later?
- 23:45Not now. And I did.
- 23:47I went in in hours, well days, found Iron Man Arizona and
- 23:54signed up 12 months out and started training.
- 23:58And I didn't tell anybody in my family.
- 23:59I told nobody. Right.
- 24:02And I won't go into, I won't keep going, but that was that
- 24:05was when I started for myself. And I there's listers on there.
- 24:09They have to be right now that are wrestling with broken
- 24:11promises. And they're like, you have to be
- 24:13there. And and so if we could turn back
- 24:16to that is it's OK to acknowledge them.
- 24:20Hell, bear hug them because the things that you're avoiding, the
- 24:24broken promises, you can fix that you just have to ignore
- 24:28first thing. First thing is acknowledge it
- 24:30because then it doesn't have power over you.
- 24:32But you're going to have to make a choice.
- 24:33And it doesn't mean you got to go out and do an Iron Man.
- 24:36That was for me. And it doesn't mean you got to
- 24:38quit your job. OK.
- 24:40But what it does mean is you need to make a choice.
- 24:42And then then what I had to do when I started my Iron Man
- 24:46training, and this is one of the reasons why I didn't tell
- 24:48anybody I was scared of my own decision was, Oh my God, I'm not
- 24:52going to break that promise. So am I not telling anybody I
- 24:56built a safety net, right? And and that's fine if that's
- 25:01what you need to do. But for for the listeners, my
- 25:03recommendation is, is look at your broken promises to
- 25:07yourself, not other people that betrayed you can't fix that.
- 25:12But where did other people? Where did you break promises to
- 25:14yourself? Then start taking little small
- 25:16Lily paths, little baby steps. You don't have to sign up for an
- 25:19Airman Ironman. Start proving to yourself that
- 25:22you can trust yourself again, 'cause you really, you're the
- 25:24problem. You're you're the problem and
- 25:26the solution all at one time. And so that was my great, if you
- 25:30will, or my one of my, if you want to call it great changes
- 25:34was doing that. And, and then things only speed
- 25:36up for me after doing the Iron Man.
- 25:38And when I say speed up, because once I did the Iron Man, then I
- 25:41did the second one, then the third one, then I did the 4th,
- 25:431:00. And then I was in that
- 25:44environment and I was like, that voice came back and said, hey,
- 25:46Scott, what'd you tell me about the book a few years ago?
- 25:50I said, yeah, you're right. And not only did I tell you
- 25:54about a few years ago, it's time to write it.
- 25:55And so over the last two years, I finished the book and it
- 25:58published. It's published.
- 25:59You know, yeah, absolutely. So look at yourself, look at
- 26:03your broken promises. And as you say, acknowledge
- 26:06them, either do something with them or as you say, there's the
- 26:10choice, right? You ignore it.
- 26:11You, you, you move on to something else.
- 26:13And that's. But don't beat yourself up over
- 26:16it I suppose is the the thing. It it is the message and and
- 26:19that's part of acknowledging the broken promises is is not to
- 26:24beat yourself up, but I was my mom told them is when I was a
- 26:27kid. She's, you know, Scott, there's
- 26:28nobody they can beat you up better than you.
- 26:31Right, that's a really good saying because.
- 26:33You have to live with yourself. Yeah.
- 26:36And, and, and because I was really hard on myself as a young
- 26:39man, I had high expectations and high standards and the world's
- 26:44hard enough. And so if I'm, if I may say to
- 26:48the audience is that whatever broken promise that you are
- 26:53wrestling with, give yourself grace.
- 26:57It's OK Use it as a tool. One of the chapters in my book
- 27:01is the gifts are in the pain. And I know that's counter
- 27:03intuitive. Yeah.
- 27:04But success never for me. Success never brought me
- 27:08anything but failure. And every single failure,
- 27:11including the $3,000,000 and many more brought me nothing but
- 27:14gifts. Yeah.
- 27:16So if you don't, it's it's a bit like the best analogy I can
- 27:20think of is as a child, you learn to walk, you fall over
- 27:24more times before you can walk, right?
- 27:26And that's the kind of same sort of thing.
- 27:28Those failures actually have a lot of learning in them that you
- 27:33you recognize, you take hold of them and you move on forward
- 27:36with that new found learning and that new found experience.
- 27:40As you know, Scott, this podcast is called Success Matters.
- 27:43So as you've been on this journey, you know you hit a real
- 27:47high with your 3,000,000 investment and and a real low
- 27:50with the whole kind of being kicked out of your own company.
- 27:55What does success mean to you now?
- 27:58That's such an easy question for me and it's centered on my
- 28:00family. If my wife I I what the things
- 28:05that she has spy get incredible satisfaction out of supporting
- 28:08my son and my daughter, my wife first.
- 28:11That is my number one priority. My wife and I every morning
- 28:15before, if I, if I'm here not traveling and we leave, we tell
- 28:19each other we love each other. Every, every before we hang up
- 28:22the phone, we tell each other we love each other.
- 28:24I don't care if I'm going down the street to if I'm walking out
- 28:27the door, I tell her I love her and vice versa.
- 28:30In fact, that is, that is not a stage thing with us.
- 28:33That is, that's who we are, is I love my wife and my family.
- 28:36My, my kids still call me and my wife, mom and dad.
- 28:40They still call for advice. They still, when they come home,
- 28:42they love to sit down around the kitchen table and have dinner
- 28:44and tell stories, right. So that, that's, that's success
- 28:49to me is that I've, I'm getting it right with my family.
- 28:52It really is. And anything that comes after
- 28:54that is an absolute gift, right? My health that I can wake up
- 28:59every morning and do what I do and, and work out and come meet
- 29:03with you today and, and, and possibly help other people.
- 29:06That's successful for me, right? Everything that I define my life
- 29:10by right now is completely intangible, right?
- 29:14You know, do I, I, I, I, I don't think I write about, no, I don't
- 29:17write about this in the book, but I, I've written a story
- 29:19about there were times in my life where it got so bad.
- 29:21I thought, well, I guess God just wants me to dig ditches,
- 29:24right, right. And then I came full circle in
- 29:29that same statement said, yeah. And you know what, you may not
- 29:31like it, but you'll be a great ditch digger and you're going to
- 29:34be right, You know, and and there's a there's a story in
- 29:38that it's I don't need a material possession.
- 29:39I don't need a vacation. I don't need a trip.
- 29:41I don't need a jet, a car. I don't need any of that crap,
- 29:44right. To be in alignment.
- 29:46That's what success means to me. But if I happened to fly on a
- 29:49plane, that's wonderful. What a gift, great stewardship.
- 29:52And that's a long answer, but I feel strongly about that.
- 29:56No, it's, this is really great and it ties in actually because
- 29:59I, I have a thing of asking a previous guest for question for
- 30:03my next guest and my previous guest asked a very simple
- 30:07question, what's matters. But I think we've got the answer
- 30:10for from that right. Your family and your wife and
- 30:13kids and stewardship matters to you.
- 30:16Yeah, it it, it does. And, and I love the question of
- 30:20what matters because I can't show you other than, you know, I
- 30:24can't. I'm, I'm not going to be able to
- 30:25say, oh, look at what I drive. Look at that BMW motorcycle I
- 30:29like, I don't have any of that. And so, but if you were here, I
- 30:34would say I'll show you, let me introduce you to my wife, my son
- 30:36and my daughter. That'd be the first thing I
- 30:38would do. That's what right?
- 30:39Yeah. And, and as long as I'm getting
- 30:42that right, I don't care what else happens in the world.
- 30:46And so that's my focus and I'll log in that really that's what
- 30:51matters to me. Talking of possessions as we
- 30:55were, you have a a sword in the background there.
- 30:58Tell us a bit more about what that sword is doing there and
- 31:02how you came about it. So I went to a men's retreat in
- 31:07Houston, near Houston, TX in the Piney woods of that area and it
- 31:12was a three day retreat. And again, it was a men's
- 31:15conference and at the end of the conference, you had a, a choice
- 31:19of different things. And one of them was the sword.
- 31:22And it was presented to you as a part of rite of passage, of
- 31:26battling with yourself, if you will, you know, learning how to,
- 31:30to be a better man, to be a better husband, to be a better
- 31:32friend, to be a better follower of God, right?
- 31:35And, and it was a, it was a very impactful 3 days.
- 31:37And I keep that hanging over me or over my shoulder because the
- 31:44the last chapter in my book, and I won't spoil it for everybody,
- 31:46but I talk about the warrior, the poet and the shepherd that's
- 31:50inside all three of us. And when those three are in
- 31:53alignment, right, the the warrior defends and protects
- 31:57right. The shepherd on the same, in the
- 32:01same token protects the poet, right?
- 32:04May make you cry when you see a sunrise, but when all three of
- 32:07them in our alignment, that's a special place to be.
- 32:10That's where Lovejoy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness,
- 32:13all those things are in alignment.
- 32:15And so that's where I got the sword from.
- 32:17And I hang it there as a reminder to be a good steward
- 32:20over all three of those things. Right.
- 32:22OK. That's really cool.
- 32:24That's that's really cool story. Do you have a question for my
- 32:27next guest? I do have a question for the
- 32:30next guest, and I'm going to say this as succinctly as I can.
- 32:34I don't want it to be a long sentence because you have to
- 32:36write it down and record it, right?
- 32:38No, Is I'd like to know from your next guest, what's the one
- 32:48thing, What's the one thing that they still wrestle with that
- 32:54they need to change? That's one thing they still
- 32:57wrestle with, that they need to change, OK, because I.
- 33:02Think we're all working through something, right?
- 33:05Yeah. Yeah, we want to do something
- 33:08and, and I and, and I'm even wrestling right with the book
- 33:12lot or, you know, the book launch, right?
- 33:15And because we all want things to be successful, but we don't
- 33:18control that, right? So we're all wrestling with
- 33:22something. So be curious in, in, in all the
- 33:24wonderful things your your next guest has done.
- 33:27What's the one thing they're wrestling with right now that
- 33:29they need to change? Yeah, that's, that's a very good
- 33:33question. And we are all wrestling with
- 33:35things and sometimes we don't even know it because it's a
- 33:37subconscious thing that's within us that's holding us back from
- 33:41maybe doing something or affecting the way in which
- 33:44we're, you know, the outcomes that we're getting in life.
- 33:47But we're not even recognizing that we're dealing with the the
- 33:50symptom, not the cause sometimes, right.
- 33:52So it's a really, really good question.
- 33:54I'm interested to see what's what my next case says.
- 33:57We're near the top of our time now.
- 33:59Scott's. It's been a really, really
- 34:00fascinating conversation. Where can people get hold of
- 34:04your book and can you just remind us of the title of your
- 34:06book? And also, if people want to
- 34:08engage with you to find out more about the work you do, what's
- 34:10the best way for them to do so? 1000% thank you very much for
- 34:14the opportunity to share this with your audience and thank you
- 34:16again for your platform. You do a beautiful job and I'm
- 34:18glad. To be here.
- 34:19Thank you. But you can reach me at my
- 34:21website. It's my name, scottlackey.com.
- 34:25And you can begin there, send me an e-mail on the, on the
- 34:28website. You can purchase the book
- 34:30through the website or click on the Amazon link.
- 34:32It'll, it'll take you straight there.
- 34:34And the name of the book is Wake Up to Die again.
- 34:36And I know everybody's struggling with something.
- 34:39And this will take you on a journey and you'll see yourself
- 34:41in it. And I hope to see you on the
- 34:42other side. Thank you for letting me do
- 34:44this. Lovely.
- 34:45Thank you Scott for sharing your your story on Success Matters I.
- 34:49Hope our paths cross again. Absolutely, I'm sure they will.
- 34:53To find your success, contact me at info at
- 34:56successmatterscoachingcom. That's info at
- 35:00successmatterscoachingcom.