Latest / The Sober Creative Podcast / Episode 071 - Full Throttle With No Map: Steve Munro is 33 years sober, still redrawing the plan

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Episode 071 - Full Throttle With No Map: Steve Munro is 33 years sober, still redrawing the plan · The Sober Creative Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome everyone to The Sober Creative Podcast.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: Every guest has done some version of the same hard thing.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: They got honest about what alcohol was costing them.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Some quit, some cut back, some don't use a word for it at all.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: What they share is that they're creating from a space that's actually theirs.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Josh Woll, and I'm excited to bring you today's guest.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Steve Monroe has been sober for more than 33 years,
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: but most of that life has been lived outside the recovery world.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: After 25 years of drug and alcohol abuse and 11 months in residential treatment,
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: he rebuilt his life across technology, entrepreneurship, and vintage motorcycles.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: He's held executive roles in high-growth software companies,
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: built and sold businesses,
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: and returned to frontline sales, where he was still setting records into his 60s.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Along the way, he became a competitive vintage Italian motorcycle racer and builder.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: A few years into sobriety,
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Steve found that the larger life he had worked so hard to build was starting
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: to overwhelm him.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Drawing on what he'd learned from the racetrack, he built what became the 70 Framework.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: A practical system for managing attention, overload, and decision-making under pressure.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Today he's 71,
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: semi-retired in rural Thailand,
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: writes 70 life on Substack,
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: and is bringing that framework to sober adults navigating what he calls
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: the expansion paradox.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Please welcome Steve Monroe.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks a lot, Josh.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Great intro.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, appreciate it.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, okay, so we'll jump into it.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: And okay, so let's see, it's 33 years.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Congratulations on that.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Six.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm going to learn quite a bit from you on what's to come.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Good stuff.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: All good stuff.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to hear more about the motorcycle racing too.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: But so like before we jump into all that, What was that 25 years like?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: How did that start and kind of walk us back into the early days?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: I started,
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I wrote a post about it.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: I started out as a beer boy in Montreal.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: I grew up in Montreal, inner city.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: And back then, and still a little bit now, well, they had grocery stores.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: They're called Deboners now.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: Grocery stores that Delivered beer.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: They had really big beer coolers.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: And they delivered beer and groceries.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: And this is before the big grocery stores moved in.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm an old guy, right?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so a good job to get,
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: particularly in the summer, was to deliver beer and groceries by bicycle.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was a big old one-speed with coaster brakes and a tiny front wheel and
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: a big basket front.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm 14 and maybe I weigh 100 pounds.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I have an order that was two cases of 24 and a small bag of groceries
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: and I cycle down,
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: climb four flights of stairs in an apartment building,
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: make maybe 25 or 50 cents in tips.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: So that was good money back then and it was a good way to be connected
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: because I wasn't a big guy and I was in a rough neighborhood.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: I learned pretty quickly that being connected Was a good way to not get beat up.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so I made that my career.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: And they got me into drugs.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I had a really dysfunctional home life, which was rare back then.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: My parents separated when I was 12 or something.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so I wasn't comfortable.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: I was really not at all comfortable with my life.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: And the buzz allowed me to To just make that discomfort go away.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: So I started drinking and smoking hash at 14.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: And that just became normal.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: It became my state of mind.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I delivered beer and that, of course, what else?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: I was a drug broker, I was a drug dealer.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: I was doing all this on my one-speed bicycle.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it just became, you know, Josh, it became a blur.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: I just spent hours remembering to write about it.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: But my parents moved to Chicago, and I barely remember the event.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't graduate high school, but I don't remember dropping out.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: It just happened.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I ended up in Chicago.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: Different culture, better drugs.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: For a moment,
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: because I got into college, Which is remarkable because I didn't finish high school.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: But I got into college and do a computer science program.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: And for this brief moment in time, I didn't drink much and I didn't get high.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I really enjoyed what I was doing.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I met this woman.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's always women.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: This woman just knocked me up.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: I was back into a whole different class of drugs and That was a lifestyle, right?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I just felt into it.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: I was good at being almost loaded and accomplishing things.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I got a job selling software when nobody was doing that.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: We got married, we moved to Ottawa, Canada.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: She worked for IBM, and I worked for Wang Computers, and we were in the
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: tech space.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: And this is the 70s, so that was part of the lifestyle too, right?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I just, I can only describe it as being on cruise for 20 years, just being on cruise.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: I went through another marriage and into the 80s and the cocaine
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: and doing even better at software sales,
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: being in the tech industry with another wife who was in the tech industry.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: And by then, you know, I was getting physically addicted.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: And the blackouts would start.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: It got dangerous.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: I remember going on a business trip to Europe,
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: the former Yugoslavia, just when the trouble was starting.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's a blackout.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: I had a camera.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's the only reason I know where I was.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: I had an agenda and I had a camera.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: It was a blackout.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: I wrote about waking up in Hyde Park.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: No idea where I was.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: Was that like a combination of alcohol and cocaine?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: it was.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: One to settle down and the other to jack yourself back up.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: It was a constant fight to find some level that I could function at.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I convinced my doctor,
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: so I started getting the DTs, which feels like a panic attack if
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: it ever happened.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: Or worse.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: I went to see my doctor because I didn't really think, I didn't know about the DTs.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't think I was addicted.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: I lied about my consumption and she gave me Valium.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that was just like pouring fire, pouring gasoline on fire.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: I was gone and I was toaster.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'd get up in the morning and have a brandy with my coffee, pop of Valium.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: And then by the time it was time to drive to work, so I needed a few lines just Get moving.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I was up to blackouts.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Just a mess.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: Just a mess.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I became unemployable.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: My wife left.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: I ended up in the worst neighborhood in Ottawa on welfare.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought it was temporary.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's denial, right?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: I really did believe it was just temporary.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I lived in that space for like nine months, 10 months, almost a year.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I had a couple of instances where my mind snapped and did weird things.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I had a couple of, usually with detoxing, a couple of seizures.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: I have one seizure on an afternoon after walking in the DTs down to the liquor store
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: at opening time, buying the largest bottle of vodka I could afford.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: Actually opening that bag and bottle as I was going out the door and drinking it.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: Before I got home, the bottle was finished.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: I woke up on the floor and I was in the middle of a seizure.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: If I moved, if I breathed, it would break my back kind of thing.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, I'm going to die.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: I am going to die.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: And that was it.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't in and out of AA long enough to know what to do next, which was turn it over.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: I kept turning it over,
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: got myself into a residential treatment center, lived there for 11 months.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: And rather than engaging in the debate, I just did the steps.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: I got them down to their esports,
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: and I went to a river every afternoon,
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: walked to a river, and I roped,
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: did my fourth, took forever.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know who I was or what I did, and all that good stuff.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: And that process was really healing.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: It taught me, I just naturally, who I was really repulsed me.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I stopped being like that.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I went through the steps organically.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: And life brought me the opportunities to go through each of the steps, which was rather amazing.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: So it was a really intense, you know, it was 10 months of that.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: To get from step one, you know, step two, I guess, till step two.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: And then I got out of Serenity House.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, this is all about the deal I made with myself.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: It was different back then.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: You know, in the meetings, the old timers were always in the front row.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's very clickish.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: And as well, I
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: would listen to what they talked about.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I go, that's not the life I want to live.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want a bunch of AA friends and an AA wife and an AA job.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want that.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: I want to go live with the Earth people.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: I want to be normal.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so I did.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's exactly how I got through the steps, modified version.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that got me, not by design, but by accident.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: A job at a growing software company that wouldn't have been able to afford my old rate.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: I was the right guy for them.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: They knew it.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: They were willing to.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's funny because I sent my resume using the fax machine at Serenity House,
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: and I thought that I had fixed it so that it wouldn't print Serenity
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: House on
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: the fax, but it did.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, so they knew about the recovery and the harmony.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so...
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was just like turbo from,
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: I lived at Serenity House for 11 months,
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: I got a car,
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: I got a girlfriend,
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: she's like my partner,
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: and she's got a kid,
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: and we ran a really nice house, and I'm chilling it in this software company.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: We're growing really well.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: I've got this one.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it was burying, really,
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: The compression, the pressure was really starting to get to me.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: Because part of it, I guess, is that, you know,
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: this is what happens when you get old.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: Words go away.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, I didn't think I was as good as everybody else thought I was.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: Imposter theory.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I was having a really difficult time doing this new stuff
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: a new way It was really difficult stuff.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: All of it was difficult, the relationships, the work.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: In the middle of this, I buy myself a Ducati as a two-year celebration gift.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: I can't lead well enough alone,
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: and I meet a couple of guys who race or finish Ducati,
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: so I'm going racing, and I sucked.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: I really sucked.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: I was terrified.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm a good writer, but I was terrified.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: And somebody had recommended this series of books to me,
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: a guy named Keith Coe, who still does, I had to stop.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: And there was a Wednesday track day at Moscow that hardly anybody went to,
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: just a couple of pros that were practicing.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I went there with a whiteboard and the books and my bike,
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: and I got through all three books, and I was a fast guy, just like that.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: Most of what Keith writes about is fear.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: The reason you feel, why does too fast feel too fast?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: If somebody's driving too fast or if you're on a roller coaster, we know that sensation, right?
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's terrifying.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's your brain's inability.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: Especially not being in control.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's it.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's your brain's inability to process information at the rate that it's coming at you.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's that simple.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: So what Keith is teaching you how to do,
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: to do one of the first lessons is getting rid of Any inputs
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: that don't have any value.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: anything that you can visually see that isn't a reference point is of absolute,
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: you know, you just throw it away.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: The sound of your bike, everything, just clear that deck.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: You're only interested, not in where you are right now, but where you're going next.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: And it works, right?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: The fear goes away because your brain can now process it and sort of,
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you drive at 90 miles per hour on an interstate,
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: pretty soon 90 feels like 20.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's what's going on.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a lot more than just, you know, discarding unnecessary inputs.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: There's the $10 of attention, which,
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: if you've got 11 corners on a racetrack,
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: you better not be sitting at 90 cents on turn three.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: You're not going to have a good laugh.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so you learn to throw away a corner that you're just not going to learn that weekend.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: You go, well, I'm not going to worry about this corner.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not going to go fast there.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not going to go fast where there's greater value.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: And you spend a lot more money on turn eight, which is over 100 miles per hour.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so there's like a couple of dozen things that make up what Keith talks about.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: excuse me,
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: I got quick enough that I was on the grid with my heroes,
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: my My teenage heroes,
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yvon Duhamel on my
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: left, Paul McMillan on my right, Brian Henderson behind
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: me.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: How did I get here?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I got on the podium and it all happened in slow motion.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's cool.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I go to work on Monday and it's like my pants are on fire by 10.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I got to find a way to fix this part of my life.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe I can take some
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: of this stuff.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Apply it to what's happened.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: And as I began to write about it, trying to create a system, it started to work.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: I just took little bits of it and tried to apply it.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: This is great.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: This is working.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I really,
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: it took about a month to formalize
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: into really five things
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: that will make
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: a big difference.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: The primary one is getting the head work.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so if we go backwards, I've gone too far.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so I figured out,
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: although I didn't have a name for it back then, I figured out the expansion paradox.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: With success comes pressure.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: And particularly for those of us who do crash and burn or don't develop properly
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: because of our drinking or drugging,
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: when we do get sober and our lives do expand,
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: we don't necessarily have all the tools to cope with that.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it does become frightening, sometimes paralyzing.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I figured out the paradox.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: I figured out I couldn't adapt everything that Keith Coates teaches, obviously.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Life isn't a racetrack.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: I tried that.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: But I could take three or four.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: I could take reference points and I could take survival reactions.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I could add non-negotiable rules.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: I could look at the idea of getting rid of inputs.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: This is all about velocity
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: and volatility.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: And they create pressure or load.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so you can manage velocity and you can manage volatility.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: You just need to learn how.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: And of course,
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: if you're an executive in a software company and you're out there breaking rules,
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: There's going to be a lot of velocity and a lot of volatility.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: When you go home to a 15-year-old kid, there's bound to be some volatility.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: So it's learning how to spend that $10 wisely and
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: how to manage velocity,
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: volatility,
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: which equals load, and allocate your capacity wisely so that you've got headroom.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: Headroom is what allows you to live in slow motion.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: It makes me look an old sage like me.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's like we're chasing headroom.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: So after a month, I had a big, I love spreadsheets back then.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: I still do have this big spreadsheet.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: It had gauges and stuff.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: And it worked.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it worked gangbusters.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Two other people,
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: I was still doing a little bit of recovery stuff,
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: working with a couple of counselors, this particular guy named Wally.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: And really what was happening was he wasn't counseling me so much
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: as he was getting me to help his clients.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: And that was good for me.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so I got two of his guides onto the framework as well.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: But then, you know, it was like, oh, I don't want to be in the recovery business.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to be in recovery.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I let that commercial opportunity go.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I just, you know, went on and lived this crazy life.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely crazy life.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't have lived it without the tools.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's the really fast version.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not keeping track
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: of time.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for that.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: I could see
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Whenever you started the sales backup when you got sober, you had said it was pretty intense.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so, I mean, you didn't have the tools in place in order to cope with that.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: But it's like you're still really good at your job and such.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's like you take on the motorcycle racing and you learn so much from it
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: and you develop a framework around it.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, what...
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what's kind of a path of someone who gets sober of ways
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: that they can create more headroom?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: One of the simplest things is trusting yourself to figure out what matters
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: and what doesn't matter.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: Because 90% of the inputs that we have on any given moment, on any given day, don't matter.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: They're nothing.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: They have zero value.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's noise.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: Turn it off.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: Learn to turn.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Close the door.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Put on the headphones.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: Or learn to turn them off in your mind.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so I just learned to turn them off.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so it worked.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: There would be times when things had gone nuclear.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I closed my door.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: I put something on my calendar.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I...
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: Get some quiet so I could figure it out.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: You just need to enforce that.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Take the time to do that.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: You have my permission.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: Just give yourself permission.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's the easiest thing you can do.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: $10 worth of attention is also extremely easy.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: Excuse me.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, take your time.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: Also pretty
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: Pretty easy to manage.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's just a matter of being more selective and thoughtful about everything you do.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: For me, it's baked in now.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: I know what the cost
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: of The things that come at me in a given day, what that cost is.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: I know whether it has any value at all or not.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't project like I used to.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: I don't sweat the small stuff.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: I only sweat the big stuff.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I sweat it on my terms.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: Does that make sense?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because it I mean,
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: I know too,
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: it is so true,
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: because it's like,
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: you go through this phase when you initially let it go,
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: and there's kind of the high that it's like, oh, I can do this without it.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then, yeah, I mean, I'm noticing six years in,
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: That
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: being a person that's trying to expand multiple businesses and such,
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: that there is a capacity for that.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, it's just becoming aware of that, that it is.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you give yourself more time and you can do more things.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: But it doesn't necessarily mean that it's like good.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: Right, exactly.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't mean that That you should.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that brings up, so then there's this other part that I made up all by myself.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the map and the territory.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I had to, I just, I had to have a map.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: I had to have a vision because I came from work because I was like a visionary, right?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: I would take companies and make them big, broken companies and make them better.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I had to be able to visualize.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so, I thought of it,
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: I thought of how I felt came from a trip that I took with some friends during
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: the dark period down to Daytona for the big bike race.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: And back before phones and maps,
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: you would go to the Canadian Automobile Association,
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: get a triptych,
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: and it would be this narrow kind of thing,
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: this book,
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: and you'd flip the pages, and each page was, I don't know, maybe 100 miles.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so we encountered An instance where there were two pages missing from our trip to it.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: And there's no feeling like when your map doesn't match
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: the territory you're standing in, you deny it for the longest period of time.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then finally you reject it.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: Where am I now anyway?
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: Life does that to us a lot.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: We stay with the wrong map for far too long.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: And what it does is it makes you really uncomfortable.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: we participate on Substack with a bunch of other coaches and people,
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: and everybody pours their hearts out, and I see it.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: I see it in other people, where they're,
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: ah, why doesn't what I'm doing feel right?
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: What should I be doing?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: That's because the map and the territory are no longer aligned.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's natural that they drift apart.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: So the other part of the framework is,
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: Helping you understand how much drift you're dealing with on any given time.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of like journaling with AI.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so I've had five periods in my life where my map and my territory horribly missed.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: I felt awful, and I spent too long in that, even with my framework.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: As soon as I wrote a new map, I felt fantastic.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: I knew it was what I needed to do.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: I had no problem executing.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: I felt fantastic immediately.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: The last one I wrote brought me here.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the last one.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: It was dark, man.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: I was sick.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: I was broken.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: I was alone.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: My wife had gone to Paris and wasn't coming back.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: I got a concussion, wasn't thinking well, and so on and so forth.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: All I had to do to stop the dark thoughts was write a new map.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: And that map had to be really simple.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: One last fabulous snort.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: That simple.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: I had to rewrite that map, obviously, once I got here.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: But all it did was get me moving.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: It got me out of bad, bad, bad place that I probably wouldn't have gotten.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: And into a place where I could stretch out Grow,
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: Heal, took two years to heal physically and, you know, emotionally.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: So the map and the territories is like probably the biggest part for him.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so in redoing this, now we have ChatGPT.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: Now we have large language moments.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: I use them.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: I use them.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, the input is you fill out your map, you fill out your territory.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: You've got to be dead honest or it won't work.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: And it's big.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's probably two hours.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: It took me two hours to do it.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: And ChatGPT takes that apart.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't have to use any reasoning to give you suggestions.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's not the idea.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: It just takes it apart and it compares it.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: It shows you the Delta.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it breaks it down by domain.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, whoa.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: And that then outputs survival react.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Words are negative.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: You need to deal with them.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: They're self-defeating learned behaviors.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: Non-negotiable rules.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: We all need them.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: Invoke them.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: And reference points.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: These are actionable little goals that we can achieve in a two- to four-week period
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: that will improve our lives.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: So to be able to use GPT, one,
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: to do the input,
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: And then two, to do the comparatives, which is really an operating read.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, wow, this is like a five-minute process that you can do on a weekly basis.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: You still got to do the journaling.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's like journaling.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: But journaling is static, right?
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: And it's really not organized.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: You can't use it to grow.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: And in this instance, you can use it to grow.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's driving you on a weekly basis.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's really cool.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: I love that that's a good use of AI.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you're kind of building, but at the same time, you're collecting your thoughts.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: Love conquers hate said sometimes you fall in a hole and it's hard to climb out.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the same as what you're saying with the map, right?
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the map really helped me The big decision I needed to make was
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: this career that
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: I have.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's not good for me, but it could be good for me.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I can't do it alone.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: I can't do it and pretend that it isn't what it is.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to have to work stupid hours.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so if this is going to work, I've got to get complete buy-in from my stepson
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: and my partner.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if I can't get that, I can't do this job,
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: not and live with them.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I wouldn't have been able to get there with the certainty and the confidence
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: that I got there
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: without the framework.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: I would have danced around that through fart.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: So would you, anybody would.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_02: These are the hard things that we tend to sit on for a long time, months.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: And by the time we do face them, then it's really difficult to implement change.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I would say it's like,
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: think financially, that's a big one of security.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: You stay on one map thinking you're not capable or have time to shift to
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: a different map, and so you just keep doing the same thing over and over again.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, which we know is insane.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: So
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_02: it's natural to anybody who's changed jobs, which you have, obviously.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's the hardest thing to do.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't get laid off, you'll stay in a horrible job for the longest time.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: You'll stay in a horrible relationship for far too long.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: So if we just take those two statements,
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_02: which you agree with,
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: and anybody,
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_02: We can get away with saying,
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: as a rule, as humans, we'll do stupid stuff for way, way, way too long.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: Mostly because we don't recognize it,
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: and the other because,
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: well, we're a little bit inherent, no
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: risk, no pain kind of people.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: As recovering people,
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: I think we need to be a lot, some,
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: maybe most,
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: maybe all,
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: We need to be really careful about not putting ourselves in situations
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: where we
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: become at risk, right?
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: Where we really fall out of that comfort zone.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, it's like I was thinking about this yesterday.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like I do production work as well.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, been over 20 years doing production work and I was out of town this week doing a job.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: They were pretty big days and it's usually when I do this work,
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: my routines get totally thrown off.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like I can't go to the gym.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: Time-wise, you know, it's really just getting rest.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: My food,
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: there's a lot of temptation around desserts and other foods
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: that I typically wouldn't eat.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so it,
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of,
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: I enjoy it,
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: but at the same time, it's like, it really throws me off when I get back.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it's easy
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: to feel like I could feel a bit down from that,
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: of like, oh, now I gotta do this all over again.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, it's like, okay, this is a small dip.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: You've built this foundation.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: And you keep going with it.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so, but yeah,
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: like you said, I mean, it's,
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: I can see, I mean,
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: it's nice that I feel that way to where it's like, okay, I don't want to go there.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't want to start drinking again or whatever in order to mask whatever this is.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I just know it's not going to work.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's like, You really do have to build the right foundations to keep that going.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: You do, you do.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: And
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't have gone as far with my career as I did
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: to get on the opportunities that I did.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: Because I don't have really an education.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: I learned how to code, but I never did any commercial coding.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: And the stuff that I learned how to code, nobody uses it anymore.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: It let me do some really amazing stuff.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: It let me experiment with life, do things I'd never dreamed of doing.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, at one point, man, I was building race motors.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: I have no training for that.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_02: I just had confidence.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: I had humility, but I had confidence.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I learned.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: I learned how to do an immense amount of stuff through this.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: And it also had me changing jobs when jobs got too dangerous.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: And there were jobs where CEOs of companies and public company are misstating revenue.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: You try and have a chat about that.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: It gets ugly.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: You leave.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: You have a choice.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_02: You're either part of it or you're not part of it.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's very expensive to leave.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_02: So That was one where you just sit down and write the map again and look at
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: the territory and say, I need a new map.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's that simple.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: As best as you can, walk us through how you do that with going from one map to the other.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: You're sitting there with a map,
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: which really It goes through all of the domains of your life,
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: you know, health, relationships, finance, all that stuff, domains.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: And you have the territory, which is just the others, the reality.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so the map says,
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_02: in my case, in the mid-90s, I had aspirations of becoming, you know, a VP sales.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_02: And doing well in the software industry.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I had aspirations of falling in love with someone and building a life with them.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I also had limits.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: I was never going to drink or do drugs again.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that map touched all my domains.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I wrote deeply about those things, each one of them.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: The territory is just the reality.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's what I thought six months ago.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: The territory is the reality.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_02: And again, you've got to be brutally honest.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: The comparison, I used to use word document compare.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: I kid you not, because there was no AI, but that was a good starting point.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I could see the delta.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: I could see where the gaps were, where I was just missing the mark.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: I was I was starting to fall backwards, right?
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know it,
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_02: but when you see it,
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: when you write it, you go, my God, this is taking over, if you will.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going down the wrong road.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: I need to switch.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what the process is like.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: You're writing the same document twice.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: One is like six months ago.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: What did I want to have?
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: What's really my goal?
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: And what's going on now?
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: And you're breaking it down in great detail by these domains that run our lives.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: You're doing a comparison.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_02: It becomes brutally apparent when there's drift.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so when you write a new map,
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: you can tell as you're writing what you would aspire to be doing
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: that it's different.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: You can tell as you're writing how you feel.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you know when you're going in the right direction, right?
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know it's what you should be doing or it isn't what you should be doing.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: So it may take a couple of cracks to get a map
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_02: that makes you feel absolutely 100%
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: vested in each of the domains
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: that you're writing.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: You go, yeah, if I could do this, this would be a good life.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: This would be a good, safe, But adventurous, but, but, but, you know, my complicated.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: And they make sense or they don't.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so you just do it.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, tomorrow, new map.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_02: Which, you know, I had, think about this.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: I had built, as a kid, I obsessed about motorcycles.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I loved motorcycles all my life.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I dreamed of being a motorcycle racer.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: And eventually I became a motorcycle racer and a builder of bikes.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: And a rather famous one.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: And the people I associated with were even more famous than me.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: They were like legends.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so I became the name of my company, Loud Guy.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: I became, it wasn't Steve, it was Loud Guy.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: And everything became one-dimensional.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: I had these new friends and they were cool people and this was all very amazing,
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: but it was just bikes.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know that this one guy might.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: In his past had been a jazz musician.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't know that about each other.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: We just knew the bike stuff.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: And one day, I was losing me.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: I had a business.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_02: I was a classic motorcycle broker building race bikes that cost $100,000 US.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_02: I had an e-commerce business as well.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was great.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: I no longer worked on bikes for relaxation.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: That was a problem too.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_02: And one day I just went, oh, my
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: math is
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_02: not, it's not a jive with my territory.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I stopped, took a day.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm out of the territory.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's it, I'm out.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_02: No more motorcycles.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_02: I shut it all down.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: Took two weeks.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: Sold the businesses, shut it all down.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: Got another job.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_02: I had lost Steve.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so there you are.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's the difference between, what's the difference between focus and obsession?
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_02: I just wrote about that this week.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_02: When does intense focus,
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: when you're surrounded by a bunch of other intensely focused individuals,
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_02: when does that start becoming obsession,
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: which is not healthy?
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: Who knows?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: Only you know when you step over the line.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_02: That was the line.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: That was the line.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know,
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: some of us do have the insight naturally to recognize these things.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not one of those people.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I built a platform.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_02: I need the map and the territory to be able to sort this stuff out.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: I need a means of telling myself that,
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: you know, like John Candy and Steve Martin in the, You're going the wrong way.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: No, you're going the wrong way.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: You're going the wrong way.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: It takes a long time to get that through our own heads.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then we have to do something really scary.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: We have to just burn it down or shut it down, sell it, do something.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_02: You'll be there.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_02: It will happen.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_02: You've got multiple businesses going there.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_02: One will become more successful than the other.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it will start eating you up.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: You need to know when that starts to happen.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then you need to be able to creatively do something.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_02: So hopefully that was a good, that was the first big map we draw.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's really interesting.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just curious out of,
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: What's it like being on the motorcycle going around the track?
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: What's that feel like?
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: When you're really
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: in the zone,
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: tons of headroom, everything is in slow motion.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: There is no bike.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's no bike.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: And you're going like 200-something miles per hour, right?
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: No, not quite.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's a vintage bike.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe 160, you know.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: But still, I mean, yeah.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_02: But you're going really fast around corners.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's not about top speed.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's about how fast are you going around this corner.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: You're focused on the place that you're going to,
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: which on a track with elevation changes, means you can't even see that place.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: You just know it's there.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's behind that wall, but that's where I'm going, and that's where I'm looking.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not looking at where I am, I'm looking there.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: And everything I'm doing is to get me.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: The other two sensations I have are traction,
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_02: which is like the feeling of pushing an old gum eraser across paper.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's the traction, the tires.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: So I know how much I'm slotting, how much traction I have.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: Intensely aware of traction.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm intensely aware of forward and going stop motion.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: I can't hear the bike anywhere.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's an open megaphone.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds fantastic.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's really loud.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: I don't hear it.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even see the tacoma.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's just my eyes and these two hands and traction and where I'm going next.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's fabulous because I've got buckets of time.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you have a moment.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: You can think about it.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_02: You can make a joke about it.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_02: You can observe it.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: But it happened in less than the blink of an eye.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's crazy.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if you back that off a bit, it does.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_02: It gets really magical because it's like flying.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like flying.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty cool.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_02: I don't recommend it to everybody, but if you can do it, great, go do
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: it.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I guess like closest,
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: well, I mean, I've done skydiving, did that for my
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_02: 40th, was the 40th birthday?
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_02: I forget when it was, but
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: it was a few years ago.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that,
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: you know, it's like,
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: yeah, I had a little bit of fear Like driving to location.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then getting there was fine.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: Watching the video, getting on the plane was fine.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're all packed in with everybody.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then take off and it's like, okay, well, I gotta get back down somehow.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm strapped to another body.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: That person wants to get down too.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's like, there's a level of trust that
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: You just have.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what I hear in you telling me about you're not there, and it's slow motion.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that once we got to that door and looked out and just saw that
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: the only way there is to jump.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: That felt so amazing in that split second, that jump.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even remember it, but I just knew that that just felt amazing.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: Then I was terrified once the parachute deployed, I'm sitting there floating down.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I'm ready to get down now.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: But it's incredible.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the trust.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think trust.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: We've got to have faith and trust that no matter-
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_02: I've been able
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: to leverage Big Headroom before walking into a boardroom to sell
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_02: a really expensive software product to Pricewaterhouse.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_02: I walk in, I'm in the zone.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'm in the zone.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_02: I own the room.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_02: I absolutely own the room.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_02: I own the conversation.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how I do that other than I get rid of,
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_02: I do a lot of prep before,
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: used to do that before I'd go into a boardroom and sell these guys,
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: but
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_02: I would discard every possible
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_02: input I could before I walked in that door and
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: And really manage how much,
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: how, you know, to slow down velocity, to kill the chaos, and to own it.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so I got like a count of five out of ten and hit them.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I know I'm going to close the deal.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think they even know I'm going to close the deal.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_00: They know in the first 60 seconds.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not just the racetrack.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: You can take that level of intense, confident, calm, almost zen-like.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_02: I hate to call it flow because flow sounds a little weird,
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_02: but I think it is a very zen-like,
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_02: but at the same time intense calmness that allows you to do amazing things.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_02: hooked
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_02: on that track.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's something that you can tap into with sobriety.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need to take a pill, swallow that.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's already there.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_02: I just had to learn how to get at it.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_02: And the map and all that stuff was just a matter of learning how to get
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: at these things,
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_02: these tools that can give us what we need in order to make really big change.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's typically what this is about.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_02: We sit in terrible situations for far too long.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's where this is.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I mean, life is about expansion and change.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: It sure is.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_02: You didn't get sober.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_02: Just sit around and watch Netflix, right?
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's why you got sober.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_02: yeah.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Steve, this has been great.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate you.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's been fun.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, I got air conditioning.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_02: The air conditioning here is horrible, by the way.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's a wall-mounted unit.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's all you get.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it just sucks the humidity out of the air.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_02: So after 40 minutes of the air conditioner on, I'm losing my boots.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm glad you hung in there.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks for doing that.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I appreciate everybody being here.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: If you have any other further questions,
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: feel free to pop them in the chat and Yeah,
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: if you want to let everybody know where to find you and what you're working on next.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, 70 life.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: That'd be great.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: I'm about to pop a demo of the framework next week,
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_02: which will feel better for me because all I've been doing is talking.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's really what I write about is
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_02: what I've experienced in 33 years by using it.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_02: And what sobriety can look like?
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_02: Boy, if you're early in sobriety and wondering what it can be,
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_02: it can be anything you want it to be.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: Here I am.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Steve.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, this has been great.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, awesome.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: I wish everybody a great rest of your week and weekend.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: Steve, you too.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for this.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, John.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see you next week.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: Take care.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: Bye-bye.