Latest / The iAlign Podcast with Flint Mitchell / #39 - Starting Out, Starting Over, and Getting Ahead with Jeff Wellen

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#39 - Starting Out, Starting Over, and Getting Ahead with Jeff Wellen · The iAlign Podcast with Flint Mitchell

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Success and failure are judged only by those who are willing to try.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because that to me is the essence of the challenge that we have as human beings to try, to push the limits of what we have inside of us, to find out how far the God-given gifts that we have can be pushed.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: What's up, y'all?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Seeking Authenticity.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: My name is Flint Mitchell, and I get absolutely psyched by having conversations with authentic people that I admire about the things they value.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: Their stories and perspectives don't just make me smile, laugh, and think.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: They inspire me to wake up earlier, listen better, focus, and work harder, and help make me a better version of myself.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: And it's my hope that sharing these conversations through this podcast might do the same thing for you.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: Before we jump into this episode, I would like to proudly let you guys know that my book, Seeking Authenticity, will be available November 19th this month.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: It'll be available either through my website, flintmitchell.com, my name.com, or through Amazon, and potentially actually also through your local bookstore.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'll keep you posted with more information about that.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: But November 19th is the date.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: The positive feedback has already started to roll in.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: So if you head to my website, you can actually already start to check out what other people are saying.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's uh it's pretty exciting.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: I'm over the moon getting this project done and out there, and I'm really excited to share it with you.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: So check out my website, flintmitchell.com, for more information.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: Now, in this episode of Seeking Authenticity, we talk with Jeff Wellen.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: He is the author of the new book When Things I Wish I Knew When I Was Starting Out, Starting Over, and Trying to Get Ahead.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: By and large, the central theme of this episode, besides a bit talking about his book, is ownership.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's about being vulnerable and taking responsibility for your actions.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: So if those ideas resonate with you, listen on.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's a good one.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: All right, Jeff, thank you for coming onto the Seeking Authenticity Podcast.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate uh having you on here.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: For the people listening, I met Jeff through LinkedIn.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: Technically, we haven't met in person yet.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: I guess that's kind of a factor of the current COVID ordeal.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Jeff is based in Dallas and he's coming out with a book called When.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and we'll get into that pretty quickly because actually, my first question, uh, the first thing I was really interested to hear about was not only uh your inspiration for writing the book, but if there were any stories within it that kind of yeah, I guess summarize uh your main intention of the book.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: Does that make sense?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the journey, well, first I just want to say thank you for having me on.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's great uh to be with you and uh it shows the power of LinkedIn that uh you can find people that uh do a variety of different things and uh be able to expand, you know, the number of people in your network.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a lot easier than it was uh when I started out in business.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: So uh because it's great to be here with you, Flint.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um the journey to writing the book actually was was about a 15-year journey.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: I I had thought about writing a book for many, many years.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I had uh some very good experiences at a particular company back in the two early 2000s.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it kind of inspired me to say, Boy, I learned a lot, had a lot of great mentors there.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't I try to write a book?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I just never could find the secret sauce to doing it.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I had probably 10 failed attempts, but I never gave up on the dream because I just felt I had something to say, which is important, obviously, when you're you're trying to write something.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I kept all the notes, and then the the crossroads of about three different things happened in early 2020.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: One was a friend of mine who uh wrote his own book and published his own book, inspired me.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and when I say this, I don't want this to come across as negative, but I was like, doggone, if he can do it, why can't I?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: But not from a negative, it was like, man, he did it.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: He he actually he said he was going to do it one day and doggone and he did it.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that was one.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Number two is COVID hit.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a lot of things going on.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm a consultant now in the retail and consumer products industry.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, as everyone knows, that world was shut down.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I had some time on my hands as I was trying to figure out what to do.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, maybe, you know, this inspiration from this friend of mine, you know, COVID hits.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then the last one was the inspiration around my son who was struggling with uh some things going on in his first job, which many people do.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Let me tell you a story.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as he explained the situation that was going on in that particular time frame.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, when I was done, he said, Well, boy, dad, that's eerily similar to the situation I have going on, you know.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I so we talked it through.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then after I was done, I'm like, maybe that's the angle this time.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's not kind of a what I call a traditional book of, you know, chapters on leadership or chapters on personal development.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's it's a bunch of stories because that's the way I was taught by many, many mentors my whole life.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And how my dad taught me, how I, you know, taught my son certain things, but you know, he gets kind of the point where he maybe doesn't like it, but he says, I always say, Let me tell you a story.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I just put all those three things together and the world opened up to me.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the inspiration, the time, and now this story to my son.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, 17, 18 months later, I published the book.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that's really was the journey, a long time in coming, but it was just a lot of happenstance and a particular timing, which sometimes life is, that that opened up this world to me.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And now I can say I'm a published author.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, so I I mean that's a fantastic story.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: I think those are pretty good, uh, those three points encapsulate uh why you wrote it or your inspiration to write it pretty pretty clearly.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: I would be curious to know what was it that enticed you 15 years ago or 18 years ago to start thinking about why it would be fun to publish a book?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: Like what about the idea of publishing a book was uh uh you know uh cool for you?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it goes now.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta go back a long time.
• 6:40
  unknown: Yeah.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: When I first went to school, to college, I went to school to be a teacher.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: I've always had this desire to teach and coach people, even at a young age.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I coached baseball teams, I coached softball teams and whatever at a very young age, 16, 17 years old.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I just liked it.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: I just liked the idea of helping people.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I had a lot of great teachers when I was younger that really helped me that, you know, you you always hear these stories.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: But if it wasn't for Mrs.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Rose in third grade, I mean I might not have been the person I am.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she was that impactful on my life.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so I thought that would be kind of cool.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then a variety of different circumstances, when I was a freshman, I said, well, maybe I'm not gonna do that, I'm gonna go into business.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I never lost the idea of wanting to mentor and coach and teach people.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And as I was learning, people kept telling me things that helped me.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was open to this, I was very inquisitive about learning.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I figured, why not learn from people who had been there and done it rather than trying to make my mistakes and be stubborn and prideful and fall down a bunch of times.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't I just say, How did you do that?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: How can I do this better?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: How can I not do this or do that?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, in this ear, this time period um of the early kind of the mid-2006-7 time period, I was working at Michael's Arts and Craft Stores.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: We were just about ready to get bought out by a private equity firm.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: I had been, you know, had a pretty good run there, both professionally.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: We had a great team, we did a lot of great things, turned the company around.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And also financially, I was, you know, I had been given some nice things.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I said, well, maybe this is time to switch my career because maybe it's time for me to go back and remember what I went to school to do.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe this is a timing to say, okay, now I can write something that can help somebody.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then maybe I can get away from this doing senior executive stuff and retail stuff.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I can use all of this knowledge that I've gained to help other people, like the mentors that I had helped me.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was kind of the thing that I learned so much.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a particular gym and the CEO of Michaels, and but there was many great people there, but particularly the CEO had let me into his world, taught me a lot.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, boy, if if only people could be the right-hand man of a CEO, that would be great.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, not many people get that opportunity.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was blessed.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, Well, let me do this.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let me do, let me tell people what I learned from this guy.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, and so that started this idea of mentorship and teaching and learning.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: The challenge is, you know, one, I couldn't find the secret sauce to write the book.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Two, I kept staying in the retail and consumer products world by going to work for other companies or going into consulting, you know, to help them.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then, like I described earlier, these three things happened that said, no, no, no, now it's time.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's your time.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's another reason why the idea and the ability to actually get this into words came into place because, you know, I had been thinking about it, you know, since I was 18 years old going into college.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm a little bit older than that, but now it's the time to go and help people and and see if I can give them what many, many people gave to me over my career and my life.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: So the thing that I'm taking away, or I'm taking away quite a few things from what you just said, but uh one is there's a very definite gesture of trying to not necessarily share your own message, but share the messages that have been given to you that were helpful throughout your life.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's a very uh genuine way of helping people, is the idea of passing on knowledge that you will feel privileged to have been to have received yourself.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the second two points that are kind of uh questions, and I'd I'd like you to direct where we go from here.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: But the first one is on this idea of mentors is how active should a person be in searching for a mentor?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: Because obviously uh sometimes there we're just blessed to have them in our lives, they just come in randomly, or or you know, they've been there the whole time, but you kind of maybe don't appreciate them yet.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: How often or how active does a should a person be in trying to seek out mentorship?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and then two, are there any bits of uh advice or stories you have that would um cover this idea of actually accepting advice?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: I've find that there is resistance in life to learning from other people's lessons.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's very it's almost trite to say like that you should learn from the experiences of others because it makes sense.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: You don't want to fail in the other way in the ways that other people have failed, but at the same time, we all, at least me personally, I know I sometimes am stubborn and not willing to maybe actually analyze the advice that was given to me or or reflect on the experiences of others in order to take it, take that experience into my own uh my own world.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that the the searching is um is I think you should be searching all the time.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I think one of the things that was a little different about me is basically because of my background.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um my father was a truck driver, he didn't graduate from high school, he had to get his GED through uh the army.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: So he was always pushing us to learn because he felt he he didn't get the chance to do what he wanted from an education standpoint.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now he took care of us and he was an awesome dad, but he always would stress learn, learn, learn.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it didn't have to be textbook learning.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: He he wanted us, he used to, in fact, there's a story in the book, it's called if you stop learning, you die.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that was something my dad used to say because he wanted you to learn.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the way he learned was he he read, but he learned from other people because he said, You cannot be prideful enough to say that you know everything.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: You only know what you know.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: And if people are not willing to accept this information, like you're saying, that's a challenge.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when you're younger, and this goes back to the original story with my my son, is that you know, I told him during this original story is you're not the first person to ever go through this issue.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, he thought he was, right?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: But so did I when I was his age.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was exactly the same age as he was, and I'm like, oh my God, this is horrible, this is crazy.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: But then I realized as you live life, you realize history does repeat itself.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there are some things that are different, but but there's other people that you can learn from.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think part of the thing is people have to be willing and open to learning and to listening and to interpreting.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that if somebody gives you an opinion that you have to just take it and go right off the cliff.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's of course it's about how do you interpret whatever they've said and how you deal with it with everything else you've got going, because you are the only one, whether it's your mom, your dad, your significant other, whatever it is, you're the only one that knows what you want really out of life.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to interpret this information and the ability to then take it in and learn from it.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so I would hope people of all ages, because we we, as you said, as a society, we are very closed-minded.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: We we we've kind of like say, I don't want to learn anything that might get away from some beliefs I had.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care whether it's about your sports teams or or other or politics or or business or whatever.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: So so I just think people, one should search and be inquisitive.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I always say, be inquisitive forever, to never stop wanting to learn.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Just because you get a college degree, just because you've learned a lot.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, some people have told me, Flint, that that after they got their college degree, they never wanted to take a test again, they never want to study again, they never wanted to read a book again.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, what are you talking about?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: That that enabled you to learn how to study about culture and life and the world.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: The story I'll tell you is when I was a young guy, I was working for a company called Hager Apparel Company, and I was young and ambitious.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was probably my late 20s at the time.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I was really aggressive, and I wanted this role, I wanted to see if I could be a CEO.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't want anybody to stop me.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought I knew everything, right?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: I had this degree, I had been pretty successful in my first career as a retailer, I had been pretty successful in my first stint as a sales representative, right?
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm doing it again and I'm on I'm on the road to be the salesman of the year.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, nobody's gonna tell me anything.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we had a meeting discussing when we were trying to figure out how to price goods to sell to Walmart.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, they were one of our big retailers.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just not going the way I thought it was gonna go.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I got very, very emotional, very unlike me.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: I like passion, but I got emotional.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I said some things in a meeting that was just like, this is crazy.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Why did I come to work for this division?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is horrible, right?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And people, we only had like eight or nine people in division, they were looking at me like, who the heck is this guy?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And after the meeting, one of the 62, 63-year-old salespeople, his name was Clay Houston.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Jeff, I want to talk to you.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he he took me, didn't yell at me, didn't do it, but I knew I was in trouble, right?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I was willing to listen because Clay was a great salesman.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: He was a great person, he's a and he was a great mentor.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: So Clay would just walk me around this corporate building and just talk me through and said, Do you realize what just happened?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Everything you said was absolutely correct, but nobody heard you because you were emotional, Jeff.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: After you said this particular word, everybody tuned you out, even though what you said was correct.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: So he he walked me, and I listened, and I listened, right?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was willing, because this was a great man, but I could have been this arrogant guy who said, No, no, no, no, you're not gonna listen to me.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna tell or not gonna tell me what I'm gonna do.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what you told me you were gonna do this.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I said, no, no, no.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I backed off.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: He he taught me, plus, he also gave me mentorship on what to do.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: He said, You should go back in there.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: You don't necessarily have to apologize because you know, everybody kind of agrees what you're saying, but you should just come at it from a different angle.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: So he gave me some talking points.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: I took some notes down, I thought about it because I didn't want to react right away because I still was, you know, had all this emotion.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I went back in about 45 minutes to an hour later, had thought through some things.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: The team was still meeting, you know, and we were getting back together.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I came in.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And when the meeting started, I asked my boss if I could have a couple minutes.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I just said, you know, listen, I mean, what I said, I got out of hand.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm really passionate.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: You guys know that.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: I took it too far, you know, and I didn't say, well, Clay told me to say that.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: But what it did is it helped me.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then obviously at 26, I learned that, you know, at a very young age, but I listened and I try, you know, listen, we're human beings.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: I try not to be emotional about things, I try to be passionate about things, but it's because of what Clay told me and my willingness to listen, that that was the big, big part of why I think people need to listen more to mentors.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: And again, not that everybody's correct, but I interpreted what he said and how it was for me.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's many times I've, you know, people told me some things, and I'm like, yeah, that's not for me.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: In that situation, I and I can imagine that scenario.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think everyone can empathize with the scenario where you're passionate about a subject, uh, maybe overpassionate, and that passionate comes out in a form of uh in the form of ineffective communication.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um what about the change in attitude do you feel turned the minds of your colleagues around to once again start hearing what you had to say?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: What was it about the change of tone or the change of communication that really allowed them to maybe start listening to you?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think in this situation, it it's it's another thing that we sometimes have a difficult time saying.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was wrong.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I admit it.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't, I don't know if I I can, I don't think I actually said those words.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that was again coaching from Clay.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because again, there's there's pride involved, you know.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, everybody's got pride.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: But what I went in there and I just said, listen, this was not the right way to handle this.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: I admitted my mistake.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, and I admit it that I could do, I could, I could have done it better.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: I could have got my point across.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: You could have listened to me, heard me, which is important, not just later, you got to hear me.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: But the biggest thing was that I I said, you know, I don't even know if I said I was sorry, but I just admitted that I made a mistake and I could have handled the situation differently.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And going forward, I think one of the other things, and I know I should say what Clay told me is tell him going forward, I'm gonna do a better job.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: But as a young guy learning, you know, please help me.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this goes back to your original question.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: If there's things that you can then, you know, either in a meeting or after the meeting, pull me off to the side and say, here's a better way for you to handle that.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because I want to learn, I want to be like you guys, I want to be.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he was clay, like I said, was in his early 60s, like I am, you know, I'm 60 years old now.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I want people to learn, you know, from those type of individuals.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it was the main thing is I went in there and said, I could have done it better.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: And and by that, it dropped the tone of everybody, you know, everybody came down, it dropped the heat of the meeting, the emotion of the meeting.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, Well, listen, that's a big step for Jeff to for anyone to take is listen, I could have done it better.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: So what it really boils down to, and I completely agree with this, is and I would say one of the morals of that story is the idea of uh taking ownership for yourself.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's responsibility, it's a factor of responsibility.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: When people can have a conversation with another person who they know is not going to take advantage of them by uh blaming them, when they feel that the other person is going to take responsible for their own actions and reactions, I think people are far more willing to uh express themselves, have the honest communication, create uh connect maybe not create connections, but form deals or or any sort of association with each other?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: This act of taking responsibility for yourself is extremely important.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um I would then venture to ask how have you maybe from that point on in your own life outside of the work environment, taken that idea of responsibility or taking ownership for your own your own actions, your own life.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: How have you seen that be important in in your own personal life?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think I think the the the the main thing is is when when you get married, right?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: So for just one example.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, or or really any relationship that you have, if you have close friends, even with your family, but just I just picked marriage out, is because one of the most important things when you go through kind of this pre-marriage thing is that they say the two most important words in a marriage is I'm sorry.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the next two words are I forgive you.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Three, I forgive you, right?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: So there are going to be times in your life that just whether it's a marriage, whether it's and that was a relationship that I had with all my coworkers, you're going to have friendships, but the ability to look at life through that lens, not in life or career, through the lens of I, no matter how good I whether I am or anybody that's listening to this, no matter how good you are, you're not perfect.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And and to be able to step back and say, even if you know you're 100% right on a topic, there's still a way to handle it, right?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Even though there's a way to, you know, and if it's a 50-50 disagreement, well then, you know, how do you how do you give and take, right?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: But the ability to understand that that you can say that I I could have handled that situation better, because then, you know, then then you're you every again, the emotion comes down.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and I've seen it, you know, I mean, listen, I've been married 28 years now.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's many times in my, you know, my marriage where you know things get you know a little testy because you know, you're living with someone very close, you you know everything about them.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, and you know, there are lines you cross, but the biggest thing is the ability to say, I'm sorry, I forgive you.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's, you know, I could have handled it differently and and not have the other person say, Well, of course you could have.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's yes, okay, I get it.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: So now let's let's move forward from there.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and the other thing I think is the ability of the the the whoever the audience is, whether it's a spouse, whether it's your co-workers, to to use that to say, okay, we're going to move on.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're not going to use it.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, again, now if you do it a hundred times, then there's an issue.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: But if you've learned from it and you've grown from it, then then to not like bring it up two years later to say, remember that one time you got emotional.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, okay, I but I'm better, right?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, of course you can prove, but you did it that one time.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of a give and take of that audience.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I think any time that you can, you know, open yourself up and and be able to say to people, you know, I could have handled that situation differently.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, we see it so many places today that people, it's just hard.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's just hard for people to admit that.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: That that kind of gets to the root of this commentary, which I find fascinating, is in order to admit that you are wrong, in order to say I'm sorry, you have to realize that you are actually wrong.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have any sort of actionable items or ideas or or feelings you can uh talk about, you know, feelings in the sense of uh ways of searching your own mind, your own psyche, your own uh emotional context for identifying when you actually feel like you are wrong and maybe have to apologize or correct a situation.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I think um nothing specifically comes to mind uh because if you live life long enough, there's a lot of them.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think, right?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just it's just it's human nature.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I think I think the the biggest thing I'd go back to is let's go back to that situation that I was in.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, just the idea that that I knew it, I knew I had to to calm things down because somebody told me to say, wait a minute, this is you have to say that what you did was not correct.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, if you're not willing to do that, and there are many people that aren't, I mean, I've I've coached and mentored, have people reported to me, work with teammates, they just will not back down, you know, then then that's that's that's a bigger psychological discussion to say that all the evidence is against you, you know, or all the facts are against you, or or or the rest of your team is is now, or or whatever it is, and that you still will not admit it.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why um, you know, that's why it's a it's a challenge.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but I think I think the biggest thing is when when I've I've realized, you know, I mean, I guess what I could say is there when I worked for this this boss, the CEO at Michaels, he gave me he gave me a lot of latitude because of my role there.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was what they call the office of the CEO.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I I was his right-hand man to be able to help implement hundreds of millions of dollars worth of initiatives, right?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't operate the company, but I was supposed to put technology in and distribution centers, whatever.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: But he also wanted me to change the company.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was literally hired under the umbrella of you're I'm gonna hire you to move the company farther or faster, or I'm gonna fire you because he wanted me to have this ability to move things.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually a story in the book.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I accepted it because that I loved it.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: I love the idea of you know moving the company and and and seeing what you could do, right?
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and making people better and kind of all this mentoring thing I've been talking about, and you know, training people and getting the whole company working better.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I knew with even with him, there were times when the latitude he gave me, I call it the line, right?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you had the Majno line over in World War One, right?
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: This was the Rulo line's name was Michael Brudel.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and I I would, if I get up to that line, I knew I couldn't go over it.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a couple of times I did, and a couple of times he should have probably said, Okay, that's enough.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: You you went too far.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we talked it out um because I I I knew it, I knew where the line was.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I had to make sure that I didn't cross it.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and so I just think I think many people, you just have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and be able to say, you know, that that I made a mistake.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's very, very difficult.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, again, especially in the world we live in today, it is very, very difficult to say, again, you don't necessarily have to use the words I'm wrong if you don't want to, just say I could handle the situation differently.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and then be able to move on from it.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then hopefully the people around you, one, you have to show progress, but the people around you will say, Yeah, that that's that thank you very much, or great, we're gonna move on, and then hopefully won't see that again.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: I think that that the whole commentary actually ties quite well, maybe in a an indirect way, to this idea of your book, this idea of taking responsibility, taking ownership and moving on, creating progress, which is the entirety of the book, in a way, is you taking ownership of the lessons that you have learned, whether they from successes or from failures, and trying your best at least to uh help other people learn those uh those lessons.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's the act of taking in ownership of probably a variety of different aspects of your life uh and character, and trying your best to I would imagine it's a fairly vulnerable uh project because in order to take responsibility for these kinds of actions or for these stories and for these lessons, you have to be vulnerable with the idea of other people knowing that you might not have succeeded in those areas.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think what yeah, no, that's exactly right.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I mean you get you hit the nail on the head.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, in the the the purpose of the the word when is when they happened in my life.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the reason I wrote it that way was kind of a chronological order of how I learned, who I learned from.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: And as I'm, you know, people when you're young, you hate the word mature, right?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you're not mature enough, right?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I wasn't now at 23, 24, 25, 26, I sure I did not like people using, well, you know, you when you're mature, but it it was so you can so I wanted people to see is my maturation process of these emotional things, like this example I spoke about earlier that happened when I was 26, 27, compared to how I was concerned, you know, 25 years later when people were coming to me and they were so emotional.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's actually a story in there about, you know, people would come into my office and they would rant and rave, and and I couldn't even hear what they were saying.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: They had no facts that literally I changed, I had my wife give me a little thing that I put on my desk that says managed by facts, because I wanted people to calm down and I felt I was now being clay used in these people.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: I want to listen to you, but I can't hear you because you're ranting and raving.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: So so the whole purpose of the book is to start when I, you know, when I was younger before I even went into my first job.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: So things that I, you know, again, I wish I knew.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's the whole point.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Things I wish I knew when.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: I started out before I started my first job, and then it was when I got my first job.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then later on, it's when I became, you know, this person, you know, that right-hand man of a CEO and so on.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: But but I hope it shows a maturation of an individual.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, it is it is vulnerable.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, some of these stories I wrote, like, man, you know, that was not a good one, you know.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and when I did fail, and I want people to know I fail.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't, you know, I mean, my my son tells me it's a Mary Sue character where there's like no faults or something like that.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: I hear like in movies or whatever, but I I I failed.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I left a job, a great job when I was 33 to go out on my own.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I failed spectacularly.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I could not figure it out.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, everything I had been successful with, well, I want to show people that vulnerability, not like, oh, I just had this perfect ride.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: I failed a lot.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: My companies I picked, you know.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: I there's a couple of companies that were, they helped me, but they weren't really good companies.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: So these are all part of life's journeys that it's it's a it truly is a long and winding road.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's very rarely is it all up.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you might, you know, be all up.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: I I you know, congratulations if you do.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, but but it exposes issues that that I struggled with.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: And and and I hope that will, you know, like I talk about this as a roadmap, that you know, you might read it and say, oh man, I'm dealing with that right now, or or then all of a sudden you might avoid it because you know not to have to deal with it.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm telling you, don't go down that dark alley, you're gonna get hit by a you know a brick.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: So um so I and that leads to a fairly interesting avenue, which is this idea of it being a roadmap.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's understood that you're not actually telling anyone to take your own path, you're asking people to take their own path.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_02: What I would I wonder how to phrase this question correctly.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's how does how can a person take in uh advice from someone else like in your book, take take in these stories, um, connect with them, how can they then uh identify maybe the only own the aspects of their life that are similar and and adapt those stories to their own life in in order to find their own kind of correct path?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think I think the thing is it's to me, it's kind of like uh the way I look at a person's life is kind of like making a cake, right?
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of ingredients that have to go into it, and then you might want to add a little bit more sugar, a little bit more of this.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's what you're doing your entire life, right?
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to have a path, you have to have know what you want to do.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're if you're reading my stories, I mean there's a there's one story in there about establishing goals, and it starts with it's titled, if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so it actually comes from Alice in Wonderland, right?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so, so as Alice was trying to figure out where to, you know, she didn't know where she wanted to go, but she was asking the Cheshire CAC for help.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if and his answer was, it doesn't matter what information I give you or help I give you, because you don't know where you want to go.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's this that's the same thing with advice in my book.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's why I think it's the third story or fourth story of the book, is that story, which is you have to be able to establish some type of goals.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: You have to have some type of thought about where do you want to go.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then these inputs can help you go there.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like I chose early on, I wanted to be a CEO, right?
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or get to as high up in the in the senior ranks of a company as possible.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: That was my goal.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't have to mean it's your goal, right?
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: You you, you know, and and and I don't care what your goals are, but you have to have something to achieve to actually have a roadmap for.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: So then if you want to know how to be, you know, a CEO, great.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Some of my stories will help you.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to know how to be, I'll use my my old my my business retailer.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to be the greatest buyer in the world, there's still stories in there about how you manage your business, how do you look at things differently, how do you interview, how do you how do you handle HR situations?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: So so I'm not telling somebody to manage and say, I want to be, because there I know there are people that don't want to be.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: My wife didn't want to be.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: She became a manager and she was like, I don't want to have anything to do with that, right?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: So she she went back to be what she was great at because she didn't want to have to manage people and do reviews and do all the other things.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't want to have to go up the corporate ladder.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: So she spent 20 years and before she had our kid doing this great job, right?
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay, but she still had goals about what she wanted to do with her life and her career, right?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the big thing is first you have to have a place to go, right?
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I can't tell you that, right?
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can take input right uh about what you want to do.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a story in the book, it's called Jenna, where I had a young lady named Jenna come to me and ask me her, you know, my advice on what she should do with her career.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I didn't tell her what to do, we talked it through, and she actually chose a path.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then once she chose that path with all this input, I could say, now I can help you.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because I have experience in that path.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the biggest thing is is for really anybody, as long as you kind of know where you're going.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: And again, you can change.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I always talk about the idea of whether you should, you know, have your goals and dreams and whatever in concrete, or they should be like a moldable piece of clay that you can adjust based on the environment, right?
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a lot of goals were changed with this unfortunate virus we've had to deal with over the last 24 months.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and that opens up actually exactly into the place where I wanted to go with this, which is um in this state of the of the pandemic, there are I think I might have actually seen this report via your LinkedIn, there are a dramatic amount of people who are actively searching or actively trying to leave their jobs.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's a substantial amount of people.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: The question is, and it's really this push and pull of when do how long do I stay in a position?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh are the are the current struggles outside of this work or my uh of maybe my lack of joy or my lack of love in my life or all these kind of things, um are those temporary or permanent in this position?
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_02: Are they caused by this position?
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: Is this position actually what I want to keep doing?
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: There are a lot of questions that come to mind as far as should I stay in this position or should I leave it?
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_02: When do you think or that's actually even a bad way to phrase it because I don't think you would want to give people exact advice when to leave their job.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: But the idea is how does how does someone, or maybe in your story, how do you search for that emotional state of being where you actively choose, make the decision, like what I'm doing is not right right now.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: I need to do something else.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, kind of speaking of the situation we've been in the last 24 months, I gave a speech a couple weeks ago to a um merchandising class at one of the local universities here, University of North Texas.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that I talked about was kind of trends that have happened over the last four decades since I've been in the business world.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: And one of them I talked about was COVID.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I related it again.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is my opinion, doesn't have to be other people's opinion, but it relates it to the the way that I heard people, my my mom and my my grandparents talk about when they went through the depression, how it changed them psychologically, the way they looked at banks, the way they valued things, what they valued, right?
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so so again, I listening to them, right?
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: Then I sit there and now I'm living through this situation, right?
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's different, it's a pandemic, but it's still a shocking, I call a significant emotional event to the system.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of people are reevaluating everything.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, from you know, health to their job to their friends to what they value in life.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think you know, part of that is what you want to do for a living, right?
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: And and and I what I always say, in fact, there's stories in the book that speak about this, but the way I looked at it in my life was because I saw the transition back in the 60s and 70s of where my most of my family was blue-collar workers.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: My dad is, I think I mentioned earlier, was a truck driver.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, most of my family worked in manufacturing, or there were policemen, they were firemen, they were teachers, they were right.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: So there were blue-collar workers, right?
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they had unions that protected them to a point.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and then all of a sudden, things started to change.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: My my my uncle was working for a manufacturer who packed up and left.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he was without a job, right?
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, my brother-in-law is working for two or three companies, they packed up and left.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was Milwaukee, Wisconsin area.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: They packed up and left, sure, and they moved to other parts of the world or country, right?
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: So all of a sudden, this idea of having some support was gone.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized at that time, and it was also the same time that Major League Baseball, a lot of a lot of uh sports thing that leagues were going through this idea of free agency, right?
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be free, right?
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I said in my mind that probably in my early 20s, I needed to be free because you couldn't depend on these companies because some of my my uncle worked there for like 32 years.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, packed up, left, gone, 48 years old, he's got a job, right?
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then I saw these major league baseball players saying, Well, I want to live where I want to live.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I have to live there?
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I believe people at the core need to need to think about themselves as free agents.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea of balancing all the things that you said, right?
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because nobody can, I can't tell them, because again, what I mentioned here, I don't know what's going on in your life, but whether it's your life, your family, your kids, um, you know, what you want to do with your career, do you want to be a senior executive?
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to make money?
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to hold power?
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: Or, or do you want to do something else?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to be a, you know, my again, my dad drove truck, right?
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he he had a great career doing that, right?
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and everything in between, right?
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to whatever you want to do, and then how do you balance that?
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I made decisions in my life later on, um, where I didn't want to move from Dallas because my kid was in high school.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, so I could have taken other positions, I could have chased other positions that would have made me move to the Northeast or the Southeast, but I'd had to move my child when he was going into high school.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I felt that was more important for him to live his high school years without having to get meet new friends and whatever.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: That was a choice I made.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, in this balance of life, my balance was my kid, you know, was higher than me chasing another step on the ladder or another title that had a C in front of it or something like that, or an S in front of it, or E in front of it.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, everybody has to evaluate that.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think at this point in time, it's a great time to step back and say what is truly important to you, right?
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and then go after it with all the gangbusters you can.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's not gonna just come happen to you.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna, you know, I say to people, it's not gonna happen by just watching a bunch of Netflix movies and playing Candy Crush, right?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is that you decide to in this balance of life and career, go get it.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm not gonna tell you, you know, after two years of not doing this, not doing that, quit your job.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, or if you don't like your boss, quit your job.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna say that.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that could be a reason, but I'm I'm not, I I think the biggest thing is how do you balance what you what you believe is important in your life now with everything going on.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: I think that that actually is a really good place to wrap up with a thought because it actually comes relatively full circle is this, and I love the way you put it, yeah, I want to be a free the free agency, everyone's a free agent in life.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and the reason that ties back into the beginning of this conversation was the entirety of the first half of this conversation was about responsibility, it was about taking ownership of your actions.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: And the idea of even in no matter the state of the world, the idea of being a free agent requires you, and everyone should realize that they are a free agent.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: No one is advocating for your worth besides you.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe your loved ones are, but at the end of the day, it's really up to you to advocate for yourself, to reflect on the value that you produce in any facet of life.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_02: In order to do that, you have to take ownership for the aspects of your life that maybe you don't feel like are under control, under your control.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_02: Am I looking at, like you were talking about earlier, taking responsibility for your actions, looking at the way you react, like in this office room, taking responsibility for the way that you react.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: And if you react react poorly, then uh admitting that, saying you're sorry, whether it's to a loved one or a friend or a colleague.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but taking Taking ownership for the way that you are living is imperative to figuring out where you want to go next.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_02: You have to, if you want to be a free agent, if you want to be valuable, you have to take responsibility for the next steps, the next actions you're going to take.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's probably a really good place to wrap it wrap it up as well, because it most likely is a common theme, it sounds like, of your book, which is this idea of taking responsibility not only of your own lessons, but the lessons that other people might have for you.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: And taking ownership, really it all is all coming back to this, taking ownership of not only listening to those lessons, but uh bringing them back into your own life.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, maybe letting your ego go for a moment and and identifying the struggles of other people's other people with yourself and learning lessons from them.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I think it's a pretty cool full circle uh thing right there.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: The last question I would have before, or two questions I would have before we go, one is do you have information for listeners on where to find your book or any sort of other uh social media you have?
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_02: If they can, so if they're interested, they can look further.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_02: And two, um, hearing me reflect over this conversation, what is one thing that you would want a listener to take away from it?
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, I appreciate that's a that was a heck of a wrap up to this conversation.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: So um you're good at what you do here.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I like that.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um people can find me.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh my website is jeffwellen.com, uh J-E-F-F-W-E-L-L-E-N.com.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's uh some links out there that you can find the book and find more information about me.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: I am on LinkedIn, you know, with just Jeff Wellen.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um okay.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um the the the thing I'd leave with people is it's the very first story in the book.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it and I will leave you with two of the quotes in that in that story.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: First is the quote that I've lived basically my entire life by success and failure are judged only by those who are willing to try.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because that to me is the essence of the challenge that we have as human beings to try, to push the limits of what we have inside of us, to find out how far the God-given gifts that we have can be pushed.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, I've dreamed of being a basketball player.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have the God-given gifts to do that.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I found this path to be, you know, a senior executive and do okay there, right?
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm trying to find a path because I believe inside me has the ability to mentor, teach, and coach people.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna push that as far as I can because that's the way.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I could fail spectacularly at it, but I'm going to try.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: And my success is gonna be because I tried.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the other statement in there that there's two simple truths that I've followed my whole life.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: One is what I just said the only way you're capable of knowing what you're what you're capable of doing is to try.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the whole COVID situation.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: You won't that life can change in a heartbeat.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: We've all found that out in the last 24 months.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, before when I was writing the book, we were in COVID, but I didn't really understand it.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: My situation, what I was talking about, is my dad had had a heart attack.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: Other people around me had had some health challenges.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I was saying, man, all of a sudden you can be healthy one day and in a bed the next.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now we've all understand that.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: So the whole point I'm trying to make to people, if they take nothing away from anything that we've said today, is try and that life can change.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: So to have no regrets in life, try.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where that's the that's the whole common theme.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's the first story in the book, and everything else, you know, they don't read any read anything else.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: If they do that and they follow that, something cool I think can happen in their lives.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Jeff.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean really breathe.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_02: Breathe so that it stretches out your shoulders and your back and your chest and pushes out your stomach.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: No more of these shallow, bullshit breaths.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_02: They're barely keeping you alive, my friend.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: And after you exhale, go out and soak up today.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_02: Because in the end, your actions and the way they interact with the world and the people around you right now are all you have in this life.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: So be authentic with them.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: Peace.