Latest / Voices for Voices® / Identity Crisis: What Happens When You Are No Longer The CEO

Transcript

Identity Crisis: What Happens When You Are No Longer The CEO · Voices for Voices®

• 0:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Hi everyone, it's Justin there, Voices for Voices.
• 0:04
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you so much for joining us.
• 0:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Whether you're watching, listening here in the United States, across the world.
• 0:10
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: If you could do us a few free things, give us a thumbs up, like, follow, subscribe, share, reshare, repost, word of mouth.
• 0:19
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: If you have your phone out, reach out to 25 contacts and share the voices for voices podcast with them.
• 0:26
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And if you don't have your phone out, grab your phone.
• 0:29
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I know it's close to buy.
• 0:31
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Mine is always in reach out to 25 or maybe 50 of your contacts and share the voices for voices podcast with them.
• 0:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you so much for being with us.
• 0:43
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh today we're going to talk about the day I lost everything was the best day of my life.
• 0:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Oh wow.
• 0:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The lawyer's term for it is insolvent.
• 0:58
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's a cold, sterile word for a situation that feels like anything but the human word for it is finished.
• 1:09
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's the feeling of a story screeching to a halt, a door slamming in your face, a future you poured your soul into just vanishing.
• 1:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: For me, that day came in a single gut wrenching email.
• 1:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I remember staring at the screen, the cursor blinking at the end of the court filing, its silence and feeling as silenced, so total.
• 1:45
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was like the world had gone deaf.
• 1:49
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The business was gone.
• 1:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The savings were gone.
• 1:54
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The identity I'd spent a decade building was gone.
• 1:59
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: All that was left was a mountain of debt and a humiliation so heavy I felt physically pinned to my chair.
• 2:11
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That was without a doubt the worst day of my life.
• 2:15
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And yet I can stand here today and tell you with zero exaggeration that it was also the best day of my life.
• 2:26
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I know it sounds like a contradiction, but what I've come to learn is that sometimes you have to be completely demolished to find out what you're really made of.
• 2:39
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Sometimes hitting rock bottom is the only way you can build a foundation that won't ever shake again.
• 2:50
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This isn't just a story about failing, and it's not a story about bouncing back to the same life I had before.
• 3:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's a story about the terrifying, confusing, and ultimately beautiful freedom that comes after you lose a life you thought you wanted, because it's the only thing that can force you to finally build the one you actually need.
• 3:23
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The final call wasn't even dramatic, no shouting, no big declarations.
• 3:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was just a quiet conversation with my accountant.
• 3:34
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: His voice tired, laying out numbers that confirmed what my gut had been screaming for months.
• 3:43
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was over.
• 3:45
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: After he hung up, I walked through the office.
• 3:48
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was late, and everything was still.
• 3:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The empty chairs, the whiteboards covered in frantic, hopeful scribbles from a week ago.
• 4:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The little plant on the receptionist desk I'd forgotten to water.
• 4:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I saw ghosts everywhere.
• 4:09
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I had tied every single ounce of myself worth to this place, to the title on my business card, to our employee headcount, to the revenue goals we were always just about to hit, and in the space of one quiet phone call, all of it was just gone.
• 4:35
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Now let's look at the grind and the dream.
• 4:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Now before the end there was a dream.
• 4:43
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And the dream, like most, started with pure passion.
• 4:48
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I loved what we were doing.
• 4:50
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I really believed in it.
• 4:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: In the early days, those eighty hour work weeks felt like a badge of honor.
• 4:59
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Sleeping on the office floor wasn't a hardship.
• 5:03
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was a sign of dedication.
• 5:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I was a builder, an entrepreneur, a creator.
• 5:12
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My identity wasn't just tied to the business.
• 5:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was the business.
• 5:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My mood for the day was set by our daily sales numbers.
• 5:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My conversations, even with friends and family, always circled back to work.
• 5:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I was chasing that version of success, you see, in magazines.
• 5:38
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Exponential growth, a bigger office, a higher valuation, the quiet nod of respect from the founders.
• 5:48
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I measured my life in quarterly reports and my happiness in user acquisition costs.
• 5:57
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And from the outside, it looked like it was working.
• 6:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We were growing.
• 6:03
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We got a few nice mentions in the press.
• 6:07
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: By all conventional metrics, we were on the right path.
• 6:12
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But if I'm being honest with myself, even then, there were cracks in the foundation.
• 6:20
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I was perpetually exhausted.
• 6:23
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That constant, low grade hum of anxiety was just my new normal.
• 6:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I missed birthdays.
• 6:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I forgot anniversaries.
• 6:35
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I was basically a ghost in my own life, haunting the edges of family gatherings before slipping out to go put out another fire.
• 6:48
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I kept telling myself it was temporary.
• 6:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Just until we get and we close this round, just until we launch this feature, just until we're profitable.
• 7:04
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was always just around the corner.
• 7:07
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I was living for a future that never seemed to show up.
• 7:12
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My own well being, my relationships, my sanity.
• 7:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: They were all things I'd mortgaged against my and a future success.
• 7:25
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I was so sure would make it all worth it.
• 7:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That's the trap of chasing a dream.
• 7:33
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That isn't really yours.
• 7:35
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's a dream built on external validation.
• 7:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You think you're building a company, but what you're really doing is building a case to prove to the world and to yourself that you're worthy.
• 7:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The problem is a business built on that kind of hunger can never be satisfied.
• 8:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's a black hole, and I was pouring my entire life into it.
• 8:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Not realizing I was the one being consumed.
• 8:11
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The stress and pressure took a devastating toll on my relationships.
• 8:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Communication with loved ones had either stopped completely or been replaced by tense, resentful silence.
• 8:27
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I was so focused on the destination that I didn't see the journey was breaking me.
• 8:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I was running a race with my head down, sprinting as hard as I could, without ever stopping to ask if I was even on the right track.
• 8:48
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The world has a powerful script for what success looks like, and I was following it to the letter.
• 8:57
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I was a success story in the making, or so I thought.
• 9:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The truth was I was building a beautiful, elaborate prison, and I was both the inmate and the warden.
• 9:14
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The unraveling.
• 9:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It didn't just fall apart overnight.
• 9:21
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was more like a slow, agonizing bleed.
• 9:25
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It started with a market shift we just didn't see coming.
• 9:31
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: A new competitor, bigger and better funded, jumped into our space and started eating our lunch.
• 9:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Their product was slicker, and their marketing budget was an ocean compared to our puddle.
• 9:49
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: At first, we were in denial.
• 9:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We called it a blip.
• 9:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We told ourselves our loyal customers would stick with us.
• 10:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We worked even harder, pulling longer hours, fueled by a frantic, desperate energy.
• 10:08
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We were a ship taking on water, and instead of heading for shore, we were just baling faster.
• 10:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Then our biggest client, the one that made up nearly forty percent of our revenue, didn't renew their contract.
• 10:29
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I remember the call.
• 10:31
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The reason was polite, corporate, and utterly devastating.
• 10:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: They were going with the competitor.
• 10:39
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was just business, but to me it felt like a brutal personal rejection.
• 10:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That was the moment the floor truly gave out.
• 10:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The numbers just didn't work anymore.
• 10:54
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: No matter how creatively we arranged them on a spreadsheet.
• 11:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The blip became a downturn.
• 11:04
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The downturn became a crisis.
• 11:08
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Psychologically I was a wreck.
• 11:11
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Sleep was luxury I couldn't afford.
• 11:15
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My nights were spent staring at the ceiling.
• 11:19
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My mind a relentless loop of worst case scenarios, replaying every mistake, wondering what I could have done differently.
• 11:31
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: During the day, I had to put on a mask of calm, confident leadership for my team.
• 11:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: While inside I was crumbling.
• 11:43
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The weight of their livelihoods, their trust in me.
• 11:48
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was a physical burden.
• 11:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Every cheerful good morning in the hallway felt like a lie.
• 11:58
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The shame was the worst part.
• 12:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was this constant companion whispering in my ear that I was a fraud, that I'd let everyone down.
• 12:11
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: In the world I came from, bankruptcy wasn't just a financial outcome.
• 12:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It felt like a moral failing.
• 12:21
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It meant you weren't smart enough.
• 12:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You weren't tough enough.
• 12:25
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You just didn't have what it takes.
• 12:28
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I started dodging calls from friends, knowing I couldn't bear the pity in their voices or the simple, unanswered question, how's business?
• 12:43
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I felt completely alone, trapped in a disaster of my own making.
• 12:49
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We tried everything to save it.
• 12:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We slashed costs.
• 12:54
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We pivoted our strategy.
• 12:56
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We desperately pitched new investors, trying to sell a comeback story.
• 13:03
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We no longer believed in ourselves.
• 13:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But the momentum was gone.
• 13:09
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The confidence was gone, and the money was gone.
• 13:13
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The last few weeks were a surreal march toward the inevitable.
• 13:20
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We had to let our staff go one by one.
• 13:25
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Those were the hardest conversations in my life.
• 13:29
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Watching the dreams I had sold them on dissolve in their eyes was a special kind of pain.
• 13:39
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Watching the dreams.
• 13:42
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The final act was that email to the lawyers, the one that kicked off the legal process.
• 13:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The word insolvent wasn't an abstract term anymore.
• 13:57
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It felt like the final judgment on my dream.
• 14:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I had failed, and in that moment it felt like my life was over.
• 14:09
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Rock bottom.
• 14:12
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The day after the business officially died was day one of what I call the Great Void.
• 14:19
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The frantic nonstop motion of the past several years came to a dead stop.
• 14:28
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: No more urgent emails, no more fires to put out, no more team meetings, just silence.
• 14:38
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: A crushing, empty silence.
• 14:41
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I woke up that morning and for the first time in a decade I had nowhere to be.
• 14:49
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My whole identity had been founder and CEO.
• 14:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was the first thing I said when I met people.
• 14:58
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was the entire frame of my existence.
• 15:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Now when I looked in the mirror, I had no idea who was looking back.
• 15:10
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: If I wasn't that person, who was I?
• 15:14
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The question was terrifying because the only answer that came to my mind was a failure.
• 15:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Then the practical realities crashed down on me.
• 15:29
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The phone started ringing, but it wasn't opportunity calling.
• 15:34
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was creditors.
• 15:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Each call was a fresh wave of humiliation.
• 15:42
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: A new reminder of just how deep the hole was.
• 15:47
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The business accounts were frozen.
• 15:50
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My personal savings had been burned through trying to keep the company afloat.
• 15:57
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Soon the official letters started arriving.
• 16:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Threats about the car, the apartment, the personal guarantees I had signed with such naive optimism years before.
• 16:13
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Losing a business isn't a clean break.
• 16:17
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's a messy, slow motion dismantling of your life.
• 16:22
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I watched as the life I had built was taken apart piece by piece.
• 16:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My car was repossessed.
• 16:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I had to sell furniture to buy groceries.
• 16:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I remember standing in my half empty living room, the echo of my own footsteps, feeling strange, and feeling a shame so profound I could barely breathe.
• 16:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I felt like I had a giant glowing F for failure branded on my forehead.
• 17:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I avoided people.
• 17:03
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I'd crossed the street to avoid running into an old colleague.
• 17:09
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I let calls from my family go to voicemail.
• 17:13
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Shame loves silence and isolation, and I was giving it exactly what it wanted.
• 17:21
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This was rock bottom.
• 17:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It wasn't some philosophical idea.
• 17:27
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was a real, tangible place.
• 17:31
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was the feeling of having zero control, zero prospects, and zero value.
• 17:39
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My anxiety was constant.
• 17:41
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It felt like being at the bottom of a deep dark well, looking up at a pinprick of light that seemed a million miles away.
• 17:55
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: All the external signs of my success were gone, and I was left with a terrifying realization that I had nothing else.
• 18:07
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I had so completely wrapped up my work with my worth that when the work disappeared, my worth went with it.
• 18:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was a period of profound loss, not just of a company, but of a future, a community, and most of all myself.
• 18:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I truly believe my life was ruined.
• 18:34
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: For a while I believed that this was the end of my story.
• 18:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Our turning point.
• 18:58
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Not a glamorous world-changing job, just a job that paid the bills.
• 19:05
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I started taking on temporary work, anything to get some money coming in.
• 19:11
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And that alone was a profoundly humbling experience.
• 19:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Going from the boss to an anonymous cog in someone else's machine was a shock to my system.
• 19:26
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But it was also unexpectedly a relief.
• 19:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: For the first time in years, when I left work, my work was done.
• 19:38
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: There were no existential crises to solve at 3 a.m.
• 19:44
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: There was no payroll to worry about.
• 19:48
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The crushing weight of responsibility I'd been carrying was just gone.
• 19:56
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I didn't even realize how heavy it was until I felt its absence.
• 20:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was like an elephant had been sitting on my chest for a decade, and one day it just got up and walked away.
• 20:13
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: All this new space and quiet in my mind created room for something else to grow.
• 20:21
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The real shift began when I was forced to confront why.
• 20:28
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Not just why did the business fail, but the deeper stuff.
• 20:33
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Why did I even start?
• 20:35
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: What was I really chasing?
• 20:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Was it the passion for the work?
• 20:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Or was it a desperate need for a gold star from the world?
• 20:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I never had the time or courage to ask those questions before.
• 20:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I started taking long walks with no destination.
• 20:56
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I started journaling, just pouring out all the anger, shame, and grief.
• 21:03
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I started having honest conversations with the few close friends who stuck around.
• 21:09
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Not the polished, confident chats of a CEO, but the messy, vulnerable talks of a person who was completely lost.
• 21:20
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And in that process, a new perspective started to take shape.
• 21:25
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I realized that hitting rock bottom had given me an incredible, unsolicited gift, a blank canvas.
• 21:35
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: When you have truly lost everything, you're finally free.
• 21:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Free from the expectations of others, free from the pressure to maintain a certain image, free from the golden handcuffs of a life that looks good on paper but feels hollow inside.
• 21:57
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: All the things I had been.
• 22:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So terrifying and terrified of losing were gone, and I was still here, I was still breathing, the sun still came up.
• 22:12
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That realization was the beginning of everything.
• 22:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I stopped seeing the bankruptcy as a judgment on my character and started seeing it as an education.
• 22:26
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: A very painful, expensive, but ultimately invaluable education.
• 22:33
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I learned that my identity is not my job title.
• 22:38
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My self-worth is not my net worth.
• 22:42
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And the relentless pursuit of more, of more money, more status, more recognition was a game.
• 22:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I had been losing even when I thought I was winning.
• 22:56
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The turning point wasn't about finding a way back to my old life.
• 23:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was realizing I didn't want to come back.
• 23:05
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was about giving myself permission to build a new life from the ground up on a completely different foundation.
• 23:17
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This whole process of reframing my story, of turning my biggest failure into my most important lesson, was the hardest and most important thing I've ever done.
• 23:33
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And it's a journey I see so many people on.
• 23:38
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Whether they've lost a business or just feel lost inside a life that doesn't fit anymore.
• 23:45
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: If you've ever felt defined by your job or a single goal, I would genuinely love to hear about it in the comments.
• 23:56
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: How are you learning to separate your worth from your work?
• 24:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Reading those stories helps everyone here feel a little less alone.
• 24:09
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And if this story resonates with you, if you're interested in the messy, rewarding process of building a life on your own terms, consider subscribing.
• 24:22
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We talk a lot on this channel about building a life, not just a resume.
• 24:28
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And I'd be honored to have you as part of the conversation.
• 24:34
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Building from the ashes.
• 24:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Building from the ashes wasn't about launching a new, bigger company.
• 24:44
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It wasn't a triumphant comeback story in the way you see in movies.
• 24:49
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was a quieter, slower, and a thousand times more meaningful.
• 24:55
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The first thing I rebuilt was a business.
• 24:59
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It wasn't a business.
• 25:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That's the key.
• 25:04
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was me.
• 25:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I started by defining what success actually meant to me, not to my industry or to anyone else.
• 25:15
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That temporary job I took out of desperation, I started to see it differently.
• 25:22
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It gave me structure.
• 25:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It gave me an income.
• 25:26
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: More importantly, it gave me my evenings and weekends back.
• 25:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I started using that time to reconnect with the people I'd neglected.
• 25:38
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I had dinner with my family.
• 25:41
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I went to my friends, kids, birthday parties.
• 25:45
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I rediscovered hobbies I hadn't touched in years.
• 25:50
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: These simple acts of just living felt more rewarding than any multimillion dollar contract ever had.
• 26:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The joy I found in simple things was something I never could have appreciated before losing it all.
• 26:12
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: My new definition of success wasn't about getting more.
• 26:20
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Is my work aligned with my values?
• 26:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Does my lifestyle let me be present for the people I love?
• 26:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I love that mental health.
• 26:33
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Am I healthy mentally and physically?
• 26:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: These became new metrics, my new metrics for a good life.
• 26:42
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I eventually left that temp job and started a small consulting practice.
• 26:49
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's nothing like my old company.
• 26:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It will never be on the cover of a magazine.
• 26:56
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I have a handful of clients I love working with and it provides enough.
• 27:03
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But the biggest difference is the why.
• 27:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I'm not doing it to prove anything to anyone.
• 27:10
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I'm doing it because I enjoy the work and it supports the life I actually want to live.
• 27:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: A life where I can take a walk in the middle of the afternoon.
• 27:23
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: A life where my phone buzzing doesn't give me a jolt of anxiety.
• 27:29
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: A life where my sense of self comes from within, not from what someone else thinks of me.
• 27:39
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This new life is smaller, quieter, and a thousand times richer.
• 27:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The failure was a brutal fire that burned my old life to the ground, but in doing so, it cleared the land for something much stronger and more real to grow in its place.
• 28:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Losing that business felt like the end of the world.
• 28:11
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: For a long time, I genuinely believed my life was ruined.
• 28:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I was drowning in anger, grief, and a shame so deep, so deep it was suffocating.
• 28:25
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But looking back now, I can see that the failure wasn't an ending.
• 28:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was a violent, painful, and absolutely necessary beginning.
• 28:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It stripped away everything I thought I was, which forced me to discover who I actually am.
• 28:48
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It demolished the fragile identity I built on the sand of external validation and gave me the chance to build a new one on the solid rock of my own self-worth.
• 29:07
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The day I lost everything, I lost a life that was slowly killing me.
• 29:13
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I lost the constant anxiety, the crushing weight of expectation, and the exhausting job of pretending to be someone I thought I was supposed to be.
• 29:26
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And in its place, I found something far more valuable freedom.
• 29:33
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The freedom to define my own success.
• 29:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The freedom to live a life that actually aligns with my values.
• 29:44
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: The freedom just to be.
• 29:47
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That day wasn't the end of my life.
• 29:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It was the start of it.
• 29:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And that's why the day I lost everything was, without a doubt, the best day of my life.
• 30:03
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Wow.
• 30:04
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Powerful.
• 30:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you for joining us in this episode.
• 30:10
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Give us a thumbs up.
• 30:12
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Like, follow, subscribe, share, reshare, repost, word of mouth.
• 30:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Get that phone out if it's not already out.
• 30:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And share the Voices for Voices podcast with 25, 50, or 100 contacts.
• 30:26
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We love you.
• 30:26
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We're sending our love and support your way.
• 30:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And we'll see you on the next episode of the Voices for Voices podcast and TV show.
• 30:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Until then, we'd like to say let's celebrate all the voices in the world.
• 30:43
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And let's be a voice for not only ourselves, but somebody else in need.
• 30:49
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We'll talk to you next time and see you next time.
• 30:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Bye bye for now.