Latest / Steve Azar's Resonance: A Podcast for Leaders, Unpacking the Power of Song, Silence and Strategy / Resonance Season 3: The Decisions That Changed Everything

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Resonance Season 3: The Decisions That Changed Everything · Steve Azar's Resonance: A Podcast for Leaders, Unpacking the Power of Song, Silence and Strategy

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: This is Resonance, the podcast with leaders that unpacks the power of song, silence, and strategy.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: We believe the great leadership begins with deep listening, not just to others, but to the still small voice within.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just about being a successful leader, it's about being soulfully aligned as well.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: In a world moving fast, resonance invites you to pause and reconnect with purpose, people, and possibilities.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: We'll dive into some cool stories, celebrate with friends, and dig deep into the music too.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: Cause song has a way of staying with words cannot alone.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: So whether you're leading a business, a team, or just trying to lead your own life with more meaning, this is Resonance.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Resonance, Resonance.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: Hey folks, welcome to Resonance with my pals Randy, Harrington, the PhD, Mike the Monk Guy Farrell, and I am Steve Azar, and we are episode number 51, if you're counting the actual nun in the vault.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: These are actually brand new shows.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: Excited to have you on today and excited about today's topic, which is going to lead to all sorts of, you know, we're like a big tree trunk and there's limbs happening and different, we bear different fruit on the same tree.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_03: But we're going to start with the decisions that changed everything.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: We all have them in our life.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_03: And for me in the music business, there's been ones I can look back at at a true crossroads where I made decisions that moved me forward and where I moved, made decisions that did not.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: And that I had to take a step back, sometimes three and four, you know, get myself off of the ground, out of a hole, and figure out how I can get back on track.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: So these decisions that can change for the good, they can churn change for the bad.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: But obviously, you want to lean toward the ones that advance your career, advance the ball, and advance you as a human being and make you a better person, a more compassionate person, a more empathetic person, and downright more successful along the way.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: So that's what we're gonna touch on today.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm gonna before I start talking about the trials and tribulations of uh the agony of defeat and the thrill of victory on my end, uh I think Mike, would you like to start this?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_03: Sure, I'll jump in.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'll jump in.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I you know, I think the biggest probably the the biggest decision that changed my life really was that decision that I made way back in the you know late 70s, early eighties when I decided to decided to enter the seminary.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: I had just come off playing golf for a living.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'd worked for, you know, worked for a couple of years and didn't really have any great passion about uh what I wanted to do or anything like that.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I happened to meet, I'll never forget him, Father Frank Lariman was his name.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: He was the vocations director for the Archdiocese of Omaha.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, the the interesting thing about it is when I met him, he wanted to go have a beer, which you know completely threw me out of whack.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't exactly my perception of of a priest, you know.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so he had been a chaplain in in the Air Force and been all over the world, and he was a big guy, and and uh just you know, he he just really knew how to ask the right questions, and and I didn't know anything about what the word discernment meant at meant at that time, but uh he was able to really convince me that that's something that you you know you can do in the seminary, you can do and and go through that.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, spending nearly five years in the uh in the seminary, it was and then you know, and then discerning out and not going on and not becoming a priest.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I look back at that time, I look at back at the decision to go in and to stay in as long as I did, that has impacted my life in in many, many different ways.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: And and even to this day in my work, in my writing, my family, and my relationships, all of that faith impact that I got in the seminary, but also the the knowledge and the wisdom that I gained through theology, through philosophy, all of those kinds of things have impacted my work over, you know, nearly 40 years now.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that that probably is I think back as if I if I'm pinpointing one particular decision uh that I have to go back and think about, that one decision was probably the most important decision that that is is put me in the place that I'm in today.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, wow.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm thinking a lot about when I was in graduate school at Chapel Hill, newly married, and at the time I smoked cigarettes.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not a lot, I wasn't like a crazy smoker, but I did smoke cigarettes, probably six a day, something like that.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was a daily thing.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And uh breakfast was a cigarette and a tab.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, the breakfast of champions.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is the sign, and and I knew I didn't like it.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was I I I I enjoyed it obviously when I did it, but it wasn't something that I thought was a good idea.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I understood that this was just a bad thing.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I I couldn't tell you exactly how this happened, but I was on campus and I was talking with another professor, and he looked at me.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we were standing outside.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: He was not smoking, I was.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Do you want to quit?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, yeah, you know, eventually I think I'm gonna quit.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Well, when do you want to quit?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: I I said, Well, you know, quitting is a thing.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, It's really not a thing.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can quit.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, All right, what's your s what's your spiel?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Here's what I want you to do.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to go home.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to make sure everything is right the way you want it in the house, don't have anybody interrupt you or bother you.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: You've got a little peaceful time, and you sit in the chair you like to sit in, and you get the cigarette you prefer to smoke of all time, and you make one commitment, and that is that you're gonna smoke the entire cigarette.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Okay, well, that seems like a thing.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, uh, and there's one more thing that you have to do, and that is you have to be blindfolded, or you have to cover your eyes, keep your eyes closed.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Really?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: You just keep your eyes closed.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, keep your eyes closed and do not stop smoking that cigarette until you feel like you're smoking down to the filter.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I didn't go rush right home and do that, but I had this thing in the back of my mind that you could do it, right?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's now floating around in my head.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: The decision, if you will, was sort of out in time and it was inaccessible, and maybe I could do it.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: I knew I need to do it, but I couldn't get to it.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And now this guy tells me this, and it's like, dang, okay.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't remember how long it was, but it wasn't long.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe two weeks after the guy tells me this, I finally sort of stir up the strength and the emotion to go do this.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: I sit down in the chair, I get uh a beanie cap and pull it down over my eyes, and I get my favorite cigarette, which was a Benson and Hedges.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: I went and splurged on a on a Benson and Hedges, and I got my little ashtray there, and I figure, you know, what what you know what harm could this do aside from smoking one more cigarette?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so I fired up the cigarette, and sure enough, I'm about three puffs in, and I'm like, God, I don't know if I can do this.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I can keep smoking the cigarette.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And by the time I got even close to the end of it, I was so done, I put the thing out, I got up, and it was done.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Just like it was like, I don't, I don't ever need or want that.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And what I will tell you is I could still walk by somebody smoking a cigarette on the street and go, that smells pretty good, right?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like it's but I have no desire for it.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was interesting to me that the decision was one thing, but this the body, this the my my it was my physical body that was like you've taken all the fun out of this.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: All all I'm experiencing is this hot smoke going in my lungs.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: All I'm sensing is the badness of this, not the goodness of it.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so it made the decision kind of for me.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've been reflective on the idea that decisions are physical things too.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: That you feel something about the decision impending, and then you feel some way after the decision is made.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Is it anxiety or is it relief or whatever?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna, it's it's a somatic response.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's my little you know, immediate contribution of this conversation is to say that the decisions that you make in your life, uh, like that one, I think I'm still alive now because I made that decision.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: I sure think I would be done if I had not made that decision, or I would be in much poorer physical condition.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm feeling a little bit about that, that way about booze, too.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's you're making me cough now thinking of cigarettes.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm checking for it.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one of your songs are sucking up in water that really got me was that I don't need I don't need a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of cheap wine.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, man, oh man, I was you were singing my song when you when you uh What I need is a second chance to get us right the first time.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: That's the truth, right there.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you know what?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_03: I love hearing that story.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_03: First of all, I can tell you when my growing up years as a late teenager and early 20s, when my band was rolling at any bar, yeah, you you saw one you saw one person in the crowd not smoking.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it was doing it.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: It was crazy.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: It was absolutely crazy after sweating.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_03: There's no description of how bad it was, right?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_03: But I can tell you on airplanes, remember that?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: You could buy right crazy.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_03: So that was a thing, right?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_03: Until everybody had a choice and realized, wait a minute, it's not a good thing.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we got to figure out how we can break those.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_03: People had to figure out how to break those habits.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_03: I can tell you, I'll never forget.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_03: I was working really hard at my career, and I was it's I was going mostly to New York and get really close, I felt like to getting signed.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: So much that when they go, hey, we want to come see you now, can you send us your schedule for September?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_03: I'll never forget.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that September we had 23 dates on the calendar.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_03: And they go, You mean you're you're not working eight days?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_03: How many how many days in September?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_03: 30?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_03: How many days?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_03: 30?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_03: 30.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: You're not working six days.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, No, no.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_03: We're no no.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_03: They said, You mean you're working six days?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_03: They they thought that I sent them a calendar that and I said, no, no, the we're we have we're only we're off six days.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: And they go, what on earth?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_03: So it was funny because that's sort of where I thought it was gonna end up being, and it wasn't.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_03: So fast forward thinking it's done, get sent to Nashville, get get before I got sent there, I I sent, and I'm 27 years old now.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_03: I s one of the guys asked me, would you send some music to uh these guys that he met?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, sure.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I got in a recording of the songs and everything, and by myself, and it was the latest, greatest, right?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I sent it to them and and sent them they wanted a picture and all that, and they uh said no pretty quick, and thank you for sending.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: So things started to happen where I I got meetings in Nashville, so I decided because I had those guys' addresses, that I would just I had a little time off.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought before I went to my meetings, and it wasn't going well so far.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I so I knocked on the door and and Rick Sanchak, I'll never forget, who became well, uh let me get there.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_03: He goes, Yes.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: I said, Hey, my name is Steve Azar.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I uh I remember walking up, going back, walking.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't gonna do it.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: You know, every something inside of me said, Don't do it.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: They've already said no.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: This what are you wasting your time?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: But I said, But it was a decision that I made that would change everything.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_03: So I I knock on the door and he goes, Well, we've already said no to you.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, I know.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_03: He goes, then he said, Well, you don't look like your picture.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe you don't sound like your songs.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_03: How about that?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm more like, I don't care what if what kind of put down that was or what kind of compliment.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_03: All I know is he's let come on in.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Okay, I'm in the door, right?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_03: So then uh he goes, I play him.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_03: Guess what?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: I play him.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: How how ridiculous is this?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: I play him the same songs that they said no to.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: Now I've got a lot of songs, but why would I choose those, right?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so he so he goes, Well, we just we're sorry.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm packing my suitcase up, you getting used to the feeling of rejection when it came to the record labels and all that and the managers and all that.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_03: And then as I'm about to do the last bolt on my guitar case, he says, Hey, can you play me the first songs you ever wrote?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I went, hmm.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_03: I think we've had this discussion.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, for some reason I'm a deja vu moment.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: But he was the guy.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_03: And so I somehow I remembered them.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: And you're talking about thir uh 15, 16 years ago, half your life ago, over half your life ago.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_03: I was a kid.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Okay, I'm gonna play those songs.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so I used to write them for meditation at mass.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_03: I led the mass thing and I'd write them and to the point where one of them was about purgatory, and when the priest told me, You're done doing these songs.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well things that's the basis of your new rock opera.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, so I played the songs, and he looked at me and he goes, play another.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I went, Okay.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_03: And he goes, play another.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: So I remember two or three, and he goes, Each time he said, You're a songwriter.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: That's how he said it.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I went, What?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_03: What what what don't tell me it's the first songs you can't do that.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: You cannot tell me that right now, you know, and which is uh against everything I said earlier about, you know, you just can't, you know, strike, you know, strike any or one of our earlier podcasts.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, long story short, that day he offered me a publishing deal, a management deal.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: He used to run Atlantic Records.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: His dad was one of the founders of BMI.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: He was involved in all of the great stuff with Atlantic in the beginning as far as just being around it and all that.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: He was running the division before he became a manager, so he wasn't doing that anymore.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: But the stories he would have to tell were phenomenal.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: But he became my first publisher.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_03: Now, Albanetta, which I talked to at Old Boy Records and all that, so I, you know what I went and did?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: I had a meeting with him next, and I went and played these same songs.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: I said, heck, I'll just play the first songs I ever wrote.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_03: And you know what he said?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: You're a songwriter.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I went, This is, I felt like this is nuts.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so then he said, Look, I'm going out of town, and I'm gonna be back in two weeks, and I'm getting John in here, and we're gonna sign you.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, This is unbelievable.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_03: So he goes, Don't do anything.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_03: Well, he shouldn't have left town for two weeks.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I wasn't gonna wait.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I signed immediately with Rick and them, which would, which, which is the reason I met so many of the people that mattered uh, you know, in my songwriting journey.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so, and it definitely changed the trajectory of where I was heading.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: But when when Al got back, he goes, It's time to meet John.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: We're excited.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_03: I told him about you.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_03: And then all of a sudden I said, I've already signed.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_03: He goes, You couldn't wait two weeks?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_03: I said, I've been waiting 20 years.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_03: I had no, I didn't have two weeks left in me.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_03: And he laughed so hard.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_03: And eventually, obviously, he'd become a mentor of mine and involved in me making decisions.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_03: They all did.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_03: They all became mentors and very important in my life.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: But Rick was so important.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: But Rick, not too long ago, calls Sancheck and he said, uh, I'm sending you all your songs back.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_03: And he had half the publishing, and I did.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I go, What do you mean?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: He goes, he goes, uh, he goes, they're yours.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_03: I want you to have them, and it's time for you to have them and your kids have them.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_03: That's what kind of guy he was.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: And he went way out of his way to connect me.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_03: We died along the way.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: It was so pivotal.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_03: But the most important decision that changed everything, if you think about putting me on a path that I needed to be on was not backing out of that sidewalk, walking back to the car.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_03: Not making that decision because he had already told me no.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: You're probably gonna have to edit that down.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: That was a long way to that.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: No, where does I mean where does that come from though?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Where does that impulse of no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fight the feeling and go for it?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: I got told I I think it's because growing up competing in sports is the only way I can explain this.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: Because I knew there were instances in my life where a coach would, and we'd eventually eventually write the song on the coach and record it, but where I felt like the coach is missing the point here, missing the boat.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I felt like I deserved more time, or I felt like I da-da-da.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_03: And when I'd get to a situation where I could prove it, I would.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_03: So I would go, okay, maybe it maybe he was right during that period.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't right for him at the time, or wasn't ready, but I'm ready now, and look what I just did.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: So in sports, I think it and also you lost a lot.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: Meaning you wouldn't always win the state championship, which we did win a few, but you know, you got close or you didn't get close, so you lost in the first round, or whatever it was, it just taught me how to how to not be afraid of losing.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: And it made me really stubborn, I think is the best word, and a and quite a bit naive.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_03: Because so I was just just dumb enough to go up and not and not be afraid, you know?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's yeah, it's interesting.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't know if you guys are familiar, Angela Duckworth wrote the book Grit, and she talks about perseverance.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, I I think, yeah, you can say you were just dumb enough not to know any better, but you had built into you that idea of perseverance that you weren't gonna give up.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: You were gonna keep going and you were gonna keep doing it.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: And and the other thing, and and I've certainly seen this over my 40 years of of work, I think the other thing that perseverance does is it also allows you to reinvent yourself when you have to.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, all of us have been in situations where it's like, okay, we've got to pivot, we've got to do something different, we've got to think differently.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't have that built into you, if you don't have that grit and that perseverance to to say, hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna keep going, I'm gonna figure this out, then you don't sometimes even put yourself in a position to make a decision like that.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I and I think that's so important is that as as as we as I talk to the people that I coach, you know, sometimes you've got to kind of push them a little to say, keep going.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this isn't the stopping point.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Keep going, keep thinking about it.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, you know, you I'm gonna give you a a big, huge example.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: And and with me, obviously having hits, it would lead to hits.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_03: Every little relationship along the way that started with Rick Sanchek, every one of them, you what's the six degrees of separation or whatever it was, they all can you pinpointed back to that moment.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: And him and how great he was, gracious and wonderful in teaching and a mentor he was to me.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_03: And when it was time when I asked to go leave him early before a contract was due because I had this opportunity, he said it's the right thing.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_03: He led me out of a contract because he said it was time.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's how good he was to me.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: That's how he wanted it to work, but bad he wanted it to be for me.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_03: He was being so unselfish where I could have been being a little selfish, you know, and all that.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: He was helpful along the way.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: But let me let me so you get the hits and all that, but let me go to what's about to come out on the movies.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: I play Rocky, right?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_03: The Sylvester Stallone story.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_03: Broke parking cars, whatever it is, and in whatever days he writes Rocky, right?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so Rocky is nostalgic as it gets in our lifetime.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so, and uh actually as real to me as a movie that will ever be that was fiction, right?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's crazy, it's crazy, right?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, they got Rocky the statue in Philadelphia at the top of the steps.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, like, like it's a real thing.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: So it's remarkable the journey and the and the money he kept turning down because he wanted to play the role.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: How easy would it have been for him to go?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: And just about everybody in the world would have said, Well, I can have Robert Redford play me, play this role, or whoever it's gonna be at the time.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_03: Unbelievable.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: And he was broke and kept saying no to 25,000, 350,000, 300,000, whatever it was.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_03: He kept saying no because he had to do it.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_03: And stubborn enough where they said, Okay, we're gonna let you do it, but if you go behind at all, you get behind schedule all, you lose the deal, right?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_03: And uh so that's we're about to see the making of that I play Rocky and that story.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that you think about the decision that changed everything for him, and what about us as viewers that would have never gotten to experience Sylvester's Tallone in film?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like part of my upbringing, you know, part of my my childhood and my growing up Rockies and two or three creeds, and you know, among all the others.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: Unbelievable.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_03: His whole career, yeah.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_03: So talk about talking about being stubborn and believing in yourself, and what what was it in him?
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: And persistence and all that.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_03: What was it in him that kept going like, no, I've got to do this, or I'll say no without the money?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, at some point, money talks, right?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_03: But Randy, what do you think was going on in his head when he kept going no?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm thinking about, I'm trying to remember who wrote the song Running Up That Hill or Running Up the Hill Woman.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll look her up in just a minute.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: She's uh You're not talking about the great English artist, are you?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: The uh Joni Mitchell?
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, this is a recent song.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the the the reason I'm bringing it up is uh that song is being covered by my current favorite band, Goose, and I uh it's a wonderful cover.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, wow, that's an interesting cover, and so I kind of looked into it a little bit, and what I found was that the person who wrote the song had rejected all kinds of support and label support and everything else.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: She she retained the Rights for the song entirely.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so, and it never it got some radio play and it was out there a little bit.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then other people started picking it up.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: And now she's rolling in the money because she didn't, she never, she knew the song had legs.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: She knew that she could do it.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: And she I I I don't know if she's done other things.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And again, as we take a little bit of a break here, I'll go find out exactly what her name was because it's worth it.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: But but uh I I've I've thought about that many times.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: So she had to believe that she was vindicated, right, by that decision to to hang on.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody told her she was crazy.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure, you know, take the deal, take the deal.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's one song, take the deal.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: No, and she stayed tight with it.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, I feel like in my own life, I can look back on a number of decisions where I don't know.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: I really don't know.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, your life goes like this, right?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't know what would have happened if you had gone this other way.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Before I came out to do my PhD here at Oregon, I had been working to have a job uh in China.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: My wife and I were planning to go, and they were gonna, we already had our daughter, and we had a deal to go to Dandong, China, and uh a port city there, and they were gonna give us a house and blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: And what was I gonna do?
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna work in a shipping firm helping them to translate abbreviations.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: They couldn't figure out abbreviations and what they meant in English, so they wanted somebody there who could say, well, ALM is aluminum or whatever it is, you know.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that was gonna be a job.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was a job to help facilitate the English so that they could manage these coming in and out.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_03: I just can't believe that's a job.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was like you work 10 months, you work 10 months a year, you get two months off paid travel, it's not taxable, and I think they were paying at the time like$50,000 or$60,000, which meant I would have$50 or$60,000 in the bank when we came back, you know.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: So that was real money.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're talking about what we are we talking about early 80s?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we're talking about 1985, 6, 7, somewhere in there.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I we I could tell you exactly when it was if I looked up the date for Tiananmen Square, because when the Tiananmen Square riots happened, that deal went poof.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Gone.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was just about to make a decision.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: We literally were talking about buying a house in Huntsville, Alabama, because of the work I was doing at Marshall Space Flight for NASA.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: I loved that work.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was so cool.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was a reorganization of the engineering directorate there and and and the the engineers mostly focused on propulsion, rocket propulsion.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I was I wasn't making a lot of money, but I was like, wow, I would just, this is it.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was in, I was committed.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm talking to Patty on the phone, I'm like, we could, we could buy a small condo here and just bounce back and forth.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: I could do three or four months at a time here, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then in January of 25, got doged.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Boom! Gone.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: The whole engineering directorate, cut, gone, poof, zap.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, you have these moments where you're headed down a path and it you've made the decision, but something outside of it guillotines it for whatever.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: What about decisions that you made, like my decision, that made no sense on paper?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: It made no sense moving with the best agent in country music, the best managers in rock and country.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, really, that I could have.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: The best that you know, I I was in a sweet spot, right?
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_03: Coming off uh my own doing my own label with coming off the top 20 record with uh number one music video, here we are again.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: It'd been seven years since I had that type of success.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_03: And as far as on radio and I decided to move back and move our kids to Mississippi back home.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: And which turned out to be the greatest decision I've ever made in my life.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because it was consistent with who you are.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was it is in alignment with that core deeper sense of what it means to be you in your life.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think, for example, it could be that Lord works in mysterious ways.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it wasn't up maybe China was exactly the wrong thing for me to be doing for the wrong reasons.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: And why was I doing it?
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of it was running away.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was leaving job and TV and other things.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was just like, I I wanted to get away from it, and that was certainly a way.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: And and the same thing with NASA.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was like maybe I maybe that was a vanity project for me, right?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh maybe it wasn't about really delivering the work.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm I know I'm rationalizing at some level, but there you go.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's a a a guy who was a professor at Stanford, Daryl Bim, and he says people don't make rational decisions, they make a decision and then they form a rationale.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think yeah, and it's the truth.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you really start thinking about it, you know, you've decided you you're uh like I've got a new grill in my in my mind.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I debate I debate with Patty all the time.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, well, so I'm looking at this one, I'm looking at that one, you know, and she's like, just you don't need to just buy the grill.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, don't don't that's funny.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Don't bore me with it.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's interesting.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: We did a whole we did a whole podcast on this a while ago, this idea of discernment versus decision making.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, one of the steps of discernment is making sure that that decision that you're making does fit within your values.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Does it doesn't match up with who you are, and so really thinking that through, and I and I think that's if I look back in my life and some of the really dumb decisions that I've made, and there's certainly been plenty of them, many of those decisions were made spur of the moment.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't really think through them.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't really discern what kind of decision I was making there.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's so important, you know, especially with big decisions, that you've got to step back and really think about it from a discerning standpoint, and that leads to a good decision.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I y you know, you think I'm sorry, Mike.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, go ahead, Steve.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: I guess I guess yeah, I love it y'all what y'all said.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_03: That makes me feel good about me.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for making me feel good.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_03: Better than I deserve, as they say.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: But truthfully, as I got here, and if one side of me would go, What did you just do?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: What you you spent your whole life trying to get there, and now you've come back.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_03: But it it was a a a well just full of water, waiting for me.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: Because all of the things that I'd I was wanting to articulate and feel and say and do and be.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_03: Everything was waiting for me to come back to be and do that, you know, and to say those things.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: It was just so easy to write the songs.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: It was easy to, I mean, everything was just in, it was just so, I mean, it was like I can't explain to you, I've never had the pen grab my hand like that, consistently.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I feel like I was on the best role, having the most fun, but yet my career, I let some of the things that I counted on, which was being, you know, with the agents and managers all the time, cooking together, families together.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_03: It kept me working, you know?
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_03: And so now that would eventually start to dwindle because we weren't doing those things together.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I and I I went through a little pivotal point, but it just couldn't be better right now than I mean.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_03: If you gave me my wish as a young kid, where where would you want to be?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: It'd be right here, right now, my career.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think that's exactly what I would have dreamed of.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's a rare and beautiful thing, man.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_03: It is.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm you know, when you were talking, Mike, about discernment, I remember what jumped into my head was a little flashback to being in the naval exchange, the the big store on on Pearl Harbor with my mom.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: We were shopping for school clothes.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was a freshman in high school, maybe something like that.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh you may recall this would have been the years where uh high-waisted pants for men were in.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_03: And hey, not not not in my style, not in my closet, movie.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Trust me, that was uh that was you made a good discernment there.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had to get new shoes, and I'm with my mom, who is the sweetest little thing in the world, but I I wanted these funky shoes, these shoes that had some style, you know, and I think they had a heel on them.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: And my mom is like, you do not want those shoes.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: That is not the shoes that you want.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I that was a hill I was ready to die on, was that hill for these shoes.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I will buy them, I said to her, you know, and you know, she don't have the money for that.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Don't even start with me.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in her wisdom, she looked at me and I'll never forget the look on her face.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: She said, All right, I'll buy those for you.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Okay, I have these shoes.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember I got home and I put them on and I came into the dining room, and my brother, who's five years older, is sitting at the table and he looks at me and he howls with laughter.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he he spits out his iced tea just about, slaps the table, and I'm like, what?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, What the hell are you thinking?
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: Where did you get those?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: What what how and I was like, Well, I was with he goes, Your mom did not buy those for you.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you now that did not happen.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I'm still defending them.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that didn't last very long.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even think I made it through like one class in school the next day before those shoes were gone.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: They were they were and so I learned to to pay more attention to those kinds of things.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: One one more quick addition to that story.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's another Pizza Hut story from the previous one.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love it.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: So this was down in Florida, and I I am going out with friends, I live, but it was with my parents' house there, and uh I'm just wanted to get out of the house on time.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: My dad's sitting at the table, and he always had something to say to me that was going to screw up my evening.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just trying to get out of there and I'm looking fine.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is disco time, man.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is I've got There you go.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've got my disco.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: I probably had chains on.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was looking fine, and I'm trying to make it out the door, and as I'm making going out the door, he says, Randy, and I stop and I turn around and I look at him and I said, What?
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Just like that.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I hope you have a good night.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I go to the pizza hut, I go in there, and there's my friends all sitting in a booth.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: I walk over to the booth, I'm like, hey, party time.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go, we're gonna go from here, we're gonna go do that, we're gonna go do this, we're gonna go do that.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I stood there and talked to them for at least five or seven minutes.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, one of the young women who was sitting at the table stands up, and as she's walking to go to the restroom, she stops and she leans over and she says, Your fly is completely down.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and sure enough, my tight disco pants fly.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Or my shirt was like tucked out of the front.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it wasn't just like a little zipper down, it was like the most awful thing in the world.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I had stood there for seven or eight minutes, and then next morning at the dinner at the breakfast table, I see my father and I sit down and he goes, When did you figure it out?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: My gosh.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, man.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that would have been a quick decision.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, discernment there.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, I'm discernment.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I actually uh try I want to laugh, I'm laughing inside as they said on stripe.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_03: Was it stripes?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_03: Was that the movie?
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: I'm laughing inside where it counts or whatever movie it was because I can't laugh out because I've still got my bell's posey and it I'm sideways.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: But no, but know that uh know that I that was that you're laughing, you're chortling quietly.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_03: Can't wait to get off with the podcast so I can call and really laugh.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_03: Really crazy.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: I learned a lot about my father in that moment, too.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_03: That was a good exact to me, that was the greatest ever.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like I I mean, my dad would my dad would have told me that's interesting, or got my mom or my brother's hand tell him, but they wouldn't let me w walk out of the house, and that's beautiful that he did.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: That's my kind of dad.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: Mike, what is Mike, what are you thinking for you?
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: Just uh maybe, maybe lately, something in the last maybe handful of years that you may have that may you look back on now as a decision that maybe you didn't think was going to be the greatest change that you made in your life, but look at look at now?
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, I mean I, you know, when I came back to South Dakota and and that was a decision because I'd been through a very difficult time, I decided I needed that change of scenery and and you know, came back here.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the you know, the idea that I was going to have to completely reinvent myself because of all of the things that I've and we've talked about this in other podcasts, but all the things that I'd been through with the financial crisis and all of the the work that I'd done and the burnout and the stress and all those kinds of things.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I think that understanding when I came back here that I was gonna have to do things differently, it was a very uncertain time.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was really uh, you know, what you know, what am I gonna do?
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: How am I gonna how am I gonna you know move forward?
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: What's the next chat next chapter look like?
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that the the decision really wasn't so much me making a decision, the decision was listening to what God had in mind for me.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that sometimes that's an extremely difficult thing to do, to really put yourself out there and say, okay, I don't know, I don't know what I'm gonna do here.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna put it in your hands, God.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: And shortly thereafter, I'm of course introduced to the rule of Benedict, and it dramatically changes the trajectory of what I'm doing and what I'm working on.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, four books later and another one coming out here in just a few weeks, you know.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_03: Clients, you got all the clients, the clients coming, everything.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_03: It was leading you to this place, like you know.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: And and and so I think that the decision was really the decision that I made was really that listening versus trying to direct it myself, you know.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: What was what was God guiding me to do?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, Met Ann, wonderful, you know, you know, eight years we've been together.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, next Friday we celebrate five years of marriage.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's it's it's been just such an incredible blessing to allow that to happen and and to embrace it and and to really look at okay, now what's what's next?
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: And and I continue to think about that, you know, I'm gonna be 68 years old here and in a few weeks.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like I'm I'm just getting started here.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: I you know, what's next?
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I want I want to keep going.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: I want to keep doing stuff, you know.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_03: Because you've you've finally found yourself.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_03: And the meanwhile, and and the things that make you happy, and and that's the bottom line.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_03: I know for Randy and I like I think of Randy and the companies that you've sold, built up, and sold, those decisions probably had the decisions that went in to becoming that successful, and the decisions to sell.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_03: The decision for me to leave the label I'd finally gotten on universal and the big label and to leave them and do my own thing, that was tough.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_03: But they were all very, very uh became very impactful and very important and imperative in the in the progress of me as an artist, and I'm sure in the progress of you as a consultant, both of y'all, but Randy, we were talking about you as far as the companies you've sold and stuff that helped I I do think it's worth it to to take time.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is one of the things I like about Thanksgiving and the holiday seasons in general, is it really is good, I think, to go back and and actually just finally do a sort of post-mortem on those big decisions and just really allow them to be whatever they were.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: People I know who had rough marriages, for example, and they that marriage ended.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that they've really achieved something when 10 years later or whatever it is, they can have that conversation.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's no longer that painful.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: They've they've worked it out.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: The decision has has finally come to rest in in whatever it is that they're about.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's an important thing.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: We can't get it right every time, right?
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't know until you make the decision.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, Kate Bush who wrote that song.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, sure.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: I know Kate Bush said that.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and in fact, the the title, the parentha uh parentheses of that song is Running Up That Hill, parentheses, a deal with God.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so that tied right into the the conversation that we were having with uh uh Mike about you know okay, dude, I'm laying it out here.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: You tell me what the deal is.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you know, Randy, you make a great point on on a postmortem, and and you know, I make a point almost every year to do a silent retreat.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, I've got one coming up here in just a few days.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: So be able to be able to take that time and really reflect on what's going on, what's happening with the decisions, what's going on, where are you going next, all of those kinds of things.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's so important, whether it's a few hours or whether it's a few days or whatever, being able to take that time and really think about you know what's what's going on in our life, what's what's going on in the world and how is it impacting our life and all of those kinds of things.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: And and then especially, you know, the decisions that I've made over the last year or however long it's been, you know, how did those decisions work out?
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: And were they were they good decisions or were they bad decisions or were they decisions that we still don't have the the jury's still out, you know?
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever that is, is and that's okay.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: Learn from it as best we can.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, all right, bring us home, Steve.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_03: I'm bringing you home.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_03: You're bringing us home.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_03: Clear my throat, but I'll choke it on.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's been like what uh well, I mean, you know, we make decisions in our life uh a lot of times that I feel like every decision that we are making in our life is leading us to where we are now, or have led us to where we are now, but are leading you and continuing to lead us.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes they they don't feel like it was the best move, but in some sort of way, it's just gonna, it's gonna there's gonna be a time when you realize you had to go through that, yeah, no matter how bad, no matter how hard, to get you somewhere that's gonna open a door to to success.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_03: And not only that, to who you are and who you need to be to be a happy, you know, to have happiness and enjoy in your life.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_03: And getting to do that while you work is a beautiful thing.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: I I'm I'm sort of struggling right now to articulate what I want to say.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I'm tracking with you.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what I'm also hearing you say is the decisions have implications for everybody around you.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so really thinking about a bigger collective with your decisions.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when whenever somebody has a baby, it's like, okay, your whole decision framework just changed.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: Everything you can do has now been really cropped because that baby's well-being is the beginning and the end of everything.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's where it's gotta be.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I hear see all these terrible stories of people who have lost their child because they left him in a car or whatever terrible thing it was that happened, you just gotta know, oh my god, you know, that's just wrenching.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think the decisions have to take into account the reality of your world.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_03: And the decision that Mike had to have me take us out was obviously not a good idea.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_03: But look what but but look what it led to.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, look what it led to.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_03: So we got Mike.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_03: Very good.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_03: I'm tired and I'm bunch drunk.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's been a long day.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: I made a quick decision, Steve.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't a good one.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: Gilly, gill it in full form.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: All right, well, that'll wrap this one up for residents, and uh you can get us on all the fit the major platforms and find us at residenceleader.com.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: We'll also come out to you.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: Residents will come live to you if you want to bring us out to an event or a meeting or something like that.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a great leadership experience that we can do for you.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: So don't forget about checking us out there, and you can find more about that at residenceleader.com as well.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, with that, boys, we'll see you next time.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: Later on.com.