Speaker 1: 0:11

Welcome to Unfazed Under Fire, a podcast designed to elevate your leadership and amplify your impact. Each episode offers valuable insights to help you transform your vision into reality, cultivate high-performing cultures that attract top talents, and navigate the complexities of today's uncertain, chaotic world with confidence and clarity. Now tuning into your needs, here's your host and moderator, seasoned executive coach and leadership alchemist, david Craig Utz.

Speaker 2: 0:46

Welcome back to Unfaced Under Fire. I'm David Craig Utz, the leadership alchemist, your host and moderator for this show. Now this show again empowers executives like you to amplify your leadership impact, gain fresh insights and build the resilience needed to thrive in today's unpredictable world. At its core, this show is about igniting authentic, courageous leadership in the world. So the question becomes what truly ignites this kind of leadership? It is ignited when we tap into the authentically released, the human spirit within us. It is the release of this spirit that naturally aligns our actions with what we deeply care about and frees our authentic voice strategies and tactics that purposely move forward what matters most for our role and for those who we work with, and for the process of discovering and releasing the spirit within, is not always comfortable. It takes tremendous courage because many times it goes against conventional norms. But each time we lead from this place, we open a wellspring of personal power that expands and deepens our impact with each step.

Speaker 2: 1:53

Again, authentic, courageous leadership is not for the faint of heart. Engaging. It requires that we step into this discomfort, risk vulnerability and take bold actions in service to a vision that aligns with who we are, and to do so when circumstances may not be working for our vision. Yet when we lead in this way, we become fully alive, and that aliveness profoundly affects all those around us. It creates a ripple effect that transforms teams, organizations and, most importantly, the people we love and are closest to and, most importantly, the people we love and are closest to, and today more than ever, this world is craving this kind of leadership.

Speaker 2: 2:30

As leaders, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to model this, when we tap into the truth of who we are and we not only lead with greater impact, but we also inspire others to do the same. So this brings me to our incredible guest today Nina Sossaman-Pogue. Nina personifies authentic, courageous leadership. Her career has spanned sports, journalism and executive leadership. She's leveraged all these experiences to become a highly respected, inspirational thought leader who reframes resilience and empowers audiences to create more successful futures. I know we're going to learn a ton from her today. Nina, welcome to the show, great to have you and thanks for joining.

Speaker 3: 3:09

Thanks so much for having me on, david, and yeah, I hope we learn a lot and I get to know you better as well, so I appreciate being here.

Speaker 2: 3:16

Great. So I'm going to take a little bit of time to sing your praises a little bit and then we'll jump in. I'm not going to steal too much thunder, but I got to give this audience a flavor for who you are. So Nina is a dynamic, motivational speaker and I've had a chance to watch some of her talks Really great. She's an author, a resilience expert, committed to empowering people to thrive in today's fast-paced world that we live in crazy world we live in, with a storied career as a hyper-growth tech executive, benefit focus, and she's an enemy award-winning television news anchor and was a former usa gymnast.

Speaker 2: 3:51

Nina brings a unique blend of high quality experience, compelling storytelling and actionable strategies to her audiences. She's also an author of two acclaimed books. One this is this Is Not the End, which provides a proven framework for overcoming life's toughest challenges. And but I Want Both which I like the title of a guide for high achieving working moms striving to balance career with successful family life, and as the host of a podcast which I also love, the title of this Seriously Sucks.

Speaker 2: 4:21

Nina offers transformational insights and feature stories of resilience from people who've conquered life-altering events. Now, she's had incredible highs and lows in her career and I'm not going to steal any more of that than I'm going to let her tell a little bit of her story. And she's also passionate, however, about making a difference beyond the stage. She serves on multiple nonprofit boards and curling champion Alzheimer's Research Association and is recognized as a woman of distinction in South Carolina, where she lives in Charleston, south Carolina, with her family, and she continues to inspire audiences worldwide to take control of their future.

Speaker 2: 4:59

So she was felt very honored that she found Unfazed Under Fire and reached out and asked to be on the show, and I'm really honored to have her. So thanks again for joining us. Felt very honored that she found Unfazed Under Fire and reached out and asked to be on the show, and I'm really honored to have her. So thanks again for joining us and I'd love, after that great introduction, I'd love for you, kai, to share highlights of your life and career in your own words. I know there's been ups and there's been downs, and that has all informed your work. So if you could please just take some time to give us a more intimate view of Nina and your life and your work, that would be great.

Speaker 3: 5:30

Yeah, david, thank you for that lovely introduction. It's a lot. It's a lot. Sometimes I hear it and I get exhausted just listening. But I have done.

Speaker 3: 5:39

I've had many chapters in my life, as you just went through, and I've had some big successes. What I talk about more often are my struggles and my failures, what I call my reverse resume, and we all have one. So if you go to your LinkedIn or to somebody you know, wherever you keep your resume or your accolades, your wall of fame in your house, everybody's got things that they have achieved. And those are the things I say.

Speaker 3: 6:01

If you draw a timeline the above the line stuff I like to talk about my below the line stuff, and that is, yes, I was on the US gymnastics team, moved away from home when I was 13, trained, traveled the world and then, after being on the cover of magazines as an Olympic hopeful I didn't make the team really public, you know, and had to figure out the shame and blame and around that, and then I just felt like I'd let my family down, my coaches down, you know. I was embarrassed to go back to my high school and then I went on to college and, yes, I competed at one of the top gymnastics programs in the nation, lsu, which actually this year, as we're recording, is number one, but one of the top gymnastics programs.

Speaker 3: 6:40

Yeah, they weren't number one back then, but it was still a powerhouse of an athletic school. And then my freshman year I blew out my knee so I lost my sport and that was another time where I didn't even know who I was without the sport. And that was another time of real change in my life. And then I found journalism. And then, after I was voted and I became a news anchor. But after I was voted Charleston's favorite news anchor seven years in a row, I was let go of budget cuts and I very public again. All of my failures were very public and so and then I went on and I had more success.

Speaker 3: 7:12

Then I went through a traumatic experience and went through a really difficult time in my late 30s. And then I found tech and I had huge success there and I left that space because I became this person that people would come to and when they were going through a hard time they would come to me and say, hey, can you help me through this? And I realized I had something more to give. That was your calling more here that I need to be doing. When I look at my life and that's when I really lean into what are the stories I tell, the things I do, the concepts that I share that are making a difference, and how do I put them together in a way that could help more than just?

Speaker 3: 7:52

You know the neighbor down the street who knocked on my door and like with a beer in his hand and like tears in his eyes and said I just got fired, can you help me? You know I had to come up with you know I would walk, I'd say come on through and we'd sit on the end of the dock and we'd work through it. And he's like I don't know how to tell my parent, my, my wife, I don't know how to go home to my kids, I don't know what I'm going to do next. I feel like everything's ruined. And I got him through that and I stepped away and did the work and wrote my first book and it's you know it's a mashup. I'm sure it's a mashup of my own life experiences and things that I learned along the way, the hard way, but stoicism and cognitive behavior therapy, a little bit of neuroscience and it's just those. My own mashup of that is the framework that I share, but it's no. It has helped a lot of people along the way.

Speaker 2: 8:47

Yeah, absolutely Well. And again, I always am amazed by people's life stories and that's why I always ask that question to start off with, because you know, even if you would look at, let's say, five, six, seven years ago, would you ever imagine you are, you're going to be where you're at today? You know, and and, and yet there's something about life that seems to work itself out. It puts us in these harrowing situations.

Speaker 2: 9:13

Um, I faced addiction myself. I've I've had my ups and downs as an entrepreneur. I was almost in and out of business several times. Um, I remember being down to a hundred dollars in my wallet. You know six, seven years in my business, wondering if I was going to even be able to pay the bills. And as I look back at all of that, it made me who I am today and in a certain way, wore a part of me down that I needed to be worn down this kind of arrogance. That is for me. That's my own personal experience. So I just think it's beautiful to hear the stories and you talk about resilience and how those times you do the electrocardiogram thing, where you have the ups and downs right, and the downs are where we kind of build up our strengths, right.

Speaker 3: 9:57

Is that fair to say? Right, that's that below the line. So if you draw a line across a piece of paper, turn your piece of paper sideways and put a line across it and put 10 dots. Let's all just pretend we live to be 100 and go 10, 20, 30, 40, 50. Which, yes, I need to drink less wine and take better care of myself, but I'm pretending.

Speaker 1: 10:13

I'm going to live to be 100.

Speaker 3: 10:14

So, you can put everything on there and you put above the line. You put all those stuff on your resume and then below the line are all the tough stuff that you've gotten through. Maybe it's a divorce, maybe it's addiction, maybe it's an incarceration, maybe it's you got fired or you raised a child with a disability, or you were bullied in school, whatever. No one got a pass. We've all got stuff. We've all had things like that, Right. So that stuff's below the line and then that's what I call your reverse resume. So, yeah, here's your resume, but there's reverse resume that actually makes you who you are. And then I show it kind of shows this up and down and up and down. And what's kind of fun is I always say you know, you don't want to be the flatline person. That would be bad.

Speaker 2: 10:55

So that is life.

Speaker 3: 10:57

Life's going to have these ups and downs. If you're living it, and you're living it big and you're trying new things, or you know, you're just being part of the human race. So the ups and downs are part of what we all deal with and I try to help people get through the downs and back up over that line. I always say it's okay to not be okay. It's just not okay to stay that way. Let me help you get past that.

Speaker 2: 11:17

Right. Well, another thing I noticed in your story is you had smacks at. One of the toughest things we deal with is our identity, like when we. You know, one of the most powerful questions, of philosophical questions is who am I Right? And you know, I think ever since we come out of the womb. One of the things is, you know, the trick is there's something there that we are and so, but we go out on this search for it. You know, we go outside of ourselves and so it's ourselves. It's kind of a humorous thing that I think God does. He's kind of like gets us to go out on this search and get a sit right in it.

Speaker 2: 11:51

But you really got smacked, you know, with the gymnast and you know the loss of the job after being an Emmy Award winning journalist, with this smack on identity.

Speaker 2: 12:01

And I remember going back and I worked, for I was brought in to do some coaching for a big floor firm and the reason why they started bringing in coaches because partners were dropping like flies after they left their job. And I looked at that and said, you know, as I look at that, it's like all of a sudden I'm just this old man, walker, old woman walking through Walmart, I used to be God in my, in my big office in the top of the you know whatever office I was in and and everybody who came to my beck and call. Now I'm just going into the store and nobody knows who I am and that's really one of the tough. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that in your, in your work, as how that's one of the toughest strikes we have against and how do you, how do you, overcome that one? Yeah, it's a kind of a false identity that gets smashed, isn't it?

Speaker 3: 12:51

Right.

Speaker 2: 12:57

You know, there's something and really in the core of finding resilience, is more of a core identity that never can be touched. So I was wondering if you, if you have a resonance with what I just said and what you would speak to about that.

Speaker 3: 13:04

Absolutely, and it is this resilience piece that I talk about.

Speaker 2: 13:08

But I will tell you at this point in my life, I love walking into a Walmart or a Target and having nobody know who I am.

Speaker 3: 13:16

I kind of revel in that after all the years of being very, very public.

Speaker 3: 13:19

But there is a time where we very much identify with what we do, not who we're being, but what we do for a living or what we're doing in life and at the time. The easiest way for me to explain it is to take the time when I was a gymnast, for example. When I lost my sport of gymnastics I was 19. I blew out my knee in college in a competition and that was the end of my gymnastics career and at that point gymnastics had been all I'd known since I was about five years old, like a little before that. I was like four when I started, so it was about 75% of what I knew in life was being in the gym. If you look at my whole life experience at 19, my whole life experience up till then, more than 75% of it had been in a gym. So it makes sense that it felt like my life was over, like when your kids come to you and go my whole life's over or like when they really feel like it because it's their life experience.

Speaker 3: 14:12

It's very real, it's a big part of it.

Speaker 3: 14:14

And back then for me in the 80s it was like my bumper sticker, my sweatshirt. I mean. Nowadays it's your Instagram, your TikTok. These kids really identify as, whatever the thing is, whether it's athletics or you're in the band or whatever you're really into. When that's taken away from you, it's hard to figure out who you are. So me at 19, that was 75% of my life. Now I do this thing, same thing.

Speaker 3: 14:39

Oops, sorry, with the timeline. You take that timeline and then I can go fast forward on that timeline now with a little perspective and go when I was 50 and I have three kids, when they moved out of the house, when I was 50 and my kids left home, then gymnastics that big chunk of time was only about 28 percent of my life. No-transcript, take better care of myself and quit drinking so much wine. If I live to be 100, then it's only 15% of my life. It just feels different for when things happen in our life. But it's really difficult to have that perspective in the moment and to lose your identity and something you very much connect with. Now my framework does all of that. It does the timeline that's the perspective piece of the timeline Like play it forward Five years from now. It's not going to feel like it does right now.

Speaker 3: 15:51

Let's figure out where that fits in their timeline of life. And I'll even say, now, when I'm working with someone and I've done it on the back of a napkin in a bar, I'm like, okay, draw your timeline, let's put a dot where you are right now and then look all the rest of the timeline's blank. Look at all that blank space ahead. What are you going to put there? It's yours to do what you want. You could decide tomorrow. I'm looking at you, David, you could decide tomorrow. Like, I'm just kind of done with this. I'm going to get like a face tat and I'm going to like do like you could totally.

Speaker 2: 16:20

I'm going to take a. I like the idea. Maybe I'll do that.

Speaker 3: 16:24

Yeah, I would not encourage. I don't know you that well, but don't, don't go there.

Speaker 2: 16:27

Don't go there, okay, thanks, that's good advice.

Speaker 3: 16:29

Yeah, don't, don't call me. If you think about it, I'll.

Speaker 3: 16:42

I'll talk you out of it, but you can put that dot there and see all that blank space ahead, and that is all up to you. What goes into that blank space ahead? Not who's your spouse or your kids, or who's the president or your boss, it's all up to you. You would decide the actions that you take. So that's the timeline piece, and then I call it this framework okay, because whatever you're dealing with, it's this, you're this, it's different from mine. And then I call it this framework Okay, because whatever you're dealing with, it's this, you're this, different from mine. And it's usually like this is too much, I can't handle this, this sucks, this was not part of the plan. So for your listeners, just what in your life you're like, this was not part of the plan, like that divorce, whatever.

Speaker 3: 17:20

So that's the T, and then the H is humans. So I always say take your humans and put a line down a piece of paper and go who's helping, who's hurting? Let's split them in half because everybody has to go on one side or the other and sometimes the people we love the most are in the hurting side. So we got to be careful about that. You know who's actually helping you. Nobody in. You know, on the good side for you, on the helping side. Then you got to pull some people in, whether it's a therapist or whatever, people who have success in life. Don't go it alone.

Speaker 2: 17:50

The most successful people.

Speaker 3: 17:51

Yeah, then most successful. You ask for. You learn to ask for help. If you want to be successful in business or in life, you have to learn to ask for help, whether it's a therapist or a friend or a mentor. I mean athletes have coaches. We have to have help.

Speaker 3: 18:03

So the humans piece, and then the end of this, that's TH. And then the I is the isolate piece. And I always say what are you actually dealing with right now? Like isolate it, like really not what happened before, not the woulda shoulda coulda done things differently. That's not where we are and not the after. So any good therapist will tell you, if you're spending all the time in the before, woulda shoulda done this, why'd I marry this guy, why'd I take this job, why'd I hang out with those people? Like all that that's where depression lives, is in the past and then in the future, the what ifs and the doomsday scenarios, and this is never going to work. That's where anxiety lives. So you have the depression piece and the anxiety piece. So we have, like that isolate is the like what are we actually dealing with right now we can take action on?

Speaker 3: 18:48

And then the last part of the framework and you know it answers your question, because this is how I got out of it and this is how the identity thing changed. The last part of it is the s, which is the story, and it's the. The words in your head come out of your mouth and that becomes your story. And there's a lot of language that we have to figure out and stop doing the self-sabotaging, the overgeneralization this always happens to me or the jumping to conclusions like oh, they didn't text me back, they must think I'm an idiot or catastrophizing. You know, this is ruined. So there's a lot of ways in which we self-sabotage.

Speaker 3: 19:18

So that's, that framework is what I put together. But the answer to your question is when it came time to move forward and figure out who I was on the other side of it and create new success, those things are the things that I did. So I didn't know that I was doing them exactly back then, but when I stepped aside to look at my life and other people who had big success, who'd gone through difficult times, who had managed to dig themselves out of a deep hole and find success on the other side, they all that was the commonality, those four things you know, to be able to look at it in timeline perspective. Humans ask for help isolate it, not before or after. What am I dealing with? And this story piece like the language in your head. We got to be a little nicer to ourselves sometimes, but we also need to put the right language on it to create the story we want.

Speaker 2: 20:05

Yeah, Beautifully said and as I look at it, thinking about what you just said, there's a reactive way you can do these things. You can lose, like the first one really is about, for me, perspective, like if I'm narrowing my perspective and this is everything, my identity is everything and this is all falling apart. I've lost perspective. And that timeline kind of expands perspective and kind of when you're, it's almost like you're less contracted, you're more expanded by doing that, right, and when you're more expanded, you're more relaxed, right.

Speaker 2: 20:40

And then the human side of the people side of it is, you know, I mean the power of making a request. I need help. So we think we're doing this alone. And you know, part of me and my journey was learning that I wasn't just a lump of flesh walking through space Right, I was life itself, and that there was other living things around me that actually had intelligence and heart and care that actually didn't want to help me if I ask, right, yep, you know. And then I love the other side of it about you know, isolating the problem, because you know there's.

Speaker 2: 21:13

There are research in neuroscience says that when we go into survival mode, we go into time traveling past future, past future, past future. We lose touch with the now. We lose touch with the only time we can do anything about anything which is to be present now. We lose touch with it and we start worrying about the future or beating ourselves up about exactly what you just said. And then what story do you want to tell yourself? What's the vision you want to live into? And I think that probably that's one of the biggest challenges when we lose our identity is what do I now want to create? What? How do I do that, and that is. Every individual has their own struggle with that time right, like if you go back to thinking about you moved from gymnast and then you moved into broadcasting, right? Is that kind?

Speaker 1: 22:01

of. Is that the move you made?

Speaker 2: 22:04

How did you make me as that is an example how did you make that transition to realize? You know, this is something I'm interested in. This kind of excites me, and maybe I'm pretty good at it because I do have this ability to communicate. How was that transition from one to the other? If you could talk a little bit about that as an example of how you changed the story, maybe Is that fair to ask, that's a fun one to ask, actually.

Speaker 3: 22:28

So when I blew out my knee in order to keep my scholarship at LSU back then, they don't do it now, but I had to work for the athletic department. So I went to work and they put me to work in the laundry room and not washing like cute little leotards. I was washing athletic attire for all the sports I sometimes joke. Had I gotten stuck in that part of my life, my claim to fame could be that I washed Shaquille O'Neal's jockstrap Like that's frightening Right right right no-transcript.

Speaker 3: 23:20

One wanted to be around, that like all the things. So I sat there a lot of days and was just kind of in my own funk and there was a young, probably in his thirties, a guy that worked for the athletic department. That was an academic advisor and you know we didn't have counseling or anything back there like they do now there's so much support. But there was an academic advisor and he would walk by and I think probably the first few times he walked by he's like hey, nina, how you doing? And I'm sure I said something horribly snarky like perfect, can't you tell?

Speaker 3: 23:48

You know, but over time, over time he would stop and there became this pattern of at least once or twice a week he would stop and we'd chat for a little while in the sun and he was the first person talk about the people letting them in uh, who I was able to have a real conversation with and say and he's asked me well, what does your, what do you want to do with life, what does life look like after gymnastics?

Speaker 3: 24:11

And no one had ever really asked me before and I had never thought about it, and so he got me thinking about well, who do you, who do you want to be, what do you get? So I really have a huge appreciation for that human in my life. And then I ended up working for the athletic department instead of in the laundry room in sports information and doing stories and things on different athletes which made more sense, which made more sense, and that got me the opportunity in the newsroom. And then the newsroom was where I stepped in and you know, sometimes you can just step in and you feel that you're in the right place, kind of like love at first sight for me, yeah exactly I love the vibe.

Speaker 3: 24:44

It was a lot of energy. It was very demanding. There was no like falling down and staying down. You had to get back up and keep going, Just like in gymnastics. It was different every day and it was moving very quickly.

Speaker 2: 24:57

And I just you have to be when it's moving like that, you have to be in the moment, right, right, you, really, you don't have any choice, right.

Speaker 3: 25:03

No, and that story is going to be gone tomorrow anyway, and you're going to be on to the next thing.

Speaker 2: 25:06

The news cycle moves so quickly.

Speaker 3: 25:07

So I just fell in love with that. And then that story in my head. What I always tell people is where do you want to be in five years? Let's start. You know, as you wake up and not sure what to do with your day, or if you're in a tough spot or if you're super grumpy, what can I do right now that me five years from now will be proud of? So I started getting in that mindset early, like what can I do right now that me five years from now will be proud of? I still do that. I mean I'll have a really bad day and something will go wrong and I'll want to just like, go through the drive through and get hamburgers and French fries and, you know, blow off the rest of my day and go sit out and live not far from the beach. I'm going to go sit on the beach, eat crappy food and then hit the first beach bar that opens, like that's what I would finish.

Speaker 2: 25:58

I think we can all relate to that one.

Speaker 3: 25:59

Yes, I'm like. Okay, me eating French fries and grabbing a beer by two o'clock is probably not what me five years from now needs. Well, it sounds really appealing in the minute. So I do that to myself, to what does me five years from now need me to do in this moment, and then I'll drive home.

Speaker 3: 26:16

That's a great question yeah, so I learned that early on and I think it's so, so valuable for all of us. As we, like you said, navigate this life, it keeps changing Something you said earlier. I was going to chime in what our definition of success is. Changes through life too. So what you're working towards changes, but all we can do is how we react is react to something so we can set plans, we can go about our day, but in the end, life's going to change, the world around us is going to change and things aren't always going to go as planned. So how we react when things don't go as planned is a lot of what I talked about. That was that I talk about. That's resilience, Very different than persistence and grit. Resilience is how you adapt in a positive way to anything that happens in your life. It's the adapt piece.

Speaker 2: 27:04

Yeah Well, that's the beautiful thing about human being is like to me it's like there's. It goes back to the. I'm not the lump of flesh, I'm more than this body. There's something that's moving in me spirit, whatever you call it that knows the way Right and almost knows, and in many ways is the most least affected part when we go through the thises Right. There's a part of us that's a peace beyond understanding, part that we can tap into. Now. It's difficult because we have this mind that makes all these stories up about what's happening. That is not true. It's all an illusion in a certain way, but it's an illusion that we buy into. It gets our cortisol moving and gets all these things going in our body and makes us feel like crap, right.

Speaker 2: 27:51

And then, and it's almost like we have to go through experience, enough experiences, and get you know some tips from people like you about how we can process these times that in a certain way, like you know, I have a songwriter friend. He has a great song Life is not happening to you, it's happening for you, right? Yeah, I love the idea of that thing, yeah.

Speaker 2: 28:15

Yeah. So I want to move from that to talk a little about the state of the leadership in the world today and in the business world in specific. And you know I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus or sing the praises of anybody, but what do you think about the state of leadership in the world today and specifically the business world? What are your thoughts on that, if you would share? Well?

Speaker 3: 28:38

I think, like in anything like you're the CEO of your own life and they're all just people who are leading in a larger capacity and the world around us is changing. So I go back to that and I'll tie this into the title of your podcast this whole unfazed under fire. We are all under fire, like, and I think, in, leadership right now, I think, leadership is certainly under fire right now.

Speaker 3: 28:59

Whether you're a CEO in a company, whether you're leading something politically, wherever you are, leadership is changing In our corporate world, people not wanting to come back to work in person. The economics of how the corporate world is going to be in the future is different. Where the spend is, how they run a P&L it's all going to be very different. So I feel like all of it's under fire. So, as I kind of tie it back into your unfazed under fire, I think the leaders who have success are going to be the ones who have this concept of resilience, have the ability to be unfazed.

Speaker 3: 29:31

You know, not in my example, not have a bad day and eat fries and go to the beach, and a very basic example of how Nina tries not to get phased, because I do, and there are days where I will eat fries and go to the beach Don't get me wrong and I will have a beer to the left. But the ones who have the ability in leadership to be unfazed under fire and take that breath, realize that they're one person on a giant planet and their actions matter and how they react matters. We have because the world is changing so much right now and everybody is under fire and anybody in a leadership capacity. We have to get better at adapting in a positive way to whatever happens in our lives, which is resilience. So let me just say persistence and grit. People get these really mixed up. I think leaders who try to be persistent or have grit right now are going to be in a bad spot.

Speaker 2: 30:22

I think you're most successful.

Speaker 3: 30:24

The most successful ones are going to be the resilient. So think about, let me take you back to 2020. So in 2020, on January 1st, you probably got up and had, like things you were going to, this was going to be the year you did this or that, or took the vacation, or lost the weight or did the thing. We all had things we were going to do January 1st 2020. If you were persistent and using grit that year, you weren't going to have much success because the world changed. Take that vacation and get that promotion, like you had to go. Okay, wait, the world's changing, I have to adapt. You know, learn, grow stronger and adapt in a positive way is the definition of resilience. Persistence, doubling down and going hard wasn't going to get you there, and neither was you know the grit like staying with it even when it's beyond bearable. But resilience is this adapt piece.

Speaker 3: 31:08

And I think, when you ask about leaderships, I think the leaders who have the most success right now are the ones who will be able to adapt in a positive way to whatever's happening in the world around. And again, in the positive way is to look big picture. You know that timeline, thinking the big mess. I call it your big messy. Marvelous life, because nobody is all pretty. That's why you have the below the line. To the ones who have the ability to look at this with some perspective, to ask for help and pull in other humans, the ones who can isolate it and go what can I actually do right now, in this moment? And the ones who craft a story that the them, five years from now, is going to be proud of. I think it's the same.

Speaker 2: 31:44

That's well said. Yeah, that's well said to me. To me, that is really about vision. It's like vision and doesn't just include I mean it can include the impact you want to have primarily, but it's also who do you want to be in the matter of having that impact right? And it's calling forth what I think is we've done. I mean leadership development. I've been involved in it for 25 years and I came into it early on when it was still a fresh profession. It was just this was getting going about. Probably like maybe eight, nine years the profession has started to become something and then I became a coach and the leadership development guy. And I think you know, as I watched over the years of organizations and God love them, they've invested in a lot of training and getting people ready to go and situational leadership and Stephen and all these people.

Speaker 3: 32:38

The servant leader. Servant leader, yes, servant leadership.

Speaker 2: 32:42

And all these things are beautiful, but you can't get it from a book, you can't get it from a training. There has to be something and almost like I feel like times like we're in is calling people. It's kind of like the idea of the sculpture. Sculpture is in the granite, right, you have to chip away the granite to get to the sculpture and it's almost like these what we're, what we're up against as a species right now.

Speaker 3: 33:05

I'm getting really deep here it's good, I love it, but we're getting that.

Speaker 2: 33:09

What we're up to as a species right now is it's being called to be greater, to find the greatness in all of us that we have. Really, it goes back to kind of your how we go in the past and say, well, I'm not, and all the mistakes I've made and you know, go in the future and be anxious Like there's something already there that we just have to cultivate. And part of what I think you're getting to with resilience is the cultivation of that, and maybe you could speak a little bit to how does this resilience cultivate that greater authentic spirit to come forward? Any thoughts on that?

Speaker 3: 33:47

Yeah, and it's interesting you call it authentic spirit. Authenticity is a big piece of it. It's also leaning into your strengths Not everybody was put on this planet to be a leader.

Speaker 3: 33:56

And some people try to be leaders who are not, and that's okay. We need followers. We need I always. I do a teamwork, a fun teamwork workshop, and I have people take this quiz and it tells you what superhero you are. I'm like you can't all be the Incredible Hulk and just be the heavy lifters. You can't all be Wonder Woman or Superman and be the leaders. Like we need Spider-Man to be a little quirky and smart and come up with new inventions and we need you know, Iron man, you know, playboy, billionaire, philanthropist, we need, we need him.

Speaker 2: 34:21

People that love engineering, people that love getting their hands into something. We need you know, we need plumbers, we need people that, all kinds of people right To make this world go round, yeah, so.

Speaker 3: 34:32

I think in this leadership piece it goes along with something you were saying earlier you don't always want to be the smartest one in the room. You have to ask other people for help. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Someone may have been there before, but I think in this moment, existentially, in this moment as a planet, the ability to be okay with leaning into your own strengths and really honing those in and making them a part of the larger of the whole. And there will be some leaders who are really good leaders who come out of this. I think the ones who aren't good leaders, who probably were wired for something else, will probably drop out. I don't think they will make it in these moments because I think the ones who just want to be the smartest one in the room, or those people who just want to be the bully and push those, aren't going to last Big picture.

Speaker 3: 35:12

I think, collectively, the leaders and the executives in finance and FITEC right now, what we're seeing FinTech and what we're seeing in some of the software as a service, the big SaaS space I think we're seeing leaders emerge who truly have the mindset when you talk about that chunk of clay and getting down to just this piece. They're made for this and they are comfortable saying I don't know what I don't know, and they're also comfortable not being the smartest person in the room, but mostly they're comfortable taking the blame when things go wrong and moving the ball forward and pulling it. I think it's going to be a very different type of leadership going forward. I think this concept of resilience and leadership, I don't think that it's going to be the same same 20 years from now. I think we're 20 years from this pivotal moment. I think 20 years from now, how we look at a leader and what they bring to the table is going to be very different.

Speaker 3: 36:05

We've seen the shift in the last five to 10 years, just as the world has changed through the pandemic, the CEOs and leaders that were really big in the 90s and early 2000s Top-down kind of bureaucratic kind of thing, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 36:18

And then some people tried the upside-down org chart. The guy at the bottom supports everybody above them leadership. And then there was the whole push you know this better than I do the servant leadership and we all read those books. Servant leadership was big when I was in 2007, 8, 9, 12, 2007 to 2012,. I think those years and I, 12 to 2007 to 2012,. I think those years read all those books and the challenger sale make everybody smarter.

Speaker 3: 36:38

Like there were pieces that came up, came around during that time. I think pieces and parts of that will stay with us, but I think there'll be a new type of leader to get us to, you know, that that brings people together in a different way, that lets people tap into their talents in a new way, that lets people tap into their talents in a new way. I have like, not on the leadership piece, but I have a real question going on in my mind of you know, how? Did it not be cool anymore to be just the best carpenter or the best.

Speaker 3: 37:05

It's all around money and stuff. Now Like what if you're? Like, if you're the best bricklayer in town like can't you just be happy and joyful and super proud of that?

Speaker 2: 37:13

Be good at what you're really good at. I mean that's. I think I mean it is truly. It's not just about leadership, it's people tapping into what they are really good at and giving people space and time. I mean everything is in STEM. I mean STEM is important, right, right, you know, but everything. But there is trades that are highly valuable and we know that when our plumbing ain't working or we need to put an addition on, we need people. We appreciate artistry in those trades. You know we appreciate. You know, as homeowners, you know you appreciate somebody come in and give you a new idea for how you could do something that would be cooler than you were thinking.

Speaker 3: 37:50

So, those kinds of they're so important, and the leaders will be the ones who allow people to self-actualize and really value and appreciate the strengths in other people. I think that's I don't know what the answer is, but I think that's going to be part of what a new sense of leadership in a more comfortable planet I don't know where the word comfortable comes to me, but a planet we can all live in a little more comfortably, I would say at peace, but I'm not sure we will ever get to peace, but maybe get to a more comfortable place in our history, with people going somehow going backwards. With that, I think we're going back to a different time almost.

Speaker 2: 38:26

Well, one of the things you're seeing and McKinsey just came out with a report that one of the biggest focuses for leaders is to create healthy workplaces and to take care of the mental and physical health of their employees.

Speaker 2: 38:41

That's an interesting report. You wouldn't have seen McKinsey have that report maybe five, six years ago, right, and I think a lot of is really fostering that empowerment of merit based on your strengths, as you said, and fostering merit based on what you can give and honoring that and leaders figuring out a way to connect to other, to their direct reports or the people that work for them, in a way that pulls out. What do you see could happen on this team that I don't see that you could bring to the table, that you think could help us be more effective, efficient, deliver greater value to our clients, have this workplace be more meaningful for the people that show up every day and it's really, you know, maybe an overused term now, but humanizing the workplace, which is kind of a weird thing when you think about now we're thinking about humanizing the workplace, which is kind of a weird thing when you think about now we're thinking about humanizing the workplace.

Speaker 3: 39:40

That's like a new idea, a new thought, Right yeah, and I saw that McKinsey study. I use that I speak on. I do a lot of corporate speaking in the mental wellness space, so I'm aware of that study and I've kind of leaned into it. But the idea, you know, that we're moving in that direction and we need to have have not a gentle kinder workplace but actually a workspace where people can be really good at what they're good at, is gonna be really interesting in the future. I think this. So you'd have to climb the corporate ladder, be a manager, let people be what we call I'm not sure they're still called this, but individual contributors.

Speaker 2: 40:10

You know, right, that's okay.

Speaker 3: 40:12

Have a path to have a pay increase and whatever it is that they're working for a title increase, a pay increase as an individual contributor and it's always been something that corporate America struggled with, especially since tech came along, because you have these really, really bright on the spectrum coders who like to sit in a dark room all day long and code and they're brilliant, but you don't want them managing people you know, and to ask them to get out of their comfort zone and be a manager is not smart.

Speaker 3: 40:39

You need a different type of human to do that. But this individual contributor needs a path to continue to grow and get better and get paid more and be, you know, really compensated, both mentally and with money, like, make, feel good about themselves, that kind of like value compensation, along with financial compensation for what they bring to the table. So that's going to be a challenge that people continue to face well, and it's all about organizations becoming more creative.

Speaker 2: 41:05

and there would you know and creativity is not always thought for five steps ahead I mean, you look at a blank canvas and then what if somebody does with blank canvas? They're not thinking five steps ahead, they're thinking where does my brushstroke go right now?

Speaker 3: 41:20

Right.

Speaker 2: 41:20

Oh, that's nice. Well, maybe I'll do it. You know, like one thing leads to another. It's a whole different way of operating which goes back to the whole past, future thing and trying to figure out too far in advance. And trusting it's like there's a level of trusting those we work with more. And how do we create more trust between us and know that? You know, promises made, promises kept, is an example of that. You know that we're going to take care of you in this way and here's what we expect from you. And these expectations are codified into real, clear commitments and if you follow those commitments, there's reward, not like you're chasing something, but it's kind of common sense.

Speaker 2: 41:59

In a certain way, we've got away from common sense and we almost think too far ahead of ourselves. I guess sometimes human beings do, which I wanted to speak to you about as well. You have this concept that is not burnout. You call it excellence, exhaustion, and so this kind of dovetails into what we're talking about, because leaders have a tendency to try to solve all the problems at once and you know they're smart, they're some of the smartest. I mean, I don't hold a candle to most of the people that I coach and their intelligence and their ability to see things. But talk a little bit about this, why you reframed it excellence exhaustion versus burnout, and I know there's a good reason for it, but I'd like you to just explain that a little bit. And what? How do you overcome that?

Speaker 3: 42:49

I think okay. So at first I think with burnout it's kind of the general population. People are just doing the same thing over and over, all day long, every day, and they don't have much control over what they're doing. Excellent exhaustion I see, as your high achievers who are. And it works. You know this in a lot of tech industry or in construction. I'm finding it's a lot in the construction space Anywhere, where you have a project and you build it and then you get handed the next one right away.

Speaker 3: 43:19

Or if you're you know so, construction has that there as soon as they finish one big I spoke to the metal builders contracting contractors association and they, as soon as they build one giant Costco or one giant warehouse like the next five, are already there Like they just move on to the next thing. There's no downtime. If you're in software, you code and you put out a software release and then you're handed the. You're handed you know however many Jiras yeah, here's the Jiras for the next release and they come in. So and we do it in our own lives too.

Speaker 3: 43:42

If you're a high achiever, you say this is the year I'm going to get the promotion, this is the year I'm going to meet my quota, I'm going to break, I'm going to beat quota and then, as soon as you do, you're years down the road. They've thought about it more and they're thinking about it more often than the rest of us, those folks in leadership positions. So as soon as you hit a target, they have the next goal ready for you. And now, with data-driven insights, and have they just you know, your targets come up through the data on how long it takes to close a sale, how many calls that makes. I mean if you're in sales or if you're in construction. There's data that shows this is how long it took to do this one. So this one is this big.

Speaker 2: 44:20

So the data is very quick and it gives you the and now we're adding AI on top of that, which is speeding everything else up, right.

Speaker 3: 44:26

Exactly, exactly. So you have this data-driven, ai-driven, constant connectivity 24-7. There's nobody sleeping because we're coding it in Hyderabad. If we're not coding it here, you know we're just throwing it around the globe. So people are always working on it. So you have this constant connectivity and these goals, and excellent exhaustion is tapping into that. That's different than just I've been doing the same job forever and I'm burned out and doing my thing. This is I am really good at it.

Speaker 2: 44:53

I love what I do and I've worked really hard to get here. I enjoy the stress of it. I enjoy the stress of it.

Speaker 3: 44:56

Yeah, I actually I'm really damn good at this and I've worked really hard to get here. But I just hit this target. Now the next one's right there. There's no downtime and there's no feeling of accomplishment that lasts for more than a second because you're given the next goal. So that's what I mean by excellent exhaustion.

Speaker 3: 45:12

It's constantly working to achieve the goal. You just you know the next best thing or to outdo the goal you just made. The next goal is going to be more. I mean, you don't very seldom do you hear of a company going okay, you made your target next this year, next year it's going to be a little lower. You know we're going to, we're going to do a little less next year. No one says that every year you're going to do a little more. So every year your target's going to be a little higher. So that's the concept of excellent exhaustion.

Speaker 3: 45:36

Is this wheel that we're on. You set a goal, you work real hard and you have persistence and grit. Then you make the goal and not just feel like we're on a hamster wheel. Some people call it. There's that one book with the hamster wheel on it. How do we feel? How do we set ourselves up for success there, and a lot of that comes from leadership and how we do goal setting and how we put things out in front of us and we look at our success and our goals very differently.

Speaker 2: 46:10

Right, so is, is what are some ways that you would say? Are that are suggestions that you give to people that are in that cycle to obviously continue with their excellence, but to also honor that there's a time to rest, to take a break, to celebrate to. You know, maybe there doesn't feel like there's time to do that. What are you? What are you? What's the way out of excellence?

Speaker 3: 46:38

exhaustion doesn't feel like there's time to do that. What's the way out of excellence? Exhaustion? The way out is through. So you don't want to get out of it. Because I say, if you've worked so darn hard to get where you are and been, you know whether you've taken the test or gone to school for it or gotten the, you know whatever, you've worked hard to get where you are, so don't step out. You want to keep going and you want to keep leveling up and doing better.

Speaker 3: 46:56

But the first part is this acceptance piece of oh wait, I am this person. I am not the flatliner. I do want to continue to get better and level up and get better and level up. This is who I am. I'm not okay with the status quo. There's never going to be like the car is not going to be the thing I get, or the house, or the thing I'm always going to want to keep getting better, because that's how I'm wired. So there's this acceptance piece of better because that's how I'm wired. So there's this acceptance piece of wait. This is who I am and I jumped in this game.

Speaker 2: 47:21

I jumped in this game Like this is the game.

Speaker 1: 47:23

I'm playing in life, yeah.

Speaker 3: 47:29

So that's the first piece of it. And then I always say, you know, I go back to the humans piece. It's my same framework, just a little different, with excellence, suggestion, the same thing. So that's the perspective. Like wait, I'm in this game, where am I? Oh, wait, I'm only 35 and I'm in this. Like it, there's no. Like I turned 50 and magically is easy.

Speaker 1: 47:43

I'm going to keep up in the ante.

Speaker 3: 47:44

So this first you have to get people with this acceptance piece of oh, this is a lifetime of highs and lows and stress and a leveling up, and once they get it in their head like, oh, it's not a bad lifetime. I chose this thing that I'm doing to be really, really good at. And then that comes the human piece, one accepting yourself and going I'm really good at this, giving yourself a little bit of credit for what you're really good at, exhaustion and to keep people in the game that they've worked so hard to be in. And that's this like FOMO culture we're in, because it takes only a minute for you to look in LinkedIn or look someplace and go look at them. They're doing that. They're already at this point.

Speaker 2: 48:31

You start comparing yourself why didn't I get?

Speaker 3: 48:32

into that job. Why didn't I?

Speaker 2: 48:34

do the other thing.

Speaker 3: 48:35

What if I just jumped out and did that? So there's this FOMO piece that we have to really get a hold of. And those people couldn't do your job. Those people probably don't have the back experience or the skills that you have.

Speaker 3: 48:48

So I spend a lot of time when I go through the excellence exhaustion piece, reminding people of what they're really good at doing and how hard they work to get here. Like you don't want to start all over, you have no idea what they went through to get there. Like let them be them. And we say you know it's the same thing we do when we pick up our phones and we go so-and-so. Just, you know, bought a new car, took a vacation, their kids got into Harvard, whatever it is.

Speaker 3: 49:08

We have this comparison Comparison's the thief of joy. There is somebody behind you that wishes they were where you are, and then there's somebody ahead of you that's already been where you are and has kept going. So part of excellence exhaustion is knowing that you're in the game and where you fit in with your skills and what you're really good at. You know that's part of this. Excellence is the words that we choose to assign to things, because if you're constantly saying this is too hard, this sucks. Why did I choose this career? So-and-so is an idiot they make like. All of that language is not helping you with your own mental health and mental well-being. That self-sabotage, the exaggerating.

Speaker 2: 49:55

It goes back to the story you're telling yourself, right, yeah?

Speaker 3: 49:59

So a lot around excellence and exhaustion is a mind game. You know, there's not like one thing.

Speaker 3: 50:02

I could sit here and say take walks, take deep. You know, do box breathing, take deep, walk, take walks. Go outside every once in a while. I don't do that type of stuff that's more for like burnout, excellence, exhaustion is more of. You're really high achiever and you are in the game. Let me help you mentally put yourself in the right place to win this game. And to win it it's to get to your. You define what success looks like you, no one else does, and you figure out what it feels like to feel successful along your own journeys.

Speaker 2: 50:31

I also find out for high achievers there comes a point where, if it becomes more about collective achievement than individual achievement, there's more reward in it for you as an achiever. You get more fulfillment and, in other words, there's a different kind of energy you pull from that. That tends not to lead to such exhaustion as much. I still think it's good to take a break to smell the roses every once in a while.

Speaker 3: 50:54

All that's important 100%.

Speaker 2: 50:56

But it's also there's a time when it's not about me, it's about we, and when you make that train, I'm not expecting somebody that's a gymnast, like you were when you were in college and all those years before that you worked at that At a young age. We're focused on us. But at a certain point when you get to mid-40s and so forth, if you start making it about more collective, it tends to reenergize you in a different way.

Speaker 3: 51:21

Well, and that's where your leadership stuff plays into, because the CEO I don't know if I got back to that came back full circle. But the CEO sets the goals and sets the targets. So their ability to set the targets and paint the picture of the we and the larger picture of why we are going down this road and how this benefits all of us and society and why what we're doing is important, like to paint the we in the bigger picture with the goals. That's a big piece of excellent exhaustion when I'm working with executive teams and leadership. How you set goals for yourself Very, very important. That's where the we comes in as well.

Speaker 2: 51:58

Well, that speaks to something about more about your background, which I think you have a lot to say about you have a really impressive background in corporate communications and media and marketing and part of the.

Speaker 2: 52:04

I think in certain ways, we've lost the power of vision as a communication piece, for not just something that I say to get people excited, but something that comes from me as the leader, that I put together and spent time thinking about and I'm excited about and I'm enrolling people into, which is the bigger why and I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that and what is the process of communicating that vision and why is that so important and what are any tips you have around that communication of vision that you think helps people with all we've been talking about?

Speaker 3: 52:45

The why is important and the story, as you put it, is the most important thing that a company can get right the CEO and the leadership team. Getting your story right about why you're building, what you're building or creating and how it fits in and what led you on this journey and where you see your green pasture ahead. That story is really key and I do a lot of work with startups going for like an S round of funding or on what is that story? Because it has to have some emotion in it and it has to have some vision in it, obviously, but the most important thing about a story is everybody needs to be telling the same story.

Speaker 3: 53:20

Your chief technology officer can't talk about your company different than the CEO and the chief financial officer can't talk about it differently, you know, than the head of HR. You need to have everybody like what is the story of our company? Because when you get the story right, it helps you attract and retain employees. Everybody's on the same page. It helps you, you know, investors know the story. It has to be the same story and a version of it for your investors. It helps you get money into the door. It helps you have partnerships and build your ecosystem in whatever industry you're in. It helps you get clients with your story and obviously, attract and retain talent.

Speaker 2: 53:56

The story is- Helps you innovate, build strategies and tactics that are going to take you towards the result of the story.

Speaker 2: 54:02

I mean, it does so much. I think there's I feel like there's been a lost, a little bit of a lost touch in touch with that, and I find sometimes that clients like calling to you I just want you to spend some time to write down in detail what you're trying to create, and it's like I really don't have time to do that. I got so much on my plate. I promise you, if you do this, it'll save you time, but it's like it's like somehow we, because things are moving so fast, we've lost. And it goes back to the power of the story.

Speaker 3: 54:30

Yeah, and that first few years, especially if you're in a startup and hyper growth, those first few years Everybody's so busy doing that they lose that story piece.

Speaker 3: 54:38

But part of that, as you mentioned, is if you're telling, it gets everybody. If no one takes time to do it, everybody starts telling different stories, because your finance guy's seeing that story very different than your chief technology officer and your head of client services is seeing that story very different than even your marketing person and so, or your product people who are building the thing aren't here, like they're all going in different directions. So taking the time to get together and agree on a story like it's collaborative the CEO doesn't get to come up with the story all by themselves. They can talk about why they started it and where they want it to go, but it's gotta be a collaborative effort to go. Wait, this is our story at this moment for our company and that becomes the vision, the story with the vision and the emotion, and the founder story. Usually that becomes this, this mashup. This is like the kryptonite it can either make you strong or kill you, like that becomes the most important thing you have that everybody can take going forward.

Speaker 2: 55:33

Yeah, it is just a couple more questions, and one of the one I want to touch on is for my female leaders that I work with. I love working with female executives. I think they're sometimes the most natural leaders in the world. However, as you say in your book, both I Want Both. You really help working mothers for striving to balance that career success and that personal fulfillment that comes with their desire to be a good mother and be present for their kids. So I know this could be opening up a can of worms because we don't have a lot of time left, but I'd love you to maybe speak to those. What do you tell female executives who are struggling with that balance, demanding their careers and personal lives the CEO or the CFO or even the VP of that's rising in their career about how to? What are some things you talk about in your book that you could be willing to share? And, of course, we'll invite people to get the books so they can get everything.

Speaker 3: 56:28

Yeah, a couple of quick nuggets. There's a lot to it. This is a whole different discussion from where we were but, I think the two most important things.

Speaker 3: 56:35

For if you're a young woman just starting on this journey or somebody in the thick of it right now, I think that there's two really key things, and the first is to define what success looks like for you. I think it's very, it's all very individual. I was in that corporate space and flying around on a little jet and going different places and I wasn't there for all of my kids things. My house was not, I was not a. Everything had to be put away at the end of the night, perfectly. All the laundry wasn't always folded, but I was okay with that because I was there when I was present and I had to find what success looked like to me. Success to me looked like making enough money for my kids to go to any college they wanted to go to and have the things that they had that I didn't grow up with, you know, and also to have time with me. That mattered, and so I remember my mom would come over sometime. She's a different generation, she just turned 90.

Speaker 3: 57:24

And she was like, what are you doing? Just sitting on the floor playing when your laundry is not done and the dishes aren't put away, and I was like I am doing a puzzle with the kids, like that was my time with the children. I was always very present. So the second thing is make memories that matter so you don't have to be there every minute of every day. You make memories that matter. Use the time with your children and memories that matter. People don't remember what you do. They remember how you make them feel. So use that time. Decide what success looks like to you. My best friend cannot go to bed unless all the dishes are done in her house and unless everything's put away. I don't think I've ever gotten there where everything's put away to this day there's always tomorrow there's always tomorrow.

Speaker 3: 58:04

It's not dirty there's. It's not dirty or disheveled, it's just not perfect. But I was fine with not being perfect and I'm fine. I was fine with my kids not having the perfect outfits to go to school.

Speaker 2: 58:14

Throw on some clothes, that's not that's most important thing, I mean with them and being present and I was comfortable with that.

Speaker 3: 58:21

Now, for somebody else they may be like I can't even imagine that. Like it's very important for me to have these things be what are really important in my life and these other things don't matter. So I have a whole chapter on the book like let's decide what's important to you and you decide what success looks like, what something's. You know the give and takes. What does success look like for this? And it's really really key. That's one of the most important. And then the other is you know, creating moments that matter. People remember what you feel, how you make them feel, and not absolutely every little thing you do. My kids don't remember the things I didn't show up for. They remember the things I was there at. She works in AI in New York. I've got one that's finished in med school. I've got one that's in the Air Force. Like they're all adulting and doing just fine and I was not perfect in any way.

Speaker 3: 59:07

Shape or form, but I was successful in my own. I was comfortable. I was comfortable in how I was being successful.

Speaker 2: 59:14

Yeah, and I think our kids enjoy and make fun of our imperfect perfections anyway. That's part of the fun of being, you know, making fun of their mother and father.

Speaker 3: 59:23

Oh yeah, daily, Daily. Even as adults they will send me stuff like look, how funny this is, yeah.

Speaker 1: 59:29

That's okay, that's okay.

Speaker 2: 59:40

Well, as we wrap up, is there any final?

Speaker 3: 59:41

words you want to say, to feel complete or to share, that you'd like to leave people with as we close the show today. Thank you for the opportunity, david. I will say one thing If you have someone listening who's struggling right now and on maybe one of those low moments trying to get back up over that line, it's okay to not be okay, but it's not okay to stay that way. It's up to you to get yourself on the other side of that line, and I just recently launched the Now what Workshop. Did you get fired?

Speaker 3: 1:00:00

Now what Something happens now what I got incarcerated, now what? It's all the things. So I launched this Now what Workshop, so I would encourage you to one. Find a clinically trained therapist. That's not me, but if you just need somebody to get you out of a deep dark hole so you don't do something stupid, the Now what Workshop will get you there. And again, it's okay to not be okay, but it's just not okay to stay that way and it's up to you to, when you're ready, start making that move to get yourself out of whatever it is you're in.

Speaker 2: 1:00:28

That's great. Well, I'll make sure that. Have your publicist send me a link to that and we'll include the links to your books and everything underneath the podcast description. I want to thank you so much, Nina, for like sharing what you shared today. It's so important, it's so timely for the world that we're living in. You know, resilience is, you know, a superpower that we have as human beings, and knowing how to tap into that is so important, and so you're, you know it's just very practical and important. I'm very grateful that you joined us today. So thank you very much.

Speaker 3: 1:01:00

Thank you so much for having me, david. I really appreciate you sharing your story too and for all you do here, so appreciate being a part of it.

Speaker 2: 1:01:07

Great and I want to thank all of you who are tuning in. Thanks for being part of this journey with us. Your time and attention means the world to me and if you found today's discussion Vanina world to me, and if you found today's discussion Benita powerful and valuable, please help us spread the word by letting your friends, colleagues and anyone else who could benefit knowing from Unfazed Under Fire podcast. Remember you can catch us in all episodes and video on YouTube, on our YouTube audio station and on Apple Podcasts, spotify, amazon Music and 13 other podcasting platforms. So until next time, keep growing in your authentic expression as a leader, leading with purpose, uplifting those around you and making an impact. Have a great rest of your day. This is David Kragatz, leadership Alchemist, signing off for now.